MOTHER was my entire world as a child.
By the time I became self-aware, only two types of people were around me: those who feared and scorned my red eyes, and those who tried to use me because of them. A curious gawker occasionally turned up, but in due time they’d make their disgust known. Maybe it was conditioning from what others said around them or threats from their parents to stay away from me that had everyone eventually turn on me.
When did I stop feeling anything as the people who cheerfully spoke to me disappeared one-by-one? Thinking back, by the time I was five I had already gained an understanding that people will always abandon you for their own good, and I developed a general sense of the way others viewed me.
A red-eyed abomination.
That was how others perceived me, even as a child.
It’s not as if I had done anything at that point. I just happened to be born with red eyes. I didn’t despair over my future enough to curse my lot in life, but I had no expectation for a happy life either. That was my childhood. Amid all the contempt that tried to devour me from every direction, only Mother loved me. Her love fit what you would expect of any mother. At times she would scold me, praise me, cry with me, and rejoice with me.
Akashi bestowed a log cabin in the woods near town to us. I spent untroubled days there with Mother. That was the entire world to me.
Mother had a weak constitution and wasn’t very strong as a vampire either. I put my heart into nursing her back to health every time she fell ill. My father, Akashi, would show his face at our cabin once a month, but we didn’t share anything that could be considered a conversation, much less heart-to-heart father-son time.
“How are you, my boy?”
“Don’t fight with others.”
I remember nodding to his one-liners every month. I recognized him as my father, but his position as Patriarch held a stronger image, causing me to hesitate becoming overly familiar with him.
My world didn’t grow even after I began attending school. Rather, it seemed to shrink. Not a single person in the same class tried to talk to me. When the need arose for me to approach them, conversation was all but impossible—they were paralyzed with fear. Some of my bolder classmates tried to pick on me every so often, but when I snapped and paid them back for it, they became like disciplined pups the next day.
You could come at me more, was my honest thought. It was far better to be pranked and bullied than to be ignored and treated like I didn’t exist.
Change came to my closed-off world the fall of my tenth year. A boy two years older than me, claiming to be my older brother, forced a letter of challenge into my hands. I listened to what he had to say, to learn we were brothers from different mothers and that he came to challenge me to a fight to see who was the strongest of all our brothers. He also claimed I was the third he had challenged so far, and that he had beaten the pulp out of the first two.
I was surprised to say the least. I learned I had siblings for the first time. Most of all, I was astonished one of those brothers not only didn’t quiver in repulsion and fear of my eyes, but even wanted to challenge me to a fight. Naturally, I properly accepted his challenge and secured my win.
He said his name was Tomoki. He was a lively boy who often smiled. He was my first friend and my older brother.
From that day, my world rearranged itself to include Mother and Tomoki.
Tomoki came to the log cabin to challenge me every time the opportunity presented itself. I asked him why he so desperately wanted to win, to which he responded with a sparkle in his eye, “I want to take over the position of Patriarch after Father!”
His mother wanted him to become Patriarch.
We brawled, laughed, and played together—that’s what the days with Tomoki consisted of. It was fun. Above all else, I was having fun. I learned for the first time how much fun spending time with others could be.
Just like that, a year passed by and I became best friends with Tomoki. I spent the majority of that year hanging out with him. And then another year went by. We both grew a little taller, our personalities settled to fit our age, and while we no longer laughed with our mouths wide-open without a care in the world, we still had a great relationship.
Tomoki also stopped bringing up our challenge every waking second. And while he never once stopped talking about his desire to become Patriarch, he started speaking about it as a pipe dream. His mother grew hysterical and started coming to my house to complain around that time. Whenever Tomoki and I would study at the log cabin, we often heard her deranged shouts of, “You took him! You took my son!”
At first, I went to help my mother until she remonstrated me saying, “This is a problem among us women.” From that point, I hesitated to go downstairs anymore and just sat on top of the second-story staircase listening to his mother’s crazed hysteric raging.
Tomoki’s trips to our house decreased in proportion to his mother’s escalating hysteria. After half a year of his mother’s hysteric attacks, he stopped coming to the cabin altogether. It was quiet. Things only returned to the way they were before he came into my life, but the silence enraged me. I went on a rampage at school during that time. Tomoki had just turned fifteen and I, thirteen.
And then that fated day came.
My siblings and our mothers had suddenly been summoned to the Patriarch’s manor. I saw my siblings for the first time there. There were five altogether—four boys and one girl. Of course, Tomoki sat obediently in the room too. He had taken on a slightly more mature and anguished look in the several months since I last saw him.
We were gathered under the pretext of an informal social gathering to get to know each other better. We were to eat and stay the night together. That was all. I thought Akashi had a few screws loose to gather all his lovers in one place, but I was convinced it might help temper Tomoki’s mother’s hysterics with how happy she was to see Akashi.
Tomoki called me out to see him that night.
He stared absently at the moon in the manor’s garden. The night was graced with an almost chillingly beautiful moon.
A little excited to see him, I called out his name and ran toward him. I gasped at what I saw glinting in his hand. I still vividly remember the expression on his face and the sound of his voice.
“Let’s fight, Kouya.” The gloomy-eyed Tomoki looked as if he were on the verge of tears. A silver knife gleamed in his right hand.
The knife was made of the purest silver from the blade to the handle. Tomoki’s hand sizzled loudly and burned where he held it. The smell of burning flesh and a grim Tomoki slowly approached me. I was paralyzed by my first taste of genuine killer intent directed toward me.
I couldn’t swallow the situation. Everything that happened from there seemed to play out in slow motion. Tomoki ran at me with the knife. I watched him without doing anything. For a moment, I didn’t recognize the shadow that leapt between us.
Mother was stabbed protecting me.
To put it simply, that’s what happened. He had thrust the knife through Mother’s heart. The flesh surrounding the silver knife instantly seethed and exploded in a bloody mess. Mother collapsed and Tomoki stood before me bathed in her blood. His shaking hand still clenched the knife.
“It’s all your fault. All your fault. All your fault,” he repeated through clattering teeth. His voice sounded so distant.
I don’t really remember what happened next.
Tomoki laid sprawled out in the pool of blood gushing from Mother. A gaping hole replaced where his heart had been, and my right hand was dyed a dark red. I finally realized what was going on and the gravity of what I had done; I lost my mind.
“Mom never loved me because you were born with red eyes and received the name Kouya… It’s all your fault. Wretched monster,” he cried out with his final breath.
Tomoki’s last words were a curse. He choked on the words, but clearly got them out. The boy I considered my dear friend and beloved older brother, cursed me as a monster in his final moments.
I think I cried. As long as my blood isn’t transparent, I believe the liquid that spilled from my eyes were tears. I resented my existence for the first time. If gouging out my eyes meant I could redo everything, I would gladly rip them out of their sockets. But reality is hopelessly cruel…
Mother died.
I killed Tomoki.
I heard the sound of my world collapsing around me.