[[Daniel,
Regarding my impending departure, have you started the interviews yet on a replacement? If so, I'd appreciate you include me in the process. There are certain facts about Yasuko's care that are not covered in the mandatory orientation that should be addressed and met before they start. For example, she has an intense dislike of individuals composed of liquids—their appearance is disorienting for her.
Please let me know a good time to call you.
Sincere thanks,
Augustine Breeze
ACSS, LLC
Senior Manager, East Coast Branch, ext. 6501
P.O. Box 340718]]
❁
Breeze entered the admin room and greeted the two fairies within with a nod, his mood a mix of relief, exhaustion and ever-present aggravation. The office space had previously served as storage for Yasuko's belongings, a place where his predecessor would smoke opium in secret. Now, it was a tidy array of desks and computers. One wall hosted a notice board laden with reminders and schedules, the other with two of Yasuko's more palatable paintings. The third wall, farthest from the door, was solely dedicated to monitors, each directed to a different corner of the Cage.
Prior to Breeze's employment, the security of the Cage would have been called pitiful, at best. 'Security' had comprised of a single outbuilding down the street, manned by one guard whose sole job was to blandly smile and wave at whoever came and went. Not a very reliable system, but back then, people left their doors unlocked and let children walk to school by themselves.
Breeze subscribed to a much more modern, paranoid state of mind. His reputation, after all, was tied to Yasuko's welfare. If he lost her, by accident or on purpose, then he—and the Autumn fairies by extension—would be saddled with the sin. He'd seen enough examples to justify his fear, and so his first campaign upon hiring had been to install enough cameras and screens to cover the entire property—the doorways, the driveway, the yard, even Yasuko's bedroom and bath. As a result, he'd come to think of the admin room as his headquarters, of sorts.
"She's in the library again," Feldick reported from his station, halfway through a sandwich. "Watching her show." His long green hair was knotted into a messy bun atop his head, and he was wearing loungewear and slippers. Apparently he'd interpreted Breeze's upcoming retirement as an opportunity to flout the workplace dress code.
Ignoring his subordinate's state of dress, Breeze looked amongst the screens for Yasuko. When he'd left her, same as yesterday and always, she'd been kneeling on a cushion, watching the television with a detached air, her spine stiff and her pose regal. Now she lounged on a chair, hands steepled in front of her face as she watched with uninhibited interest...a children's cartoon.
"Fucking vampires and their kids shows," Feldick murmured, rolling his eyes.
"How was she this morning?" asked Juniper, Feldick's assigned partner for the day. He was drowning amidst two desks covered with textbooks and half-finished schoolwork. Judging by his uncombed hair and tired eyes, it had been a while since he'd last slept—the homework was probably to blame.
"Still mad." Breeze smiled a little when he recalled the vampire's frustration. Smiling more, when he reminded himself that he was leaving this job. Leaving her. His mother would likely send him someplace ten times as stressful, but for now, he would bask in relief—no more strict dinner schedules. No more art time. No more freaking Dragon Tales. He was particularly looking forward to giving up on the last thing. "How's your thesis?"
Planting his forehead into the spine of a book, Juniper groaned, "The Behavior and Compulsions of Vampires Unattached to a Circle. Gag. Can't I pick something else?"
"Pff. You're the one who chose the topic and dragged your ass here begging for an internship. You gotta stick it out."
"But it's boring! Why can't I talk about, well, I don't know..." Juniper trailed off meaningfully, raising his eyebrows at Feldick.
The other fairy pursed his lips, looking pointedly at his lunch. "Ugh."
"Fel..."
Feldick immediately swiveled his chair around, facing the wall. "Not it."
Glancing between the pair, Breeze folded his arms. What were they up to now? "Are you gonna tell me, or...?"
Juniper hung his head, but the young man had boundless enthusiasm—Feldick's lack of support didn't leave much of a dent in his mood. Wiggling his fingers at Breeze, their tips stained yellow with highlighter ink, he inquired curiously, "Has Yasuko been acting weird?"
"Considering you keep better tabs on her than I do, sometimes, I'm guessing that's a redundant question."
The young fairy's response was another grin, bright with victory. "She was grabbing things all over the house last night and hiding them in her futon and the closet."
Breeze's eyebrows went up.
"It looks like hoarding behavior. She built a literal pile in her room while everyone was sleeping." Juniper seemed to be making logical connections that escaped his fellow fairies, and with a touch of frustration, he further added, "Hoarding speaks to underlying anxiety issues. That's counter to their psyche."
Pulling up a chair between the two men, Breeze reluctantly gestured at the screens. He felt like he was placating yet another one of Juniper's mad theories, and he sighed as he propped his chin on a fist. "Video." He pointed first at the bank of monitors, then at Feldick.
The other fairy sighed. His expression said all his thoughts on the whole matter—pointless, waste of time, lunch breaks were precious. Breeze tried not to let those opinions influence him too much, even though he hadn't seen any evidence of a so-called 'hoard' in Yasuko's room.
A monitor flickered, calling for attention as it switched from a view of the kitchen to an altogether different scene—Yasuko's bedroom. The time stamp read late at night, and Yasuko laid her futon atop a veritable pile of...stuff.
Breeze paused, surprised.
Vases, a painting Breeze recognized from the foyer, a rug, a curtain compacted into a messy roll. The mound was at least a foot tall and looked highly uncomfortable, but that didn't discourage the vampire from climbing atop and falling asleep. Feldick obligingly fast-forwarded the recording to early morning. On screen, she awoke, stood up, and haphazardly shoved the entire mess into her closet.
"Look, look." Juniper urged, as if he was worried Breeze would be bored.
He shouldn't have worried. Breeze wouldn't go as far to say he was intrigued, but he was certainly confused. Organization was one of the core compulsions that drove vampires. Yasuko adhered to schedules and neatness with fanatical devotion, and she was the type who didn't tolerate pictures hanging askew. Couldn't tolerate, actually.
"What's she doing now?" Breeze asked, but no one answered. Instead, the video went on.
The time stamp was early morning, still. Yasuko opened her closet and extracted several items from the pile—a torn fan, a wadded-up shawl, and a broken vase. Breeze shuddered to think how much each was worth, then tensed when Yasuko took the broken vase and used the edge to slice open her palm.
She squeezed her hand into a fist, dripping red onto the wood parquet. With a finger from her other hand, she dipped into the blood and painted on the floor—a pattern, twisting and spiral and confusing like a maze. She spent at least ten minutes on it, pausing and rocking back on her heels to consider what she'd made, then continuing. The line of her shoulders grew more and more tense as she drew, and Breeze envisioned anger and frustration in her expression.
She stilled, staring at the design.
Then, all her tension vanished. Her shoulders relaxed, her fingers softened, and—almost sleepily—she started to wipe up the blood. At the end, she licked her palms, her fingers, and swept the floor with her hands until she'd cleaned up every drop and sucked it off her skin.
Feldick muttered something about hygiene.
Afterwards, she cleaned her room, returning all to its proper place. For a moment, Breeze suspected there was a forlorn air of surrender to her pose, but he dismissed it as his imagination.
He threw Juniper an inquiring look. "...and?"
From his seat, Feldick sighed, while Juniper looked crestfallen. The younger fairy had been clearly hoping for some grander acknowledgement than disinterest.
"See, I told you? Just another one of her shitty paintings." To emphasize his fact, Feldick pointed at the framed watercolors hanging nearby. Someone had mercifully covered the worst of them with post-it notes, to save other employees from the horror that was Yasuko's 'art style.'
"Know what else is interesting?" Not one to be easily deterred, however, Juniper leaned forward and whispered in a conspiratorial tone, "I think the ACSS file on her is fake."
Feldick rolled his eyes. "They're the government. Everything they write is fake."
Breeze was inclined to agree, if only because no one really cared about the whole truth. He'd seen Yasuko's stylized biography; it was all glamour and feminine empowerment—the ACSS had chosen to romanticize her past as a prostitute.
He crossed his arms, wearying of this subject and repeating, "And?"
Juniper met Breeze's gaze steadily, a glint in his eyes, "For one, it says she was human when she was turned."
Oh, no, Breeze could see where this was going. Juniper had been tiring of his thesis for close to a year now, chafing at the yoke. This wasn't the first time he'd tried to steer a particularly odd trait of Yasuko's into the foundation for a more interesting course of study.
The kid was too much of a dreamer. He wanted to discover, to 'make his mark.' If so, he should've pursued a different major. The point of history was to hammer down what was already known and occasionally quote something pithy and prosaic. Like "history is doomed to repeat itself" or the like. If he'd wanted adventure, Juniper should have joined the military and let himself be shipped overseas to shoot at crazed chimeras and rabid sphinxes.
"June—"
A stubborn frown came over the younger man's face, his eyes firm with his decision. "Vampirism behavior papers are a dime a dozen. This could be something new."
Feldick scooted his chair behind a tower of cabinets, resigned to a lunch without quiet but determined to exclude himself from the rest of the conversation.
"Hoarding is not a part of vampiric nature. That," Juniper pointed again at the paused video feed, "is not characteristic vampire behavior." A stretch. He was grasping for straws at this point.
The kid probably felt pressured, now that Breeze's departure was official. Who was to say that the replacement would be as accommodating for Juniper's studies? Maybe he wanted to vent all of his wild ideas before he was properly leashed, which spoke to how lenient Breeze was with his staff.
He was reminded of Feldick's pajama pants.
Breeze sighed. He wouldn't regret leaving this job. "It could be behavior from when she was a human. Humans hoard; there's an entire network show dedicated to it."
"But everyone knows that vampire natures override the human ones! She isn't acting like a vampire."
Yasuko acted like nothing less than a vampire—she fretted over organization, followed strict routines, stubbornly refused any and all changes to those routines, and threw dignified tantrums when matters did not go her way.
Before this could go any further, before Juniper could become any more invested in his idea, Breeze held up a hand. "Look, I get your excitement. I won't deny that the hoarding is a little weird, but—" He emphasized this as gently but firmly as he could. Any more or less might leave a loophole through which Juniper could slip through. "I'm leaving, June. I really don't want to put up with this sort of thing right now."
Or ever, actually.
Juniper fell back into his seat, hard, his mouth pursed with disappointment.
"I'm sorry," Breeze said, meaning every word, "For now, we'll attribute the behavior trigger to Min-ho. Daniel's team didn't prepare her for the move." He winced. The decision had been clumsy, and though he'd been just as unaware as Yasuko, he couldn't help but feel a twinge of embarrassment on the behalf of his superiors. "I'll mention it to Daniel, though."
The lack of definitive reaction to Min-ho's absence, Breeze reflected in hindsight, should have caught their attention. This was the only known departure from Yasuko's routine thus far. He should have expected something to happen sooner. Though she had shown no signs of reciprocating Min-ho's interest, the vampire pair had lived together for fifty years. Breeze's superiors should have ended the courtship with more grace.
And maybe...maybe Yasuko had more invested in the failed courtship than anyone had realized. But Breeze couldn't think of her as a regular human or any other being. Vampires were hard-wired differently.
"What about you leaving?"
Mired in his thoughts, it cost him a moment to realize both Feldick and Juniper were staring at him, their eyebrows raised.
"She started last night," Juniper ventured, holding up one hand, and then another. His enthusiasm was fast returning, and Breeze grimaced, wary of the other fairy's optimism. "You told her you were resigning yesterday."
Nodding, Feldick's usual malaise dropped and was replaced with similar excitement. The appearance of something salacious had revived him, it seemed. "But the thing with the tea—"
Breeze shook his head, waving away their suspicions with a small frown. He didn't want to discourage their inquisitive natures, but neither did he want them trailing after Yasuko on the hunt for answers. Mischief would be inevitable, and it might attract the sort of attention that their kind had been actively avoiding. For now, and however long in the future it took, the Autumn fairies needed to appear harmless and obsequious. "Correlation is not causation. I've acted according to the guidelines, and she's given up others without complaint." His predecessor had acted as Yasuko's primary caretaker for over a hundred years, and the vampire had hardly blinked in the two-year transitional period during which Breeze had slowly and meticulously inserted himself into her life.
Another two years, another adequate caretaker—she would be fine without him. It was Min-ho's absence he had to think about. Breeze and the ACSS had presumed that Yasuko's attitude had bespoken indifference, but perhaps there were subtleties to vampire courtship that they had not documented. What should have been a nascent bond might have been misconstrued for apathy.
That had to be it. 'It's Min-ho.' Breeze couldn't envision any other reason. He was just her nanny, after all, and anyone could fulfill the role of babysitter. Not anyone, however, could be her lover and mate. 'It's not me.'
❁