The Crescentian Looking Glass showed a scene of two young teenagers running at the fields early in the morning at dawn, ages twelve and thirteen.
Vladstin had just celebrated his thirteenth birthday two weeks ago, he was only a few months older than Leron. But he always uses this small period of being elder to get the chance to have Leron call him big brother.
"Big Brother Your Highness!" Leron called out, catching up to him in the lavender fields. "Big Brother Your Highness, wait up!"
"I told you to just call me Big Brother, haha!" Vladstin faced him but continued running, so he was running backward. "Just get rid of the Your Highness already, it's already been five years since I told you to stop calling me that!"
"It feels impolite, Big Brother Your Highness!" Leron finally caught up to him but tripped on the rock, causing to make him and Vladstin fall on the ground and onto the damp grass and lavenders.
The two giggled and rolled for a while, not caring about soiling their clothes. They kept laughing hysterically like it was the funniest thing in the world. Eventually, they stopped, and Leron ended up still on top of Vladstin.
He chuckled. "Big Brother Your Highness—"
"If you keep calling me that, I'll tickle you until you drop the 'Your Highness'." Vladstin grinned mischievously, his hands ready at Leron's waist.
Leron's eyes widened. "Wait, Big Brother Your Highness—"
Vladstin tickled him mercilessly, knowing all of Leron's weak spots on the waist and behind the ears. Leron wriggled out of his grasp, but he kept tickling him, this time rolling again so he was the one on top and pinning him on the ground.
"You have no escape, Leron!" Vladstin grinned above him, hair shining from the dew. "Promise me you won't call me Your Highness again from now on and I'll stop. Just call me Big Brother or Vladstin."
Leron was now in tears from the ceaseless tickling. "Okay! Okay! Stop it, Big Brother! Please!"
The way Leron pleaded, breathless with his hair and clothes disheveled, made the Vladstin who was just getting out of puberty.... feel something in a different way.
He let go immediately with his face red and turned away. "I.... I need to go to the woods over there for a bit. Nature calls."
"Oh, I see." Leron propped himself up with his elbows. "I'll wait for you here and pick up some lavenders. Her Majesty told me to warn you not to go too far and go back to the carriage before noon."
"I-It won't be that long, I promise!" Vladstin hurriedly ran off to the woods near the fields, seeming to have difficulty in doing so.
The young Leron really did think that he had to relieve himself that day. He did not know it was a different kind of 'relief' from what he expected.
Now, the two adults in the Looking Glass saw what really happened, their faces aghast.
Vladstin blinked for a bit as he watched his younger self, then scowled. "This isn't the kind of memory I was asking for. I wanted a strong emotion to be invoked, not to be nauseous of my awful past!"
He used his powers to immediately shut the revolting memory that was being shown in the Looking Glass, and it turned back into a regular mirror. Vladstin stared at his own perturbed reflection for a while...
Then snapped his head back to Leron.
Leron yelped and slammed the door shut, falling backwards.
Within a blink of an eye, the vampire lord already kicked the door open again, staring down at the flustered Leron with an unreadable expression.
"How long have you been watching?" He asked with a straight face.
Leron gulped. "I did not see anything..... I only saw you looking at the mirror and—"
"You were a better liar when you were younger." Vladstin seized his throat!
Leron wasn't being strangled in any way. Vladstin just wrapped his hand around his neck without squeezing. It was like he was just giving him a warning if he lied again. "I did not mean to. I can't sleep, so I wanted to talk to you and.... and I saw you watching that memory."
Vladstin remained stoic. "And?"
"And what? There's nothing else, I swear!" Leron gripped his hand to take it off his neck, but Vladstin did not let go.
"What are your thoughts about it?"
"H-Huh?"
"What we saw in the mirror. How did you feel about that?" Vladstin asked without any hesitation, even having a slight hint of professionalism in his voice like it was a serious matter.
"I.... I don't know what you want me to say...." Leron's face reddened. "It's only natural for someone at that age to.... be confused and experience some things that are unreasonable—"
"Hahaha!" Vladstin covered his mouth to laugh, but there was no mirth in his voice. "Confused? You think I was just confused? Then why did you use my feelings against me then? I saw many memories of you toying with me, sometimes in shamelessly flirtatious ways. How can you do that if you believed I was merely confused?"
"Did you.... know for yourself since back then that you were.... infatuated with me?" Leron's voice kept getting weaker and weaker from meekness.
"I can't really tell for sure since I have lost my memories and was just watching it as an outsider." Vladstin let go of his neck, but his intense eyes kept Leron in place. "But I have a hunch that it wasn't even childish infatuation back then."
His golden eyes had a glimmer of sorrow when he said: "I once desired for you deeply, both for your body and your soul."
Leron was tongue-tied at this sincere revelation, his mind going completely blank.
"But that was before, when I was a foolish young lad." Vladstin knelt before him with a dry expression. "Do not think that you could even rekindle that desire again. I, a dead man, do not get excited so easily by silly things like calling me 'Big Brother' or pleading in a coquettish tone."
"I wasn't planning to— It did not even cross my mind to do that!" Leron stammered from shock.
Vladstin did not say anything, merely observing him without gentleness or malice. It was like he simply regarded Leron for being there, not caring at all. Leron had never felt even colder in his life.
Then, Vladstin offered him a hand. "If you can't sleep..... why don't we watch more memories together until you do? I will ask the mirror something more innocent and wholesome."
Leron's long lashes fluttered several times at how easily Vladstin's mood had shifted. "But why....? I mean, don't you despise me...?"
"Let me make one thing clear." Vladstin pulled him up forcibly when he still hesitated to take his hand and get up on his own. "I do not have emotions. I am merely a shell that copies how people would express themselves in certain situations. The living me would have despised you for your betrayal, that's why I enact how he would be like towards you. But I am a corpse, with no heartbeat that can race, nor feelings that may ache."
"I don't understand.... You have shown clears signs of anger, aggression, and playfulness at times. How can you say you have no emotion?" Leron knitted his eyebrow.
"Give me an emotion that you want me to show to you." Vladstin said.
"Uh.... Sadness?"
"How sad do you want me to be?"
"Can you....cry?" Leron asked dubiously.
Just as he said it, tears began to form on Vladstin's eyes, and his face was the most pitiful he had ever seen. There was so much pain and anguish in his expression. Leron felt his heart get crushed while looking at him and he wanted to wipe his tears away....
But Vladstin already wiped his tears by himself. "As simple as that. I did not 'feel' anything, merely 'showed'. I am just that convincing, I suppose."
Leron was stricken by this like a lighting bolt. So that explains it. No remorse for all the lives he killed, no real joy in getting his revenge..... nothing. The Vladstin in front of him is not the Vladstin from before. It was merely a dead body that resembles him but does not have his spirit.
"Then.... Why are you watching all those memories?" Leron asked, finally understanding this vampire lord's circumstances. "Do you...."
"Want to feel emotions again? Yes. That is the main purpose of why I kept revisiting memories from the time when I used to have them."
"How can you want something if you are dead?" Leron tilted his head to the side.
"I don't know either. " Vladstin answered honestly, face inexpressive. "When I first saw you after my rebirth.... that desire to make my heart beat again came for a small second. I remember that desire well, that.... yearning. Perhaps, I am now not as emotionless as I was before that meeting. I may have gained an inkling of human emotion from seeing you."
"From me?" Leron was perplexed by this.
Vladstin nodded. "I wanted to test if I would gain more if I watched more memories of you. But it was a fruitless test. So what if...."
He took Leron's hand, rubbing his thumb over every nook and cranny of his palm, fingers, knuckles, like he was searching for something, eyes never letting go. "What if you were with me the whole time? Would that make me 'feel' something?"
Vladstin, the undead vampire lord, was staring at him straight with his golden eyes, like they were both commanding or pleading or neither.
"Vladstin...." Leron could not handle how Vladstin stared at him so indifferently, yet so intensely at the same time. It was very unnatural and unsettling, yet strangely melancholic.
"I want to feel again, Leron. Help me."
------------------------------------------
~BRIBE ME, PLEASE~
Ok, I'm getting desperate and pathetic so now I'm willing to accept bribes. I get jealous easily of other books that have a huge following and get sad everytime, thinking what's the point of writing if I feel like no one's reading/appreciate it.
1 NEW 5 star review with genuine feedback (emojis and just saying compliments doesn't count) - 1 extra chapter
100 comments in a week (only those with TEXT count) - 1 extra chapter
5 NEW people voting for this book- (so invite your friends haha) -1 extra chapter dedicated to them
100+ votes in a week in any of my books - 1 extra chapter for all of them
Magic Castle and up - Burst update
If you love my stories and would want to read more of them, please show your support through one of these bribes. Thank you!