The birds chirp softly as the sun rises on the horizon.
I only slept two hours last night and, to be frank, I felt like absolute shit.
A merciful breeze brushes my bangs across my forehead as my brow squints at its touch. I wake up with a strange warmth surrounding me. My eyes flutter open as the warmth starts to make its way up my body. I'm covered with a dark gray blanket that slowly lifts as a moving object slithers towards my head, like a gopher in it's burrow.
Suddenly, Oumi's face appears from under the blanket. She rubs the sleepiness from her face and looks up at me with her soft green eyes. For a second we stare at each other, watching the morning light sparkle in each other's eyes as if we were watching the stars.
"Good morning," she says.
Her hair is sticking up all over her head from the static electricity and I giggle a little bit at the sight of it. In the light from the window, Oumi's hair seems to be a much brighter orange than usual. As I stared at her, I realized that I was watching her hair stand like I watch an open flame burn in a fire pit. Some would say she was a flaming ember.
"Morning," I say, still half asleep.
Oumi blinks a couple of times before a rush of red fills her cheeks.
"Wait-," she stutters.
A terrified scream escapes her mouth causing birds to fly from their trees and an echo to go down the street. My ears start to ring and I cup my hands over them as if it would help at all with the pain. I squint my eyes shut but open them again when I hear a quick shuffling.
With a swift kick, Oumi boots me out of bed and onto the carpet. I pick myself up from the floor and wipe my eyes. By now, I'm wide awake.
I squat down next to the bed and pull up the covers revealing Oumi's bright red face. For a moment I idly admire her puffy face under the covers.
"Look," I say "I swear I don't remember how you ended up in my bed. As far as I know, you were the one who crawled in with me."
Oumi squirms under the blanket, trying desperately to cover her exposed chest.
"It's not that I think it was you," she says, softly. "I know it was me that got in with you."
Oumi pulls the blanket back down over her head.
"I'm a sleepwalker," she says.
I completely forgot that Oumi was a sleepwalker. I should've suspected it when a shy and stuck-up girl like Oumi pulled something as far-fetched and drastic as this. Back in her cat-girl phase, Oumi would sleepwalk out of her house and into my bed. To this day, I'm still unsure why she continues to do this, but I've noticed that recently Oumi's sleepwalking has been a lot less frequent.
"Ah," I say. "I forgot about that."
Yes, I can't blame Oumi for being a sleepwalker, but she should at least make a habit out of wearing a top or something when she goes to sleep. Last time I was at Oumi's house, I found out that all of her pajamas were the cat-onesies she used to wear in middle school. She refuses to not only wear them but also throw them away. This explains why she is always out of pajamas and why she's laying shirtless in my bed at the moment.
"Don't get any wrong ideas," Oumi says, shuffling under the blanket.
Times like these further remind me of how much of an airhead that girl really is. But, I put on a smile and sit down on the carpet. I stretch out my arms and make a grunt sound that makes Oumi jump. My whole body aches.
"How are your wounds healing?" I ask. "I used the stuff that Tae would use on me when I got badly hurt."
"It aches, but I'll be alright," Oumi says.
After we were attacked, I used a technique Tae had taught me to put both Oumi and her asleep. The side effects of the technique are small, but one big one is memory loss.
The technique itself is quite easy to pull off. I simply chopped at their necks in a very specific spot that would completely knock them out. As far as I know, Oumi and Tae don't remember anything from the night before.
Oumi makes a whimpering sound from under the covers.
"I'm glad you're okay," I say. "When I saw you fall, I thought you might have died."
In order to further remove the memory of last night, I told Oumi that she had fallen on our way back home. She, of course, believed me. Hell, you could probably say just about anything and this airhead would most likely believe it.
"As if someone would die from a fall at that height," she mumbles.
"You're right," I say. "Four feet off the ground isn't too dangerous."
Oumi thumps me on the head.
"For some reason, I can't remember a single thing from last night," she whines. "All I know is that my back hurts and I can't stop sleeping."
"Speaking of your back," I say, rubbing my aching head. "Can I take a look at the cuts?"
She's reluctant at first, but she soon caves in and lets me check her back. I walk to my closet and grab a shirt, throwing it in her direction before I leave the room.
"Put this on," I say. "Let me know when you're changed."
From the other side of the door, I can hear the sounds of Oumi shuffling around in the bed, struggling to put on a shirt. Once she's done she calls out to me as she lays comfortably on the bed.
"Come in," she says, pulling the shirt down to cover her waist.
Wearing my white button-up shirt, Oumi looked to be as young as a grade-schooler, though she was actually a couple of months older than me. The only major thing that set her apart were her legs that were short but thick, her waist that was strangely small but hourglass shaped, and her breasts that were small enough to hold in your hands. Her brain, on the other hand, was undoubtedly that of a grade-schooler. In all, Oumi is the brain of child stuck in the body of a 19 year old.
The light from the rising sun shone through the window behind her, silhouetting her small body. She glowed like a sunflower in a meadow as the wind blew through her peach hair.
"Let's get this over with," she says, crossing her arms.
I scoop her up, take her to the living room, and have her sit on her legs by the table in the middle of the room. I gently lift her shirt as a subtle moan echoes in the room.
"Seriously?" I yelp, stepping back in disgust.
"It's not my fault I'm so sensitive!" Oumi exclaims. "Give me a break!"
Through the uncomfortable moans she does, I finally lift up her shirt to see the damage.
The wounds were almost completely gone. When I first brought Oumi and Tae to the house after the event, Oumi looked to be on the verge of death. Her back was covered with blood that dripped down her legs and onto the floor. I initially thought that she was dead until I applied a special ointment that Tae keeps in the medicine cabinet.
Back when I was first turned into a vampire, Tae tasked me with going on hunts for the materials she needed for the ritual that cured me. Along the way, I had gotten into fights with other vampires, leaving me with missing limbs and a torn-up body. But, somehow, Tae was able to fix me up every time.
I lightly brush the surface of Oumi's back feeling for some sort of texture on the wound. To my surprise, it was almost completely smooth. If you saw it, you would say it looked like she laid on something while she was sleeping, the way it barely showed itself on her soft skin.
From this prospective, you could truly admire Oumi's delicate and petite body. As I felt for the wounds, Oumi continued to moan between breaths.
"Damn," I say. "It's almost completely gone."
"Well, it's not like I got extremely hurt," she grunts. "It was only a little fall."
"Yeah," I say, softly. "A little fall…"
Suddenly, the bathroom door slides open revealing a half-naked woman wrapped in a towel. She turns off the bathroom light and grabs a small pile of clothes that sit on the floor by the tub. She sort of shakes her legs trying to get the water off of them, before entering the living room and looking in my direction.
"Morning, Tae," I say, removing my hand from Oumi's back.
"Eh-" Oumi grunts, "Keisuke?"
"Yeah?"
Oumi leans in closer to me, cupping her mouth to my ear.
"Why is there a half-naked woman in your house?" she whispers.
For a second, I'm confused about what the question is, but soon reality hits me, and I realize what she means.
I look Tae up and down and silently marvel at her long legs. I start to space out but stop myself when I see Tae notice the point of my focus.
"Ah," I say, trying not to look embarrassed. "This is Tae, my roommate."
Needless to say, having a half-naked roommate doesn't make the best impression, especially if one of the roommates is a girl and the other is a guy. Usually, roomies that share a living space are of the same gender, but because Tae is homosexual it goes fine.
A painful silence lingers as Oumi and Tae stare at each other.
"Nice to meet you," Tae says, maintaining the same unimpressed expression she always wears.
"Nice to meet you," Oumi says, crawling under her skin.
It's easy to tell that Tae simply doesn't care.
"All done!" I say, dropping Oumi's shirt.
"Huh?"
Oumi gets up from the floor and walks into the bathroom. From the living room, you can hear her marveling at the result.
"Amazing!" she squeals. "It's gone!"
"Of course it is," Tae says, walking to her room. "Keisuke healed you."
Tae passes by me, sending a pretty scent to my nose. I almost melt at the smell.
"Thanks, again, for taking care of me, Keisuke," Tae says, flashing me a smile.
That melting feeling accelerates as she continues to smile at me, but, suddenly, her smile disappears and she shuts the door behind her as she leaves the room.
Oumi finishes freaking out about her healed injuries and finally leaves the mirror in the bathroom. She shuffles over to me and grips my hand while she looks intently into my eyes. For a moment, I was convinced she was about to kiss me.
"Thank you, Keisuke," she says. "I'm glad to be friends with you."
"Don't mention it," I say, breaking eye contact.
It doesn't take long for her to realize what she's doing, causing her to back away quickly. In an abrupt fit of rage, Oumi rushes back into my room and shuts the door behind her. I shake my head and strut over to Tae's door, knocking softly.
"Yes?" Tae asks.
"May I come in?" I ask, sticking my hands in my pockets.
"Sure."
When I slide open the door, I almost fall on my ass. It was the worst condition I have ever seen her room in. The walls are covered in scratch marks the size of a tiger's paw and the window is broken open. It looked like a wild animal has broken into Tae's room in search of food or any means of sustenance. Tiny shards of glass stick out from the carpet underneath it like an array of see-through bear traps. Needless to say, it's an absolute mess.
Tae twiddles a pencil between her fingers as she watches me walk into her room with a dumbfounded expression on my face. As if she has no idea her room is in shambles she asks:
"What's wrong?"
For a second I look at her in disbelief.
"Do you not see your room?" I say. "Holy shit."
Tae scoffs.
"My next due date is in a week," she says, completely shrugging off the question.
"Well can you do that somewhere else so I can clean your room?" I plead.
Tae shrugs and drags herself off her bed. She nabs her papers and a laptop as she leaves, walking that same zombie-like strut she always does.
Once she's out of the room, I shut the door and grab a book off of one of her shelves. I quickly lay it on the table in the middle of the room and skim through its pages. When I reach a page labeled 'Possession Demon', I plant my index finger on the surface of the page and read every line.
Last night, after I subdued Tae, I read every book in her room about demons. The only thing I could find that could explain why Tae suddenly tried to kill Oumi and I was a section about Possession Demons, a rare species of demonic entities that possess humans to live their everyday lives.
Upon finding this section, I learned that Tae was, indeed, under attack by one of these entities.
In the book, it describes that Tae is only in control of her body when the sun is out, which is kind of inconvenient because Tae is rarely awake during the day.
I also read that if the host's stress levels or heart rate reaches a certain maximum, there is a high chance that they may die.
This kind of worked out for me after I knocked Tae out, but then I figured out that the possession demon causes memory loss of all events that took place upon turning into the demon. In the book, the author describes the host as a demon, simply because of the state they fall into after dark.
When I read all of this information, I was stoked.
For once, I'd be able to help Tae to pay back my debt to her. But that happiness was short-lived when I couldn't find a single hint as to how to cure someone of a possession demon. I, of course, started to lose hope, but then I realized I could try doing some sort of ritual like Tae did to me to cure me of my vampirism. Needless to say, I have zero experience with any of that spiritual type stuff, but I was determined to try.
Tae saved my life after all.
My whole life I've been given things, saved countless times and assisted with almost everything I do. For once in my life, I had a chance to do good for someone else. Something I had never done before, ever.
I continued to read from the book until I noticed that the page I was holding was a little bit thicker than the one before it. I lift it close to the previous page when I notice that the thicker page isn't a singular page. I dig my fingernail into a small break in the page and pull it apart slowly. The thicker page turns into two pages, and at the top of the page is the word: Kjilmir.
For a minute, I skim the page but after I finish the brief entry I reread it to make sure I missed nothing. Fear registers before I can even think. I shut the book and leave the room, slowly closing the door behind me. I walk out to the living room to find Tae sleeping soundly on the sofa.
I stare silently at her for a moment as I sit on my knees by her side.
"Don't die on me, Tae," I say. "You can't die yet."