April 15
Toyama Park, Shinjuku Ward
Anger at the injury to their comrades burst forth in Hozumi and Rokutani's hearts. The park was already surrounded by backup police officers and security androids in addition to them, with numerous muzzle flashes pointed at the assailant.
"This is your final warning! You are completely surrounded! You are under arrest for assault and obstruction of justice! Get down on the ground with your hands behind your head!"
Rokutani barked to the young man over the loudspeaker to surrender. Residents living in the park had also heard the sirens and commotion and came out of their houses one after another.
"Do you really think you can catch me? Do all of you want to die?"
However, the assailant... the vampire child Touma Tsukigami who disguised as a mysterious man, laughed in the face of warnings from the state authorities.
This Empire of Japan is the only country in the world with a complete rule of law, and this Tokyo is one of the world's watched cities. On the other hand, there are few individuals in this country, including Inudera, who was involved in the Expo Terrorist Attack, who have powers that even the government and police cannot subdue. This was the main cause of the chaos swirling around the country.
"Nah... we will be fine, monster lady."
"!"
Juen forced his bruised body to sit up. He then forced his creaking knees to stretch and stood up. His eyes were as piercing as Touma's as he glared at her while speaking.
"Don't you dare to get too cocky. Within ten—no, within five years, we, humanity, will surely have the means to subdue the likes of you. The day will surely come when we will surpass the strongest of all beings. We may not be able to defeat you now, that is true. But we are the guardians of the law. We cannot just let this happen!"
"Uh-huh..."
Seeing someone who has been hurt but still has not lost the will to fight, Touma is intrigued by him. But her distraction lasted only a moment, and she slowly raised her right hand to catch him.
"Honestly, if you had given me the blood... I wouldn't have killed you, but I had no choice. As you can see, this appearance is a temporary façade. In addition, I cannot be seen on the cameras. So the only way to build a case against me was to catch me in the act. Am I right? So I'll just get through this, starting with you..."
"!!"
Touma was about to eliminate all the police officers who had rushed to the scene. Her right arm quickly became a strong-looking red arm. Her target was Juen's life.
"...STOOOOOOOPP!!"
Rokutani, who was the first to notice this, rushed toward Touma. From his right hand, a bundle of strong spider silk threads erupts toward Touma's right arm. However, Rokutani's attack was blocked by the magic barrier. Other policemen and androids also fired their cordless taser guns, but even the electrified bullets were bounced back by the defense.
"...YAAAAAAAHH!!"
"...Grk!"
A monstrous arm with sharp claws at its tip struck at Juen and then at Kokonoe, who was lying near his feet. Juen covered her, protecting her fainted form.
"...!!?"
At that moment, a huge arm, red and robust like a dragon, stood between Juen and Touma. It did not even flinch under Touma's attack. After Touma stopped moving, the arm shrank in size with a shrieking sound, and then withdrew back to its owner. At the end of it was a male student.
"Sister, let's not do this anymore."
"Aoi!"
Touma's eyes widened. There was Aoi Tsukigami, Touma's younger brother. His eyes are shining as red as blood, just like Touma's.
"...Sister, please return to your original appearance. The police, too... please put down your weapons for now. If you hurt my sister any more, I will join the fight. Two vampires are more than enough to literally annihilate you in the blink of an eye. After all... we inherited from our mother... the blood of a true vampire, the Devils of the World and the strongest of all beings."
"!!"
His words implying their vampiric heritage shocked Rokutani, Hozumi, and the others. The two facts were revealed: a vampire woman had entered Japan illegally, as the Foreign Affairs Police had speculated, and she gave birth to two children with a Japanese.
"Aaah...!! Your power...! You've finally awakened your vampiric powers!!"
"Um... well, yes."
Touma rushed to Aoi, put her hand on his shoulder and exclaimed with joy. On the other hand, Aoi had a somewhat troubled expression on his face.
Their mother's name is Branvie Tepes, a vampire woman who entered the country 60 years ago at the time of the Return and whose whereabouts were being hunted by the Public Security and Foreign Affairs Bureaus.
Since humans are "lesser lifeforms" to vampires and are the object of predation (bloodsucking), no one knows the story of how she gave birth to two children with a human man. When Touma, the eldest daughter, was in the second grade of elementary school, Branvie disappeared somewhere, leaving behind her husband, Shigeru Tsukigami, and her young siblings. The father who remained raised the young siblings by himself, but he was killed in an unfortunate car accident and disappeared from the lives of the siblings, as did their mother. The father's relatives do not accept the mysterious 'monster children,' and the two siblings must live alone together from then on.
Touma, who was taking the form of a young man a head taller than Aoi, was enveloped in a golden light. After the light disappeared, Touma returned to her original high school girl form. She rested her body against her brother's chest and raised her voice at the police officers surrounding her.
"Fearing our blood... this world has rejected us. And now you want to take something from us again!?"
Touma herself did not resent her vanished mother, but rather was proud of the vampire blood that flowed through her and her sibling's bodies. However, those who learned the truth of the matter left them one after another. Touma, who no longer believed in anything in this world, came to love and depend on her own brother Aoi, her only living relative.
"Sister..."
Aoi gently stroked her distraught sister's head soothingly. The first thing he did was to calm her down, and then he called out to Juen, who was lying on the ground.
"Officer-san, you understood anyway. Even if all of you teamed up, you would be no match for us. Even this country's power can't hold us back. So... how about we make a deal?"
"...A deal!? What the fuck are you talking about!? You can't expect us to just turn a blind eye to ten cases of assaults on civilians and fighting the police!"
Rokutani was furious at Aoi for offering a one-sided deal. But Aoi, too, was firm in his words.
"Don't get me wrong? Police? Trials? Military? You know we are not afraid of such things. This is our confession, and if you don't take it, we will turn all of you into zombies and unleash you here in Tokyo. You understand what I am saying, don't you?"
"...!!"
Aoi had no intention of letting the police get their hands on his sister. But he knew that he could not ignore more attacks. Therefore, he decided to use the city of Tokyo itself as a hostage to threaten the police and force the case to be settled.
"Cease the case against the series of events that happened to my sister immediately with no known suspects. In exchange, we will no longer attack anyone. We will substitute wild cats, wild deer, and other wild animals for blood... I don't know if we can find any, but we will try to get voluntary donors to consume it. And..."
Aoi's eyes narrowed even more, and he put his hands on Touma's nape and back, hugging her tightly.
"I won't let anyone hurt this person anymore...! And neither will my sister... I don't belong to you, sister, and I won't let you get away with this anymore."
Before the awakening of his race's ability, Aoi knew that her sister was out of control, but there was nothing he could do to stop it. Therefore, although he truly loved his sister, he could not suppress his feelings of fear due to the overwhelming difference in power. However, he now took Touma's attack unscathed. This meant that the power relationship between sister and brother had changed.
"...Fine, then, as per your request, the case will not recur after this one, and the suspect is unknown... let's end it with that. However, as a minimum requirement, you must show us your ID and we will inquire about your identity here. We must record you in the archives of the Public Security Bureau."
"...What does that mean?"
Juen withdrew his sister's arrest and demanded their identification as a condition for covering up the truth of the case. Aoi looked on suspiciously.
"Your 'family register' will not register you as demi-humans. Instead, your information will be stored in the confidential files of the National Police Agency. In this country, there is a small number like yourselves who have powers that even the state authorities cannot control. If people like them are registered in the family register as usual, there is a risk that information will be leaked to other countries. That must be avoided at all costs. That is why... we took this extra-judicial measure."
"Does that mean that our identities will not be leaked to the school or other institutions...?"
"...Yes, that's a promise. Provided, of course, that you will not cause any incidents again. And please do not tell anyone about this."
Aoi thought about it for a moment. But there was no better option than a compromise between the two.
"...I understand. If our secret is not revealed and we can live in peace, that's fine. Let's agree to the background check. I'll take a student ID card, okay?"
"...Aoi!?"
Touma, the older sister, was watching the exchange between Juen and Aoi on the sidelines in her brother's arms. She was surprised that her brother agreed to the conditions presented by Juen.
"Don't worry, sister. Now, you too, show your student ID... I'll protect you. If you get hurt, I will never forgive anyone..."
"...!"
Touma had always thought that she was the only one who could protect her younger brother and that she was the one who had to protect him. However, her brother declared that he would protect her. She was shocked and happy at the same time.
Later, Aoi received his sister's student ID and handed it to Juen. After checking them, Juen searched their names on his wristwatch terminal. The data that came up clearly stated that they were students at Shinkawa High School and that they were born in Tokyo.
"...Indeed."
Hozumi and Rokutani, as well as the officers from Division 4 and the local jurisdiction who had rushed to the scene in support, watched the confrontation between Juen and the monster children with bated breath.
"...Later, a person from the Public Security Bureau will visit the address registered in the family register for final confirmation. Then the deal is concluded."
"Alright. Then, see you around..." Aoi smirked.
Immediately after that, his and Touma's bodies transformed into a swarm of bats, which flew away into the night sky with high-pitched cries. Juen looked up at the scene in silence. Rokutani came running up to him in the middle of the scene.
"Are we really going to let them go and let them running amok!?" He growled at Juen.
Rokutani was not convinced that the criminals should be left alone. However, Juen calmly admonished his subordinate.
"...Do you want to be annihilated? Besides, we were originally ordered by the chief that as long as they were identified, we were good to go. I knew this would end up like this. We can only hope that they will remain quiet."
Juen had envisioned this outcome from the beginning. The biggest problem facing this country is that there are people whose power cannot be suppressed even with the country's might.
Tokyo, and Japan as a whole, are the only places in the world where people do not have their houses suddenly burned down and cry themselves to sleep, nor are bombs raining down from the sky. It is the only country in the world where peace and security are maintained. On the other hand, people can almost die of frostbite in the middle of summer in the city, get mutilated into shreds in a public gymnasium, or lose blood after being attacked by a flying bat-woman. Anything can happen in this city, as the residents say.
This is Japan, a country where peace, science, the supernatural, and chaos exist together.
Apartment, Shinjuku Ward
The sister and brother who had caused a commotion at Toyama Park had returned home as if nothing had happened, and the two were sitting on the floor in the bleak living room, huddled together as usual. But there was a definite change. Aoi's face, which had been somewhat unable to hide his fear, had lost its frightened emotion. He held his sister's body close and looked at the moon outside the window with his red eyes.
"Unlike you, sister... I hated mother's blood, and I was a bit scared of awakening its power. But now that her blood has been awakened, I finally understand her loneliness. We will live for the next three to four thousand years. In this world, it must be very lonely... to be alone."
There was another reason for his sister Touma's attachment to Aoi besides the fact that he was her one and only immediate family. It was because he was the only one who could walk with her through her destiny to live in a time different from that of ordinary humans. Now that the blood of his race had awakened and he had turned fully into a vampire, Aoi could finally understand his sister's heart and accepted her obsession.
He covered his sister's cheek with his hands and slowly turned her face toward him. Her face had a faint reddish hue. Their blood-red eyes looked at each other.
"But sister, I have you. That's why... don't go anywhere. Please don't do that again."
"Yes..."
Touma was ecstatic.
After that night, the Shinjuku serial blood loss incident never occurred again, and the investigation into the incidents was quickly terminated with no suspects identified. The victims of each case were kept in the dark about the fact that this was a series of attacks, and the individual cases were ostensibly treated as independent and unrelated.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
April 16
Investigation Division 4 Section 7 Office, Metropolitan Police Department
The next day, the members of Section 7 were discussing the identity of the Tsukigami siblings. On a screen in the office, the siblings' portraits and family registry information are displayed. With the images in the background, Section Chief Juen explained the situation.
"Both Touma Tsukigami and Aoi Tsukigami were confirmed to have been born at a maternity clinic in Tokyo, and their ages are not falsified. They are definitely vampire children born in Japan. Their mother's name is 'Shizuku Yorumizu,' and a woman by that name exists in the family register. However, she was a Terralusian extraordinary immigrant who came to Japan with a Japanese man with whom she had been married 60 years ago at the time of the Return. She is registered as a 'human race.' However... her age at the time of registration was listed as 34 years old. A person who is now 94 years old on the family register cannot possibly have children in high school as of today. And the person in question has been missing for 50 years. Her death has never been confirmed."
Their mother was indeed registered in the family register. However, since she looked exactly the same as a human being, it seems that she tricked the Immigration Services Agency (ISA) of the time into falsely registering herself as a human. Just before the Return, the "Demi-Human Empire" on planet Terralus informed them of the possibility that the missing vampire woman may have headed for Japan. The Foreign Affairs Police and the ISA searched frantically, but were unable to find her.
"...In other words, this woman, their mother, is a true vampire, and that she is still lurking somewhere in this country?"
Tamura swallowed hard. The whereabouts of the creator of the children are unknown, and her blood children could be anywhere besides the Tsukigami siblings. The vampire menace is far from over.
. . .
Evening of the same day
Metropolitan Shinkawa High School, Shinjuku Ward
After school that day, Aoi Tsukigami and his classmate Jun Sanada were again visiting the Manga Research Club room. The club leader, Nadaji Sakuraka, grinned. The three girls were also so happy that they almost fainted from joy.
"...Welcome to the Shinkawa High's Manga Research Club, Aoi Tsukigami-kun!"
"Yes, nice to meet you."
Aoi and Nadaji shook hands. He had finally declared his intention to join the MRC. Sanada, who had invited him to join the club, was also happy. Aoi put down his right hand, and her expression turned somewhat darker than his previous smile.
"...What's wrong?"
Nadaji tilted his head and looked at him. Aoi spoke with his intention.
"Senpai, and Sanada-kun... I have something to ask you. Can you please keep what I'm about to tell you to yourself?"
"!"
The club members were surprised by the abruptness of the conversation. Nadaji looked at Karashima, the vice-president, who looked at him in turn.
"...Everyone has a secret or two that they don't want others to know. But if you are telling them only to us, there must be a reason for it, isn't there?"
"Yes... it is a matter of my survival."
Nadaji and the others were surprised again when they were told that it was a matter of life and death. Aoi slowly walked to the window and opened the curtains that covered the window. The sun was already setting and there were a few stars in the eastern sky.
"Before you do that, promise me once more that you will never divulge it to anyone else. With your lives. If not, feel free to tell me. I'll leave this place at once."
"...!?"
Seeing Aoi's unusual behavior, members of the manga club became nervous.
"Life... huh? Fine, I promise. You all agree?"
"Y-yeah..."
"O-of course!"
The other club members nodded frantically at Nadaji's question. Aoi smiled gently but with a mysterious air at the sight of them. Soon after, the sun sets and darkness covered the sky. The moonlight, which is becoming brighter and brighter, penetrated through the window glass and poured into the club room. Aoi is gradually transformed by the evening darkness and moonlight. The first person to notice the change was Sanada, Aoi's classmate.
"Your eyes...!"
Aoi's eyes, which were exposed to the night wind, gradually changed their color from brown to crimson. His fingernails became sharply pointed, and sharp fangs peeked out from his mouth. The members of the club gasped.
"This is who I am. My sister and I... we are the descendants of the vampire, a race that feeds on blood," Aoi revealed his true identity.
Nadaji's eyes widened in shock. The other club members were also in turmoil. Aoi began to explain again.
"Until junior high school... I was just like any other human being. But a few days ago... my vampiric power finally awakened... Please, I beg of you... will you share your blood with me? I know it's a creepy request."
"!!"
Aoi asked Sanada and his seniors to be his 'live baits.' Nadaji and the others again looked shocked. This was a gamble even for Aoi. A normal person would have been so disgusted that he or she would never go near them again. In fact, they had been cut off from all other relations. After a short silence, Nadaji opened his mouth.
"...So, vampire, huh? I never expected to encounter that kind of demi-human in this school. So... how much blood do you need to ingest?"
"!"
Nadaji was trying to listen to Aoi calmly. On the contrary, Aoi's eyes widened in astonishment. The other members of the club also watched the conversation between the two without interrupting.
"I'd like to have a cup about once a week, if possible, or at least once every two weeks..."
"I see... about 100 ml. So it's not that much. Since the 200 ml blood donations are, I believe, four weeks apart, so if the club members provide them one at a time, no harm will be done...?"
Nadaji considered whether Aoi's request is feasible or not in a casual manner.
"Hmmm, well, then there should be no problem."
"??"
Karashima agreed with Nadaji's words with his poker face. Aoi is increasingly puzzled by the fact that they do not lose their usual demeanor even after he revealed his identity and purpose.
"Um... I don't know since I'm saying this myself... but aren't you creeped out? Are you not going to kick me out?"
After their father's funeral, the siblings asked their paternal grandparents to become their guardians since they were minors. However, what they received from them were not words of comfort or encouragement, but rather curses: "Don't ever show your face again, filthy monsters."
Later, they went to visit their aunt, who also looked at them with contempt, calling them "freaks" and turned them away. After this incident, his sister lost faith in humanity.
"We are all friends now. If it's the life that's at stake, of course I'll cooperate."
"........."
Karashima nodded silently at Nadaji's words. The three girls were somewhat agitated.
"Giving blood to a vampire... that sounds like something out of a novel!"
"If it's Aoi, I'd rather do it than anything else...!"
"I don't mind giving all of mine—hehehe!"
Aoi smiled at the unusual reactions of his seniors. Immediately after that, his classmate Sanada interrupted.
"But... what about your sister?"
If he is a vampire, of course his sister is also a vampire. Sanada was concerned about who would provide her with blood.
"For the time being... I'll have her use my blood. I won't let her run out of control anymore. But now, please do not ever contact my sister, all of you."
"...Why?"
Nadaji nodded. He and all the other members of the club ignored the words 'out of control.' A wild intuition told them not to mention it.
"I don't want to say anything else, of course, but to my sister... I don't want you to tell her that I have revealed myself to you all now. As her brother, I can tell you that he will not hesitate to kill people. She will definitely try to silence you..."
"O-okay..."
Nadaji's forehead broke out in cold sweat. Touma doesn't consider humanity as her own people. Therefore, when she confronted the police, she had no hesitation in killing her opponent. Aoi can't let her seniors and friends be murdered at his sister's hands, so he reminded them not to have any contact with her.
"...Um, are you sure you want to do this? This is just like taking advantage of all of you!"
After the conversation was over, Aoi again asked the club members anxiously. Although he had no intention to do so, he felt guilty because it seemed as if he had traded their blood for the club's admission. However, his fears were cut short by Sanada's words. He frowned and spoke with a slightly angry tone.
"Taking advantage...? What are you talking about!? As the prez said, we are friends, aren't we? My friend is asking me for help, so it's only right that I help. If I don't like it, I'll say it to your face, but I'm not!"
"!"
Sanada told Aoi that he is willing to give his blood to him. Nadaji, Karashima, and the senior girls nodded at Sanada's words in silent agreement, with smiles on their faces.
"Well, we only have one thing to say... again," Nadaji said and took a deep breath. Following him, the other club members inhaled and exclaimed in unison.
"WELCOME TO THE SHINKAWA HIGH SCHOOL'S MANGA RESEARCH CLUB!!"
Even if they knew his true identity, even if they heard his eerie wish for blood, they would not change their welcoming intentions to welcome Aoi. Aoi is overcome with emotion at the sight of unconditional goodwill. It was something that not even blood relatives had given them.
"...! T-thank you... thank you!"
Tears fell from the corners of his eyes. He could barely manage to keep the tears from falling out, and he croaked the words of gratitude out of his throat.
And thus, the vampire gained his first 'friends.'
. . .
Vampire
The strongest race in the other world, Terralus. They stand at the pinnacle of all living beings, and are feared by such nicknames as the "Devils of the World" and the "Scourge of God." They are capable of shapeshifting and a ridiculously potent regeneration, as well as overwhelming magical power and fighting prowess unrivaled by any other race. Furthermore, they are able to turn their victims, regardless of whether they are human or animal, into 'zombies' and loyal servants. This power is contagious, and those who are attacked by a zombie will turn into a zombie.