"Azusa, would you keep me company?" I ask, only just barely disguising the sadness in my voice.
As if picking up on it anyway, he gravitates close.
"Yes... Miyako... Perhaps we should... do an activity?"
"Such as?"
"I was thinking... foraging... perhaps...?"
"Foraging?" I echo curiously.
An opportunity for escape?
"In the nearby forest... I want to find... food to complement... Yuma's garden."
"Do you know what to look for? I'm sufficient with forageables. In a survival situation, if you're tracking demon prey that's travelling through the wilderness, you may be out there for days to weeks on end following a trail."
"Demon prey?" Azusa echoes curiously.
"Yes," I confirm as he leads me to my room. Efficiently, and as Azusa's back is politely turned, I don a wide-brimmed hat, a long sleeve shirt, many-pocketed trousers, and walking shoes. The outfit is to deter the biting bugs from getting at my skin, but also warm enough to keep me insulated through the night. Should there be an opportunity to run, I'd be well-equipped with proper attire. "I was trained – the daughter of a demon hunter."
"Oh... that's rather... intimidating... is that why... you are sufficient in... weapons training?"
"Exactly."
He leads me out of the mansion and into the nearby copes of trees. Almost immediately the sunlight turns dappled and filtered green through the leaves.
"Do you forage often?" I ask of Azusa and he nods.
"I enjoy... the fiddlehead greens..."
"I'm fonder of the mushroom varieties," I admit, looking about through the trees for signs of direction. Perhaps a forest path? Even a deer trail would do. Perhaps signs of infrastructure – can I see a cell phone tower through the trees?
Something catches my attention immediately. It's a quick disturbance of air – the teleportation of someone from the spot just behind the oak tree we'd just passed.
"Azusa, does anyone come out to these woods?"
"No, these woods are safe," he insists, watching my examination of our surroundings.
Ah...
Looking him over, I notice what I've missed before; he's attentive to every motion of my body, every flick of my gaze.
He's taken me out here to see what I'll do. They've set me out here to see if I'll run...
"You're sure there's no Vibora in the bushes or Adler hiding in the trees?"
"Eh?"
"Right, you guys are turned vampires – you might not know about all that stuff. Ah, here some mushrooms – they look to be Shiitake."
"Oh... yes..." Azusa notes, hefting the basket from his shoulder and proffering it as I pluck the fungi from the soft earth beneath the tree.
"There looks to be a copse of bamboo just to the West of here," I point, "We can find some shoots."
"You're not nervous... about those things... you mentioned?"
"The Vibora and Adler?"
"Those."
"Well, I hear some things rustling in the underbrush," you say with mock hesitancy, "But I don't think they're anything to worry about; definitely not a threat. I was joking about the other demons, honestly."
"Other demons..."
"Well, you and your brothers are vampires. There are other demons that exist out there too. The First Blood from which the four demon races evolved, the vampires of the bat clan, werewolves of the wolf clan, Adler of the eagle clan, and Vibora of the snake clan."
"How are you... aware of such... information?" Azusa's head is low as he walks beside and a little behind me. The posture is oddly submissive to see in a vampire, but it was likely a trait he carried from trauma endured during his human life.
Is childhood trauma a prerequisite for a demon? It wasn't as if father's training covered in-depth therapeutic psychoanalysis of demons; I just knew their general habits. Azusa was strange for a demon.
"I was raised a demon hunter; I told you that, remember?"
Azusa nods his head, the little tendrils of mussed, charcoal hair swishing across the bandaging on his neck. A few stands sway into his eyes and I reach out to pinch them, much to Azusa's surprise, and tuck them back behind his ear before continuing.
"Demons will come into the human world to collect sustenance – humans – but that's where demon hunters come in. To protect humans, they learn to kill demons."
"It's very difficult... for a human to kill... a demon."
We're upon the towering round of bamboo now, but instead of looking up to the soaring stalks, I'm looking down around my feet for the new growth. Sure enough, there are six-inch tall buds peeking from the ground. Getting to my knees, I set to work digging with my fingers. The dirt under my nails makes me cringe a bit – for the first time in my life, my fingernails were really beginning to grow out. It was the lack of activity, perhaps.
"Humans use a significant amount of mysticism and magic relating to astrology and gemstone-tied magic. Demon blood is also a common way to temporarily amplify a hunter's ability. However, if you take too much, you run the risk of becoming one. Some hunters, like my father, embraced this fact and became fully turned demons so that they could fight their enemies on a more even playing field."
The idea of my father makes me uneasy and I find myself looking over my shoulder as I work. I put out my hand to Azusa, wordlessly requesting the knife. He obliges and I hack the shoot from the ground.
"You are... deeply afraid... of him."
"Yes," I whisper, moving onto the next shoot as he takes the one I've cut.
"You are... a human I can... empathize with..."
"Bonding through shared trauma, huh," I grumble, reluctant, "Trauma cannot be the sole thing two individuals share."
"Then you know... a significant amount about... relationships?"
"N-no," I blush, pursing my lips as I relieve the ground of another shoot. This time, my distraction costs me. I nick my thumb with the knife and blood immediately wells from the dirt coated finger pulp. "Ah!"
"Miyako...?!"
Azusa immediately reaches forward, grasping my injured hand in both of his own to examine it closely. His pale-grey eyes flash quickly over the wound before he leans in to envelop it with his mouth.
"Azusa-!" I attempt to pull my hand away, but his grip on my wrist is concrete. "Please, that's dirty, you shouldn't have to do that."
The vampire pauses, then looks to me inquisitively, "Miyako... Eve's blood... is too precious to be... wasted. And... the longer the wound is... open... the longer you remain... in pain. You do not... like pain."
"Azusa..." I breathe, then lean in slowly to press my forehead to his. Oddly enough, a pang of homesickness zaps through me and tears nearly spring to my eyes. The Sakamaki brothers had begun treating me this way back home... I hope they're alright... I hope they're looking for me!
Even so, I couldn't ignore the vampires here. They'd meant to save me from the Sakamaki household, to offer me themselves as suitors preferable to the sadists there. But even they were all ultimately using me for some plan. A sacrificial bride, whatever being 'Eve' entailed – it was all some scheme that I wasn't as privy to as I thought I'd been. As wrong as the Mukami brothers had been about my situation, I found was disinclined to abandon them.
The thought brings me up short, freezing my breath in my throat.
"Miyako...?" Azusa wonders, and I notice that the noises of the others who'd followed us had stilled.
I take a deep breath but pull away from him.
"I'm alright."
"What are... you thinking about?"
"I feel that I've gotten to know you, Yuma, and Kou a little, but Ruki has still been very cold to me," I confess, reaching the fingers of my free-hand up to brush my throat and cringe. "It's frustrating that he calls me livestock, then abuses me in the next moment. I thought farmers nurtured their charges."
"Ah, that..." Azusa purses his lips, relinquishing my now-healed finger. "You'll... have to forgive... him. He's.... been through... a lot."
"I don't have to forgive anyone," I argued, continuing my assault on the bamboo shoots as my resentment built, "I didn't escape my father's control just to be captured by someone else. If I'm to be Eve – whatever that means– I'm going to do it in my own way. By my own free-will. Not because anyone owns me or orders me to."
"You were your father's... livestock... then?"
"Yeah, I guess so," I shrugged, then rocked back on my heels to pull at the hem of my pant-leg, "He branded me and everything. Once, my sisters and I orchestrated an escape from him. After we were punished, he branded us – see? It was also good for tracking us when he sent us out with other hunters to learn their techniques."
Azusa leans in, examining my ankle bone for the small scar there. It was a pair of letters – SK – but mutilated and pink.
"It's an awfully... small brand," he notes, reaching out a finger to touch the raised skin.
"It was originally a spell that was embedded into my skin with a mixture of ink and Father's own blood," I say, watching him carefully trace the letters. Even now, they twinged with phantom pain as I remembered. "It was used to track us and punish us if we weren't where he had dictated we should be. Since my Mother's blessing neutralized it, it's now just a scar."
"Your mother...?"
"She passed away soon after I was born," I explain softly, fiddling with the forgeables we'd already collected, "But during my heart surgery, she appeared to me and blessed me with a 'blank slate'. She'd temporarily erased my memories of my unfortunate upbringing and removed his spells from my skin. Instead, she supplied memories of kindness and optimism that have carried me through the hardship I've encountered post-surgery."
"You say... you don't want to be owned... and yet... you were with the Sakamaki family."
"They've been kind to me," I say softly, distracting myself by finding another bamboo shoot, "In the beginning it took a little while to reach an understanding, but now they treat me as a family member. We've celebrated birthdays and have gone on vacations altogether... it's been fun."
I breathe the words gently, a faint smile etched into the corners of my lips as I tease the next bamboo shoot from the ground.
"You know," I say, wiping the back of my arm over my damp forehead, "This would go much faster if the others would quit watching and start helping."
"Ah?!" Yuma's gruff voice exclaimed from behind the thick trunk of a nearby tree, "How long did you know?"
"Since we entered the forest," I say leaning back on my heels and putting my hands on my hips as both Kou and Ruki emerged as well.
"You were deliberately snubbing us back then, knowing that we could hear you?" Kou inquires, eyes narrowed, and I pause, leaning into Azusa apprehensively. "I can remind you of just how threatening we can be – if you've forgotten."
"I was joking," I say warily, not attempting to put a false-disarming tone in my voice.
"I see!" Kou's tone brightens immediately, dropping all defensive edge. "So long as you know."
"You've already made your strength very clear," I mutter, leaning further into Azusa. Kou's posture doesn't re-stiffen, but instead slackens and I see a little twitch of his eyebrows; perhaps into a brief, regretful arch? The expression is gone before I can examine him.
"C'mon," Yuma growls, walking forward and hoisting me up from my crouch, "Let's get more of those mushrooms, 'kay?"
"I need to ask Miyako a few questions," Ruki interjects, extending a possessive hand for the wrist Yuma has gripped to steady me.
Yuma's eyes narrow and with a forceful tug which makes my shoulder protest, he pulls me in against his chest. My open, dirty palm fits snugly to the planes of his abdomen and despite his baggy shirt, I can feel how well-muscled he is. This observation forces an unwilling blush onto my cheeks, so I face his chest for a few extra seconds, nose pressed to his clean shirt until the heat in my face fades a bit.
"Her knowledge about the demon world may be of note," Ruki says, extended hand unwavering as he stared down his behemoth of a brother, undaunted. "We need any information, no matter how insignificant."
"Aw, Ruki, can't you do that after tonight's dinner has been collected?" Kou negotiates, putting his hands on his hips in a disarming manner.
Ruki's narrowed eyes flit from one of his brothers to the other, taking in the array of opposition present. He lowers his demanding hand.
"Fine."
I breathe out a shaky breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding.
"Woah there, what're you swayin' for?" Yuma asks, his arms stiffening to support me better.
"Just light-headed, I guess."
"You are still anemic, I 'suppose," he shrugs and his eyes slide sideways to Kou. The blonde brother had noticeably winced at his brother's observation.
"Ne, Miyako... are you able... to continue?"
"Yes, I should be okay," I assure him, moving to prop a hand on Yuma's forearm.
"Is there anything that doesn't require any digging?" Kou complains, hands behind his head as he regards the bamboo shoots with a mildly wrinkled nose.
"There may be some strawberry bushes around," I suggest and he perks, an infectious smile spreading across his cheeks.
"You'd do better with some sugary fruits, Kitten," he says, closing the distance to bop his forefinger on my nose.
"Your blood sugar... is important to... maintain," Azusa seconds from the ground, proceeding to dig up another shoot from the earth.
"I am kind of curious," Yuma starts, nudging me a little too forcefully out of the way as I attempted to kneel beside Azusa. I rested back on my heels again as he crouched beside me. "How do you know the difference between pure and turned vampires?"
"Oh," I perk up, reaching toward a shoot. Yuma's large hands intercepted and I sat back again. "The Sakamaki's were the first to notice; your scent is different. Then, of course, you admitted to me that you liked human food because you were human once."
Each time I reached for a bamboo shoot, he took over, yanking it from the ground with sheer brute force.
"Huh," he says, deflating, "Still, you're too smart for your own good."
"I'm failing math and barely passing English," I point out, "Probably doing worse since I'm missing so much school."
"That's not the point. School don' matter."
"Not in the world of demons, it doesn't," I shrug, standing and stretching, "But... I can't just go through life oblivious of basic knowledge."
"What?" Kou interjected, "You think in-depth analysis of a book is useful? Tell me; what benefit is it to me that I understand why the author chose to make the main character's outfit blue."
"You do music videos, don't you?" I inquire.
"Of course," he narrows his eyes.
"If you choose a color palette, why do you choose it? How will it make your audience feel? What does that color really mean?"
"What do you mean 'what does a color mean?'?" Yuma rolls his eyes, "Blue is blue. Yellow is yellow."
"Blue can be sad or productive or calm. Yellow can be cheery or jittery or energizing. Some colors can be very symbolic of stuff... like, in anime they'll make a main character's hair a certain color to reflect their personality."
"Anime?" Ruki scoffs. The other three look to each other with raised eyebrows and smirks. "You like to waste your time."
"I haven't seen much, but I used to have friends that showed it to me."
"Don't bother."
I shrink back a bit, pursing my lips with disappointment but Kou trots up, light on the balls of his feet, as Ruki inspects the horizon through the trees. He elbows my side with a little poke.
"We'll show you some of our favorites," he whispers with a grin, "Ruki doesn't have respect for anything that's not in a book. Boring!"
"Like a movie-night?" I wonder, the breeze sending little wisps of my hair floating.
Azusa perks and gives a hesitant thumbs-up, his hands grubby with caked dirt.
"That sounds fun," I breathe, smiling warmly at Kou.
He blinks, blue eyes jittering a bit with surprise. As I gaze at him, one of them seems to glint and my lips part in curiosity. Before I can ask, however, his expression resolves into satisfaction and he returns to his inspection for strawberry bushes.