CHAPTER 1 ─ STRATOCASTER STRIPE

It's not absolutely necessary but if we were to breathe on normalcy for less than a minute, I worked part-time at a music store. I work Sundays from around noontime to dusk, manning the counter on oftentimes lazy hours. You might not even believe it was a job, but a casual visit to a relative only to laze around for an entire afternoon.

I sit there, oftentimes listening to music.

Sometimes, I'd play the music myself.

For a hero aspirant, you'd rather have the backstory a bit more like being an intern at a technological mogul. You know, being in cahoots with giants of the industry. After all, I was a tinkerer myself.

Well, I've been tinkering… but not of a potential web shooter.

This is reinforced true during the 5th of October, when I was tuning this worn-out Stratocaster.
I only snapped out when my boss said we were about to close─to which I complied almost immediately. I hid the Stratocaster to its case, thinking I could come always get back to it next week. I leaped out from the music store as soon as I got my paycheck.

Destination─home.

I rode my bicycle, and looked up the night sky.

"…This late already," I murmured under my breath.

While I thought so, matched with an exasperated sigh, I cycled─which I didn't know at this point, but marked the liminal blur between normal and abnormal.

I was cutting through my usual route when I came across an eerie shadow.

Little to no light came into this particular sidewalk.

A shadow could only exist if there was imbalance in the illumination, whence the environment itself didn't permit such imbalance. You'd argue there are artificial lights too, and that I could be mistaking it for a silhouette. Still, the silhouette I saw was from the ground had the nuance of being a shadow.

I didn't pay any heed to it and thought it was Simulacra getting too uncanny─as though a misplaced deja vu.

That's when I was proven wrong.

I pressed the brake a bit too hard─as that blatant unrest broken upon plain sight.

A vampire.

And.

A belle in a suit.

Two unlikely entities staring at each other before a wooden bench.

I stood firm. So as I watched like your deluded and carefree game spectator: my sense of foreboding strongly suggested darkness.

Nothing could have prepared me for that moment.

The vampire lunged at the poor girl─almost instantly, or maybe faster, than I heard my heart barraged out of my chest.

Either I don't have the emotions or I was panicked but the static feel of the situation would lead to a static description.

Don't think, feel?

Spare me, and receive loathing and indignation.

Without justification of my claim, the vampire sucked the blood out, the neck lifted from the gentle peck─damning even to relay the subject of how strong he dropped the body down the pavement just like so.

Without a trundle.

Like she was weightless.

I froze, then and there─my heart was trying to file for divorce.

Vampires weren't real.

Except—apparently—now, I was in the audience of one.

What now—?

This was Happy Death Day.

I hadn't let myself gasp, not even once—but this was futile.

All because of its designation as a vampire.

Pretty sure I read stories, having devoured their myth too dry—through pages, panels, and pixels.

They're too old of a news, I could reference someone referencing vampires being too old of a news.

What matters is this: a vampire can taste your blood from the air.

So there was no point in keeping myself calm and composed.

I thought to myself, even if he noticed I was there, I'd let him dissolve into the wind and keep cycling forward. Since he had already been sustained somehow, the chances of him leaving just like so would be high. This was no time to make the hero spiel come to fruition─the victim had already died. Let's also not disregard that courage alone wouldn't leave a vampire to even bleed.
Before I could do anything, nor think, our eyes already met.

As the seconds kept ticking, he stepped even closer.

I backed into nothing, startled as though I'd fallen from the bicycle. Honestly, if this had been a romantic BL manga, this was the part where he'd push me against imaginary bricks and confess.

Unfortunately, this wasn't a manga.

The vampire had just drained a middle-schooler like a juice box.

You don't need a complicated formula to know what was coming next─

─Except, maybe, this was that one cosmic fluke.

Not too rare, but a relatively uncharted turn of event.

"Hello," the vampire greeted.

I…

Smiled.

A vampire?

Funny was it that the vampire looked like a vampire from the movies. Say─Count Dracula exploring the world in secret. I possess good imagination so he could have only been a cosplayer. I simply jumped the gun on the label.

There is a thin line between expectations and reality, they say.

Although I wasn't given the luxury after already seeing the bite. Fangs buried underneath the girl's neck. No longer permitted to function in her original birth role.

"Uh-huh…Hello," I greeted back, as though reflexively, I doubt I was one to entertain in a heartbeat.

I suppose it all dangles into that notion: how Gen Zs are the most unserious of today. It's not like that, would be how I hoped to defend myself but the uncanny semblance wasn't so easy to wash off like dirt on a shirt.

He closed his face: the vampire didn't know how to be proper with distances. I couldn't vouch for his behavior, but I sure flinched aback. Heart crazed into mania. I repressed my stomach as not to throw up…The churn, the intestinal revolution.

One, two…Ten seconds, or maybe it was nine.

He backed away without a care in how I conducted myself. As I assumed, not exactly mirroring how he felt. Maybe I didn't pique his interest at all─that I was closed to being relieved. Yet, I couldn't pardon myself to exhume something out.

None the liquid nor gas.

As I was still in this abject state, he took notice of his crime scene. Stooped down, he carefully lifted the girl's corpse into his cradle. Then, as I was waiting for him to leave, he turned to me once more.
"I'm sorry you had to witness that."

I tilted my head.

He didn't linger on my confusion. Just adjusted the girl's limp body like one would cradle groceries, then strolled off as though the street belonged to him. None the dramatic cape swirl, nor escape in smokescreen.

Only steady and soft footsteps.

Sure enough how I have naught the idea about the body being cradled.

Fair to say it's like a brother taking his little sister home after a long day. Although there were a lot of mistakes that would warrant a Gestalt collapse.

I got off my bike─and walked ahead.

My body moved before my brain signed the waiver. One foot, then another, as if being reeled in by invisible thread. Maybe it was morbid curiosity. Maybe I was too stupid to realize people normally run the other way.

He didn't hurry, didn't hide.

Turned down alleys like he was only on a tour.

I kept about two lamp posts' worth of distance.

Then, midway through a corner, he slowed.

His head tilted the way cats do.

"Generally, I would have nothing against walking with someone," he said without turning, "but you don't seem the type to stroll."

It was at this moment that I realized, I wasted a once in a lifetime cosmic fluke.