CHAPTER 24

Kou didn’t forget that he was working on a time constraint—anytime now, the nightwalkers would stage their attack and render his entire point moot. He did, however, believe in them. Just like he believed in his senpai.

Who was screaming her lungs out as he brought her up the second tallest landmark in Tokyo, by the way. From the outside.

“Kokonoe-kuuuuunnn!!”

“Hang tight, Senpai!”

Kou wasn’t actually all that trained in flight. He could probably make it a lot faster if he leaned and transformed into something that could fly, or maybe into something like mist, but there’s no way he could carry Sakura that way. Heck, he had never even attempted a flight that much higher than the average two-story house in Nerima—and he’s tackling Tokyo Tower’s more than three hundred meters in one go.

“This won’t end pretty!” Sakura screamed.

“This probably won’t, yup!”

“Then why must you do this to show me aaaaaAAAAH!”

She didn’t finish her question. Kou picked up speed, forcing himself to lean ever so slightly deeper and deeper into the other layers of his existence, slowly leaving his physical restraints while making sure he still had enough of him to physically hold his senior.

He didn’t know where he ended and where he began. He was drowning in the face of multiple realities of the same world, multiple sights of the same view, multiple laws of the same universe, and he was blinking in a storm that hit him in the face—or maybe that was just the wind from his speed in climbing up the Tower. Oh, he was basically running across the entire side of the Tower. He was fighting gravity. Somehow.

Sakura was still pretty deep in his embrace, screaming for her life.

He picked up speed.

On second thought, wouldn’t Himiko get pretty jealous? Would she get jealous? Didn’t she get a bit jealous before when Kou was worried about Sakura?

He pursed his lips, or at least whatever physical bit was left of it. He better give his absolute best to give Himiko the greatest time in that delayed date of theirs.

First, though, if he wanted to go on a date with Himiko, he had to get this done—all before the impatient nightwalkers cued their attack.

So he climbed. Well, flew. He flew, and he flew, and he flew higher and higher. He wasn’t going to compromise—he was going to take Sakura to the peak of the Tower.

Come on, come on….

He struggled a bit once he passed the observation deck. He had to actually stand on walls—a single misfocus, a single wrong way to lean in, and Sakura would’ve fallen right off his grasp.

But he held on.

And he climbed, and with a single draw of breath and a lot of gusto, he kicked ahead.

He flew right past the observation deck and onto the antennas.

With just one more push, he finally got to the peak.

There was one flaw to this plan that Kou hadn’t considered: the entire way up, he was only looking upwards. Not once did he look back or down.

Was he scared of heights?

Time to find out.

“Senpai,” he said, “we’re here.”

The wind was strong. So much so that he would’ve normally been blown away. He didn’t know how he managed to keep himself stuck and tethered so solidly there to the top of the antenna. Was it ever on the vampires’ cards to stick to walls? Kou didn’t think so.

All he knew was that he stood there, and as he made sure that his princess carry was all solid, he gave his senpai a little bit of a stronger grip to reassure her. Feeling his stability, slowly, Sakura opened her eyes.

Spread out before her were the darkest hues of the night, sprinkled by the sparkles of lights.

It was like a whole sea of stars, a blanket sewn from the edges of a galaxy; the playful blinking and the desperate shining as every point tried to outdo the rest. Passes of white and glimpses of red colored the streets tinted orange under the night lights. Roads slithered like small veins that told little stories of every human life down there, every person on their way home from grueling work, every family all together, every traveler on their lonely paths.

There were more.

Kou had the advantage of his sharp eyes, but a little soft gasp from Sakura was all he needed to hear. “That’s … amazing.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

Sakura turned to face Kou. “But why are you showing me this?”

“From here,” Kou nodded his chin as if to tell her to look around again, “can you tell which ones of those little dots down there are nightwalkers?”

Kou had the advantage of his vampiric eyes, but Sakura was just a normal human. Slowly, she shook her head. Kou chuckled.

“I’m being unfair to you. There are no nightwalkers here currently.”

Sakura frowned. “Kokonoe-kun, that personality of yours….”

“I know. But my point stands, Senpai—those very same humans down there, any one of them, could make decisions that forever changed the world. We wouldn’t know. At the same time, though, we’re really just trying to get by. Living our best lives, for some of us. Struggling to make sure we have some food on the table, for others. For the most part, Senpai, it’s hard enough for us just to live. This is the same for everyone.”

Sakura gripped Kou’s sleeve a little. “But they’re … scary.”

“Am I scary to you?”

“You literally just took me to the top of Tokyo Tower in the count of minutes by flying, what do you think?”

“… that’s fair.”

Sakura sighed. “I’m joking. You don’t scare me.”

“See?”

“But … Kokonoe-kun, I don’t understand. You’re … you’re active during the day. You go to school. You’re not scary. You’re not like them.”

“My sister also goes to school during the day,” Kou said. “You saw her vampiric face, right? Was she scary?”

Sakura pouted a little. “I get the feeling she’s scary even without that.”

Kou chuckled. “You’re right. Don’t tell her I said that, though.”

“They’re not like you, Kokonoe-kun. You’re different. You’re one of them, but you’re not like them.”

Kou could only smile. “And what if I tell you that I’m every bit just like them?”

“How?”

“Have I told you that I drink blood? Human blood.”

Sakura’s eyes widened. “Really?”

“Yeah. Oh, not directly from the source, no. I also don’t turn anyone into vampires. It actually requires a lot of annoying rituals, I’m not sure where movies got the idea that a bite was enough for that.”

“You drink … human blood?”

He knew he got her to listen. “Yes. My mom helped provide us with some bad or wasted blood, so we don’t chomp into emergency services or the like. But I need to drink blood to survive.”

“It doesn’t have to be human blood, right?”

“It depends on the vampire kind. There’s a lot of vampire types, you know. In my case, I can’t tell for sure. I’ve only ever drank human blood.”

Sakura fell silent. Kou continued.

“Not only that, I’m also active during the night. I don’t need to sleep, see, so I spend the days at school and the nights making sure that the neighborhood is safe. If everyone’s happy, I’m happy. Everyone includes everyone—humans and nightwalkers alike.”

“So you work hard to not be like them, right?”

Kou tilted his head. “Not exactly … it’s more like, both humans and nightwalkers? They cross paths now and then. Not a lot of those end up well. I just do my part to make sure it ends rather well for everyone involved. I understand their struggles—I had to make sure that they don’t struggle anymore, that’s it.”

Sakura seemed to let that sink in. Kou was a nightwalker. He knew what it was like to have to depend on his own identity, to not be able to turn into anything else without inviting more consequences than was necessary. Well, he wasn’t entirely honest, either, as he was also the King of the Night, but above his mantle as the King, Kou felt that he was doing the right thing.

With or without the mantle, if somebody needed help, human or nightwalker, he would jump to the rescue without a second thought.

Wasn’t that exactly why Chi was always angry at him?

“I won’t ask you to truly understand us,” Kou said. “It’s impossible for humans to truly understand nightwalkers, and it’s impossible for nightwalkers to truly understand humans. But it was never impossible for us to understand that the last thing we both want is for ourselves to get hurt. Even you, Senpai. You’re just protecting yourself, right?”

Sakura hesitated, but she nodded. Kou smiled.

“But, Senpai, I do need you to understand this … in your attempt to protect yourself, you’re putting other people in danger. A lot of people.”

Sakura frowned. “How?”

“When I said that the last thing we want is to get hurt, I meant it—most nightwalkers today are peaceful. We’ve accepted that we don’t have a place under the sun. We get weakened, we scare people, we understand all that. So, apart from occasional scares to make sure we survive by maintaining our identities, actual attacks have rarely ever happened these days. However, to compensate for that, we needed another source of life energy.”

Kou could almost see the gears slowly click in Sakura’s eyes. “The leylines?”

“The leylines. Our most peaceful ones feed directly from the leylines. They sometimes prey on wild nightwalkers who weren’t sentient, but half of them can’t even hurt a fly. Instead, they sponge off of the leylines, taking just enough to keep themselves alive because the only other alternative is death.”

Sakura fell deep into thought. Kou sighed.

“With the leylines blocked, Senpai, they’re getting desperate. My friend warned me that they might attack tonight.”

“Why didn’t they just go away to where the leylines are strong?”

“If I just tell you to move houses now, Senpai, would you be able to do it?”

She didn’t answer.

“Not only that, nearly all of them weren’t stuck here due to their own choice—just like us, they all had their own circumstances. We can’t just force them to move. They’ve always been here with us, this is their land as much as it’s yours.”

Sakura still didn’t answer.

“Senpai, I’ll just be frank with you. Draining the leylines is like pressing a blade to their necks. When they fight back, it’s not their fault that they felt they had to fight. Like us, they just don’t want to die.”

“And their alternative source of life energy now … is humans?”

“Unfortunately, yes. They’re the most abundant and the most ready to grab.”

Kou knew that they actually had to also consider the Enforcers—the nightwalkers wouldn’t dare attack during the day because they could trigger the Enforcers to appear, but at night, every human still outside was fair game.

The nights in Tokyo were sleepless, but so were the nightwalkers.

That said, though, like the King business, the Absolutes were a whole other issue that he’d rather not talk about with Sakura right now.

Kou might be naive, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew that what his sister and Himiko proposed would be the most efficient solution—beat Sakura up, make her spew the secrets to the ritual, and make her stop it.

But what would that accomplish apart from deepening the fear she already held?

She didn’t despise. She just didn’t understand.

Her fear was natural. All human fears were natural—it was part of what had allowed humans to survive for three hundred thousand years.

Her fear was natural. Her reaction wasn’t.

Sakura might’ve done a massive mistake, but she wasn’t heartless.

If there was a way he could convince her, remind her again of that, then until the last drop of his blood, that’s what Kou would try.

“So, please, Senpai,” Kou begged her. “Please let us stay at our home.”

Sakura was silent.

She looked away to the lights of Tokyo—it’s almost unbelievable to imagine that all this activity was exactly what would invite so many supernatural attacks in one night.

It’s almost unbelievable that all of those lights would soon be victims of a siege of monsters.

Sakura shed a single tear. “I understand.”

“So you’ll—”

“Yeah. I’ll fix the leylines. Just put me down … please.”

Kou was so relieved he could’ve just fallen from the top of Tokyo Tower straight to the ground—but he didn’t forget the senior he had in his princess carry. His lungs just suddenly felt so free that he just had to laugh.

And maybe cry a little bit.

“Thank you,” he whispered. He knew Sakura heard that.

And, with that, Kou jumped.

Sakura screamed, but having flown up more than three hundred meters and clocking only a few minutes to do that, Kou was actually feeling pretty confident in his flight this time. Oh, there’s also the giddiness from Sakura agreeing to his proposition, but the job wasn’t yet done.

They flew straight to the top of Atagoyama, directly to where Sakura held her ritual, and as soon as Kou let her down, she ran past the confused Chi and Himiko, straight to the main shrine grounds, kneeled, and started praying.

Kou took a deep breath. Then, he nodded to his sister and girlfriend.

“It’s done,” he said.

Finally.

*