The Vampire Princess

“Class 1’s Hanakawa Mitsuki is definitely a smash,” said Haruto assertively.

“She has a cute face,” relented Shinji.

“Oh, but Class 1 also has Hasegawa Kyoko, the captain of the track and field team,” remembered Haruto.

“Yep, she has style and a nice figure to boot. A woman like that is every man’s dream,” agreed Shinji, nodding with a serious expression on his face.

“Sucks though that she has small breasts,” added Haruto with a disappointed sigh.

“Breasts that are both atheletic and shapely are rare treasures. She is a hidden gem for sure,” objected Shinji.

“Are you saying that size doesn’t matter?” asked Haruto with a frown.

“That statement right there proves just what a child you still are,” replied Shinji.

“Ah, forget you. Hey, Abe, what do you prefer?” Haruto asked Harumi.

Abe Harumi, 17 years old and a second-year high school student. A fairly drab-looking boy with medium black hair and rather remarkable honey-amber eyes, which would be even more remarkable if they weren’t shaped so fierce. He had a sharp nose with a low bridge which brought his eyes together to give him an even fiercer face. Because of this face, he’d been given the nickname “Bishamonten” since childhood. In contrast to his outer appearance, Harumi was a man with a strong sense of justice and will always lend a hand to those in need. And though his classmates know this, his face, sadly, still puts them off. Around his neck hung a necklace with a silver pendant in the shape of a pentagram—a treasured family heirloom.

All this time, Harumi listened to his friends prattle on about girls, but he had since lost interest in the conversation some minutes ago and wasn’t paying attention at all to their words. He didn’t even hear Haruto call his name for what seemed to be the fifth time. On the sixth call, Haruto added a slap to Harumi’s back, waking the latter up.

“Oi, what are you spacing out for? Is our conversation not fun enough for you?” asked Haruto.

“Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention,” apologized Harumi with a small embarrassed smile.

“Oh, look who’s outside right now,” said Shinji, gesturing out the window with his chin.

Outside on the school grounds was none other than Annabelle Strix, a transfer student from Romania and the school’s idol. Though she just transferred in two months ago, she was quick to attain idol status amongst the student body due to three factors: her foreign origins, her elegant and aloof persona, and her aura of unattainableness that makes it clear to others just how out of their league she was.

She was an angel with silver-blonde hair that fell down her back like soft feathers. Her eyes were brilliant rubies that glistened without pause and her skin was like fresh fallen snow. Her figure wasn’t second-class either; voluptuous and mature yet delicate like a rose in full bloom. She carried herself with the grace of a European princess as befitting her exotic image. Though she rarely talked unless spoken to and kept a short distance from others, she was still a cordial person who accommodated others well, often with a kind smile and polite nod of her head. And when she spoke, others would fall silent just to hear her voice: soft like silk and melodious like a sonorous flute.

Like always, she carried with her her parasol. No one knows exactly the reason why for this behavior, and when people attempted to ask her, she would simply reply with a smile. But the guys at school had already accepted it as part of her elegance that had captivated them so.

“Man, if I had a girlfriend like Annabelle Strix, I would never leave her side even for a moment,” sighed Haruto happily.

“I bet it’s so that you can grope her breasts all the time,” said Shinji with a knowing smile.

“Ah, was I that obvious?” replied Haruto with a dopey smile.

Harumi let out a sigh. “Guys, I know how horny virgins can get, but it’s not cool to just objectify girls for your own convenience.”

“You have no right to say that to us, you virgin!” objected Haruto, pointing a finger at Harumi with a childish pout.

“Yeah, yeah, well, I gotta go,” said Harumi, picking up his things to go home.

“Ah, the virgin got angry!” joked Haruto.

“You’re a virgin, too,” growled Harumi with a scowl. He swung his bag over his shoulder and made his way to the door.

“See you later,” said Shinji.

“You better join in on our conversation tomorrow!” called out Haruto.

Harumi said nothing and threw a wave before closing the door behind him. The sun was already setting by the time he finished changing into his outside shoes. He made it to the corner of the crosswalk and crossed the street before turning left. The street led to a large park that was on the way home. When he reached the park, he saw Annabelle Strix sitting on the park bench. She had her parasol closed and resting next to her.

‘I didn’t know she knew this place,’ thought Harumi.

A group of rowdy thugs had entered the park and quickly gathered around Annabelle. They came onto her and pestered her using vulgar language. Some of them were even beginning to get handsy. Harumi couldn’t let this slide and quickly dashed over to put himself in between the thugs and Annabelle. His unwelcome presence was met with intimidating looks of disgust from the thugs.

“Who do ya think ya are, ya little bastard?” came the leader of the thugs.

“Oh, are you her boyfriend?” mockingly asked one of the thugs with a laugh.

“As if! There’s no way a weak virgin-looking bastard like him could be this hot-piece-of-ass’ boyfriend!” ridiculed a third.

“Get lost already, you virgin bastard,” demanded a fourth.

Harumi didn’t care much about their insults, but there was no way that he was about to do as they say and leave Annabelle unprotected. “What, you guys have nothing better to do? I guess that’s all I can expect from third-rate thugs like you,” he fought back with a sneer.

The leader tilted his head with a scary scowl. “Let’s kill this bastard,” he ordered the others. The thugs were quick to follow their leader’s orders.

Harumi found himself caught in a ruthless maelstrom of punches and kicks. He had his arms up to protect his body and face and stood his ground as best as he could. Then, out of nowhere, he felt a sharp pain at his side and suddenly found himself losing consciousness. Unbeknownst to him, one of the thugs had brought out a switchblade and jammed it into his stomach. ‘Huh? What just happened?’ he asked himself. He dipped his fingers into his side and brought them back up to see them covered in his own blood. ‘Wait, that’s my blood. Does that mean that….’ His body grew heavy and his legs became jelly. ‘This is what I get for playing the hero,’ he told himself ruefully. ‘But at least, I managed to protect her, even if only for a moment. I did protect her, right? Ah, I regret nothing if this is how I die.’ As he thought that, he smiled. The last thing Harumi saw before his entire vision turned black was the red puddle that formed under him.

With Harumi out of commission, a thug kicked away his body and the group turned their focus back to Annabelle. Annabelle glanced over at Harumi’s lifeless body with pitiful eyes. But she was also grateful for his courage and smiled softly. “Now, now, I guess it’s my turn to punish these ugly pigs,” she said with a sigh. With one swift movement, she killed the group of thugs, leaving behind only their decapitated corpses.

Harumi slowly blinked his eyes as he came to. He looked around at his surroundings and found himself resting on a bed in a strange room. The room had a Gothic feel to it with pointed arched windows that looked outwards to an open garden, walls housing golden framed paintings of undoubtedly European origin, and a giant fresco on the ceiling. Harumi squinted his eyes a bit as his vision was still a little blurry from just waking up, and he noticed that the fresco was one of a man in a black cloak standing before six others underneath a bright moon with bats in the background.

“Ah, have you come to?” came a voice to Harumi’s right. He turned to see a beautiful maid with glossy black hair smiling at him.

“Um, where am I?” he asked her.

The maid came forward and placed her forehead onto his, making him blush. “Yup, it looks like you’re okay now,” she told him.

“T-Thanks,” he replied without thinking.

“Although you didn’t actually have a fever, so I guess this kind of behavior was unwarranted,” she said as she broke away from him. She covered her mouth with her hand and giggled.

‘She, she’s messing with me!’ realized Harumi in shock.

The maid cleared her throat and recovered her previous elegance. “Now, to answer your question, you are currently resting in Strix Manor,” she told him.

“S-Strix Manor?” echoed Harumi with a frown. “Wait…Strix? As in, Annabelle Strix?” he realized. That’s when the memory of last night’s scuffle returned to him. His hands quickly shot to his sides. He didn’t feel any pain and when he brought his hands up there wasn’t any sign of blood. But based on his recollection of the events, he was bleeding out. ‘Shouldn’t I be dead?’ he reasoned.

“Mistress Anna revived you,” explained the maid upon seeing the distressed and confused look on his face.

“Revived?” That didn’t make any sense to Harumi at all.

“Though I would not mind explaining everything to you in its entirety, I believe you should hear it from Mistress Anna herself,” said the maid. Before Harumi could say anything, she immediately bowed and excused herself.

Harumi’s head was a jumbled mess. Sitting on the bed only made it worse, so he got himself up and left the room. As he walked, he turned his attention to the golden framed paintings that graced the walls on both sides. They depicted various scenes ranging from mythological figures to wars to daily life. The only constant factor in all of these paintings was the presence of bats. One painting in particular drew his attention more than the others. The subject in the picture was very familiar to him; she was a silver-haired beauty who wore a gothic red and white dress with a parasol in one hand and a poppy flower in another. “She looks just like Annabelle Strix,” he muttered to himself in awe.

“Don’t touch the painting!” barked an unexpected voice, making Harumi jump. He turned to see a scowling butler who looked no older than himself.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” apologized Harumi.

“If you’re going to apologize, then you must show the most basic of decorum to convey sincerity. Otherwise, it’s nothing but a string of hollow words,” snapped the butler.

Harumi somehow understood what the butler was talking about and quickly bowed his head in apology. “I humbly apologize for my actions!”

The butler squinted his scarlet eyes as if to say he was accepting the apology out of reluctance rather than sincere acknowledgement of Harumi’s words. He then turned his head away and marched off.

‘Gosh, that butler was scary!’ thought Harumi with a sigh of relief. “Anyway, I need to go find a bathroom to wash my face.” He found one a few doors down and entered to wash his face and freshen up. He reached over for a towel and grabbed the first thing he touched. While using it to rub his face, he felt that there was something strange about the cloth’s texture. It was soft and silky and smooth, completely unlike any towel he had ever used before in his life! At first, he thought the towel must be of an exotic nature and that this must be what towels are like in Europe. But that reasoning quickly fell through. He brought the towel before his eyes to better observe it. “Is this really a towel?” he asked himself. When he lessened his grip on it, he saw the back part of the cloth unravel downwards to form a triangular shape. That’s when it clicked.

“P-P-P-P-Panties!” he exclaimed. Now that he was looking at it more closely, he noticed that it was a stainless pair of white panties with a delicate floral design of poppies along the waistband. He had also realized for the first time that the pair of panties were warm—they were freshly taken off!

The door to the shower on the other side of the bathroom opened. “Ah, you’re awake.”

Harumi slowly turned his head and couldn’t believe the divine sight his eyes fell on. In front of him, bare naked without so much as a towel to cover her succulent body, was Annabelle Strix. Her skin was white like a peach and the droplets of water that raced down her naked body only made the already divine parts of her body appear even more divinely. Especially her godly bosom. Oh, how the boys at school would kill to see them in their purest state; Harumi was given this miraculous treat for free! Those enticing ruby tips atop perfectly proportioned disks atop unblemished milky-white skin….

What made the situation even more bizarre was Annabelle’s lack of shame. She didn’t mind Harumi’s stare at all and wore an even expression the entire time! This unexpected behavior only made Harumi want to inspect her closer. He watched as the droplets raced down her soft stomach to her plump milky-white thighs that reminded him of delicate tofu. And down to her….

Harumi quickly slapped his face to come back to his senses. ‘What are you doing, you disgusting pervert! Just because she didn’t scream and make a scene doesn’t mean that it’s okay to continue this ugly behavior! Not once did she give you her consent!’ he reprimanded himself harshly.

“Ah, my panties,” said Anna, referring to the pair in Harumi’s hand.

The realization froze Harumi in terror. He quickly handed her to her. Once she grabbed it, he jumped onto his knees and bowed his head all the way down to the floor. “I grievously apologize for my extremely unwarranted, disgusting, sinful, vile behavior that is worthy of a million deaths! I accept all punishment that you wish to deal upon me!” he sincerely and seriously apologized.

“Ah, that’s alright,” said Anna, putting on her panties. She was completely unphased by it all. “You can lift up your head,” she told him.

“I cannot!” replied Harumi.

“Why?” she asked him.

“It’s—well—it’s because you don’t have anything on,” he told her honestly.

“I like serious boys like you,” she told him with a giggle. She bent down and placed a hand underneath Harumi’s chin to bring his face up to hers. “Also, I forgot to say this to you. Thank you for last night,” she told him with a smile.

“No problem,” replied Harumi slowly, mesmerized by Anna’s sparkling ruby eyes.

“Say, would you mind helping me again?” she asked him.

“Um, sure,” he replied with no thought behind his words at all.

That answer was apparently the wrong one—a fact that Harumi realized too late. Now, he was in Anna’s room, charged with helping the elegant young lady dress. ‘What the hell is with this lucky pervert situation?!’ he exclaimed in disbelief.

“I want to wear my red one today,” Anna told Harumi. Except for the pair of panties between her legs, Anna was completely bare.

“Um, Annabelle-san—.”

“Call me Anna. And you don’t need to use honorifics either,” Anna quickly told him.

“Anna,” corrected Harumi, “why am I doing this?”

“You said that you’d help me,” she told him.

“Yes, I did, but isn’t this kind of work meant for a maid? And wouldn’t it be better to have another female here instead of a male like me?” he reasoned.

“I do not mind if my naked body is seen by you,” she told him with a small smile, her cheeks wearing a very subtle rouge.

“But I don’t think it’s right,” continued Harumi.

“If you like, you can touch them,” Anna said, turning her body to Harumi.

“Critical hit!” exclaimed Harumi as he was knocked back by the generous offer. “Please, no more jokes,” he begged her while covering his nose with his arm.

“I can get dressed by myself. You can wait for me in that seat over there,” she relented with a sigh. Harumi did as she said and had his face turned away the entire time. Once she was done, she invited him to follow her to the main living room.

“How do you like the manor?” she asked him as they walked.

“It’s very…interesting,” he answered her honestly. “By the way, Anna, I have a question for you.”

“Yes?”

“Well, um, this is kind of a weird question, but…I died last night, didn’t I?” he asked her. Anna simply nodded her head in answer. “Then, how am I still alive?”

“I gave you my blood,” she told him.

“Your blood? You mean, like a transfusion?” he asked.

Anna stopped and turned around. She brought up a finger to her lips and bit down on the flesh to draw blood. She then turned the finger towards Harumi. Harumi was a little confused and unsettled by Anna’s behavior, but he didn’t fight back at all as she brought the finger closer to him. Her finger eventually met Harumi’s lips. Instinctively, he licked the blood from her finger. The taste was familiar to him somehow…it wasn’t at all how he imagined it would taste like! The blood sent a wave of warmth and comfort through his body…but there was something else about it, too! Was it…energy? Power?

The look of pleasant realization on Harumi’s face made Anna smile. She quickly retracted back her finger and placed it between her lips. “Got a kiss from Harumi,” she teased with a smile.

“A-A-Anna!” exclaimed Harumi with embarrassment—her action had brought him back to reality. “So, are you telling me that you revived me back with your blood?” he asked her after calming down. “But, that’s strange! That’s like something you hear from a vampire movie!”

“Do you believe in vampires?” Anna asked him.

“Believe in vampires? Aren’t they just occult figures? Surely, they don’t exist—.”

Anna disappeared from Harumi’s sight and quickly reappeared behind him with her arms wrapped around his neck and her body atop his back. She brought her face close to his neck and opened her mouth to reveal two large incisors that were not normal by human standards at all. Harumi felt his heart skip a beat from fear. “Do you believe in them now?” asked Anna again, her eyes glowing dangerously.

“Yes,” Harumi answered her, too scared to think up a more rational answer.

Anna smiled and kissed his neck, sending a shock through Harumi’s body. She then returned back to her previous position and continued on to the living room. Harumi followed her, though his mind was occupied with conflicting thoughts about what he had just witnessed. But after everything he had seen, despite his misgivings, he knew that he couldn’t disregard the facts anymore.

They reached the living room and the maid and butler from this morning were each standing to the side of a couch. Anna took her seat on the couch. Harumi sat on the couch opposite of her. “Now, Abe Harumi, it is time that I formally introduce you to Strix Manor,” announced Anna. “And I am its master, Annabelle Strix Nosferatu.”

‘Nosferatu is her actual surname?’ learned Harumi.

“Abe Harumi, last night you died from a fatal stab to your liver,” Anna explained. “However, grateful for your desire to protect me from harm, I have taken a liking to you and decided to grant you reprieve from death as my reward to you. Flowing through your veins is my blood. It is from my blood that you now live as a vampire.”

“I don’t mean to sound ungrateful or anything—in fact, I’m very grateful and more for what you did for me—but, don’t people become vampires by being bitten by one?” questioned Harumi logically.

“You’ve been watching too many movies,” snapped the butler with a glare.

“My, so adorable,” giggled the maid.

“It is true that vampire consume blood by piercing our fangs into human flesh,” explained Anna, “but that is all it is—consumption. To turn one into a vampire, a vampire must feed their own blood into the subject. The subject may be alive or dead. As long as our blood flows through them, they become vampires.”

“Furthermore, vampires are forever loyal to the person whose blood flows through them. If they so much as try to disobey, their disloyalty will bring about calamity upon them. Your vampire master knows everything there is to know about your heart,” added the butler sternly. “You know what that means, don’t you?” he added with a scary glare.

“I will never disobey Anna for as long as I live!” quickly promised Harumi.

“Say, Harumi, what do you know about vampires?” asked Anna curiously.

Harumi thought about her question for a moment. “Well, based on my experience with movies and general lore, I know that vampires are nocturnal creatures who are weak to sunlight. They can turn to bats or dark mist, though some can also turn into other things like wolves and such, and they also don’t have a reflection or shadow. Oh, and they can also use hypnotism! And besides sunlight, their other weaknesses include garlic and fire and crosses and silver. And wasn’t their something, too, about vampires hating running water? And they can’t enter people’s houses without an invitation.”

“50,” scored Anna.

“A test score?” Harumi quickly retorted.

“It is true that we are nocturnal creatures with a dislike for sunlight,” began Anna. “The sun can be viewed as our natural enemy. If we are exposed to its rays, our body will disintegrate. However, being immortal creatures, we will always regenerate at night. It’s true that we do not possess a reflection or shadow. However, we cannot turn into bats or dark mist or any other creature. But we can communicate with bats and most other nocturnal creatures. And we cannot use hypnotism, though we can employ a similar technique that allows us to influence the thoughts of simple-minded people to a certain extent.

“Garlic is only a danger to us raw; it is the scent of garlic that eats away at our strength rather than the actual plant itself. This also goes for other similar plants, like onions and leeks. Running water is not a danger to us, nor are churches and crosses. Religious vampires exists and quite a number of them are members of the faith. And silver and wooden stakes are all works of fiction. As for entering people’s houses without an invitation, that’s just plain etiquette.”

“The image of vampires that I’ve always knew is being shattered right now,” said Harumi with a disillusioned smile.

“Say, Harumi, do you know what the only way to kill a vampire is?” asked Anna with a dark smile.

‘Well, if stakes and silver and sunlight are out of the question….’ Harumi shook his head to show that he didn’t know the answer.

Anna walked over to Harumi and caressed his cheek. Her hand then rested on Harumi’s necklace. “By destroying a vampire’s soul,” she told him. “Our bodies are immortal, but our souls are not. When a vampire is born, their body gets reanimated with the tainted blood that now runs through their veins, but their soul is transferred somewhere else to preserve their immortality. This is why vampires live forever.”

“Transferred somewhere else?” echoed Harumi, entranced by Anna’s beauty and close proximity to him.

“To kill a vampire, you must destroy their soul. Therefore, you must kill the thing they hold dearest to them,” Anna told him.

Her words clicked and Harumi looked down at his family’s heirloom. She was right that it was the thing he held dearest to him. Despite being a family heirloom, the pendant also held a significant memory for him—it was the last thing given to him by his now deceased father. His father was the one that instilled in him the strong sense of justice he adhered to. “So my soul is in this pendant,” he concluded aloud.

“Now that you know, make sure you protect it with you life,” she told him as her hand fell to his heart. “Your body can die and resurrect itself, but the same cannot be said about your soul.” She looked at him with sad eyes that also had a hint of sexiness to them. “I would be very sad if you were gone,” she told him with a matching smile.

That night, Harumi was given his first mission as a member of the Strix Familia. He was to meet with another member of the family atop the roof of a building. He had arrived at the designated building—a ten-story business building on the south side of town. As he looked up the building with its large glass windows, he felt uneasy. Ben, Anna’s butler, had instructed him to scale the building as if he was running on flat ground—an ability that all vampires possessed. This was Harumi’s first time and he was not ready to test it out at all.

‘This is for Anna, who revived me with her blood,’ he told himself. He psyched himself with a slap to both cheeks, staining them red. Now filled with confidence, he did as Ben had told him and jumped onto the side of the building. His feet landed gently on the building’s side, surprising him greatly. But now that he knew he could do it, his confidence shot up even more. He ran up the side of the building as if he was running on the ground. It was so easy that he hadn’t realized that it took him less than two minutes to reach the top.

Once he was at the top, he saw the clear shape of someone else on the roof. The person turned around with a kind smile. He was a good-looking young man who seemed to be of the same age as Harumi. He had soft indigo hair in a small ponytail and kind, smoldering indigo eyes. His frame was skinny under the black hoodie he wore, but the outline of his collarbones were those that belonged to someone athletic. His face was long and his skin was a light tan. He also had about him an aura that reminded Harumi of those folk heroes from period dramas: intimidating and mysterious but also very kind. Attached to his hip was a sheathed katana.

“You must surely be the new member of Strix Familia,” said the young man.

“Yes, I am. My name is Abe Harumi.”

“Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Sir Abe,” greeted the young man politely. “My name is Saiga Takehito. I, too, am a member of Strix Familiar.”

“Nice to meet you, Saiga-san. So, what is our mission, exactly?”

“Did Lady Anna not tell you anything?” asked Takehito.

“She only told me to meet you here,” Harumi told him honestly.

“I see. Well, Sir Abe, we are here tonight to hunt down Stragglers,” explained Takehito.

“Stragglers?”

“Rogue vampires,” Takehito told him. “They are vampires who have either rebelled against their master or have lost their master and are now free to act on their own.”

“But I thought vampires can’t rebel against their masters,” remembered Harumi.

“But that doesn’t stop them from trying,” countered Takehito. “When vampires rebel, they are forever forced to live in constant fear. A vampire’s master can sniff out their subordinate’s location faster than the greatest natural predator on Earth. Vampire masters tend to let their subordinates roam free to do whatever they want as long as they do not commit treachery against them. Lawyers, doctors, teacher, priests, salarymen, but also gamblers, murderers, rapists, and crime bosses—there are no limits to what vampires are allowed to do with their own lives. Some even have families and live rather normal lives. However, these freedoms are only guaranteed if the vampire swears undying fealty to their master.”

“And if they don’t, they get punished,” finished Harumi with a grimace. “This sounds just like how an organized crime ring operates.”

“Now, now, don’t look so disheartened, little brother,” joked Takehito with a smile to lighten up the mood.

“So, these Stragglers, what are we supposed to do to them?” asked Harumi.

“Kill them,” answered Takehito a little too easily.

“K-Kill them?” exclaimed Harumi, baffled by the actual content of their mission.

“You don’t have to worry about doing anything immoral,” reassured Takehito. “These Stragglers are the worst of the worst. Serial killers, armed robbers, serial rapists, terrorists, and societal dangers; these are people who must be dealt with in order to protect the peace.”

Harumi was against killing people, but what Takehito said also made solid-sense. “But—,” he wanted to protest.

“Sir Abe, if you continue to view this world through the eyes of an innocent child, you will not be able to live as a vampire,” Takehito told him. “Nothing in this world is cut-and-dried or strictly black-and-white. Good and bad are two sides of the same coin. Killing is good if it benefits the greater good and follows a clear code of conduct, just as it is bad if abused and used indiscriminately without a clear code of conduct to regulate it.” As he said this, he wore a very grim expression like that of a man who had a very intimate relationship with death. “Do you understand now?” he asked Harumi with a smile.

Harumi couldn’t do anything but admit defeat to Takehito’s words. Even though he was reluctant to accept it, he understood that this new world he now inhabited followed a different set of rules and values. And if he wanted to survive, he would need to adapt to them. “You could’ve just told me they were bad guys and I would’ve said yes without question,” said Harumi, doing his best to adopt a nonchalant smile.

Takehito turned back around and walked up to the edge of the roof. “Do you hear that?” he asked Harumi.

Harumi didn’t know what Takehito was talking about. But after a second or two went by, he heard the slight sound of footsteps. Takehito signaled to him with a nod. They both jumped off the roof and into a dark alleyway. Underneath, the Stragglers looked up to see a pair of glowing eyes coming down towards them.

Once Takehito landed, he unsheathed his katana and sliced up two Stragglers in a flash like lightning; their bodies turned into white ash. However, his goal wasn’t the vampires themselves, but their souls. His katana possessed the ability to sniff out a vampire’s soul and destroy them in one strike. The blood of the vampires that now dirtied the blade were swallowed up by the blade itself. Before long, it was shiny like new.

‘Did that sword just suck up the blood on its blade?’ thought Harumi in bewilderment.

“Sir Abe, please don’t forget your mission,” Takehito called over to Harumi.

Two vampires surrounded Harumi. The first one swung at him but Harumi managed to dodge it by jumping back. However, his preoccupation with the first Straggler proved to be his downfall. The second Straggler took advantage of this situation and struck out with a punch of his own. Unbeknownst to him, both Stragglers had on spike-tipped brass knuckles. The second Straggler’s brass knuckle pierced through Harumi’s stomach.

The punch sent Harumi flying back into a wall. The impact from both the punch and the wall shook his bones like jelly; he was sure that he felt a good chunk of them shattering into pieces inside his body. The intense fire-like pain made him want to cry out, but he did his best to hold it in. The only thing that came out from him, though, was a stream of blood flowing from his lips.

“This guy’s weak as hell!” exclaimed the second Straggler with a huge smile on his face.

“This should be no problem for us,” gloated the first Straggler with a smirk.

Both Stragglers took turns punching Harumi in the stomach with their spike-tipped brass knuckles while laughing gleefully among themselves. Each time they landed a hit, Harumi spat out blood. His head was ringing and his body was crying “No more!”. After a dozen or so punches, the two Stragglers watched with glee at Harumi’s flaccid body falling off the wall and headfirst onto the ground below.

‘I can’t take this anymore,’ he told himself painfully. ‘I’m sorry, Anna, but I can’t do this after all…. No! I have to do this! I have to do this for Anna!’ The thought reignited a small flame within him and his sense of justice consumed all of the negative feelings that had inhabited his mind. ‘I can’t let this happen like last time! This time, I will successfully protect her!’ Slowly but determinedly, Harumi rose up off the ground. “I can’t give up on this. If I do, I will never be able to protect Anna!” he told himself aloud.

“Wha-Wha-What the hell?!” exclaimed the second Straggler in bewilderment.

“Let’s beat his ass!” determined the first Straggler.

The second Straggler threw out a punch. Harumi’s hand shot out and clasped the fist tightly, stopping it in its track. He flashed the Straggler a deadly glare filled with anger and determination.

“Ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow!” complained the second Straggler as Harumi’s hand began to close tighter and tighter over his own.

“S-Something’s different about this guy!” yelped the first Straggler.

Indeed, he was right. Harumi’s body was now 90% healed and surrounded by a thin and bright red aura. With a punch using his free hand, Harumi unleashed strength equivalent to a dozen elephants. The force sent the second Straggler flying back and straight into a wall where he now fell down unconscious. On the ground along the Straggler’s path was a trail of blood. The first Straggler glanced back at his acquaintance and realized that something was strange. He glanced back at Harumi and almost threw up; the second Straggler’s left arm was still tightly clutched in Harumi’s hand.

Harumi threw down the dismembered hand. He then turned his focus onto the first Straggler. The clear righteous rage in his eyes made the first Straggler flinch like a little kid. Harumi slowly moved towards the Straggler.

“S-Stop! Don’t come any closer! Y-Y-You’re a monster!” screamed the first Straggler hysterically.

With a look unbefitting a human of any kind, a look that was more ogre than human, a look that pierced through evil with its own brand of justice, Harumi clenched his fist; the red aura surrounding the fist glowed brighter than anywhere else around his body, and he struck his fist right into the Straggler’s head. The strike forced the Straggler into the wall behind him. The Straggler’s eyes rolled back. Harumi let go and the Straggler’s body slid down. On the wall, in the place where the Straggler’s head once was, was a large round bloodstain. Harumi’s fist was also covered in the enemy’s blood, but it didn’t bother him at all.

He glanced down and saw a bright jewel hanging around the unconscious Straggler’s neck. “Right, I need to destroy their souls,” he remembered with a dark expression. With one tightening of his hand, he smashed jewel into pieces. The Straggler’s body then turned into a pile of white ash. Harumi then turned his focus back onto the still unconscious second Straggler. He walked up to the body and picked it up by the neck. As he did, he noticed a flimsy photo falling out of the Straggler’s jacket. With a stomp, he crushed the photo under his own foot. Like before, the second Straggler’s body turned into white ash.

“Sir Abe, you did well!” praised Takehito, who was also done with destroying the rest of the Stragglers.

The aura that surrounded Harumi disappeared and he suddenly fell onto the ground. The last thing he heard was Takehito shouting out his name. Then, everything turned dark and silent.