“I do not.” Haruka’s eyes widen in disbelief. “Never mind. Just go away.”
Asao breathes a laugh through his nose. “Alright, your grace. By the way, you got another letter in the mail today. From Japan. This is the tenth one she’s sent this year.”
Haruka swallows hard, his throat tight. The simple mention of her still makes his body tense. He looks back down at his journal to resume his work. “Send it back, please.”
Asao nods. “My pleasure.” He turns and disappears from the doorframe.
A minute before eight o’clock, the doorbell to Haruka’s estate rings. He is waiting in the kitchen, knowing that Asao will first show his guest to his room on the second floor, then allow Nino to settle his things before coming downstairs for dinner.
Even now, Haruka is anxious—his knee nervously bouncing underneath the table. What had gotten into him? For the past ten years, his primary objective has been to avoid other people at all costs, not invite them into his home. He can already smell Nino’s woodsy, cinnamon-laced essence gently floating throughout his nest like an alluring spell. Haruka’s own nature shifts in response, but he’s prepared for it now, so he easily stifles the sensation.
Ten minutes later, Asao precedes their handsome guest into the kitchen. Nino looks around, taking in the space. Asao has made sukiyaki for dinner—the air is warm and accentuated with the scent of simmered beef, vegetables and sweetened soy sauce. Haruka watches Nino from the wooden breakfast nook tucked into a corner along an exposed brick wall. Industrial-style pendant lights hang down from the low ceiling, giving the space a modern yet homey feel.
Haruka stands from the table, taking a deep breath to prepare for whatever he’s gotten himself into. “Hello, Nino. Welcome to my home.”
Nino responds with a slight bow. “Thank you… I appreciate you letting me do this. Your house is beautiful. Picturesque.”
“You’re very kind.” Haruka gestures toward the bench. “Please sit. I hope you like Japanese food?”
“Is this sukiyaki?” Nino blinks in awe. “Holy—I haven’t had this in forever. It looks incredible.”
“Everything is ready.” Asao turns toward the door, grinning. “I hope you enjoy. Call me if you need anything.”
“Thank you,” Nino calls, his gaze settled on Asao’s back as he leaves. When the manservant is gone, Nino turns to face Haruka. “Asao is third-generation, isn’t he?”
“He is,” Haruka confirms, grabbing an empty bowl for the soup.
“It’s unusual for a ranked vampire to be a servant. How did that come about, if I may ask?”
Lifting slightly from his seat, Haruka grasps the ladle from the large pot. He generously fills the bowl and hands it to Nino, then fills a second bowl for his own helping. “Asao was my father’s best friend as a child. I do not know the story in its entirety, but he willingly pledged his loyalty to the Hirano Clan. When my parents passed, he was named as my guardian.”
“How old were you when they died?”
“Twelve.”
“Jesus.” Nino pauses. “You were young. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you, Nino.” Haruka sits, brings a spoonful toward his mouth and blows before carefully tasting the warm broth.
Already, Nino has surprised him. Haruka hadn’t realized it until this moment, but he’d been waiting for the shallow, elaborate compliments on his appearance. For the awe over the stifled power of his nature or worse, for the blatant sexual advances.
They simply eat in comfortable silence. When Nino speaks again, his question is once more unexpected. “I meet a lot of funny humans while I’m working in my bar,” he says, a certain fondness in his expression. “Do you have human friends? Or do you interact with them at all?”
“I personally do not,” Haruka says. He places his chopsticks and soup spoon beside his empty bowl. “While I feel strongly that we should protect and maintain our unique culture, I also feel that some integration with humans is healthy and necessary.”
“I think so too,” Nino says. “I think positive relations should be encouraged among all beings, regardless of their inherent nature. My older brother, Giovanni, focuses on that in business. He wants to get more vampire and human companies working hand in hand instead of exclusively for their respective audiences.”
“You achieve this on a local level at your bar, yes?”
Nino takes a quick sip of his wine. “I guess you’re right. I have both kinds of patrons. My vampire customers are inherently drawn to me, you know? On a fundamental level. They’re always pretty low-ranking, so they don’t ever cause me any trouble. The humans are the ones I worry about.”
“In what way?” Haruka asks, bringing his own glass to his lips. He has a fairly strong impression of humans from literature and news, but the quiet truth is that he’s almost never had any personal interaction with them. The existence of his race has long been exposed to humans. There are exceptions, but most higher-level vampires remain secluded.
Life for vampires in the contemporary era presents itself as a wide spectrum, where the old world of aristocratic vampire ways comfortably co-exists beside human society.
Nino sits back, making himself comfortable. “Well… they almost always drink too much, then one of three things happens—they get angry, they get sloppy or they become overconfident. Sometimes all three, but those are the worst cases and fairly rare. Angry and sloppy I can deal with easily. Overconfident is probably the most… exasperating? They’re not doing anything wrong per se, so I just have to tolerate their advances. And it almost always starts with the ‘If you were human’ game.”
Haruka tilts his head to the side, a frown creasing his brow. He is wildly intrigued by this insight. To him, Nino is like an anthropologist who has deeply researched and exposed himself to a precarious species—a species that has shown much fear and discrimination toward vampires in the past. “What does this game entail?” Haruka asks.
“It starts with ‘How old are you?’ Usually out of the blue, with no context whatsoever. They’ve probably been sitting there watching me and thinking about it all night. So I tell them, then I get a long stare. Eventually I hear, ‘If you were human, you’d be…’ Insert random age. It’s like they need to establish some frame of reference so that I fit into the mold of their understanding of life. They can’t just accept that I’m a hundred and twelve. Then, depending on the person, I start getting random cultural questions—‘Did you know Mussolini?’ or ‘What about Pompeii?’ And I’m like, what about Pompeii? Did you not hear me say I’m only a hundred and twelve?”
Haruka frowns in disbelief. “So what human age do they typically assign you?”
“Usually something between thirty and thirty-five? Believe it or not, thirty-two is what I get most often. If I opened a bar for every time a human gave me that number, I’d be franchised all across Europe.”
Haruka shakes his head in amazement. “Such an arbitrary and pointless exercise… Pompeii.” Are they drunk when asking these ridiculous questions?
“I know.” Nino shrugs. “But they enjoy that kind of stuff. These playful little games. And they tell me as if it’s something clever—like I don’t have a human do that to me multiple times each week.”
“It sounds exhausting.” Haruka tilts his head back, finishing his drink.
“There are worse things.” Nino smiles, mischievousness sprinkling his expression. “So… if I’m thirty-two, I guess that means you look twenty-nine?”
Haruka’s jaw drops in naked shock. “I do not present as some weak, twenty-something infantile human.” When Haruka was still under a century, that had been frustrating enough. Vampires over a century have the irritating habit of treating younger vampires as if they’re children—as if they understand nothing about life and the complexities therein.
“It’s just hypothetical, for fun.” Nino grins. “So how old do you think you look?”
