In the dim apartment, the woman in the brilliant kimono was impossible to miss.
Yumizuka Satsuki’s rented flat was small enough that the bedroom was visible straight from the front door.
The curtains had been pulled open; the molten-gold remnant of the setting sun spilled in through the window.
The composed woman sat on the edge of the bed, bathed in that last red light, looking quietly at Satsuki.
Reflected in her ink-dark eyes was Satsuki’s silhouette; the woman’s fine brows and the corners of her eyes were sharply defined, as if fixed on something unseen.
She wore a kimono of pale-orange twisted silk, scattered with vivid cherry blossoms.
Her long black hair was caught up loosely.
Her face was almost unfairly fine.
Her shoulders tilted at a small, tired angle, the whole figure giving off something at once weary and gentle.
But to Satsuki, the woman’s posture was a knife held to her throat.
As though the woman could spring up at any second and cut her down with a single slash.
It was worse than the natural-predator pressure she’d felt from the Asagami maid—this woman, plainly, held Satsuki’s life in her hand outright.
Satsuki braced her left hand against the wall and dropped her weight low.
From her body, a low, dangerous warning sound forced its way out.
In the dim, the crimson eyes pulled in light.
“Who are you!?” Satsuki demanded warily.
There was one last trump card hidden in her blood—a card she’d kept, untouched, in reserve.
She’d never used it.
But death was right in front of her, and any side effect was a small price to find out whether it worked.
Sitting on the bed’s edge, the woman lifted her brows and answered, slowly:
“Me?
I’m Ryōgi Shiki.”
Her voice was deeply even.
Satsuki had the unmistakable sense that the woman had seen straight through to her nature at a glance.
But—Satsuki’s shoulder gave a small jerk.
She had heard that name.
From Sakura.
“Sakura’s… onee-san?”
The instant Sakura’s name passed her lips, Satsuki saw the corner of the woman’s mouth lift in a small, genuinely warm smile.
She drew her own conclusion.
The woman called Ryōgi Shiki had not come because Satsuki had turned into a vampire.
She had come because the vampire that Satsuki had become was now tangled up with Sakura.
Shiki rose slowly from the bed.
“You should be glad,” Shiki said, looking at the girl bracing herself against the wall, “that you didn’t bite down just now.”
In her current state, Satsuki was not yet worth Shiki drawing her blade.
Satsuki’s right fist tightened.
The thick blood there had cooled, lost its temperature, and reeked of something unmistakably inhuman.
If she had moved on Sakura, Shiki would have made her understand: the Ryōgi family being counted as one of the Four Great Demon Hunter Families wasn’t just for show.
Satsuki understood what Shiki meant.
She gritted her teeth.
“I won’t…”
“Only Sakura.
Sakura is the one person I will absolutely never hurt.”
Watching the naive young girl swear so earnestly, Shiki dropped her gaze.
A Dead Apostle this freshly turned—her hands had no blood on them yet, except for her own.
Wait…
Shiki tilted her head and looked at Satsuki.
By Sakura and Fujino’s account, the girl had only been out of contact for a little over a single night.
A human hunted by a Bloodsucker had, at best, around a one-percent chance of becoming a Ghoul.
The body and rotted soul would be fixed in place.
To make up for a body slowly decaying with the years, they would feed on living things or on corpses.
Across long, long stretches of time, if they regained sentience, only then could they ascend into a true Bloodsucker.
And yet the girl in front of her had skipped the whole Ghoul stage outright—had stepped straight up into a Bloodsucker.
Not just that—a fairly high-tier one, at that.
With enough self-control, faced with blood, to hold herself back.
In addition to her sire being an exceptionally high-tier being, the girl herself had to possess an unusually strong aptitude for becoming a Bloodsucker.
“I have a few things to ask you,” Shiki said, watching Satsuki carefully, her tone casual on the surface.
Satsuki gave a careful little nod.
It was strange.
There was nothing supernatural radiating off the woman—she felt like an ordinary girl.
Satsuki was the one who could shatter walls and tear through sheet metal now.
And yet Satsuki was the one quietly shaking, instinct telling her to keep her head down.
“Can you feel where your sire is?” Shiki asked. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
She was almost certain the girl’s sire had to be tied to the leader of the Dead Apostle group that had moved into Tokyo.
Possibly—the Ancestor herself.
Satsuki, not following any of it, shook her head.
Since waking, all that had filled her mind was her ache for Sakura and the thirst for blood.
“Never mind,” Shiki said, watching the blank face.
“Then—do you remember what the one who bit you looked like?”
This time, Satsuki nodded gravely.
She could not have forgotten.
The black-haired, red-eyed girl, beautiful beyond words.
***
Coming out of Yumizuka Satsuki’s apartment, Sakura jogged toward her own car.
It was unusual—Shigure wasn’t standing by the car waiting for her this time.
Her small nose wrinkled.
Sakura caught a faint, unfamiliar scent on the air.
She watched a thin wisp of pale smoke drift out of the car window and slowed her pace.
Her clear eyes went a touch wider.
A rare sight had unfolded before her.
The maid in her trim uniform, a head of jet-black hair cut clean to just brushing her ears, was leaning back in the seat with a kind of languid, drowsy elegance, her lovely curves impossible to disguise.
One hand rested on the lip of the open window; between her fingers was a thin, elegant ladies’ cigarette.
Sakura had hardly ever seen Shigure smoke before.
The drifting smoke wasn’t sharp.
It was more like some kind of burning herb.
The faint vapor seemed to settle the senses; even Sakura felt her thoughts come a little clearer.
“Young Miss.” At the sound of Sakura’s footsteps, Shigure exhaled lightly, looked over, then crushed the cigarette between her fingers and tossed the spent stub into the waste basket.
“Shi—Shigure-nee,” Sakura said, eyes blinking, and slid into the back seat.
Shigure looked good like that.
A great deal better than the older lady at the law office across the way looked when she smoked.
“My apologies, Young Miss.
I was thinking of some old memories.” Once Sakura was in, Shigure smiled and pressed lightly on the accelerator.
The faint blue light in her eyes drew slowly back.
Her indigo eyes turned dark as the deepest kind of polar night.
(Shiki)