DIABOLIK LOVERS: The Blacker the Better

00. My Name Is Natsuka Washimine

(Natsuka POV)

It's the first thing I glimpse, like usual.

Hanging from her slender, tanned neck, the row of fangs gleam, each one winking individually so that I count eleven of them in total—eleven bicuspids pulled out from their owners' mouths. It makes me puzzle at the uneven number.

Why only eleven? Was one demon of the bat clan running around without one of his or her fangs? Were they out there somewhere plotting revenge? Or could they grow back the tooth?

"Natsuka."

The sound of my name redirects my gaze to my mother. She's paler, frailer but taller than the older woman wearing a row of fangs; the woman I only recently learned to call grandmother. The room is airy enough, but night has long fallen, and the only sources of light are the flickering candles and the dripping pillar candles, their sweet, pure beeswax perfuming the room.

Unlike the women, the scent is a restorative balm to my nerves. Oddly, that thought gives me a painful pang. I might not expect it from my grandmother, being as we were reacquainted as of a full moon ago. However, I expect more from my mother.

She's quiet, the air around her ponderous. The rare smile she'd favor me with is nowhere to be seen. Her black eyes, the irises fuller in the white, dart to my grandmother. Her mother-in-law if I'm to believe this woman sired my father; the father who left more shadow than memory with his death many years ago.

My hands find each other even over the long, thick sleeves of the plain dress. Mine is a stormy gray, and my mother wears a replica in black, only her longer arms are not lost in the sleeves. Her hands holding a black lacquer yunomi, brandishing the tea cup like a shield against my grandmother's announcement.

"Noriko. You hadn't mentioned the child's mind is prone to fleeting spells." My grandmother, with even darker eyes, grits her teeth plainly for all to see. The action rears my shoulders up to my ears. I'm cowering and I can't help it. Her voice is soft, but commanding, and the disapproval of me is laid on thick.

"She's young, but I know no other to better suit our purposes in fulfilling such a destiny." My mother inclines her head, keeping it lowered through the remainder of her reply. "I, of course, take full responsibility, mother."

I flinch at the supposed reverent term, more respectful than affectionate; dutiful than out of a sense of adoration.

"Natsuka knows the history of the Washimine clan. She has trained alongside the best of our warriors, as instructed by her father, and on his passing, I've personally taken the reins to see she's balanced her physical sport with her courtly educations."

My mother's pride is about as heavy in her tone as my grandmother's disgruntlement at my lapse in attention was. The fear jabbing my spine poker-straight is replaced by a gleam of pride in the wake of all the praise. It's the strength I need to answer my grandmother when she silences my mother mid-sentence, mid-approval.

The elaborate rainbow-feathered headdress quivers as she stands, takes the steps down the dais to bring her shadow over me. I'm not my mother. I don't lower and bare my neck to this potential threat, and it has nothing to do with years fighting those same high-classed warriors my mother mentioned.

Common-sense brings my head craning up to meet my grandmother's eyes. I want to see every emotion she musters in the interrogation I see forthcoming.

For all my preparation, my fighting spirit deflates at my grandmother's question.

"Come, tell me, what is your goal then, child?" she asks. "What are you praying to gain from stepping out of all the comfort you're familiar with here to enter the unknown lands beyond, in the Mortal Realm?"

It's a second, but like a rasping take of sparks over wax, I repeat the mantle cloaked over me time and again, and these last couple years in particular.

"To darken the hour of the Vampire King, Reinhart's, reign and to bring his crown and sword, law and throne collapsing faster. To crush and therefore undo all the grievous harm he has brought to our name, and the good names of many Eagle demons, young and old, poor and rich, weak and strong, in his bloody war."

I stand, relieving my knees of the burden of keeping my legs tucked under me. We're almost eye-to-eye, my grandmother and I; I must get my shorter stance from her, as my father towered even over my leggy mother.

"How will you possibly destroy that indestructible monster?" My grandmother's spite does the opposite of what it should. I'd like nothing more than to make her eat her words, but right now I have only a promise as arsenal. It'll have to do in the time being.

Steadying my need to huff my annoyance, I leave plain my words of all feeling, negative or otherwise. Anything telling of what I truly feel. After all, we really all want the same thing, my mother, my grandmother and I: to see to the annihilation of the Vampire King, the one who goes by many names, but has for more than a millennia ushered the bat clan out from their shadowy spaces of our Realm.

"Root out his weakness," I tell her, the teensiest of confidence blossoming. "The children he's sired are a place to start; a place to begin dismantling his cruel experiments from the inside out."

I've said little, yet I'm breathless.

I find my mother's eyes. She lowers her tea cup from her mouth. She hasn't taken a sip since we sought my grandmother in finalizing the plan.

When I look ahead at the woman puppeteering the strings of our clan in the vacancy my father left at his unexpected demise, I wait for her to do one of two things, shatter all our planning or send me off on what could very well be the path to my own abrupt end.

There's a beat where the air feels colder, my sight darker. Then my grandmother gives the barest of nods, her hand reaching up to caress the vampiric fangs resting over her pronounced clavicle. Maybe one day I'll have the courage to ask her where she procured it from, each wretched-looking tooth.

Dipping my head, first to my grandmother, and then my mother, I dismiss myself on the pretence of packing—a task I completed long ago. Instead, in the last hours I have in my home, I spend it wandering the halls of my youth, of my very existence. My whole world trapped in the decaying mansion's walls; the glamour gone more recently in the losses of our family's main treasury to the Vampire King's costly war.

I'm alone, outside the company of my mother and grandmother. The few servants who have remained on more out of loyalty than wealth have long retired for the night, everyone preparing to see me off at dawn.

Finding the waxing moon in the courtyard, I crane my neck up to take in its frigid, still beauty. I'd always preferred the rays of sunlight kissing my skin to the night and its huntress, the moon.

Facing it as I did when asked what role I'd play in the coming personal war, I make a vow to return to ask that story of my grandmother and to see the eagle demon family, Washimine, to its glory of yesterday.

"Let it be so," I say, "or my name isn't Natsuka Washimine."

*

A/N: Hello, hello!

Happy New Years! \\^0^//

Since it's a brand spankin' new year, we're back with something new. For now just enjoy this chapter. We'll explain how we will go about writing this one in an Author's Note or something a little later on.

Here's hoping this project goes well...