Black in the Moonlight

Chapter 03: Kishi Kaisei

It is the night of the Hanatoro festival so it really should not be that dark will all the decorative lanterns lining up the way through every street but Rinko ran too deep into the forest well beyond the area of celebration. She can be lost now for all she knows, even her phone is not picking any signal where she crouches around some railing while shivering from the coldness of December.

Rinko knows she has seen Jun Ichijou, the man she is here in undercover to find and apprehend before the police does but he disappeared in the throngs of crowd while she was in the middle of following his trail. The man has been visibly hyperventilating when she spotted him and that was a telltale sign that the monster will lose his control soon enough and another person will go missing. By morning, another body drained of all its blood will be left in its wake – that is, if they are lucky. Jun's massacre of everyone in his own home after all has more than one body count.

Rinko will not let that happen to another person which is why she squeezes through the sea of people just to track Jun down but she never knew he would lead her out there, alone in the darkness of the trees and the mountains only Arashiyama could provide. The trees lead to the bamboo grove, rows and rows of bamboo standing tall around her, and Rinko is certain not another civilian will be dying tonight because the bloodsucker laid its eyes on her. Because of course, the target has fallen on her moment he sniffed her blood.

Vampires always pick up her scent and drop everything they are doing to catch her and make her their personal blood pig even when she was a child. She has to go through different therapists just to break off her attachment to her captors. She promises herself none of those monsters will ever catch her alive again.

Rinko wraps her hand around the handle of her hunting knife, unsheathing it from her boot. Then cautiously, she stands up and scouts the bamboo trail. She can barely see in the dark, the moon is not even full. In the silence of the night, she can imagine hearing the ghosts of a scolding her adoptive father will berate her with by the time this is over.

No Koancho officer is allowed to engage a suspect in combat during an investigative mission both within and outside of the Rakukanteki division. But Rinko is confident she'd at least be able to fight her way back to an area where she can get a single phone bar of signal so she can contact her section. Cowering in fear in the dark is not going to accomplish that, not that she can still afford to feel anything but trepidation while in her vulnerable situation.

Vampires are more than capable of ending her life in the dark, she knows that well. But staying in one place is more than foolish so she pushes onwards, pressing the quick dial on her phone and waiting for it to connect to her section. Even just a missed call should be enough for them to look for her.

Suddenly, a rustling behind her has her spinning around, ready to stab anything that moves.

"Rinko?" a familiar voice calls out in the dark.

It is wrong to feel a sliver of hope at hearing that voice. She spends a long time trying to forget it. There is nothing in the darkness except that voice but she feels the familiar yearning she used to have for it. She wishes she has a gun with her but the mission forbids it for her to maintain the cover of a college student.

"Come back to me, my dear," it continues, its sickly sweet voice detached of emotions. "I'm thirsty."

"Don't you dare come closer," she hisses, taking a step back and another, tears welling up in her eyes.

The years of being locked up and bitten every now and then sow a deep lingering disgust for vampires in herself. It isn't just the way they drink blood that makes them depraved; it's the way they enjoy taking control of her life that reminds her how helpless she is when her family is dead and she has to live like a cattle not for slaughter but rationing.