The Midnight Symphony || VK Fanfiction

Chapter 3 - A Forlorn Star

Warning: This chapter contains Graphic Depictions of murder, self harm, depression and suicidal thoughts, viewer discretion is advised.

ephemeral

If you describe something as ephemeral, you mean that it lasts only for a very short time period. Fleeting, passing and slipping like water through the cracks of your hand.

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As a young child, Zero used to fear the dark.

He didn't share that with anyone, not even his family. For Ichiru, he had to be twice as bold and brave so that his brother didn't need to. For his parents, he had to be the perfect son, showing high potential to become a skilled hunter in the future. Causing them worry and trouble would take away the attention that was meant for his twin. All in all, these were things he learnt at the very beginning of his life. Zero didn't care if he had to train night and day, be there for Ichiru in his free time and build the facade of a happy child for his parents. If he could make his family happy, then he would play his role. 

But the dark, it never ceased to scare him. He'd lay there limbless each night, a snoring Ichiru beside him as he looked at the ceiling. To every stranger, he was just some kid who didn't want to fall asleep. A child that didn't want to obey the whims of relaxation, tempting his body to go beyond its limit.

Zero, however, wanted to sleep more than anything. These shackles didn't only keep his body on the bed, they also crawled into his mind and wouldn't let him fall into the arms of his untampered unconscious.

At that time, Yagari-sensei began to assign him books to read. They weren't your fairytales, neither stories with a happy ending. 

They were about the beasts in human form. More specifically, the Level E's. Zero once pitied them, his young and impressionable heart going out to them. But soon he was allowed advanced books. And at the sight of the corpses, his stomach vomited on his heart, covering that pity he'd felt earlier. Not only that, the stories that accompanied them weren't easy to stomach either.

There had been this one female vampire who was supportive of humans, especially human children. She would go as far as to take care of human children, born out of wedlock in a time where it was frowned upon. She had this sort of, natural charm, which is what drew the desperate women in. Some hunters were astonished and some were skeptical. The latter sadly proved to be right. 

In a time where some Hunters were becoming tired of the fighting, this was one of the instances which returned their fierce hatred. 

The female vampire never intended to raise these children entrusted to her. In truth, she was a sick woman who ought to use those children, sometimes even babies, as her personal playthings. Documented in her found diary, she describes the various pains she inflicted upon her charges with great detail. It was ironic truly, how drinking their blood until they were dead was considered merciful, compared to what else she did.

With a morbid happiness, she'd write how she enjoyed crushing one toddler's skull with her feet, while she had their sibling watch. It was like, to quote, 'crushing a little vermin. Especially satisfying when you could hear the cracking noise.'

Others, she would bury alive, listening in on their wails until she heard them no more. And then were those she only fed poison and feces to.

What happens when a human child only eats that?

Zero faintly remembers intricate explanations of what happens then. But the pictures of one girl's body bloating up and exploding was more memorable. The way her eyes dislodged, leaving space for body fluids to ooze out of her eye socket. Her liquefied intestines escaping their skeleton prison and laying there dull on the ground. Her skin ripped apart where it exploded, framing her small and petite torso.