Forbidden Sunlight

Ah! The wretched afternoon again.

I don't like it. Why do I have to suffer when the entire world is moving just fine?

I hate it.

The sun, the sunlight. And everything sunny.

It's been more than a thousand years that I have been roaming around.

Yeah... I am a-thousand-and-a-nine years old vampire roaming around in this world... Ohm is the name. I have no way to die. And so, I survive on blood.

I try to coexist. I feed on the blood of the almost dead, except for the ones who are suffering from any blood-ailing diseases. Not that it can give me the disease. But how do I explain?

When I was a human, my mom taught me to eat fresh foods. So, I have a habit of discarding the rotten ones.

Unlike how they portray it in movies, I can sleep just fine. I can eat normal food too. It doesn't get stored anywhere, but I can put on a show.

The only thing that resembles what they show is the forbidden sunlight. My skin doesn't glisten in sunlight. It will burn and leave me empty on that part. I have a hollow part in my body, like a hole in my right thigh, which I hide well with the jeans or shorts I wear.

When I was a newly turned vampire, I was lost and curious. So, by mistake, I walked out and got burned.

I immediately retracted, and I was saved. But that hollow is unreal. And it reminds me time and again that I am not human. I am not... normal in terms of everyone around me.

I know a few others who are like me. Like dogs, we have territories. We do not cross our lines. And so we do not crowd.

There is an unsaid rule too. We are not allowed to convert others just like that. Only those who do not die after we consume their blood automatically become one of us. They are sent to dungeons and tied up for the time they accept the fact and agree to coexist with humans and others of our kind.

That dungeon is dark and smelly. It smells of blood and tears. So, any new vampire, when released, first runs towards the sun despite being warned.

I did the same. And I suffered the same too. A few who do not realise it in those fractions of seconds even die on the stop and turn to ash like they never existed.

It's like their entire existence is gone in a second by only this sunlight.

So, I hate it. Like all of our kinds, I too hate it. Or rather, I used to hate it until I saw him.

He struggles the same way I do.

Never in my existence have I seen a human trying to avoid sunlight like he does.

Initially, it intrigued me. So instead of my thirst craving for his blood, my curiosity craved an understanding of his actions.

It's been a month of seeing him hop on the slabs of shadow to walk forward and reach his destination when the sun is over his head. He carries an umbrella for a few days. And the other days when he is late, he usually rushes.

I see him wince when, by chance, he gets into the sun.

A smile forms on my face, which has stopped moving for any expression in the past thousand years. Even my features are frozen in place because I hardly smile, cry, or even flinch.

Nothing... Nothing affects me at all but him.

Unknown to myself, I am following him daily from his house to his office.

Then from his office to his house.

On the way, he stops at convenience stores at times. Then, on weekends, he sometimes won't leave the house, and sometimes he will go to a nearby bakery and have croissants.