Vampire Boys Of Summer (Completed!)

Episode 38: Haru, The Girl Killer

We’d driven maybe thirty minutes and made small talk about school and stuff when he unloaded the question I’d been dreading today. “So, if you don’t mind me asking, why is your dad in a psych ward?”

I hesitated. How in the world was I supposed to tell him? Did I say, ‘Hey, he tried to kill someone different than him’ or perhaps ‘he has trouble getting along with certain types of people?’ That would make it seem racially motivated, to say the least. I decided to just go on and tell him the truth.

“He tried to kill a vampire.”

He turned his head to look at me, both eyebrows raised in a look that said, ‘No shit?’ And though it was his look that said it, and not his lips, I answered it anyway.

“No shit. He attacked this guy he believed was a vampire.”

For a moment he didn’t say anything, but just turned his eyes back to the road. “Well, that makes things interesting,“ he replied. “Asking for your hand in marriage is really going to be awkward now.”

I punched him in the arm. “Stupid. You weren’t going to ask him that.”

“Well no, not yet at least. Maybe one day, hmm.”

I looked at him, trying to gauge if he meant this or not. “Are you being serious?”

“Do you want me to be?”

“I want you to be honest.”

He nodded and smiled. “The honest truth is I was trying to lighten the mood, but if we were together for a time, I imagine I would want to make our togetherness more permanent.”

“You don’t need marriage for that,” I teased. “Just bite me on the neck and turn me into one of you.”

His smile went away in an instant and he hung his head. “It doesn’t quite work that way,“ he half mumbled. I thought I saw his eyes turning glassy. “It would only kill you.”

A lightbulb went off in my head; a piece of conversation with Ryo in which he stated Haru had killed a girl. But whether it was callous as he suggested or with remorse didn’t matter. All that mattered is someone died at his hands. Ryo hated him for it and he wanted me to do the same, but I didn’t think of Haru as evil. Even if a murder had happened, I couldn’t bring my heart to think of this gorgeous vampire boy as malicious. I decided to take charge of this conversation and approach the subject that he would not.

“Did you love her?” I asked in a weak voice.

He didn’t look at me or say anything. He just nodded.

“What happened?”

“She died,“ he answered in a solemn voice. “Out of my own selfishness, pride, and greed, I killed her.”

“Ryo told me you…”

“Ryo loved her too,“ he interrupted. “If I’d just let him have her, she’d still be around. But I guess the heart wants what it wants. And I wanted her to be mine for always.”

“I don’t understand what happened.”

His sigh was heavy and he took a deep breath, as if what he were about to say was some kind of game changer or something.

“There are two kinds of vampires, Nora. We’ll call them Alphas and Betas. Ryo is an Alpha. The Alphas can make other vampires. They are your typical creatures of legend. You know, bite you on the neck, suck your blood, get you to drink theirs, and pow! You’re on your way to being a vampire yourself. But, Betas can’t do this. From their bite comes only death. They do not have the ability to turn others into vampires. And the great cosmic joke in all this is you don’t know which vampire you are until you make the attempt to turn someone. Maybe this is how nature balances herself. In the evolution of vampirism, something was needed to keep it all in check. If every vampire could create more vampires, the world would be overrun with them by now. So, there’s this check and balance to ensure that doesn’t happen.”

“So you tried to turn someone, not realizing it would kill her?”

He pulled the car over and parked it under the shade of the tree. “Are you sure you want do this?” he asked.

“I..I want to know you. And to really know you I have to know the truth. I can’t live by Ryo’s version. I want yours.”

He looked away for a moment as if he were considering what to do. After a few seconds, he turned back to me and put this finger to my eye. He traced a line from my bottom lash to my upper lip, and then put the finger to his own lips as if he somehow could taste the very oils from my skin.

“Everyone has their own scent,“ he explained. “Yours is sweet. Like cherry blossoms that have been overrun by honeysuckle. Have you ever tasted honeysuckle?”

“No,“ I confessed.

He smiled. “To me it’s very sweet. That first taste is like rich butter from the earth. It’s savory, but one drop is not enough. You have to have more. The taste lingers, and before you know it you are drinking the nectar again and again. Chiyo was like that too. Once I laid eyes on her, I couldn’t tear myself away. Do you know what the name means? Chiyo? In the best English translation, it means A Thousand Sparkles. You know, like something that shines forever. The irony in that is she was like a thousand sparkles, but I put every one of them out through my own pitiful romantic scheming. See, she was betrothed, or promised, to Ryo, who was the son of a samurai, part of the ruling class of the territory. I was the son of an artisan, the lowest class among our society. Even peasant farmers were above my station. In those days, poets, artists, even musicians, were deemed the lowest, because in the mindset of the day they were not necessary to life and human survival. They were entertainment, and yes, that could make one happy and productive, but they were not essential to living in the way growing food or protecting the village was.’

‘In any case, she was his, and in that era it meant she was like property. If one were to steal her away, that person would be treated the same as a thief, and depending on the value the owner placed on the theft, thieves were often met with death. I didn’t think of these things when I fell in love with her, but she was very aware of her place in society. For this reason, though she loved me back, she would not challenge the betrothal her parents had arranged. But I thought if I turned her into one of us, the rules would change. The intimacy of the turning would make it near impossible for Ryo to lay claim to her anymore. It would override any human promise, for nothing is more powerful and binding than the exchanging of one’s lifeblood. But I didn’t know I was a Beta. You can still exchange blood as a Beta, but you can’t create new life, and if you drink for too long you can kill the person. Which is what happened with Chiyo. In my vampiric ecstasy, I was so excited to be spending eternity with her that I didn’t notice it was killing her until it was too late. She couldn’t be saved.”