Waking up felt like drowning in warm syrup.
Everything was slow. My limbs were heavy. My mouth tasted like old coins and regret. My thoughts came back in pieces, scattered like glass across a bathroom floor.
There had been blood. So much blood. Her voice. My own heartbeat stuttering as her fangs broke skin. And then—nothing.
No, not nothing.
Silence.
Deep, velvety silence that had weight and warmth and... eyes?
I sat up fast—or tried to. My body lurched like it was on delay.
My breath caught.
This wasn't my room.
This wasn't anyone's room. The walls were bare. The air was stale. The windows looked like they hadn't been cleaned since the first world war. The couch under me wheezed like it was alive.
I looked around.
And that's when I saw him.
A guy. Older than me, maybe. Black hair, kind of messy in that "I don't care but also this is just how it grows" way. Eyes—hazel? That wasn't normal here. Not fake-colored. Just... real. Like the kind of person who stood out without doing anything to earn it.
He was sitting by the window, arms folded, legs stretched out like he owned his corner of the room. Not relaxed, but not on guard either. Like someone who was used to waiting for things he didn't expect to like.
"You're awake," he said, voice low but clear.
There was no surprise in it.
Only fact.
"Who the hell are you?" I croaked. My voice felt like sandpaper soaked in battery acid.
"Lucien," he said. "Or Luc. Your call."
I blinked at him.
That didn't help.
"Where...?"
"Cram school. Abandoned. Second floor. Been three days."
Three days?
I looked down at my hands.
They didn't feel like mine.
They were... cleaner? No cuts, no calluses. My skin was pale, like it hadn't seen sun in a while. Or maybe that was because—
"Is she—?"
"Over there," Lucien said, nodding.
I followed his gaze.
She was sitting cross-legged on a couch. A small girl with golden hair down to her waist, dressed in a white summer dress like she'd just stepped out of a catalog for children of royalty. Her eyes were closed. Her breathing steady.
But I knew her.
Even like this.
Kiss-shot Acerola-orion Heart-under-blade.
The vampire I gave my blood to.
The monster I saved.
The reason I—
"Why is she—?"
"She's regressed," Lucien said before I could finish. "Less energy consumption."
"Oh."
That made sense, I guess. In a horrifying, incomprehensible, non-human way.
Her eyes fluttered open.
She looked at me the way a bored cat looks at a fishbowl.
"You've come back to life," she said simply.
I didn't have anything to say to that.
My mouth opened. Nothing came out.
Then I turned back to the guy—Lucien.
"You were here this whole time?"
He nodded. "Since the night you ran away."
That hit harder than I expected.
"You saw her?" I asked. "Back then?"
"Yeah."
"And you didn't help?"
"No."
"Why?"
He looked at me like he'd already asked himself that question a hundred times and didn't like any of the answers.
"Because it wasn't my place."
I clenched my fists. "You let her die."
"She didn't die," he said calmly. "You showed up."
I wanted to be mad.
Really mad.
But he wasn't smug. He wasn't cruel. He didn't say anything wrong. He just... existed in that weird middle place. Like a piece on the board that shouldn't be there but couldn't be removed.
Later, I sat by the wall while Lucien leaned against a window, flipping through a book he didn't seem to be reading. The air was heavy with words none of us wanted to say.
"Where are you from?" I asked eventually.
He didn't look up.
"Chicago."
I stared at him.
"As in America?"
"Yeah."
"What the hell are you doing here?"
"Still figuring that out," he said.
There was a pause.
A long one.
Then I asked, "She likes you, doesn't she?"
He blinked slowly.
"No."
"She does, though. She looks at you different."
"She doesn't like me," he said. "She recognizes something in me. That's not the same."
That... felt true.
But it didn't make me feel better.
She hadn't said much.
She just sat there. Smaller than I remembered. Smaller than I wanted to remember. Watching both of us with those ancient eyes in a child's body.
This wasn't what I thought would happen.
I thought saving her meant dying.
I didn't know it meant coming back to life in a room with a stranger and a creature pretending to be a girl.
And something about Lucien—his voice, his posture, the way he never asked why—it all made me feel like I was the one intruding.
Like I was the extra piece.
And that scared me more than dying ever did