The bell that signaled the end of another soul-crushingly monotonous school day was, to Akira Tanaka, the single most beautiful sound in the world. It was a sound of liberation. A sound that meant he could escape the prison of whispered jokes, the sting of condescending glances, and the oppressive weight of his own invisibility.
He packed his bag with the practiced speed of someone who had no one to talk to, no club to attend, and no plans other than to vanish. The classroom erupted into a cacophony of scraping chairs and overlapping conversations—friends making plans, couples sharing shy smiles, the popular kids holding court. Akira moved through it all like a ghost, his shoulders hunched, his gaze fixed on the scuffed linoleum floor.
"Hey, watch it, Tanaka!" a voice sneered as he accidentally brushed against a desk.
It was Kenji, the de facto leader of the group that made Akira's life a special kind of hell. He was flanked by his two lackeys, Taro and Riku, their faces split into identical grins of casual malice.
"Sorry," Akira mumbled, the word tasting like ash in his mouth. He didn't even look up.
"Sorry?" Kenji mocked, leaning in. "You should be. You almost messed up my new uniform. This is expensive, you know. Not that you'd understand."
Taro snickered. "Probably bought from a vending machine."
Akira's fists clenched inside his pockets. He could feel the heat rising to his cheeks. Just walk away. Don't give them a reaction. That's what they want. It was a mantra he'd repeated to himself a thousand times.
He tried to sidestep them, but Riku moved to block his path. "In a hurry? Got a hot date with your body pillow?"
The laughter that followed was a physical blow. Akira felt his throat tighten. He was a specimen trapped under their microscope, his every flinch and stutter a source of their amusement.
"Leave him alone," a quiet voice said from the doorway.
The voice wasn't loud, but it cut through the noise like a shard of ice. It was calm, devoid of anger or fear, and carried an authority that made the three bullies pause.
Everyone turned.
Standing there, silhouetted by the afternoon sun streaming in from the hallway, was Elara Nocturne.
She had transferred in just a week ago, and in that short time, she had become the center of the school's gravity. It wasn't just that she was beautiful; that word felt inadequate, like calling a supernova "bright." Her hair was the color of polished obsidian, falling in a silken cascade down her back. Her eyes were a shade of deep amethyst, so unusual and captivating that they seemed to see straight through you. Her features were perfectly sculpted, pale and flawless, giving her an ethereal, almost otherworldly quality.
While other girls wore their uniforms with a practiced cuteness, Elara wore hers like a royal gown. She was elegant, poised, and utterly untouchable. She rarely spoke, and when she did, it was in that same, measured, quiet tone. Rumors swirled around her like mist—that she was a foreign diplomat's daughter, a reclusive heiress, a former child model from Europe.
Right now, those amethyst eyes were fixed on Kenji and his crew. She didn't glare. She didn't scowl. She simply… observed. And under that calm, dissecting gaze, their bravado seemed to shrivel.
Kenji recovered first, forcing a laugh that sounded brittle. "We were just messing around, Nocturne-san. No harm done."
Elara didn't respond. She just continued to look at him, her expression unreadable. The silence stretched, becoming more uncomfortable than any shouted insult could ever be.
Finally, Kenji scowled, shoved his hands in his pockets, and jerked his head for his friends to follow. "Whatever. Let's go."
They shuffled past her, giving her a wide berth. The classroom, which had fallen silent, slowly resumed its chatter, though now it was hushed and tinged with speculation.
Akira stood frozen, his heart hammering against his ribs. She had spoken up for him. Him. The invisible boy. Why?
He dared to look at her. Her gaze had shifted from the departing bullies to him. For a terrifying, exhilarating second, their eyes met. He saw no pity in her expression. No condescending kindness. It was more like… curiosity. As if he were a complex equation she was trying to solve.
Then, she turned and walked away, her footsteps silent on the floor.
The spell was broken. Akira let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. The encounter had lasted less than a minute, but it felt like a seismic event in the small, confined world of his life.
He finally managed to get his legs moving and hurried out of the classroom, his mind a whirlwind. He replayed the moment over and over—the sound of her voice, the intensity of her gaze. For the first time in years, someone had seen him. Not the clumsy, awkward loser, but him. And that someone was Elara Nocturne.
He walked home through the familiar, drab streets of his neighborhood, the encounter playing on a loop in his mind. The usual grayness of his surroundings seemed a little less oppressive. The jeers of the bullies still stung, but they were now overshadowed by a single, burning question: Why?
Home was a small, slightly rundown apartment he shared with his aunt. His parents were… gone. A car accident years ago. It was a pain he kept locked in a deep, quiet place inside him. His aunt was kind but perpetually tired, working long shifts as a nurse. Their interactions were a series of polite, weary exchanges. It was another place where Akira felt he was just… occupying space.
He dumped his bag in his room—a spartan space with a bed, a desk, and shelves lined with well-worn books and a few model kits he'd painstakingly assembled. It was his sanctuary, but tonight, the walls felt like they were closing in.
He slumped into his chair and booted up his ancient computer. The familiar glow of the monitor illuminated his face. This was his other world, the digital one. Here, in online games and forums, he wasn't Akira the Invisible. He could be a mighty warrior, a cunning strategist. He could be someone.
But tonight, even the pixelated adventures couldn't hold his attention. His mind kept drifting back to a pair of amethyst eyes.
"Get a grip, Tanaka," he muttered to himself, running a hand through his messy black hair. "She was just being decent. It didn't mean anything."
But it felt like it meant something. To him, at least.
He opened a browser and, with a feeling of foolish desperation, typed "Elara Nocturne" into the search bar. Predictably, he found nothing. No social media profiles, no news articles, no trace of her existence whatsoever. It was as if she had materialized out of thin air a week ago. The mystery around her only deepened her allure.
Frustrated, he closed the browser and stared out his window at the city lights beginning to twinkle in the twilight. The sky was bleeding from orange to deep purple, the color of her eyes. He was being ridiculous. A girl like that existed in a different dimension from his. She was a star, and he was a piece of space dust, caught in her gravity for a fleeting moment, soon to be flung back into the void.
His phone buzzed. A message from the part-time job he worked at a convenience store two nights a week, reminding him of his shift tomorrow. The crushing weight of reality settled back onto his shoulders. Rent, food, tuition—the endless, grinding cycle. This was his life. Dreams of mysterious, beautiful girls were a luxury he couldn't afford.
He decided to go for a walk to clear his head. The night air was cool against his skin. He walked without any real destination, his hands shoved in his pockets, his thoughts a tangled mess. He found himself wandering towards the older part of the city, where narrow streets were lined with closed-up shops and traditional houses with slatted wooden fences.
The sounds of the city faded, replaced by the whisper of the wind and the distant hum of a single streetlamp. It was in one of these quiet, poorly lit alleys that he heard it.
A sound that was out of place.
It was a low, guttural growl, followed by a skittering, scraping noise, like claws on pavement.
Akira froze, his heart leaping into his throat. His first thought was of a large dog, maybe a stray. But this sounded… wrong. Deeper, more resonant, and laced with a malevolence that made the hairs on his arms stand on end.
He peered into the shadows of the alley. The single flickering light at the far end cast long, dancing shadows. He saw a shape move. It was low to the ground, but too large to be a cat. It moved with a jerky, unnatural gait.
Just a raccoon or a fox, he told himself, trying to quell the sudden surge of fear. This part of the city is full of them.
He took a cautious step back, intending to turn around and leave. But as he did, his foot scuffed against a loose piece of asphalt.
The skittering stopped.
The shape in the shadows froze. Then, slowly, it turned.
Two points of sickly yellow light ignited in the darkness. Eyes. But they weren't the eyes of any animal he knew. They glowed with a faint, phosphorescent malevolence.
Akira's breath hitched. Every instinct screamed at him to run. But his feet felt rooted to the spot, a primal paralysis seizing him.
The creature stepped out of the deepest shadows and into the dim, jaundiced light of the streetlamp.
Akira's blood ran cold.
It was the size of a large dog, but its skin was a mottled, hairless gray, pulled taut over a skeletal frame. Its limbs were long and spindly, ending in claws that clicked against the concrete. Its head was a nightmare parody of a wolf, with a mouth full of needle-like fangs that dripped with a viscous, dark saliva. But most horrifying were its eyes—those pitiless, intelligent yellow orbs that were fixed directly on him.
This was no raccoon. This was no fox. This was something out of a nightmare, something that should not exist.
The creature let out another growl, a sound that vibrated deep in Akira's bones. It lowered its head, its powerful haunches coiling like springs.
It was about to pounce.
Panic finally overrode paralysis. Akira turned to run, his heart hammering a frantic drum against his ribs. But he was too slow.
With a sound like tearing cloth, the creature launched itself through the air. Akira caught a glimpse of its gaping maw, the glint of its fangs, the sheer unnatural speed of it.
He threw up his arms in a futile gesture of defense, a scream trapped in his throat.
There was a blur of motion from his left, a rush of displaced air that sent dust devils dancing across the alley.
Something—no, someone—intercepted the creature in mid-air.
There was a sickening crunch, a high-pitched yelp of pain that was cut off abruptly, and then silence.
Akira stood trembling, his arms still raised, his mind refusing to process what he had just seen.
Standing between him and the remains of the nightmare creature was a figure. Slim, poised, and familiar.
Elara Nocturne.
She stood with her back to him, her obsidian hair flowing down her back like a cape of night. She wasn't even breathing heavily. At her feet, the monstrous creature lay in a broken, motionless heap. Its neck was twisted at an impossible angle.
She had moved faster than his eyes could follow. She had killed the thing with what looked like a single, casual blow.
Slowly, she turned to face him.
In the dim light, her amethyst eyes seemed to glow with an inner fire. There was no curiosity in them now. There was only a cold, ancient intensity. Her perfect features were set in a mask of grim focus. A single drop of the creature's black blood stained her porcelain cheek.
She was the most terrifying and beautiful thing he had ever seen.
"Akira Tanaka," she said, her voice still that same, calm tone, but now it carried the weight of glaciers. "You should not be here."
He could only stare, his mouth agape. The world he thought he knew had just shattered into a million pieces. The bullies, his loneliness, his boring life—it all seemed so trivial, so distant.
"W-What… What was that?" he finally stammered, his voice trembling.
Elara glanced down at the corpse, which was already beginning to dissolve into a foul-smelling black smoke. "A nuisance," she said dismissively. "A lower demon. A Gnasher. They are drawn to places of negative emotion. Fear. Despair." Her eyes met his again, and he felt laid bare. "You were an easy beacon."
A demon. She had said demon. The word echoed in his mind, absurd and horrifying.
"Who… who are you?" he whispered.
She took a step towards him, and he instinctively took a step back, hitting the cold brick wall of the alley. There was nowhere to run. She was in front of him, the wall was behind him, and the dissolving remains of a monster were to his side.
She stopped, her gaze sweeping over him, assessing him. The fear, the confusion, the sheer shock.
"My name is Elara Nocturne," she said, as if that explained everything. And in a way, it now did. The mystery, the unnatural beauty, the power—it all clicked into a terrifying new picture.
"Why… why did you save me?" he asked, his voice barely a whisper.
A flicker of something unreadable passed through her eyes. It might have been pity. It might have been annoyance. Or it might have been something else entirely.
"Because," she said, her voice dropping even lower, "your blood is not for the likes of them."
And before Akira could process the chilling implication of her words, she was gone. Not walking away, not running. One moment she was there, a solid presence in the alley. The next, she was simply… not. Vanished into the night air as if she had never been there at all.
Akira was left alone in the alley, shivering uncontrollably. The only evidence that any of it had happened was the fading patch of black, acrid sludge on the pavement and the lingering, coppery scent of blood in the air—a scent he realized, with a fresh wave of nausea, was not entirely unpleasant.
He slid down the wall until he was sitting on the cold ground, his head in his hands. The invisible boy had finally been seen. But not by the world he knew. He had been seen by the shadows that moved within it. And he had a terrifying feeling that his life of quiet obscurity was over forever.
The night had just begun, and Akira Tanaka was now painfully, irrevocably awake.
Author's Note:
Hey everyone! Your friendly neighborhood author here!
Buckle up, because we're diving headfirst into a new world with My Girlfriend is an S-Class Vampire! 🦇❤️
Ever wanted a story that mixes the epic stakes of a dark urban fantasy with the fun (and chaos) of a harem romp? Well, you've found it! Meet Akira, our resident loser who's about to have his entire world turned upside down by the gorgeous and terrifyingly powerful Elara.
This story is my love letter to all things action, mystery, and supernatural romance. We've got:
· S-Class Waifus: Cool, powerful, and mysterious.
· Badass Fights: Holy weapons vs. demonic powers!
· A MC with Potential: Watch Akira grow from zero to hero!
· Secrets & Betrayals: Nothing is as it seems!
I'll be aiming for a consistent upload schedule, so stay tuned! The more love this story gets, the faster the chapters will fly.
Your Mission, Should You Choose To Accept It:
1. Add to your library! Never miss an update.
2. Drop those Power Stones! Let's get this story trending!
3. Comment below! Who's your favorite character so far? What do you think Elara's deal is? I love reading your theories and reactions!
Let's make this journey epic together! Enjoy the read!