Work Text:
Donk.
Donk.
Donk.
“She’s throwing bricks again,” Kaori Tanaka muttered to the absence her family used to fill. Her brother was who-knows-where, her father was dead, her mother was dying... and the thing that could be her best friend was outside her window, chucking bricks at the wall.
For the past several minutes.
Kaori sighed, braced herself on her shovel, and moved.
She didn’t have the strength to open her window, now, so she levered it up with her shovel and stared out at the girl she once loved.
Pitch-black eyes stared back.
For a moment, she was just that. A girl again, staring out the window at her closest friend, about to wave and ask hey, hey Megumi-chan, whatcha doin’, can I help?
The thing that might be Megumi smiled, and her fangs shone.
Kaori sucked in a breath, braced her hands on the window, and gathered her courage and spite.
“Y’KNOW WHAT?”
A brick sailed past her head. She continued, “I didn’t spend all yesterday digging my own grave for you to chicken around!”
The thing that might be Megumi tilted its head, laughed a little, stilted and wrong.
“My, my, for something like yourself to show such...blind courage...”
“Courage?” She scoffed, opened her tired eyes a little wider. “Maybe to a coward like you!”
“Coward?”
“COWARD! If you’re gonna rip my heart out, quit pussyfooting around! GET TO IT!”
“And how would you suggest I--”
“Oh, do your vampire overlords write your THOUGHTS now too?! The Megumi I knew wouldn’t take orders from some unwashed catboy in overpriced hot pants! She’d at least kill me PERSONALLY!”
“The Megumi you knew is dead.”
That struck a chord. Kaori surged forward, fists balled save for the finger she pointed at what might be a husk and might be the last remains of Megumi Shimizu. “I’M NOT GIVING UP ON HER THAT EASY!” she screamed, then staggered forward again, grabbed one of her gown’s straps and tugged forward. The thing didn’t budge.
“You never knew her anyway.” The husk of Megumi’s fangs glinted in the moonlight.
“I never--” Kaori had to gnaw on her shovel for a moment to keep from gritting her teeth so hard they’d shatter. “Megumi-chan.”
“Mhm?”
“You’re allergic to persimmons.”
“I am?”
“You only do the laundry on Mondays and for some reason think it’s unjust if it rains on Tuesday. Childrens’ Day is your least favorite holiday. You’ve never played a video game in your life. You get anxious about accidentally making puns. You have the best English grades in class but you learn out of order.”
“None of that matters and half of it seems wrong.”
"You missed an episode of Doraemon in the third grade and cried for five hours!"
“My elite vampiric mindset would never accept such a c-- foolish show!”
“You wore your first pair of heels to the festival two years ago! They broke! I CARRIED YOU HOME!”
“I would never have let a filthy redneck-- ”
“YOU! You matched the rubber bands on your braces to my hair ties for a YEAR!”
“I didn’t have--”
“I always forget my umbrella! You always have a spare!”
“If you’d stop returning the spares maybe you’d...have...one...”
Now we’re getting somewhere! “You wanted to do Halloween movies in sixth grade! I spent my allowance renting them! That’s why you know about vampires, I’m positive!”
“There wasn’t a single vampire movie in the bunch, I--!” Megumi’s hands rushed to her mouth, and Kaori felt near triumphant.
“I TOLD YOU I DON’T LIKE BOYS! YOU’RE THE ONLY ONE I TOLD, ALL THOSE YEARS AGO!”
Megumi’s red pupils were pinpricks now. She scratched pristine nails against her scalp. “You...you did ... so, so you and Natsuno...?”
“HE’S GAY TOO, MEGUMI-CHAN! PROBABLY, I THINK, EITHER THAT OR HE HAS THE WORST TASTE EVER BECAUSE WHAT GUY WOULDN’T WANT YOU?!” Kaori’s fingers twitched, curled, grabbing at the air like she was hunting for some imagined rejecter to shove in a nonexistent locker.
“You...you...SHUT UP!”
Megumi’s shriek broke the clouds above. “SHUT UP! SHUT UP! HE WAS GOING TO TAKE ME TO THE CITY! HE COULD’VE! And.. and then I’d be in the city, and I’d be famous, and respected, and we’d be together, and...and...”
Kaori snickered.
“The city, huh?”
“THE CITY! YES!”
"Remind me, Megumi-chan. If, if this is the last time I'm seeing you. If I die tonight. Just, remind me, why the city?"
“Hah! EASY! It’s... it’s...”
In the distance, a dog barked.
Megumi frowned, tugged at one of her ponytails. “It’s...I wanted, I wanted to be famous. I wanted to get away from everyone who made fun of me! From everyone who acted like anything new was evil or stupid or useless! From everyone who acted like I was a waste of time and space! I hate the country, and, and I hate this stupid village! I hate everyone in it! I hate everything in it! I’ve always, ALWAYS hated everything here and I wish it could all just BURN!”
“Have you always hated me?”
The vampire choked on air. She stared, eyes wide and flitting between her hands and Kaori’s face, said hands then flitting up to yank at her ponytails as she bit her own lip hard enough to draw blood if she had any blood if she wasn’t just dry and lifeless inside and out--
“NO! No, okay! I didn’t...I didn’t hate you... I wanted to, I wanted to so badly! It would’ve been so easy to leave if I had! If I didn’t have anyone left to care about! I could’ve...I could’ve driven away, with Natsuno, with my family, with the Kirishikis...”
“Why didn’t you?”
“THEY ALL SAID NO! None of them, nobody I asked would take me away! Nobody would go!”
“Did you ever ask me?”
Megumi froze.
She blinked.
The wind howled.
Kaori loomed over her, now.
“...no. No, I...I didn’t.”
“I would’ve taken you. If you’d asked.”
Megumi sniffled. She wrapped her arms around herself, shrunk down, even her hair seemed to droop. Her eyes locked on the grass below.
“K...Kaori. Kaori-chan , will, will you take me... can we go to the city?”
The dirt on Kaori’s face gave way to a trickling stream. She opened her arms.
"Yes. It's you, what else was I going to say? Yes. Of course."
Megumi’s knees buckled, and she fell into her arms.
Her tears were frigid. Her body was cold too, colder than the grave Kaori’d tried to dig.
This...this could be a trick. The perfect chance to sink her teeth into Kaori’s neck.
Kaori didn’t care. With hands stained with graveyard dirt and her own blood, she held Megumi, cradled her shivering form.
“Am I still human, Kaori?”
“...after everything you’ve done...”
Megumi tensed.
"...Is something wrong with me, Megumi-chan? Because even after everything you've done... I still miss you. I still love you. I can’t forgive you. But...but you’re still my best friend. And we’re still going to the city."
“Together?” Megumi sobbed.
“Together,” Kaori replied.
For what could’ve been seconds, minutes, hours, eternity, the two held each other, crying what tears they had left, clinging to each other in the wind. But the story of the Shiki is a cruel one, and something must always interrupt.
“Aw, how sweet. You really do have feelings, Shimizu!”
The two froze. Kaori’s eyes opened to another pair of red past Megumi’s own, attached to an adult man with cat ears like some awful manga side-villain. His fangs were bared.
“Meowdy there. Now are you gonna have your snack already?”
The world blurred. It took a few moments for Kaori to realize she had been thrown. She sailed through the window, nose just barely scraping the frame, missed the brick and slammed into the futon. Three-point landing, really, she thought as she lay in a broken heap.
“The city? Hah! Kids. Nah, you’re not going to the city, Shimizu, didn’t you understand this whole thing?”
“You...you promised!”
“Nah,” Tatsumi replied, “I offered. Your snack there promised, yeah, but she can’t drive.”
“I CAN TRY!” Kaori retorted.
“I’ll snap your neck if you leave that house, kiddo.”
She could hear his smirk. She didn’t know how Megumi responded, though it...didn’t sound good.
“Anyhoo. Got business to attend to. You can keep your dibs, Shimizu, but don’t waste time. Toodles!”
A curtain of doom descended over the Tanaka household.
That was it, then? Her idea, her plan, her...her last chance with Megumi. Just...gone?
Everyone, dead and gone. Everything, dead and gone. The house might as well collapse on her. She has nothing left.
No , Kaori realized as she stared into the voids of Megumi’s eyes, WE have nothing left.
Megumi looked away, but her eyes seemed to dance around the room, wincing as she spotted the couch where they used to nap, the books and movies they enjoyed together, that box of old toys from their childhood, a photograph of her and Kaori holding their middle school diplomas high.
Kaori sighed.
"...can't end this on our own terms, huh?"
"I...I already ruined everything. It's the ending I deserve."
"No. No it isn't."
Megumi didn’t respond, except to turn away and zip her coat.
"See you in a better life, Megumi-chan."
The response may as well have come on the frigid wind.
"I love you too, Kaori."