Several years have passed since my first and only encounter with a vampire in this lifetime, twenty-three years to be exact.
As the white-haired vampire instructed all those years ago, I continued my pursuit on being a writer. And now, twenty-three years into the future, I was now known as Kashiwagi Junta, the man who reshaped the genre of vampire literature in Japan.
After reading Kashiwagi’s parting letter twenty-three years ago, bit by bit, fragmented portions of the memories of my previous life came to me occasionally in the form of dreams.
From what I could gather, the vampire Kashiwagi Jun was as aspiring writer who wanted his name to be immortalized, to leave a mark on the world despite being an immortal being. Jun had already been a vampire for a good two centuries at that time. And due to his long-lived life, he seemed to struggle to find fame in the field of writing as the times evolved faster than his writing could ever imagined. But he didn’t give up, he kept on writing and writing, until one day he met a girl named Anne fifty years ago.
The young girl was about to throw her life away, standing at the edge of a high-rise building, prepared to meet her end. It was then when Jun swooped in and made her reconsider. He showed her that there was more to life than what her young eyes could see at the moment, that there were endless possibilities that was waiting ahead if she simply didn’t give up on life.
He offered her a new start.
The girl who had just entered the workforce a couple of years back, who was driven to a corner by her colleagues, was given a chance to escape that life. Jun offered to turn her into the creature that roamed freely in the night, a vampire. But in exchange for creating a minion, he would lose a part of his immortality in the process. Jun didn’t seem to mind and offered to help anyway.
From what I understood, vampires were completely immortal until the moment they create a minion. Once they do, a part of their immortality is stripped from them and is passed down to their new-found underling. They were still immortal for the most part, but now with a single weakness. They were now vulnerable to a certain type of sunlight.
Anyway, Anne agreed, turned a new leaf and became a vampire. The two of them spent two years together in their new life.
During this time, the two developed feelings for each other as if it was the only natural course of action to take place. Jun also continued his pursuit of becoming a writer, and his new-found partner supported him in every way she could in the span of those two years. But by the end of it, Kashiwagi Jun, despite his efforts, continued to fail time after time, one rejection after another.
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Jun had been rejected a number of times before, so he thought to himself that it wouldn’t be a big deal. But this time was different. In the past, he knew he had forever to keep working on his craft. That no matter how many times he got rejected, he had no choice but to keep going as there was no other option either way. But this time, he had an escape. That when things got too hard to bear, he could now simply throw it all away and end it all.
Which is what he eventually did.
Leaving his lover behind without a single parting message, he waited at dawn for the first ray of sunlight to emerge from the horizon; the type of sunlight that could kill a vampire. And as he bathes in the warmth of the morning’s sunrise, Jun met his end.
As stated in Kashiwagi’s letter to me twenty-three years ago, the contents of the story I made was apparently heavily inspired from the memories of my past life without me noticing. However, for the sake of writing something different, I may have dramatized the last part—the part in which Kashiwagi wouldn’t have any recollection of, which was the contents of her master’s mind in his final moments.
At the last part of my story, I wrote that the protagonist was thinking of nothing but the heroine in his dying moments, about how he would spend a lifetime with her once he reincarnated as a mortal and become a successful author that she could be proud of.
But from what I could recall from the memories of my past life, there wasn’t a single mention of Anne during that time, all that was in my head was nothing but my longing to end my suffering.
Talk about selfish.
If I could go back in time and visit myself in my previous life, I would give him the beating of his life for not having any balls and leaving Kashiwagi behind—a beating that would could kill an immortal vampire.
To this day, I still occasionally think about Kashiwagi and where she could be now. They say that the bond between master and minion for vampires was special; that even after death and rebirth, you’d still be able to find each other eventually. But to this day I feel like I haven’t felt her presence since. It makes me wonder if I’ve already passed her somewhere random before and I just didn’t notice.
I couldn’t help but sigh at the thought.
As I was reminiscing about the past, both in my current and previous life, I hadn’t noticed that it was already past eleven in the morning, more than an hour past my scheduled meeting. I say that but I wasn’t the one who’s late, it was my editor.
She had resigned from the publishing house I was currently under, and was to assign me to a new editor. We had agreed to meet at the publishing house’s lobby at ten, but almost an hour and a half later, she still wasn’t anywhere to be found. I suppose if you’re only rendering your last thirty working days, you’d stop caring about your job huh…I started considering just keeping this bottle of sake to myself.
Before long, I spotted two silhouettes through the frosted glass walls of the building. And the moment they passed through automated sliding door, I confirmed it was them. My editor was taking the lead as my supposed new editor was following her from behind. She was way shorter than my current editor from what I could see, so she’s probably new.
As they slowly approached, I stood from my seat and brought out my parting gift for my editor.
“You’re late, I almost ended up drinking this bottle myself out of my sadness from being stood up.”
“My bad, my bad, this girl here proved to be a bit too hard to drag along.” She jerked her head to the side as to point to the girl behind her, accepting my gift with an apologetic look. “She said she had to mentally prepare first so we made a few unexpected stops on the way, she’s apparently a fan.”
As if taking that as her signal, the girl finally stepped out of my editor’s shadow and revealed herself, not-so-confident-looking but trying her best to look professional.
She had short white hair, fair complexion, a rounded face and a somewhat small build. With the looks of it, I could have easily mistaken her for middle schooler or a high school freshman if it weren’t for the mature-vibe that her office outfit gave out.
“My name is Sakuragi Hanako, I’ll be in your care.”
She bowed her head as we were about to exchange our first formal greetings. I know this wasn’t proper etiquette, but as Sakuragi Hanako remained bowing, waiting for me to do so in turn, I ended up breaking into a warm smile and instead uttered the following words:
“Do you like vampires?”