Opening and closing his eyes, Dex started rubbing them harder and harder till they started to hurt a bit. Dex still felt the pressure from what seemed to be something to do with Miki’s eyes, but he forgot about it for a second when he looked at the scene calmly. First, it was the muscular old man whose appearance changed by the second. He was only initially a bulging muscular “man” at first, but his muscles started growing more and more distorted, with his muscles forming smaller ridges inside themselves. His head also started growing what seemed to be horns? This didn’t make any sense to him.

Next was Miki, whose body first started spewing black smoke around the room. At first, it only dimmed the light in the room, but before he knew it everything was covered in black smoke. It almost felt like a different room to him, no maybe a different world? The only light source left was the deep crimson light emanating from Miki’s eyes and the large, neon pair of butterfly wings that sprouted from her back a few seconds ago.

Dex has seen some shit, but this was too bizarre even for him. It seemed too fantastical, too out of this world, too unrealistic. He left home half a year ago to search for something just like this, but instead, he was exposed to the reality the world had. Money laundering, torture, kidnapping, and of course, assassination. He had a crash course of “What shouldn’t have happened” to any young man. So it was not too far to say that he rejected what he saw. “There’s no way something like that’s real”. 

Dex was woken up from his thoughts with a loud *thump sound* on the back of his head. Miki’s foot was now firmly placed on top of his head and pushed him down to the ground.

“Hey Dex, I know you’re thinking about stupid thoughts right now. It seems your heartbeat even calmed down a bit. Tch, just what kind of life were you living for you to stay calm like this?” 

“As far as I know, I’m the one that needs answers. I don’t know what you know, but I told your Dad everything.” Dex struggled to say each word that came out of his mouth, while for every word that he said Miki’s heel became heavier and heavier.

“Yeah. There’s no way Dad wouldn’t have know, but look where that got him. It’s all your fault Dex, looks like they were looking for you and found Dad instead.”

“...” Dex thought about what Miki had said and grit his teeth. He knew what would happen to people that would cross Rising Feather’s crosshairs, hell he experienced that first hand. 

“Silent huh? Guilty? Well, you should be. We gave you a home and your mere presence disrupted our life.”

What she said was fair, but it didn’t seem reasonable to Dex. 

“It’s unfortunate what happened to him, but I did warn him that something like this might happe-”

Before he could finish that sentence, Aoi quickly punched his back, making a crinkling sound with what seemed to be his bones. The blow shook Dex to the core, knocking him out for a good second. 

“Now you’re just pissing me off kid...You don’t even feel a bit guilty? And you’re even pinning the blame on him? You’re absolutely the worst.” Gritting his teeth, old man Aoi started sobbing a bit.

“What would you know? I don’t care if I’m selfish, I wanted to live! And he gave me that opportunity, what’s so wrong with taking it?” Also gritting his teeth, the guilt-trodden Dex looked at the two with desperate eyes. 

“Stop it uncle, I know how much he cared for my dad. I just want him to pay. It’s also my fault that dad’s gone...” Trailing off from her train of thought, Miki started to mumble to herself.

“Miki, it was a decision that the three of us made, the blame is on the three of us.” Aoi started patting Miki’s back.

Still glaring at them, Dex started to get curious.

“What do you mean? I thought you’re pinning the blame on me? Because of my involvement with Rising Feather.”

“You’re really not fazed about how we look huh? That’s fine, it's better to explain something properly. Torturing you comes afterwards.”

Miki winked at Dex while she started kicking his head. Dex felt the pain resonate throughout his whole body, he wasn’t sure if it was just because of the sheer force of the blow or because of some strange thing related to how they looked. Aoi mentioned something about “Essence”?

Dex could still think a bit rationally at this situation because he was previously involved in the underworld of Arasia. He had seen a lot of horrible things and was even forced to commit some of them. So that he wouldn’t lose “himself” he decided to dial down his emotions so that he wouldn’t be overcome with them. 

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“First of all Dex, yes we are what you would call magical creatures.”

“...” dumbfounded Dex looked at Miki who had just said that sentence with a straight face and started laughing.

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA”

Dex’s method of covering his emotions didn’t take care of positive emotions and because he was so caught off guard with what she just said, it just sounded even sillier. He had forgotten the pain from Miki’s kick and started rolling on the ground laughing and what seemed to be tears in his eyes.

“I can’t believe you said that with a straight face Miki!! You’re killing me HAHAHAHA-Ugh”

Before he could spew another one-eight of the page’s worth of laughter, Aoi punched him at the back of the neck and he lost consciousness for a good ten seconds. He was woken up to his hair being pulled up by Aoi, who then grabbed his head and continuously bashed it on the floor.

“I guess you’re not taking this seriously enough, Dex. Here’s a little demonstration you fucking brat.”

The muscular Aoi grabbed Dex’s left arm and gripped it with one of his hands. With just a few seconds of gripping it, a sharp sound came from Dex’s arm.

“Aghhhh”

A mere thirty seconds ago, Dex was rolling on the floor laughing, now he was groveling on the floor from the pain.

“Man, what do you say to that?”

Smirking, the old man started laughing a little bit as Miki made a small embarrassed grin on her face. She was somewhat embarrassed by Dex’s previous comment and let him take the initiative of the situation, something she could not allow herself. This was her revenge, she shouldn’t be bothered by this insect.

They heard a bit of laughter from Dex, which somehow became louder and louder. With drool spewing from his mouth Dex spat at the old man and glared at him.

“I feel sorry for your tiny weewee if you jack yourself off as hard as you’re acting tough.

These words lit a fuse inside the impatient old man. He clenched his fist and tried bringing it down to the groveling Dex, only to be stopped by Miki’s outstretched wings. She quietly whispered unto her uncle’s ear.

“Uncle, don’t let him get to you. It seems we’ve underestimated him, we really thought that he was just a stupid, selfish, runaway brat but he seems more”monsterish” than both of us. Please let me handle this, if you go through with this we wouldn’t be able to get information.”

Letting go of his clenched fist, Aoi started to back off from Dex and pulled a seat from the table and turned it to the direction of Dex’s body, and sat quietly. 

“What’s wrong? Can’t use your muscles for shit?”

“Just be grateful that we haven’t killed you yet.”

Dex spewed pour insult upon insult towards Aoi who was silently holding in his anger. After realizing that the old man had calmed down, Dex looked at Miki who was vehemently staring at him with her eyes. Ever since she started looking at me with those eyes, it seemed like he couldn’t move his body properly so he decided to start the conversation this time so that he could understand the current situation more. 

“So you mentioned magical creatures...It’s hard to believe but those eyes seem to be doing something to my body, would you mind explaining that?”

Thinking he made the rational decision, he silently stared at the young woman with butterfly wings only to be stomped on by her foot again. 

“Oww”

“Who said you could start the conversation? I’ll continue where I left off”

This fucking woman! So unreasonable!

“I’ll get to the point. You shouldn’t be alive right now, we should’ve killed you a long time ago. This was preordained by me, uncle, and of course, father.”

“??? That doesn’t make any sense though. If you wanted to kill me, wouldn’t you have done so as soon as possible? And what would be the reason for doing so? Did you guys have a grudge against Rising Feather?”

Looking back, Dex thought that Mr. Ernesto was too nice to him, so much so that he also doubted him at first. With the short time he had spent with Rising Feather, he unconsciously registered that people would only be kind to you if they could be of use to them. But also because he had spent countless hours being manipulated by other people in the underground, he could also tell when someone carried hostility. For Dex, he had never sensed hostility from Mr. Ernesto and because he continued to be kind to him, he started opening up to him and started to seriously live his life at the bar.

“You were supposed to be my birthday present. Rather, my “cake”. As I was saying earlier, me and uncle are what you humans would call “magical creatures”, simply put creatures that aren’t registered as normally living in the human world’s perception of the food chain. We only appear in legends, myths, and fictions.”

Making sure that Dex wasn’t laughing at her again, Miki peeked a bit at Dex’s face. He returned a serious gaze on Miki. It seems that talking about her Dad had caught his attention, rather had convinced him to hear them out seriously. This didn’t sit well with her, because she wanted him to continue ridiculing her so that she could dispose of him without a moment’s hesitation later on.

“I’m what you would call a “Vampire”, though as you can see from what I look like, not in the traditional sense. It would be more accurate to call me a “Vampiric Entity” than a true vampire, which you humans perceive as normally what a vampire looks like.” Pointing at herself, the wings on her back started flapping strongly, knocking down some of the chairs under the table.

“Uncle over there is what humans would call an “Oni”, a type of daemon. Of course, my father was also a “Vampiric Entity” like me. Now, I think you know where this is going right?”

“You guys wanted to eat me or something? Talk about stereotypical.”

“It’s not like we wanted to be born this way. In fact, you should be grateful that only certain types of phantasmal require human blood to satiate themselves.”

Grinning mischievously, Miki started giggling to herself a bit.

“You were supposed to be a delicacy Dex, a gift for my birthday. As Vampiric Entities we would only be required to satiate our blood lust once a year or so, else our Essence would be robbed from us and we would vanish.”