Ethan rubbed his eyes several times. He only stopped when his vision had almost returned to normal.
As his sight gradually cleared, Ethan realized that he was no longer sprawled among the shattered debris scattered across the floor of the VIP Dressing Room inside Harmony High's Grand Theater. Instead, he was lying on a single bed with clean, comfortable blankets and pillows.
Judging by the medical equipment in the small room, the faint scent of disinfectant lingering in the air, and the gray curtain separating his bed from the one beside it, Ethan knew that he had been hospitalized once again.
This had to be the Field Hospital inside the Old Fortress on the outskirts of Harmony Town. One look at the room's low ceiling and tiny window was enough to tell.
That's it! Ethan had only been living in Harmony Town for about two and a half months, yet he had already required medical treatment at least three times. The worst part was that he could never remember exactly how he had ended up being transported to the hospital.
Ethan shook his head in frustration. He really didn't want to be the kind of young man on the verge of adulthood who ended up hospitalized every other day.
When his gaze accidentally drifted downward, his cheeks immediately flushed bright red. He realized that he was no longer wearing his Harmony High school uniform. At some point, somehow, someone had dressed his battered body in the standard patient clothing of the Field Hospital.
Could it be…
Ethan slowly raised his head. He stared at Felix, who had been yawning nonstop this whole time, in complete shock.
No way.
That couldn't be possible.
Felix was unbelievably lazy.
On normal days, after finishing dinner at Mrs. Marina's and Mr. Silvan's house, Felix always found a way to dump all the table-cleaning duties onto Royce. His success rate at escaping household chores was practically one hundred percent.
And on the rare days when he actually had proper time off - when he wasn't monitoring security cameras or working shifts at the Field Hospital to pay off the debt for the artificial heart inside his chest - he would simply sprawl out somewhere and spend the entire day staring at his phone.
Most importantly, Ethan knew perfectly well that Felix didn't like him. Whenever the boy spoke to him, he would deliberately bare his fangs and exaggerate his mouth movements to make them as visible as possible. The behavior reminded Ethan of male birds puffing up their feathers, each trying to show off that theirs were more colorful than everyone else's.
So, Ethan knew Felix couldn't possibly have been that person - the person who had pulled him back to the world of the living, brought him to the hospital, cleaned his wounds, bandaged him, and changed his clothes…
No.
Absolutely impossible.
After yawning several more times, Felix finally paid attention to Ethan again. Noticing the dazed look on his face, the boy kept snapping his fingers beside Ethan's ear and only stopped when awareness returned to Ethan's eyes.
"Do you even recognize me?"
Before Ethan could answer, Felix launched straight into another speech.
"If you don't recognize me, that's understandable. After all, you've been in a coma for ten years. A lot of things have happened during those ten years, you know?"
"W-What? Who… who's been in a coma?"
"Haizzz. Poor Ethan. Ten years of sleeping without using your brain must've broken it completely, huh?"
Felix grinned, flashing his gleaming fangs once again. He didn't look remotely sorry for Ethan despite what his words suggested.
"No. That's impossible. Just a little while ago, Autumn was still…"
Ethan stammered helplessly. He was trying to recount events that, as far as he knew, had happened only a few hours earlier, but he couldn't even string the words together. He simply couldn't believe that ten years had passed.
Staggering out of bed, Ethan scrambled toward the bathroom on bare feet, forgetting even to put on his slippers.
At that moment, Ethan no longer cared much about whether Kai was alive or dead. Even Ruby and the unfinished contract between them seemed strangely unimportant now. The image of Yara trapped inside the giant ball woven from her own hair was already fading from his mind.
Only Anya's condition after poisoning herself by drinking Autumn's blood concerned him slightly. But even that guilt quickly passed. Replacing it was fear, worry, and pity for himself.
Ethan froze as he stared at the blank white wall above the sink. There should have been a large mirror there. Where had it gone?
"Oh! Looking for a mirror? This room doesn't have one. Here, let me take a picture of you with this ancient phone instead. Just don't faint when you see it."
Contrary to Felix's warning, Ethan nearly did faint when he looked at the photo displayed on the boy's phone.
Where had the slightly lean face and smooth skin without a single wrinkle gone?
Where was the thick, jet-black hair full of the vitality of a sixteen-year-old?
And what was this? Eye bags? A double chin? Gray hair?
The person in that photo, with sagging, wrinkled skin and lifeless hair, simply could not be him!
Ten years!
Even if ten years really had passed, Ethan would only be twenty-six years old. There was no way he could have aged this badly. The man in the picture who vaguely resembled him looked more like forty-six.
"See? My wife knew you'd be shocked, so she hid all the mirrors. Autumn has always been thoughtful and considerate like that."
"Autumn? Y-Your wife? Autumn is your wife?"
The new information Felix dropped hit Ethan like a bolt of lightning. His mouth hung open in disbelief.
"We've been married for seven years already. After Autumn graduated from high school, she waited one more year for me to turn eighteen, and then we got married right away. When you find a wife, you've got to marry her fast. Wait too long and people start talking, right, Ethan?"
Ethan nodded absentmindedly in agreement. But he no longer understood a word Felix was saying. That lazy vampire boy seemed to be rambling endlessly now, bragging about his experience raising children. At only twenty-five years old, Felix and his wife had somehow already produced three children - both boys and girls included.
Miserable and heartbroken, Ethan shuffled back to his bed and collapsed onto it face-first, burying his face in the pillow and covering his ears. He didn't want to hear Felix babble on about his three little children with Autumn anymore.
Right now, Ethan just wanted to go back to sleep. Another twenty years would be fine. Anything was better than facing this cruel reality.
"Done laughing yet? You're being way too rude. This is a hospital. Keep it down and let people rest."
Swish.
Someone had just pulled aside the curtain separating the two beds.
Ethan immediately sprang out of bed when Royce lunged across Ethan's bed and grabbed Felix.
Oh!
A Vampire truly was different.
Ten years had passed, yet Royce was still as handsome, healthy, and radiant as a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old teenager. Time seemed to have completely forgotten him. How unfair was that?
"Get out. Get out right now and let us rest!"
Royce grabbed Felix by the back of the neck as if he were nothing more than a misbehaving puppy. Then, using only one hand, he shoved him out the door and slammed it shut behind him.
Just one hand.
Only one!
Ethan couldn't see Royce's other arm anywhere. The empty left sleeve of his shirt fluttered loosely with each movement of his body.
What had happened to Royce during the ten years Ethan had supposedly been in a coma?