I've always aspired to become a hero.
Not the hero who saves the world─a street level operator is enough. I'd also love to be a decent artist, maybe a manga-ka or a guitarist, who inspires an entire generation. Still, I would welcome being bitten by a radioactive bug, or become the avatar for a deity of any kind.
Expectedly, these were troublesome for my teachers during career conference week.
That was last year, when I'm only halfway through being a sophomore. I found the idea of being a doctor or a teacher boring. I preferred that high-octane action calling when my impressionable mind has yet to escape from those mainstream superhero flicks.
"Son, you need to choose a real career path," they said.
Afterwards, I got to know all the things I've been good at as they point out one by one the titles I could take. Their words, not mine: "I could be a scientist and make a real breakthrough for mankind to benefit from." I hated that─on several pages of issues knowing my science projects were blatantly copied from the giants of the past.
For instance, the "Poyo-Gun" was just something I ripped out of an anime─which anyone can make as long as they know Tesla's work.
In any case, after a bunch of retaliation that would mark my infamy for them, I finally wrote "I want to be a quantum physicist" on paper for their satisfaction.
Of course, this didn't stop me from wanting to become a hero.
And I'd poke fun at them for rejecting the dream.
I know this isn't a viable option for school.
With respect to myself, I don't want to bar that from coming true. Sometimes, I like telling other people things I want to happen for the pressure. I wouldn't want to betray their expectations. Then, bam! Surprise, motherfuckers, I have electricity coursing through my veins─then I'd zap every evildoer on the planet.
Ha ha! You get the idea.
I say all that, however, when I first encountered a vampire─
─I couldn't be the hero who I ought to be.
*
It's not absolutely necessary but if I we were to breathe on normalcy for less than a minute, I worked part-time at a music store. I work Sundays from around noontime to dusk, manning the counter on oftentimes lazy hours. You might not even believe it was a job, but a casual visit to a relative only to laze around for an entire afternoon.
I sit there, oftentimes listening to music.
Sometimes, I'd play the music myself.
For a hero aspirant, you'd rather have the backstory a bit more like being an intern at a technological mogul. You know, being in cahoots with giants of the industry. After all, I was a tinkerer myself.
Well, I've been tinkering… but not of a potential web shooter.
This is reinforced true during the 5th of October, when I was tuning this worn-out Stratocaster.
I only snapped out when my boss said we were about to close─to which I complied almost immediately. I hid the Stratocaster to its case, thinking I could come always get back to it next week. I leaped out from the music store as soon as I got my paycheck.
Destination─home.
I rode my bicycle, and looked up the night sky.
"…This late already," I murmured under my breath.
While I thought so, matched with an exasperated sigh, I cycled─which I didn't know at this point, but marked the liminal blur between normal and abnormal.
I was cutting through my usual route when I came across an eerie shadow.
Little to no light came into this particular sidewalk.
A shadow could only exist if there was imbalance in the illumination, whence the environment itself didn't permit such imbalance. You'd argue there are artificial lights too, and that I could be mistaking it for a silhouette. Still, the silhouette I saw was from the ground had the nuance of being a shadow.
I didn't pay any heed to it and thought it was Simulacra getting too uncanny─as though a misplaced deja vu.
That's when I was proven wrong.
I pressed the brake a bit too hard─as that blatant unrest broken upon plain sight.
A vampire.
And.
A belle in a suit.
Two unlikely entities staring at each other before a wooden bench.
One evidently trying to suppress her scream at the expense of shock.
I stood firm. So as I watched like your deluded and carefree game spectator: my sense of foreboding strongly suggested darkness.
Nothing could have prepared me for that moment.
The vampire lunged at the poor girl─almost instantly, or maybe faster, than I heard my heart barraged out of my chest.
Either I don't have the emotions or I was panicked but the static feel of the situation would lead to a static description.
Don't think, feel?
Show, don't tell?
Spare me, and receive loathing and indignation.
Without justification of my claim, the vampire sucked the blood out, the neck lifted from the gentle peck─damning even to relay the subject of how strong he threw the body into the air in satiation of its hunger.
Then, he tossed her body upward like she was weightless.
I froze, then and there─my heart was trying to file for divorce.
Vampires weren't real.
Except—apparently—now, I was in the audience of one.
What now—?
This was Happy Death Day.
I hadn't let myself gasp, not even once—but this was futile.
All because of its designation as a vampire.
Pretty sure I read stories, having devoured their myth too dry—through pages, panels, and pixels.
They're too old of a news, I could reference someone referencing vampires being too old of a news.
What matters is this: a vampire can taste your blood from the air.
So there was no point in keeping myself calm and composed.
I thought to myself, even if he noticed I was there, I'd let him dissolve into the wind and keep cycling forward. Since he had already been sustained somehow, the chances of him leaving just like so would be high. This was no time to make the hero spiel come to fruition─the victim had already died. Let's also not disregard that courage alone wouldn't leave a vampire to even bleed.
Before I could do anything, nor think, our eyes already met.
As the seconds kept ticking, he stepped even closer.
I backed into nothing, startled as though I'd fallen from the bicycle. Honestly, if this had been a romantic BL manga, this was the part where he'd push me against imaginary bricks and confess.
Unfortunately, this wasn't a manga.
The vampire had just drained a middle-schooler like a juice box.
You don't need a complicated formula to know what was coming next─
─Except, maybe, this was that one cosmic fluke.
Not too rare, but a relatively uncharted turn of event.
"Hello," the vampire greeted.
I…
Smiled.