• CHAPTER 54 - A NEW ME

    Emotional healings are never an easy thing. Not unless there is somebody there to help you cope with your loss. Somebody who has been through something equally as tormenting. But now you have a shoulder to lean on, somebody else to depend on.

    Another week, another Vampire attack to not worry about. It had been three weeks since I was last consciously associated with a Vampire. And that Vampire dumped me off, unfortunately. And it had been three weeks since he left me. I forbid myself to think of his name all the time. I told myself to push him out of my thoughts, but not out of my life. I focused my thoughts only on homework and making it through to the next day.

    I was finally catching up to school and the jocks and broads weren't communicating with me as much, but they would still throw something in every now and then. Akatsuki was generous enough to drop me off and pick me up from school every day, even though I offered to continue with the bus so he could sneak some sleep in during the day. It's tiring when you're a Necromantic Hunter and you always work at night but now you have to watch over a vegetarian girl who's a little too pathetic to look after herself for a while.

    I reached up high for some spices and herbs to prepare a nice dinner for Akatsuki, to give him a break for tonight. He told me it sounded as though the Vampires weren't as rowdy tonight and that he'd be back early, so I thought we'd finally be able to eat together for once. It was too lonely without him around at night, although I was usually sleeping. He's been too lonely for the past two years, so maybe he'd like somebody to talk to for once.

    "What's this?" Akatsuki interrogated out of surprise as he slipped off his coat and walked into the apartment.

    "Dinner," I smiled while I mixed together his ingredients for his gyudon. After that, I started mixing my ingredients for my gyoza without the pork, "You usually get back when I'm sick, so I thought since you were coming back early that I could make something for you. You can't just live off of Banquet microwaveables, you know." I giggled.

    "It's the closest thing I can get to a dinner. I can't cook to save my life." he shrugged and chuckled, "Where did you get the ingredients?"

    "Sorry," I hunched over, "I took some money from your coin bank and bought ingredients."

    Akatsuki laughed and hung his coat up, "That's fine. As long as you can cook well."

    "I'm doing this off of memory, so it might not be the best,"

    "That's okay. As long as there's something new to eat." Akatsuki smiled again.

    A weight was uplifted off of my shoulders at seeing Akatsuki smile. He was such an amazing friend and I knew he could make anybody smile. I still hadn't gotten my full smile out yet, and I knew how hard he was trying to bring it out. He helped clear off the breakfast bar as our food was cooking. I brought out the ingredients to prepare some jakopi tofu.

    "Do you mind jakopi tofu?" I asked him timidly, afraid he'd reject it.

    "Tofu?" he raised an eyebrow, "I've never had it."

    I cocked an eyebrow as well, "You haven't?"

    "No," he blushed a little, "I haven't."

    I finished our meals after another ten minutes and we sat ourselves at the breakfast bar. Akatsuki took his first bite of tofu while waiting for his gyudon to cool. His eyes lit up in surprise and he smiled widely.

    "It's not that bad. Good job, kid." he smiled while messing up my hair.

    Kid? Right when Akatsuki said that word, almost out of reflexes, a subtle sharp pain plunged into my stomach. I stopped eating for a short second and sighed, trying to push the thought away. I turned to Akatsuki as he took another large bite of tofu. He swallowed the large bite timidly and sighed.

    "Yeah?" pink lounged on his cheeks subtly.

    "I'm going to be making cake after this...for dessert. You can help if you want. Unless you are too tired." I offered.

    "No, I could help," he smiled, "If I'm going to live by myself in a few years after you graduate, then I should learn how to make food myself."

    We finished our dinner in silence and Akatsuki washed the dishes as I brought out a large mixing bowl and the cake ingredients. I prepared about all of it up to the eggs and I handed two eggs to Akatsuki.

    "Try it out," I explained, "Just tap them on the bowl or the counter and drop the yoke into the bowl."

    "Okay," he grabbed the eggs and almost looked like a little kid with the confused complexion on his face, "They won't blow up, will they?"

    I giggled, "No, they shouldn't," I could feel something creeping across my face.

    Akatsuki glanced at me and back at the eggs and forcibly smashed one of the eggs on the counter, splashing yoke all over the counter, his hand, and his clothes. He looked down at the mess he made with a look of childish disgust and that's when I lost it. The laughter crept up unexpectedly and exploded from my chest at the mess he made. I reached for a towel in one of his drawers, still laughing, and started cleaning up the mess on the counter and he laughed along with me. I finally calmed down when I started helping him clean up his hand. After a moment, I noticed from the corner of my eye that he was almost staring at me in a musing fashion. Only one assumption came to my mind.

    "When you look at me," I became serious and avoided eye contact while I continued to clean off his hand, "do you see Aya?"

    Akatsuki used his clean hand to lightly grasp my chin and lift my face up, "Yeah," he mused, "You look too much like her."

    "I'm sorry," I giggled, trying to lighten the mood. "It's not like I can help it."

    "I know," he drifted off.

    He slowly leaned forward and kissed my forehead dantily. I held my breath and closed my eyes as my face heated up severely and I waited. I knew he wouldn't be acting anywhere like this if he wouldn't have lost Aya the way he did. Or if I wasn't her twin, so there's really nothing I should be worried about. He's just dazed.

    "Well, um," I was becoming uncomfortable with where this situation was headed. "I-I'll clean up the rest of the mess. You might want to change your clothes."

    "Yeah," he snapped out of his daydream and came back to his senses, releasing his grasp on my chin, backing away, and taking off to his bedroom.

    I shook that awkward moment out of my mind cleaned the rest of the mess and finished the rest of the cake by myself. I tossed it into the oven and cleaned up the cooking supplies. I rushed into the guest room and slipped into my pajamas. I downed some of my pills, taking my time, and slipped back out into the living room where Akatsuki was still absent. I lounged on the couch and snuck in a nap only for several minutes before the timer on the oven went off. I forced myself awake and checked on the cake and poked it with a knife; it still wasn't done. I set the timer for five more minutes and poked it again to be sure it wasn't done.

    "It's about time I got you to laugh, eh?" Akatsuki asked me.

    I freaked out at his sudden appearance and jumped and turned around. I held my hand up to my chest as if I were regaining my breath and smiled back at him, "You scared me,"

    Akatsuki was holding his clothes in a bundle and had a fresh pair of blue flannel pajama pants and a white wife-beater tank top. His hair was dripping from a short shower he took while I was getting dressed and napping. Seeing a white wife-beater tank top again donned a small tear in my chest, probably from remembering somebody I knew wearing that before. I gripped the counter at the pungent pain, but it soon went away after a short moment and it was then that I realized Akatsuki had dropped his clothes in the hamper by the couch.

    "So," Akatsuki started casually, almost immaturely, "how does it feel to smile again? It's been what, three weeks since I last saw a full smile on you?"

    "Yeah," I mused. "I feel like I'm getting older now that I'm smiling."

    "But at the rate you were at, you'd never have wrinkles,"

    "What's so bad about not having wrinkles?" I giggled.

    "That means you didn't smile enough," he sighed. "That's what I've been trying to do to you for the past three weeks. I want you to be old with many wrinkles."

    I couldn't help but laugh at that either. It was too funny to handle, hearing somebody actually wanting me to grow wrinkles when I'm old. The timer on the oven went off again and I grabbed the knife, secretly licking off the cake badder from before, and stuck it back into the cake. It was done. I grabbed some cheap oven mitts and pulled the cake out. I dropped the cake onto the stove as soon as I felt the heat from the pan burn into my skin through the glove.

    "Dammit!" I slipped off the gloves and observed the damage; probably going to blister.

    "Ah, s**t," Akatsuki sighed, returning to the bathroom and grabbing gauze and peroxide. "Hang on."

    "How can you live with those?" I complained as he rubbed the peroxide on the burn with some toilet paper squares he ripped off.

    "I told you I don't cook," he chuckled. "I didn't know how cheap they were until now."

    I waited for another minute as he thoroughly cleaned my new burn. I eyed the hamper next to the couch and realized the clothes overflowing and trying to jump out, "If it's no problem, I'll drop those clothes off at the laundromat tomorrow night on my way to work,"

    Akatsuki eyed me with skepticism, "Do you want me to come with you?"

    I shook my head, "I should be okay,"

    "Arisa, there's...people out there," he knew to avoid saying "Vampire" around me.

    "I know," I whispered, looking down. "But nothing has happened for a while now. I'll be okay. I'll drop the clothes off on my way to work and then pick them up afterwords."

    He sighed in defeat, "Okay. I guess you may. But if anything happens, then just call me."

    I nodded, "Yeah, I know," he had programmed his number into my phone when I arrived here.

    "What are we going to do about the orphanage, though? Don't they think you've been taken?"

    "No," I shook my head as he wrapped the gauze around my hand. "I told Chi to tell them I was staying at a friend's house for a while."

    We both paused for a moment for no reason, both looking down. Akatsuki reached behind him and opened a drawer and pulled out two spoons. He opened the freezer and pulled out two small tubs of ice cream and smiled at me. I picked up the hint and grabbed a spoon and ice cream tub from him and we both sped to the couch. The mood and atmosphere was immediately uplifted as we dove into our own tubs of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.

    "It's too unfortunate that I don't have a T.V. It would be like a real slumber party then." Akatsuki smiled.

    "It's no problem," I smiled back. "We've got the pajamas and the ice cream. We're all set."

    We spent the next two straight hours telling scary stories which, unfortunately, I was incapable of scaring Akatsuki since he battles the scariest things known to man every night. He was able to scare me witless, though, until he would laugh and pat my shoulder, trying to calm me down after noticing me scarfing down my ice cream out of unconscious fear. After the scary stories, we talked deeply about our childhoods, avoiding any deaths that had occured, and I kept talking about how Aya and I would always screw around with kids from school before. We would always confuse them by our identical looks, and I knew deep down that it was hard for Akatsuki to be hearing so much about Aya so I offered him to talk about his past. He seemed to have lived a pretty normal life until his parents entered him to be a Necromantic Hunter. After a while of hearing Akatsuki's past, we finally finished off our ice cream tubs and he took mine and threw it away for me.

    "You should be getting to bed," Akatsuki checked the clock, "It's two thirty in the morning."

    "Yeah," I yawned and clawed at the sticky ice cream remains around my mouth.

    "Good night, then," Akatsuki smiled at me one more time before heading off to his room.

    "'Night," I smiled back at him.

    I lazily scrambled off of the couch and drug myself to the guest room. I spent two minutes in the bathroom, cleaning off the dried ice cream. It came by as surprising to me that I was able to tell Akatsuki about my past so easily. He was somebody else to talk to, somebody I could now trust and tell everything to. He was a new shoulder to lean on now.

    I dropped myself onto the couch and mused at the moon that reflected off of the mirror on the wall and lit up half of the room with a pale blue glow. I sighed in relief at the fact that it wasn't a full moon so that Akatsuki wouldn't be put into such danger tonight. The tear in my chest from earlier from the small things Akatsuki said that had to remind me of my old life was coming back. The smallest things that went unintended brought me back unintentionally to my old life from over three weeks ago. I held my breath and curled up in a ball to suppress the pain that was trying to eat away at me. The pain finally subsided after another minute and I released my tension in the ball-shape I locked myself in and managed to relax.

    A thrill of unintentional desire and lust pulsed through me and I opened the drawer of the nightstand. I blustered to myself in my head to stop what I was doing and shut the drawer immediately, but my body wasn't listening. My hand searched throughout the drawer on its own for the last thing I wanted to lay eyes on. It finally managed to find what it was looking for and my hand shut the drawer stealthily. I withdrew my hand back to me after noting a shimmer coming from it. I opened my hand slowly and there sat in my palm my engagement ring. My tears cascaded down my face once more as I continued to stare at it in awe. It was so beautiful, much more beautiful now that it wasn't on my finger any longer.

    "No," I said to my conscience, forcing my hand to enclose the ring in my palm so I wouldn't see it, "No, not now. Not when I'm at the summit of my healing point."

    I was lying in silence for another moment and my willpower finally kicked in. I kissed my engagement ring dantily and forced it back into the drawer, attempting to chip away at the memories of my old life once again of the one who gave me that ring.