• CHAPTER 39 - A MASK

    Some people mask their real pain that they might suffer on a daily basis. Some people you can't even tell that they do, they're just that amazing.

    Oh my God, no way! I thought to myself as I stared into the sliver of forest green eyes that belonged to Takeuchi. His eyes were barely open, but he finally opened them!

    "Takeuchi?" I inched myself closer to his bed.

    The corner of Takeuchi's mouth crept up into a small smile and his face was consumed in exhaustion. He looked so fragile and frail lying in that hospital bed. It took all of his energy just to smile a couple of weeks ago and now he's finally opening his eyes. He really was going to survive.

    "Can he talk?" I asked Orihime.

    Orihime shook her head, "No. He can't use his voice yet, but he can still speak in his head."

    I paused for a moment to think something through, "What about the next full moon?" I panicked, "It's in a few days, so what will happen to him?"

    "Believe it or not," Orhime started, matter-of-factly, "when Werewolves are this weak, they don't change into their wolf forms. There would be no way their bodies would have the energy to change."

    "You mean, if they're at a certain amount of weakness, then they won't morph?" I had never heard of Werewolves doing that before.

    Orihime nodded, "Yes,"

    I turned my attention back to Takeuchi and pat his shoulder, "Looks like you're off the hook this month," I grinned.

    Takeuchi gave me a small smile and turned his eyes to Miku's direction. I moved out of Miku's way as she inched her way closer to Takeuchi. I heard Orihime chuckle warmly and her face was washed over with awe.

    "He wants you to take his hand," Orihime started, "and press it against your belly."

    Miku stared at Orihime in disbelief, as did I. Kai touched my arm and pulled me back a little by my bicep, allowing Miku and Takeuchi their room. Kai grasped my hand and we stood at an angle where we could get a perfect view of Miku and Takeuchi's scene. Blushing, Miku timidly grabbed Takeuchi's hand and willingly pressed it against her swollen belly.

    "Is he feeling for the baby?" I whispered to Kai.

    Kai only nodded and I turned my attention back to the expecting couple. Miku stood with Takeuchi's hand on her stomach for a long moment in silence. After a few minutes, both of their faces glowed with the same intensity. Miku leaned over Takeuchi again, looking hopeful.

    "Did it kick you?" she asked quickly, urgent for an answer.

    Takeuchi smiled weakly and Miku smiled back, tears brimming her eyes. I stared in awe at the chemistry between them that filled the aura in the room. The only other perfect couple I've seen besides Matsuda and Orihime was Takeuchi and Miku. Takeuchi was such a kid but he had a giant heart. He's a Werewolf that cares about humanity. He could never hurt somebody intentionally unless he had a reason, just like Kai.

    I looked down at mine and Kai's hands, intertwined, and wondered if our relationship would ever reach the extent of Takeuchi and Miku's. Of course, they've been dating for years and Kai and I have only been together for almost seven months...and I have no intention of getting pregnant any time soon.

    Miku leaned over and kissed Takeuchi tenderly, tears of joy filing down her cheeks and to her jaw. Takeuchi was unable to kiss her back; he still could barely move. Kai nudged me with his elbow and it knocked me out of my trance and I looked up at him.

    "Let's say we go home," Kai suggested, "We'll give Takeuchi and Miku their room. They haven't had any alone time in a while."

    I nodded and we both silently made our way out of the room, promising we'd be back within another day or two. I couldn't help but grin widely as we made our way out of the hospital and into the cold weather which was brewing up a light snow shower. I grasped Kai's hand tight and looked up at him.

    "Kai, he opened his eyes!" I rejoiced, "He's going to be okay!"

    Kai smiled back at me, "You seem happy about it,"

    "Well, duh," I almost smacked him, "But you should be happier. He's basically been your brother for however long he's been living with Matsuda and Orihime."

    "That depends on how happy you are about the situation," Kai smirked and raised an eyebrow.

    "Let's just say we're even," I let go of his hand and crouched down onto the ground and started packing snow together in a snowball and tried my best to hide it.

    "What are you doing now?" he sounded a little annoyed, "You're going to get sick again."

    "It's okay. The hospital's right there." I jabbed my thumb behind me to the hospital that was about two hundred meters away.

    Kai rolled his eyes and stood for another couple of seconds while I was trying to perfect my snowball in secrecy. Kai mumbled something and then headed towards his car again. I stood up rapidly and fired my perfect and smooth snowball right at the back of his head. I bet it felt like nothing more than a poke in the back of his head, but it caught his attention. He whipped around and stared at me with a face that at the same time said "what the Hell?" and "you're dead".

    I sprawled my confident smile across my face and crouched down again to prepare another one as fast as I could. My speed was no match for him. I could hear him growl and I looked up just in time to see a smirk on his face while he was hunched over just before he glomped me. He ran into me in the front and tackled me onto the ground on my back. We slid a little farther than expected since, obviously, snow is a little slick at times. I stared at him with a dumbfounded expression as he lifted his face to mine and roared in laughter. My hand was frozen where it was, holding the second snowball I had been attempting to make.

    "Never have a snowball fight with a Vampire," Kai joked, mussing around my hair.

    I put on my evil smile this time and smashed the snowball onto Kai's forehead and spread it into his hair and my evil laughter followed. Kai grabbed a handful of powdery snow and spread it into my hair as well, trying to get even. We fought in the snow on the ground for another few minutes until we decided--I decided--we take a breather. I lost my breath from all my laughing and I was so incredibly happy and so lucky to have a guy like Kai.

    "You still aren't cold?" I asked Kai, seeing as he was still not wearing a coat.

    He rolled his eyes, "No, I'm not," he chuckled.

    My heart fluttered when he landed his lips on my cheek and my face heated up. I looked past him and up at the overcast sky. The snow continued to fall and the snowflakes increased in size. It was when a giant snowflake landed on the tip of my nose that Kai decided we leave.

    "You can't be out in this weather, silly girl," he smiled.

    I frowned at him as he stood up and extended his hand for me to grab. I grabbed his hand and he pulled me up without effort. We made our way to his car and he coiled one arm around my shoulders on our way there. When we climbed into the car, Kai turned it on along with the defrost right away to heat up the car.

    Kai smiled at me weakly as he backed out of the parking space, "I'd warm you up myself, but unfortunately I'm colder than the snow,"

    "I'd like to argue with that," I challenged, positive that he was at least one or two degrees warmer than snow.

    It was silent for a couple of minutes as Kai sped down the intersection, weaving his way between cars and barreling through empty lanes. I kept my mind off of his insane driving by a question that was knocking on my brain. I didn't know why it popped up randomly, but I was curious.

    Just as I was about to ask Kai my question, he beat me to the punch, "He was ten,"

    I paused, "What do you mean?"

    Kai took his eyes off the road and looked over at me, "Takeuchi was ten when he first became a Werewolf,"

    I gripped the door and my seat as Kai swirved swiftly to dodge a slow car, still keeping his eyes off the road and focused on me, "How was he only ten? Wasn't he born a Werewolf?"

    "Yeah, he was. But just like what Orihime said earlier; if they're at a certain point of weakness, they won't morph."

    "I still don't understand how he could have been ten, Kai," I was a little slow now.

    "When everybody is young, everybody is weak, right?" he asked rhetorically, "So Takeuchi just lived almost as a normal human for the first decade of his life because he didn't reach the amount of strength to become a full-fledged Werewolf.

    "He knew the time would come, but he didn't know how strong he had to be so it came up unexpectedly during one of the full moons. He has no control over the morphing now."

    "So, how is it that he's too weak now? And then?" I asked him.

    "When Werewolves are only kids, their bodies are much too fragile to withstand the pain and complications of the morphing, so it would probably kill them. The same goes for him right now with the state he's in."

    My heart skipped a beat, "But Kai--"

    Kai dodged another slow car, "The morphing is almost like an off-on switch. If you're too weak, you won't change during the full moon. If you're strong enough, you will change with a guarantee of survival."

    My heart slowed down a little more at that in relief. But my mind was soon busy with imagining how scard Takeuchi must have been when it first happened, how much pain he was in. He probably didn't even feel it now, but still...ten years old.

    "Do you want to know what happened to his parents?" Kai asked, looking out the windshield in a daze.

    I nodded, "Yeah, sure," I was a little nervous, though.

    "Takeuchi's always been a part of this Werewolf 'pack' ever since he was born. His father was the leader and his mother was the second head of the pack. Takeuchi was considered special, seeing as he was the leaders' son.

    "His parents had been leading the pack for about a hundred years or so and then they had Takeuchi. They opted Takeuchi take their place once they decided to retire after another couple hundred years. I would imagine his parents were fearing the day that he would become a Werewolf because they didn't want to see him go through the pain.

    "He grew up for about nine years with his parents just like a normal kid, though, and he made plenty of friends within the pack. All together, there were about twenty-three Werewolves in the pack. The whole pack would do whatever they could to protect Takeuchi since he was going to be the new leader of the pack when the time came. I didn't know exactly why other Werewolves and Vampires were after Takeuchi, but they're not anymore.

    "There was one battle during the full moon in October when Takeuchi was only nine years old. It was against a large group of Vampires." Kai's face hardened, "The battle lasted for hours without a break for anybody and Takeuchi was feeling helpless, just sitting in a small cave he was told to hide in.

    "When it was nearly dawn, the Vampires found Takeuchi," Kai hissed, "and they attacked him. They bit him everywhere and infected him several times as well."

    I flinched and almost broke down, imagining the pain he must have been in. And only at nine years old.

    "After the Vampires nearly ate him alive, they finally left him for dead. Takeuchi managed to stumble out of the cave and he ended up staring upon the carcasses of his whole pack."

    I flinched again and covered my mouth, "Oh my God,"

    "With how much Vampire venom that was injected into his system, it surely would have killed him since he was only so young too. Matsuda, Orihime, Kira and I traced the mixed scent of Werewolf and Vampire blood and came upon the battlefield.

    "We searched to see if there were any survivors. At first we thought Takeuchi was dead, seeing as he was covered in blood and he had crawled over in his pain to lie with his parents' carcasses. We were just about to leave, thinking everybody was dead, until Takeuchi grabbed onto the bottom of my pant leg. He started begging to us, begging for us to either kill him and rid him of his pain or subside his pain because he could tell faintly that Matsuda and Orihime were Angels.

    "So we took him back home immediately and they had me suck out the venom that was slowly killing him off. Matsuda and Orihime healed all of his many broken bones and he was unconscious for days after that. When he woke up again, he finally realized that Kira and I were Vampires so he kept his distance." he chuckled at that last part.

    "It wasn't until he made a full recovery after a couple of weeks that he finally started warming up to Kira and I and eventually thanked us for saving him. After that, he broke down after realizing for a second time that his parents and his friends and the rest of the pack were all dead. He hated himself, blamed himself for what happened. We managed to pull him out of his depression and look at him now." he rolled his eyes, "In all honesty, we've pulled him out too far."

    I giggled at the lightened mood Kai managed to bring on.

    "After an experience like that, I'm surprised he still trusts Kira and I. It's probably because he's such a good kid deep down. He can't hold a grudge for incredibly long unless it was absolutely necessary. He knew eventually that not all Vampires were the same, he knew Kira and I were different."

    I stared at Kai in awe, absorbing Takeuchi's history. One thing that shocked me so much was thinking about Takeuchi being depressed. Takeuchi depressed?? But I wouldn't blame him. His parents and the rest of his friends were mauled by Vampires and he almost was and was infected by them several times. He was left for dead...at only nine years old.

    "That's horrible," an unkown tear was gathering at the corner of my eye and Kai wiped it off with one finger.

    "He's okay now. He's grateful for Matsuda and Orihime. Now you understand why he's said how he could never repay them enough?"

    I nodded and leaned back in the seat. It was a good thing Takeuchi couldn't turn into a Vampire since he was already a Werewolf, that'd be horrible if he did. I couldn't even tell he had been through such a tramatic event. He was such a happy-go-lucky guy that couldn't hate anybody.

    Kai grabbed my hand and leaned back in the seat casually and continued to speed down the interstate. I started wondering that if Takeuchi were still depressed, if he would have wanted to die when that Werewolf smashed his skull in. Would he not have been trying so hard to wake up? Would have he kept a grudge against Kai and Kira and possibly want to kill them? Would have he met Miku?

    "I'm proud of him," Kai broke the silence, "He's really learned to move on in life. He's also been acting more human than anybody else, despite that he was born a Werewolf."

    I smiled when Kai said that and I almost wanted to record it. He was praising Takeuchi. It's not something you can hear from him every day. Kai frowned at me and I smiled at him, rubbing it in. Of course, Kai would praise him every now and then because...Takeuchi is his little brother. I knew Kai was much happier than I was that Takeuchi was pulling through.

    I started thinking about my parents and how I lost them. I could still feel the stabbing pain that pulsed through my chest after finding my parents' bloody corpses on the bed. I thought about how I still wasn't over it yet, but that was about a year and a half ago and Takeuchi's was nearly eight years ago. But Takeuchi was so young and he lost everybody, even his friends. Some dark pasts are better to hide than others, but a past like mine and Takeuchi's are usually covered by a mask, hiding the true pain we still suffer through.