Epilogue 2: A Very Suspicious Person

It was late at night. Takashi Jonouchi was wandering the city.

He couldn’t forget.

He had been wandering this way ever since Natsuki Takeuchi had blown him off just before finals.

During his wandering, he had met a vampire named Eriko Kamiya. She had changed his life. He’d become a vampire, gained the ability to take beast form... and then the next thing he knew, it was all gone.

Anthromorphs were vampires’ retainers, and that power was gifted to them by their vampiric master. Takeshi assumed that Eriko had been killed; now, he had lost that power.

He should have left it all behind and returned to his daily life... and yet, he continued to wander the city at night.

Takashi couldn’t forget the ecstasy that had enveloped him when he’d felt the beast’s power coursing through his veins. Compared to the might of the beast, his human body felt so frail.

He felt exposed; naked.

And so Takashi continued wandering.

Perhaps, he hoped — a fleeting hope — that another vampire would find him and restore that power to him.

Perhaps it was in vain.

Perhaps it was all futile.

How long had he been doing this, now?

“Why the long face? It’s sad to see a proud anthromorph reduced to this.”

Anthromorph? Takashi looked up as he heard the word.

At some point he had come out in a suburb. An expensive car was stopped in the road beside him. A voice addressed him from the back seat.

“Yuri Konishi...” he murmured.

She was a girl his age; they had met several times in their parents’ society parties.

She had blonde hair done up in an intricate style, and an imperious gaze. She was the type of girl you never forgot once you met her once.

“What’s an anthromorph?” he asked her.

“If you want to play dumb, you’ve picked the wrong person,” she said. “We’re the ones who had to clean up after you, after all. Attacking a Chinese restaurant... what a moronic thing to do.”

Natsuki Takeuchi... He remembered. Natsuki Takeuchi had been in that Chinese restaurant for some reason. And before he could figure out what was going on, she had torn his body to ribbons.

He had lost his power immediately afterward; the vampire had probably been defeated by one of Natsuki’s allies.

Yuri got out of her car. “Come with me. I shall teach you the true power of the anthromorph.” She offered Takashi her hand.

“What are you talking about? I thought an anthromorph had no power without a vampire... Wait, do you have a vampiric master, too?” Takashi’s eyes glittered with hope at the thought.

“What nonsense are you spouting? The vampires and the anthromorphs have no direct connection. Watch. I have never had my blood drained by a vampire, yet I can do this freely!” Yuri pointed to her head proudly.

Takashi’s eyes opened wide. She had cat ears.

“You’ve been taken in by the vampires’ folklore, which means we’ll have to deprogram you,” she told him. “But I think we can handle that well enough. Consider yourself in good hands.”

“...What will happen if I go with you?” he asked slowly.

“The Noro household has lost a great deal of influence due to their breaking an important agreement recently. This is our chance to liberate ourselves from the vampires’ ridiculous insistence that they’re our masters! To make this possible, we need every anthromorph we can get. Those who have transformed before will be especially important. Now, come with me!”

Yuri had been holding her hand out to him all this time. Takashi now felt no hesitation about taking it.

If it meant regaining the power of the anthromorph, he didn’t care who it came from. To Takeshi, who had convinced himself of that, taking her hand was the easiest thing in the world.