The first thing I felt was warmth.
No—not warmth. Dampness. My lips… were wet.
It felt strange. Sweet and salty.
I opened my eyes slowly, reluctantly, as if waking from the dead. My body ached like a hollow shell shattered and stitched back together. Breathing was a chore. Moving? Impossible. Even blinking felt like an act of war.
My gaze met a ceiling of rotting wood, cracked and faded, as if forgotten by time itself. The walls were old and dust-caked. Mould bloomed in corners. There was a weak light—orange, flickering, like it came from a candle or an old gas lantern. Not bright enough to call this a room. No, this place was a tomb that happened to have a bed inside.
And I was lying in it.
My throat burned. My chest throbbed. My hands trembled beneath thin, bloodstained sheets.
Where the hell was I? What happend exactly when I was unconscious?
That's when I noticed the wetness on my lips again. I ran a shaking finger over my mouth and saw it—crimson. Fresh. Blood.
My lips cut. Now I understand.
Panic threatened to rise. Was I bleeding again? From the inside? Was I dying all over again?
And then... I saw her. A girl who is in empty shell and lost happiness in darkness but still want to find the light to become free.
In the dimness of the room, she was a silhouette at first. Standing by the doorway, wrapped in shadows. Then she moved—slowly, like a ghost. Like someone who didn't belong to this world. A mystery in the mysterious world.
The faint lantern light caught her features.
My breath caught in my throat.
She wasn't human.
She was something more… something less.
Her hair was long, black as a moonless night, cascading like a waterfall of ink down her back. Her skin was pale—too pale—like cold porcelain, untouched by sunlight. She wore an old dress, colorless in the shadows, tattered around the edges like the wings of a broken butterfly.
But it was her eyes that froze me in place.
Crimson.
Not just red. They shimmered like rubies soaked in sorrow. Deep and Eternal. Eyes that had seen too much. Eyes that had cried blood. The kind of red that doesn't fade with time—it haunts.
She looked straight at me. Not with hostility. Not with hunger.
But with something worse—gentleness.
I couldn't move. Couldn't speak.
My heart pounded, screaming warnings through every vein. She's a ghoul.
The very thing I trained to destroy. The kind of creature I've seen rip men open like meat bags. The reason I've buried more friends than I can count.
And yet… here she was. Silently Watching me. Caring for me? How can i believe this?
A white cloth rested in her hand. It was stained with blood—my blood. She walked over, sat on a creaking wooden stool beside the bed, and without a word, began wiping my lips.
My muscles locked. My instincts screamed.
There was no pain in her touch. No malice in her actions.
She dipped the cloth in a bowl of water—slightly pink with diluted blood—then wrung it out, cleaning my chin, my neck. My breathing trembled beneath her care.
Then I noticed—a bandage on her neck.
Tightly wrapped. Looks like a new Bandage.
Why was she bandaged?
"What…" My voice cracked like dried bones. "What are you…?"
She didn't answer. Just gave me a look—a soft, unreadable look—and gently laid her hand against my forehead.
Cold fingers. Cold palm.
But… it comforted me.
I couldn't explain it. The fear was still there—coiled like a viper in my chest—but something else crawled beneath it. A seed of confusion. I felt anger at first then it vanished from nowhere.
Why was she helping me?
Why hadn't she killed me when I was bleeding, broken, defenseless?
I tried again.
"You… saved me?"
This time, she spoke.
Her voice was a whisper, nearly drowned out by the wind scratching at the broken windowpanes. But I heard her.
"You were dying. Alone in the riverside just like..... Nevermind."
Her words floated like ashes.
"Should've let me," I muttered, unsure why I said it.
She didn't respond.
I Don't know what she wanted to say
My eyes began to blur again. Fatigue pulled at my consciousness. But just before darkness took me again, I heard her voice once more—barely a breath:
"I don't kill those who still want to live. What an irony of fate right? An Elite IGBU now in Ghouls care... "
I didn't said a word but I surprised. Even he knew my identity still she saved me?
Days passed—though in this place, time was difficult to measure.
There was no clock. No sunlight. Only the slow flicker of a candle on the crooked table by the wall, burning low and silent, its wax dripped down like tear trails across the wood. The outside world was muffled—only distant wind, sometimes a whisper of birdsong if I strained to hear. But I never tried too hard. I didn't know if I wanted to know what lay beyond this old, crumbling house.
My body healed slowly.
My bandages were changed regularly. The fever left my bones. The searing pain in my ribs dulled to a low hum. I could breathe again without choking on it. But the weight inside me—that never left.
And she was always there.
The crimson-eyed girl. The ghoul. My… what? Rescuer? Captor? Caretaker? I didn't know.
I never learned her name. She never offered it, and I was too afraid to ask. Or maybe I just didn't deserve to know it. She floated around the room like a spirit in mourning—quiet, graceful, and wrapped in a sadness that made the air colder.
She never looked me in the eye for long. She would come in, bring me water, sometimes strange, tasteless soup. She'd sit by my bed and watch me eat, even if I could only manage a few spoonfuls. Her expression never changed. But her eyes always did.
They said everything she didn't.
They told me she was tired. Not physically—but soul-deep exhausted, the kind of weariness that no amount of sleep could cure. She wasn't just alive—she was surviving, and she was doing it in silence.
Once, I caught her pressing a hand over her stomach when she thought I was asleep.
Once, I heard her vomit behind the door.
I began to understand.
She wasn't eating. She was starving. And not just in the way a ghoul starves. This was something different. Something worse.
I forced myself to sit up one evening, pain shooting down my back like hot wires, and finally asked, "Why… are you doing this?You can kill me if you want. Why you saved me?"
She didn't turn to look at me. Her back was to me, her fingers holding the edge of a bandage she had just peeled from my side.
"You're a ghoul, I am a human." I said.
She paused.
"You… should've fed on me. That's what ghouls do, right?"
Nothing.
"Why am I still alive?"
Her shoulders tensed—but only for a second. She replaced the bandage in silence.
"I don't kill humans for no reason. And you really know what's the difference between Ghoul and Humans? They are all same in nature different in appearance." she whispered. Her voice was colder than before.
"That's not an answer," I said. But there was a deep meaning what she said. I understood it later. Very soon.
But I knew she wouldn't give answer easily. She stood, gathered the bloody gauze, and turned to leave. Her eyes glanced at mine for only a moment—but that moment held a storm.
I saw a girl who had killed before and hated herself for it.
I saw someone who didn't want to survive—but couldn't bring herself to die.
She was a ghoul… but she was bleeding light.
Later that night, as the wind howled outside the cracked windows and the candle danced its lonely rhythm, I lay awake.
There were questions I couldn't push down any longer:
What broke her?
Why… am I still here?
And in the shadows of that room, somewhere between healing and horror, I whispered to no one:
"Who's saving who, really?"
Time crawled.
It didn't walk. It didn't run. It dragged its belly like a wounded animal across the rotten floorboards of this forgotten place. The silence stretched longer each day, yet inside that silence was the growing weight of something I couldn't name.
I was healing. My wounds had scabbed over. My muscles no longer screamed with every movement. I could sit up now without falling. I could walk a few steps—just enough to reach the narrow window sealed by wooden slats. But beyond those slats, the world remained unseen. Distant. Untouchable.
Yet something else was happening. Something not physical.
I wasn't hungry.
Not like I should've been. I hadn't eaten a real meal since… since before the mission. And yet, food made me nauseous. My stomach rejected it like poison. Bread turned to ash in my mouth. Soup sat on my tongue like sludge. I tried to force it down, and I'd throw it up before it reached my stomach.
And every time, she was there. Quietly cleaning up the mess. No judgment in her face. No scolding in her eyes.
Just… stillness.
But I noticed it—her cheeks growing thinner. Her steps slower. Her lips pale and trembling. The hollowness in her eyes deepened, like a moon slipping behind clouds.
She was wasting away.
Not in days—hour by hour.
She never ate either. I never saw her feed. Not once.
And still, she poured her time, her effort, and whatever strength she had into caring for me. A human. A member of the very unit designed to destroy her kind.
One night, I found her sitting beside the bed, slouched forward, head on her arms, as if she had simply collapsed there while watching over me. Her breathing was shallow. Her skin had lost what little warmth it held.
I reached out, hesitated, and then touched her wrist.
Cold.
I pressed two fingers to her pulse. Weak. Barely there.
She stirred at my touch, eyes opening slowly—those endless crimson pools duller than ever.
"You're not eating," I said.
She blinked.
"You're dying," I added, more forcefully than I meant to. "Why?"
She looked at me then, fully. The longest she ever had.
"Because you are still healing."
I stared at her.
"That's not how this works," I whispered.
Her eyes softened—not in kindness, but in pity.
"Isn't it?" she asked.
The words sank into me like ice water. I didn't have an answer.
She stood slowly and turned away. Her legs wobbled beneath her frail frame, but she said nothing more.
And I sat there… confused. Angry and Afraid of myself.
Because deep inside me, in the place I didn't want to look…
I wanted her blood. I felt that but I don't know why.
I didn't want food. I didn't crave water.
But her scent. Her pulse. The warmth beneath her skin—
It was calling to me.
And that terrified me more than death ever could. I wasn't in myself.
That night, the storm came.
It crept in slow—a whisper at first, then a moan, then a growl in the sky.
By the time the rain began to fall, it wasn't rain anymore. It was a thousand needles stabbing against the roof of this crumbling house. Thunder cracked the heavens open like fractured bones. Lightning flashed through the cracks in the boarded windows, lighting the room in harsh, sickening bursts of white.
And then—
Darkness arrived.
The candle sputtered.
The dim bulb overhead flickered once, then died.
Power gone.
Endless Silence are walking for the eternity.
I lay in bed, heart pounding against my ribs like a caged animal. My body had healed—but something inside me had not. Something deeper. Something darker.
I heard her breathing across the room. Shallow and Labored.
She hadn't spoken to me since that afternoon.
I didn't know what time it was.
But my throat felt dry. My limbs were stiff. My mind—unsettled. Thoughts tangled. Memories broken.
And then—
A sound.
Not from outside. Not thunder. Not rain.
From me.
A low hum. A growl, almost.
I sat up. My head was heavy, but my vision sharp. Too sharp. I could see through the dark.
I could hear her heart.
It was faint. Weak. But it was calling to me like a lullaby soaked in sorrow.
I stumbled forward—feet on cold floorboards. I didn't know why I was moving.
I didn't feel in control.
Something else… something primal had taken hold.
She was sleeping on the floor beside the door, curled like a wounded animal, wrapped in a torn blanket.
I knelt beside her.
Her neck—
So pale. So delicate.
A pulse beneath the surface. Rhythmic. Tired.
Her scent overwhelmed me. Sweet… like copper and violets.
I was starving.
I don't remember making the decision.
One second, I was staring.
The next—
My mouth was on her neck.
Teeth. Skin. Warmth.
The taste—divine.
Her blood flowed into me like fire and music.
Like redemption. Like ruin.
Her body twitched, but she didn't scream.
She didn't push me away.
She just whispered one word.
"…Mahiru…"
And I froze.
Pulled back.
My hands trembling. My lips wet. My mouth—red.
Her blood… dripping down her neck.
My breath shallow. Eyes wide.
She stared at me through half-lidded eyes, weak, fading.
And I realized:
I wasn't human anymore.
I stumbled back, crashing against the wall, shaking. My own body a stranger to me.
Outside, thunder roared like the wrath of the gods.
Inside, I sat there—a monster born of confusion, pain, and fate.
And across from me, the girl who saved my life…
…was dying because of me.