[The first year after marriage.]
[Toru seemed to have encountered a bottleneck at the piano. According to him, the limits of humanity only allowed him to reach this point.]
[Your husband gave up on daily intensive practice.]
[He had long since passed the stage where practice was necessary. At the final threshold, insight seemed more important than effort.]
Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent sweat.
But that 1 percent inspiration is the most important, even more important than the 99 percent sweat.
Kagarino Kirie had heard such a famous saying before.
Many people only remembered the first half and ignored the latter.
With effort alone, one could become excellent, but never truly reach perfection.
[The second year after marriage.]
[You began to worry about having children.]
[As a vampire, you could not give birth to a baby.]
[Toru had no desire to continue his bloodline, but you could not help but think about it…]
[More than ten years later, if you used methods to turn him into your kind, Toru would also lose the ability to have children.]
[The way vampires produce offspring requires the First Embrace, assimilating humans into vampires.]
[By human standards, children produced in this way should not really count as children, right?]
[After careful thought.]
[You took the initiative and suggested that your husband find an ordinary person to marry and have a child in your place.]
[Unfortunately, your goodwill did not gain Toru's approval.]
[He only wanted to spend the rest of his life with you.]
[Children, to him, were merely a burden. Moreover, Toru was stubborn by nature. Once he acknowledged a single partner, he would never change his mind.]
[Helpless, you could only give up the idea of letting him leave behind a bloodline.]
[The fifth year after marriage.]
[The musical pieces you wrote every day had already piled up into a sizable area. Aside from writing scores, Toru recently began trying photography and keeping a diary, recording his feelings while composing.]
[You could not be recorded by cameras, so your husband used his pen to draw images instead. His drawing skills were immature, worlds apart from his piano.]
[But the love contained within them still made you feel warm.]
[To pass the time.]
[Toru opened a piano classroom near your home, teaching children how to play.]
[He was a good teacher.]
[And also a good pianist.]
[Every time you stood by the classroom, listening to him teach the children, you would become completely absorbed.]
[More than ten years ago, you never would have imagined that in the days to come, you would look forward to every day for the sake of a human, anticipating every morning, dusk, and sunset, until the sun rose again the next day.]
[Ordinary days passed quickly.]
[Toru entered the age of forty.]
[Time left clear traces on his face. Wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, a gradually growing beard. After maturing, his charm did not diminish, and he still captivated you.]
[You were obsessed with his body and sank into his soul.]
[During this period, you once again brought up the topic of leaving behind a bloodline. You wanted your husband to find a woman he found agreeable to bear a child in your place.]
[You did not mind him having one more lover.]
[Yamada Ryo and the others would be quite suitable.]
[All these years, your husband had not grown distant from the members of the Kessoku Band. Their bond remained close.]
[Toru shook his head and did not agree.]
[You glanced at his waist and chose to be understanding.]
[To be honest, at his age, still being able to endure your nonstop, round-the-clock draining from morning to night was nothing short of a miracle.]
"From morning to night…"
Kagarino Kirie looked at Toru's expression a few more times.
There was no fatigue, and it even seemed as though he still had plenty of strength left.
What a terrifying man.
His stamina was far too excessive.
[In these ten years after marriage, your appearance did not change in the slightest, still maintaining the figure of a young girl.]
[To prevent your husband from being looked at strangely by outsiders, you used illusion magic to block ordinary people's perception.]
[Toru was very pleased by this, though he did not care about ordinary people's opinions at heart.]
[Nothing in the secular world could restrain him.]
[Toru had long since passed the stage of being influenced by others.]
[Recently.]
[You cleared out one room in the villa to store the piano pieces Toru had composed in recent years.]
[In truth, you did not quite understand his reason for doing so…]
[Before Toru's life reached its end, you would assimilate him into a vampire.]
[You would become eternal partners.]
[Vampire lifespans were essentially endless.]
[As the thought flashed through your mind.]
[A bad premonition surfaced in your heart.]
[Desperately leaving behind memories within a limited time.]
[Such a posture was no different from a mayfly born at dawn and dead by dusk…]
[Hear the truth in the morning, die at dusk without regret.]
[You liked his gentleness, his face, his soul. The only thing you hated was this outlook on life of Toru's.]
["What if he is unwilling to become a vampire?"]
[At some unknown point, this thought turned into a dark cloud, hanging over your heart.]
[Yes. Not all humans could accept becoming blood-drinking monsters. Vampires were anomalies, existences that humans could not accept.]
[After struggling internally for a long time.]
[You prepared to find an opportunity to ask him what he thought.]
One autumn evening.
After an intense bout of intimacy.
The silver-haired girl's body trembled slightly as she enjoyed the lingering afterglow.
A languid scent drifted through the air.
Male and female hormones intertwined, making it easy to imagine how fierce the battle had just been.
"Do you want to go again?"
Toru lifted her full, fair thighs, helped her into an M-shaped posture, and then let her sit on his lap.
A vampire's desires were far stronger than those of ordinary people. After marriage, Toru played quite freely, without worrying about his partner surrendering on the battlefield.
"No… ugh…" Before Kagarino Kirie could finish speaking, she instinctively clamped her thighs tightly around his waist.
The girl lightly bit her lower lip, doing her best not to make strange sounds.
Blushing, she leaned against his shoulder, covering her mouth with one hand, muffled "mm" and "hn" sounds continuously escaping her lips.
Half an hour later.
The extra session ended.
Having lost all strength, Kagarino Kirie lay on top of him, like a fish out of water, gasping for air.
After resting for a few minutes.
Kirie leaned close to his ear.
"I want you to stay with me forever. A few decades is too short."
After a moment of silence.
"…Kirie, I want to die as a human."
Toru spoke words that were somewhat heartless.
"Vampires are not acceptable?"
"For me, a lifetime of happiness is enough. The length of life is limited, but its breadth is infinite."
Kirie lightly bit his neck, her small fangs brushing against his skin. "…If, when you leave, I am still not happy enough, what will you do?"
"I will make you happy."
"But I am very greedy. I might force you to stay with me."
Another silence.
"It's fine. No matter what you do, I will forgive you."
[From that day on, you never asked him similar questions again.]
[Before you lay two paths.]
[To satisfy Toru's wishes, let him die happily, and spend the long years ahead without him.]
[Or to ignore his will and forcibly keep him.]
[Which was the correct answer?]
[You did not understand.]
[Everyone says that loving someone means learning to let go, yet you could not do it.]
[You had tasted three hundred years of loneliness, and for the first time, in the darkness, you saw brilliant fireworks, met someone who could fill the emptiness in your heart.]
[At this point.]
[You loved him to a blind degree.]
[How could you possibly let go so easily?]