"How many times is this now, I ask you! How many times have I told you! Do not take anyone to watch the sunrise! Do not take anyone to watch the sunrise! Why are you so disobedient, child?!"
Inside a luxurious manor styled with classical European aesthetics, a little girl with short purple hair sat on a chair, scolding the boy kneeling before her. He, too, had slightly wavy purple hair. His face was pale and refined, his build tall and strong. He possessed striking blood-red eyes and exuded a peculiar, almost enchanting charisma that naturally drew people to him.
Yet, facing this handsome young man, the little girl wore an expression of deep frustration.
"What kind of brain-dead idea is it to take a vampire to see the sunrise?! I seriously wonder who you take after! Your father and I are perfectly normal vampires—how did we end up with such a strange child!"
As she lectured him, the little girl repeatedly tapped the boy's head with a folding fan. Her tone and words confirmed her identity: she was a vampire and the boy's mother.
"I only wanted to share that beautiful moment with her. Is there something wrong with that?"
"Is there something wrong? Everything about it is wrong! It all started well enough: the girl, hearing you wanted to share your most precious treasure, was thrilled. She covered her eyes, excited, and went with you. Then, you took her to see... the rising sun!"
The little girl could perfectly picture the scene: after being blindfolded and waiting with nervous anticipation for her son to reveal his greatest treasure, the girl opened her eyes. She saw her child with his back to the rising sun, arms spread wide, proclaiming that this—the sun—was the most precious treasure he wanted to share with her.
Don't ask how she knew—because her own foolish son had previously tricked her, his own mother, into watching a sunrise!
If it was a shock even for her, who found it stimulating, she could only imagine how jarring it was for the date. While the sun wouldn't instantly kill them, adverse reactions were inevitable. And the result, without a doubt, was a failed match.
The girl's clear conclusion was that any vampire who'd take his date to watch the sunrise was clearly insane.
"If she can't even handle that much, how could we possibly be together? Besides, the sun's golden light is so beautiful, yet she didn't like it at all. What a lack of aesthetic taste! Why can't anyone else want to be friends with the sun like I do? That feeling of being enveloped by its searing light is truly wonderful!"
Upon hearing her son's declaration, the fan in the little girl's hand began striking his head at an even faster pace.
"Always causing trouble! Always causing trouble! Can't you make things easy for your mother for once?! A vampire wanting to be friends with the sun is the strangest thing I've ever heard! And I don't know about your so-called 'wonderful feeling' when the sun hits you, but I do know your skin gets burnt! How is that wonderful?!"
After striking him dozens of times, the little girl finally exhaled and stopped.
"Kars, I no longer expect any vampire girl around here to want to be with you. Your… peculiarity has spread throughout the entire vampire community. All the eligible girls think there's something wrong with you, and none are willing to meet you anymore."
She sighed deeply. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't hide her son's special preference. Combined with the testimonies of his "victims," the other vampires now had a complete understanding of Kars's problem.
"I don't think it's a big deal, Mother. I'm only a little over a hundred years old. I'm not exactly rushing to find a date, am I?"
Kars felt that at a mere hundred-plus years, he shouldn't need to worry about marriage. By all accounts, a vampire his age wasn't expected to be actively seeking a girlfriend, even if his potential matches were all adorable young girls who were, ironically, three or four hundred years his senior.
He never understood why he, a century-old vampire, aged so much faster than his centuries-old peers.
"Oh, Kars. You are the sole male heir of the Scarlett family. As the only son, I believe you should shoulder the responsibility of family prosperity sooner rather than later. In any case, since no one here is willing to date you, I'm sending you to your two aunts. I heard they recently moved to a place called Gensokyo—the paradise of yokai. Go find your elder aunt and see if she can help you find a suitable match."
She figured that a boy with her son's eccentricities might only find a partner in a place like that.
"Huh? Go to Auntie?"
Kars recalled his elder aunt: light blue short hair, red eyes, wearing a pink dress and a pink hat, and quite petite. When he was very young, she enjoyed lecturing him, asserting her seniority, but she was generally caring. It was his other, younger aunt who gave him residual trauma.
When he was looked after by his aunt, Flandre, she would play with him. Sometimes, while she was amusing herself with a toy, it would instantly burst into pieces right before his eyes. She would then declare flatly, "It's broken again," before flashing him a terrifying smile and saying, "Kars is much more fun to play with."
During that time, Kars was constantly terrified that he would end up like the toys—exploding in his aunt's hands. Thankfully, he never did. But then, for reasons he still didn't understand, his aunt Flandre somehow multiplied into four distinct versions. They all started fighting over him, and then… they started fighting each other.
Kars, the focal point of the chaos, huddled under the bed, trembling, watching the four identical women laugh and smile in genuinely unsettling ways as they battled.
Even now, Kars was still a little scared of his Aunt Flandre. But he was much older and bigger now—surely he didn't need to be afraid anymore?
"I don't think we need to bother Auntie, do we?"
"Your opinion is irrelevant now. I will contact Remilia and explain everything to her. She definitely won't refuse me. So, you will go straight to her, like a good boy."