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He woke up. The second he managed to wrestle his eyelids open, he was greeted with Lumi’s inverted face. Apparently she had been hovering over him like this the whole time he had lain sprawled on the ground.
Nervously and somewhat hesitantly, she spoke up, “Mr. Seymour, are you alright?”
“……If you don’t get out of the way, I’ll kiss you while getting up.”
“Okay, it looks like you’re just fine.” Lumi’s face disappeared.
Seymour sat up, shaking his head to clear his mind, and realized that he was currently in the garage he called his home. He was still clad in the same bloody clothes as before, the hole in the chest prominently visible, but Lumi was now dressed in an oversized men’s suit.
Thinking back on it, her outfit had been.risqué to say the least after getting shredded apart by truckloads of bullets. She had probably “borrowed” her current outfit from one of the guys back there. As he stood up, Seymour was struck with a sudden image of the man wearing Lumi’s rags instead of his suit.
“……The bleeding…has stopped?”
Taking a peek beneath his torn shirt, he realized that the hole created by Lumi’s hand had closed up. As if to prove that Seymour had not merely dreamed the entire ordeal, there was a patch of newly formed skin where the hole had been, starkly white against the rest of Seymour’s skin.
Placing a hand over that spot, he could feel his heart thumping within.
“Umm……that……”
“Ah, whatever. Let’s leave the difficult talks for another time. I simply don’t feel like it today.”
After bending and stretching several times, Seymour extended a hand to Lumi. And as he did so, he noticed something. They were in his garage, and there was nothing on the floor that could function as a pillow. And yet, his head had definitely been pillowed by something when he woke up, given the angle it had been at.
Reflexively his gaze shot to Lumi’s thighs. He frantically tried to recall the sensation he should have felt against the back of his head when he just woke up, but just like a fleeting dream, the memory slipped right out of his hands.
Lumi tilted her head at Seymour who had scrunched up his forehead into ravines of deep wrinkles.
“Is something the matter?”
“……No, it’s nothing.”
I’m going to try asking her for a reprisal of that some day, Seymour pledged in his heart, smiling faintly at the thought so that Lumi wouldn’t see.
Given how bright the window is, dawn should be just around the corner, I’m guessing. When I consider that all of that took place over the course of a single night, it makes me feel dizzy.
About to kill, about to be killed, about to die, and about to be allowed to die, yet we both survived in the end.
“It’s not bad, is it?”
“What is?”
“Everything and anything.”
Since he had lived, he probably had to acknowledge them. The many things he had ignored so far.
Seymour approached his Essex on unsteady feet, and planted his butt on its bonnet. Lumi, who had quietly followed, sat down next to him.
“………I wonder, what should we do from now on?”
A whispered question. Murder Inc., his courier job, the mafia, and above all, her being a vampire; they had heaps of issues that required consideration. Yet, Lumi’s words sounded as if they were simultaneously aimed at all their issues and none at all. And Seymour had only one answer for all of them.
“We’ll live on,” he said, squeezing Lumi’s hand, “We’ll keep living on.”
Lumi twined her fingers around Seymour’s. The strength of her grip was overpowering to a human, but Seymour was sure that it was regarded as weak and cautious to a vampire.
“Yes.”
Her answer was simple, and that was fine for Seymour. A mountain of trouble lay ahead of them, and it wouldn’t be even remotely surprising for them to be killed or otherwise die tomorrow in this kind of situation.
But, at the very least we’re alive right now. The only reason we made it to this point in time at all is because we desperately clawed our way out. That’s why, let’s enjoy this good thing for the time being. Let’s enjoy being alive.
While stretching, Seymour cast a grin at Lumi to encourage her for what life had in store for them next.
“Be that as it may, I really am starving.”
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