She leaned back against the sofa and closed her eyes, yawning as well.

"That's how passionately, lovingly and ardently you show your interest in my cause." Yurika didn't even try to reply, she didn't have the strength. She had spent the entire morning on those tomes Ferid had provided her with and their complexity was devastating her more and more every day. Could it be that everything in the world seemed so impossible? To think that she even had noble goals, although she was the only one who thought so. Or maybe at most Ferid could support her in that utopian undertaking, but she was not sure of that. It was true that he had provided her with the necessary books and decided to help her, but that didn't mean he saw it as a positive thing. She honestly had no idea how he felt about that.

She sighed as she went back to thinking about how many pieces were missing to complete what she knew about the vampire she was hopelessly in love with. And the few pieces she had were not the best. She thought back to when she had mentioned the presence of others before her, this certainly intrigued her, but worried her at the same time. In fact, she wondered how many there had been. Once again she would not be able to give herself an answer as she did not know how old Ferid was, although she now understood that he had been through several stages of history, but when were his years as a human?

She shuddered a little at the gulf of time between them, but it wasn't just that. She wasn't sure how old he was biologically speaking, certainly his unequal beauty may have helped, but he was clearly older than she was. Had he always chosen prey younger than himself? Especially how much experience had he had in the past? Perhaps he had already had similar feelings for others?

"Yurika, stop it. You're obsessed."

Kurena wished she could have added a 'not at all' to her sentence, but unfortunately that wouldn't have been realistic. As much as she couldn't bear to see her so caught up in matters that didn't seem all that dramatic to her demon eyes she couldn't claim it was false. Ferid was a vampire who had walked the Earth probably for centuries so he must have had certain experiences, there was no point in denying it.

But she didn't think it was wise to dwell on them for too long, she was only hurting herself. Sometimes she laughed at her overly affectionate remarks to Yurika. She too wasn't doing her job as a demon.

In such a situation it would be all too easy for her to take control of the young girl and do her duty for once. She felt revulsion towards herself for even thinking such a thing. Yurika was not her mistress. She was her friend. Her best friend. The only one she could count on in this new life of hers.

That's why she couldn't bear to see her fretting over futile matters. She simply wished the girl could enjoy those moments of joy and serenity with the vampire. Once again she sensed something strong in the recesses of her consciousness. As if something wanted to escape. Was it some memory of her past life? She could not remember, but she could help Yurika.

"I'm telling you tostop it." The girl tried for a moment to interrupt the flow of thoughts that crowded her mind, but she already knew that it was not easy. When something gets persistently into your head then it's hard to get rid of it completely. "I'm trying." The demon huffed. "Don't lie to me, you know better than anyone that it doesn't hold up with me." "I know, but... Sometimes I can't help thinking about it. I just can't."

Kurena sighed, at the end of the day she could also understand her more than anyone else and for that she couldn't blame her, she couldn't completely go against her because she felt all too well how the girl felt in these cases. But no matter how absurd the situation seemed, for now she was the one with the clearest mind of the two, so it was his duty to bring her back to reality.

"Do you realize that you are making simple assumptions about a past that may not exist? You don't know what happened in the past years of his life and you'll never know unless you ask him." "Sure. Excuse me Ferid would you care to tell me about your past romantic experiences!!!?" "I didn't say that Yurika." "You said..." "It's not his past you need to think about! There must be a reason the past is in the past, don't you think? Because it's something that belonged to another time in life, that is not part of the present life and can never be part of the future. What counts is the present. Especially now that you know nothing about his life, you have to be based on the present. You have to feel how things are now." She paused briefly.

"It doesn't sound like it's going that badly to me." Yurika quivered. "You know what I've been thinking about lately." She whispered weakly. Yes, Kurena knew very well what was bothering her.

"It's certainly not a problem Yurika." "No?! You say it's not a problem. Yes, it is. At least... Think about how he is towards me when he kisses me and all. I can tell when he wants to do something else. I always feel so awkward."

"Ferid has never made any problem with you about it, he doesn't make you do things you don't want to." The girl sighed. "He hasn't made any problem about it yet, but sooner or later the time will come when we'll have to deal with it." "Don't be so dramatic."

"What if Ferid has a problem with it?" She whispered. Kurena wanted to snort. She was worrying about problems that didn't exist. Though she recognized that they would appear soon.

"What? The fact that you've never had anyone before? And what comes with that?" "Well... Yes." "I don't think it's a problem for him." "Maybe he'd like me to be more responsive, more I don't know.... Maybe he thinks I'm not involved enough..." "And instead you don't have a clue how to behave and when he expands too much you panic." Concluded the demon with a smile. Yurika blushed, "I'm afraid you've summed up the situation all too well." "You need to be more relaxed my dear and avoid getting all this unnecessary paranoia. Maybe from my position as a demon I can't give a true judgement on reality and on men's behaviour, also because here the subject we are talking about is a vampire, but you have to give importance to tangible things, not to suppositions. That vampire is really in love with you, if not, we both know that in that bed you would not spend the night sleeping innocently but doing something else and not only that. He's careful about drinking your blood and he's even training you. These are things that wouldn't happen in case he didn't really care about you, alright?" "You have a point." "But what Yurika?" "There would be endless buts to consider, but you're right. I'm going crazy for nothing. I should try to give myself to some novels to distract myself. I don't have the head right now to continue."

Thanks to the courtly atmosphere of this classic of Japanese literature, she was able to fully immerse herself in the period of the court ladies and those loves so far removed from reality. When a man was only allowed to see a woman through screens and, if he was lucky enough, he would catch a glimpse of her hair and a piece of her dress. From here he would fall in love with her and start to take an interest in her by sending her a series of poems to express his feelings, but things were not that simple, the woman had to be able to respond by showing that she had been raised in the best possible way. Only then she would have been able to keep the man interested in her.

Yet there was something about that system that had never fully convinced Yurika. If the man managed to get to where his beloved lived without being discovered, the two of them would have a night of passion, even if the woman was not always sentient. And after only three nights, with a ceremony approved by the father, the two could be considered married, but they lived separately, she in her father's house and he could only visit her at night, and at each dawn he had to leave. Sometimes it was some time before the man went to see his beloved because he had other women to visit. And now Yurika could clearly feel the pain and frustration of waiting for the man she loved and the love pains of these young women who had fallen for the beauty of the same man.

"How deep will be

the love you say you feel

and is it possible

to suffer for someone

who you have not yet met?"

A shiver ran through the girl's body as the vampire read directly from the text in his hands the poem written by the lady, she had not heard him coming.

He gave her a light kiss on the neck and then sat down next to her on the small sofa. "You've taken to Genji's story I see, are you also fascinated by the famous shining prince?" "I mean... I don't know if I'd like to share it with all the other lovers..." "Mmm. Wise observation." Yurika looked at him him.

"I'd rather have exclusivity." "Does that apply to me too my dear?" The girl laughed. "Yes." She lowered her head. "And for you?" She whispered in a low voice. The vampire stroked her face with cold fingers.

"You are my Murasaki, but for me, only you exist. No one else will be able to bewitch me as you do, my little lamb." She thought back to the words she had exchanged with Kurena earlier, it was true, she tended to worry too much, but Ferid was honest with her.

How could he claim such a thing? Because he felt it. He felt that those words were sincere. She could still use it to find out more about her mysterious vampire.

"Did you also live in this era?" Ferid watched the girl curiously, almost surprised that she was asking him a question, but what was she getting at? "In that era let's just say I already delighted in spending my days on this earth." "In Japan?" "I'm afraid not." "Oh." Said Yurika surprised. She thought back to the composers. "You've been to several places then." She said more to herself than to him. "Spending more than a thousand years in the same place gets a little boring for us, although it can be fascinating to watch the devastating changes a place undergoes, especially thanks to generous human intervention." He chuckled at the last statement. Neither of them considered the human intervention as something generous, but the girl had caught something interesting.

"You said over a thousand years Ferid, but exactly how many..." "Biologically speaking we are only twelve years apart." Yurika widened her eyes. Here was something that was going to make her situation even better. Not only was she in love with a vampire, a natural enemy for a human being, but that vampire was 33 years old. "You didn't think you were dealing with an old man like me?" Yurika blushed, "A pretty cool old guy though." And she shifted her gaze, becoming redder.

Ferid stared at her. He should have smiled at those words, which had indeed had a certain effect on him. It was the first time Yurika had ever spoken openly about her feelings, or rather about how she saw the vampire.

He felt a tremor in his body, that body he wanted to use to make her understand how important she was to him, that body of his that could make her moan with pleasure. He clenched his hand into a fist, but moved closer to her anyway, heedless of his carnal desires.

The girl soon felt the vampire's passionate lips on hers. She hesitated, then wrapped her arms around the vampire's neck.

Ferid mentally cursed as he felt her hands on his neck, that was not where he would have wanted them. He moved his lips down to her soft neck, he needed to soothe himself somehow.

"Yurika... May I?""Yes" Whispered the girl, noticing the urgency in the vampire's voice.

She quivered, this wasn't simple bloodlust, she knew that. She groaned as she felt the vampire's fangs sink into her skin. Ferid concentrated on the blood, trying to calm his other instincts, but it wasn't easy, not by a long shot.

In the chapter I mentioned "the story of Genji", a masterpiece of the classic Japanese literature, since Yurika and Ferid live in Japan I thought it was better to mention the literature of the place, rather than European literatures, realizing that it could be unknown to someone, so I thought to give you a mini summary of the work, just to have an idea of what Ferid and Yurika were talking about.

The main character is Genji, called Hikaru Genji, that is the shining prince, he has this name because he's beautiful, very good at everything and no woman is able to resist his charm. In the book we talk about his vicissitudes with various mistresses, he has a secret relationship with his father's wife, with a lady older than him and many other stories (there are more than a thousand pages, so there are quite a lot of adventures), but the most important lady, who later becomes his main consort is the Lady of Murasaki. And here the situation is a bit complicated because Genji had seen Murasaki when she was still a child and had kidnapped her in order to take care of her, raising her as his ideal woman. Murasaki then developed feelings for him as well, but it's fair to say that the first time he decided to "do things" with her, the girl wasn't exactly willing, but this also has to be contextualized in the society of the time, where things worked more or less as I tried to explain in the chapter (for the aristocracy of course).

I hope I managed to give you a vague idea of the work. 💖

17/04/2021