A/N: Happy New Year, re-uploading the edited chapters. They are...slightly shorter. :p enjoy my imagination in Matsuri Hino-sensei's world~! :3

Chapter 1: The Road Less Travelled

Splotches of bright color were splattered across the morning sky, creating the daily phenomenon that was the sunrise. Lovers cooed in each other's ears, bathed in the morning's glory while along the bay walk, gulls screeched and joggers' feet pounded the ground caught up in their daily routine for the morning.

The world was just waking from its slumber. It was a violent and rude waking every day to the sound of the honking of cars as they work through rush hour traffic. Monday mornings at nine a.m. were especially abhorent. For one person though, this had been the day she's been waiting for. For Toya Rima, this was the day when she would finally make the first move and initiate a plan that had been lying in wait for over a year.

Leaning with her elbows on one of the wooden poles connected to the pier, Rima narrowed her eyes at the sun's growing gleam. She reached down into her suit pocket and tried to fish out her sunglasses. The pocket was deep and mishapen so it took her more then a few seconds to recover them. She put them on.

"Darling, doesn't the sunrise look so beautiful?"

Ten meters away, Rima picked up on a female's soft sigh that spoke of infatuation. She rolled her eyes and flung a piece of blonde hair from her eyes, annoyed that her bangs had grown so long without her knowing it. Then she heard the man's reply...and shuddered. The woman's responding giggles sounded as loud as if Rima had been standing right beside her...which sadly left nothing to the imagination. She wasn't a mind reader but she could easily tell what that woman was thinking without being one.

'Humans...'

She thought with a shake of her head. What was so special about a sunrise anyways? It wasn't a novelty or anything.

This coming from a being who has watched these kinds of things for so many years. How many years? The number escaped her and she deemed it unworthy to bother even trying to remember. In human years though she was a mere sixteen. It was just a sunrise, just a hug, just an event that occurred once every hundred years...But her mind flitted back to the unspoken question of her age.

Surely she has already gone through more than that couple will ever know. Rima turned away from the sun's glare, too weary from facing it just to escape the lovers' continual chattering. . She awkwardly stood there, facing the streets where more and more people were starting to gather. She caught sight of a bench nearby and dropped down there. Moving towards it, She flipped up the collar of her shirt to cover the exposed skin of the back of her neck. Contrary to the popular belief that vampires burn to death in the daylight, they merely burned. And nor did they exactly shimmer like there were diamonds and crystals implanted in their skin while under the sun (though she wouldn't put it past more eccentric personalities).

Yet her mind eventually drifted off to darker matters, a dismal expression overcoming shades of crimson. There was a sinister recollection burned forever in her subconscious that would force her to do what she was about to do….a memory that never failed to break her heart…..

It had resurfaced.

One year ago…

Broken glass crunched beneath her feet, the sound abnormally loud in the silent house that was her home. A fifteen year old girl raced into the house, through a doorway that had been obliterated. Large amounts of adrenaline pumped into her cold blood, lethal dosages that would have overwhelmed every system in a regular human's body.

But she was not human.

The girl violently pushed past over-turned chairs and trampled frames, reminders of the glass cabinets that her mother loved so much. She could smell the blood now. So much blood. The familiar scent that had caught her attention did no good in calming her. It just made her more desperate to get to where the source of the blood was.

"Mom?" She stumbled into the den. And then her chest heaved upwards. And her heart jerked to an unprecedented stop. Time froze, her eyes focusing on one momentous figure that lay amongst the chaos.

"MOM!"

She wanted to shriek, to scream and let out the sudden blow of grief and disbelief that had struck so heavily her heart with the weight of her crashing universe. But she couldn't.

Her voice would not let her. A pathetic gasp was what had escaped before her jaw had involuntarily closed shut.

She staggered forward, her heart sputtering to a start, its beat unsteady and as weak as she felt. Her mother, ripped and bloody, was lying in a puddle of liquid tinted a dark cherry by the fading light. The older woman coughed, that same mysterious liquid in patchy sprinkles coating her mouth. Her rose petal lips glistened, wet with her own blood.

The girl's heart clenched painfully when gaunt eyes slowly turned up to face her. Eyes with passion and tenderness sparkled at the sight of her pale-faced daughter. Hana tried to move her twisted limbs in an effort to sit up. But she couldn't. She was too weak.

Over and over in the daughter's mind, the same question kept repeating themselves.

Who could've...?

To an aristocrat. Someone who was now injured nearly beyond recognition.

"... Rima..."

Hana coughed again, her breaths becoming cruder and shallower. It took a visible exertion for her not to choke. The resulting gasps were terrible and sent a streak of horror through the girl. She slumped down onto her knees, vehemently ignoring how the blood started to soak into her white party dress. She reached her hands out to her mother's face. Sobs wrestled themselves from out of her throat, pitiable sounds that couldn't express the sudden sense of fear, an emotion she had never truly felt before, that had erupted within her very core.

"What happened?" She whispered under her breath, trying to restrain her emotions but failing to do so completely.

Her mother's face;

It would haunt her for an eternity.

"Who did this to you?" continued the girl.

Taking a closer look, Rima's eyes widened substantially with dread. Multiple shivers relentlessly began to run down her back, raising the delicate hairs at the back of her neck.

"Why...?" Her voice croaked, an ugly sound that hurt her ears.

"Why aren't you healing?"

Her mother grimaced and the lines on her forehead creased with the tension of staying conscious.

"I can't..." She stammered uselessly, trying to caress her daughter's face. But her hand fell short, flopping down to her side like a piece of rubber as the little strength that she had gave out.

'What do you mean you can't?'

"Heal already. Why not?" whispered the girl again.

Aristocrats' injuries could heal at almost 10 times as fast as humans. But right before her eyes, Rima was finding this fundamental fact being sorely contradicted.

"I've gone too far to regenerate..."

And then, through this nightmare, a realization dawned upon the daughter.

Her mother couldn't heal herself.

Her wounds would not close and her body wouldn't be able to recover from the amount of blood that she had lost. The slippery blood was painting the den floor a sickening red and there was nothing she could do.

"You won't make it." The sound of finality rang in her voice and the girl was surprised how clearly she could say it despite what it insinuated.

She was going to lose her mother.

She looked for her mother's hand in an act of desperation and clutched it to her chest, squeezing it tightly; she was not about to let go of her lifeline.

"Mom...Mom...Mom..." She kept repeating, on the brink of breaking down. Her only family, gone...

No, it was not just her.. There was another...

Her heart stopped for a second time.

Tha-dump…..Tha…dump…Tha…dump…

Miyako.

Rima's heart started to race erratically. A pushed aside picture filled her mind. It was of her golden-haired and green-eyed sister.

Miyako.

The human who had been waving good-bye and wishing her horrible time at the party.

"Mom, where's Miyako?"

No reply.

"Where did she go? Mom, stay awake!"

"Did she escape? Mom? MOM!"

Her voice grew more and more raspy as she called out to her mother who was slowly ebbing away. Her once vibrant blue eyes dulling into bleak, opaque abysses of anguish.

"... Miyako..." Her mother wheezed out, eyes shifting from side to side inside their hallowed sockets.

"Kuran..."

Rima took a sharp breath and couldn't believe her ears. Kuran?

"K-Kuran-sama...took her..." The mother had started crying, another sight that wretched at her eldest daughter's heart. "Why..."

That couldn't be true. It couldn't be the Kurans. The purebloods wouldn't do this to her mother. Haruka-sama, Juri-sama, Kaname-sama...they wouldn't do this to her mother. They had been friends, allies in the pacifist movement. But...

She had said 'Kuran-sama'.

'Kuran-sama'.

Kuran-sama, as in, the other head of the family who she had never met.

Rido-sama.

No, why would he?

Pearling at the corners of her eyes, Rima felt the tears begin to fall down her powdered cheeks. She hated herself for this, for crying when her mother needed her to stay strong. It seemed to be like an unconscious betrayal, an unknown knowing on her part that her mother wouldn't survive. She wanted to tell her it was okay. She wanted to smile and ask when her mother would stop joking and heal. But she could hear her heartbeat fade away with each thudding beat...and that's when it triggered the torrent.

The tears started to fall, one by one, dropping on her mother's blood-stained face. It left fresh wet trails across the dried blood, only causing her to shed more.

"You can't leave us, Mom! What about Kuran-sama? What about Miyako? Mom, please. Stay with us."

The girl couldn't help but plead feebly, her voice cracking and dropping almost to a silent murmur as she tried to keep her mother away from the grips of Death.

"Mom….don't do this to me!"

Fifteen years old and without her mother. It couldn't be happening to her. This kind of thing happens to other families but not hers. Never hers.

The scene became even blurrier as the girl tried to wipe away the tears with her sleeve, blinded by her anguish. Her hands, she realized, were covered in her blood, her mother's blood dripping off the tips of her fingers.

Bile rose up in her throat but she fought it back.

It was her final moments….her final moments. The words echoed in her mind hollowly, leaving despair and discordance behind.

But they turned into different sounds…

"Miss? Miss?"

Awaking from her dark thoughts, Rima opened her eyes. Before her stood a person she had never met before. She appreciated him blocking what sun could reach her.

"Who are you?" was what she wanted to ask but what came out of her mouth was an indignant, "What?"

The man, taken back by Rima's curt tone, cleared his throat before speaking.

"S-Sorry to disturb you, but I was just passing by and…"

Here, he pulled out a card from his pocket and handed it over. It was barely spared a glance.

"I'm actually a models' scout and I was wondering whether you've given any thought into launching a modeling career?"

"I'm sorry..." Kai apologized while standing up, her motions as fluid and smooth as water. "I…I already have something that I have been planning to do."

"Is that a definite no?" The scout called out as Kai bowed her head politely and took her leave.

From what the models' scout could tell, it seemed as if she had set her sights on a outsized cruise ship that was harboured in the distance.

If Ichijo had known that this would've happened, he would have stayed in bed this morning. That thought ran through his mind the minute he had stepped out of his Mercedes Benz Roadster. He had lovingly tapped the passenger seat before setting foot in the harbour, remembering the three weeks of careful contemplation that had went into deciding on 'Palladium Silver'.

And then, he was mauled.

By who?

Normally, fan girls. Not a volley of desperate-looking men. The second between his initial surprise and recognition of the men as vampire guards consisted of him fretting about how he was going to have to turn them all down.

Sighing, he had moved to wave them off but then began to realize that this set of guards were not his own but of another. That of his younger, quieter friend. It was actually that friend's cruise ship technically that he had been about to board.

'What did you do now, Shiki?' Ichijo thought as the guards hurriedly rushed to inform him about their charge's disappearance. Disconcerted by their panicked expressions, he listened to their plights, noting that each had lost a little of his composure. Ichijo narrowed his green eyes at the cruise ship up ahead and tried to imagine what his friend was doing at this very moment. Obviously he had no idea that Ichijo had to deal with the consequences. The lithe blonde combed a hand through his hair and sighed. Whatever it was that had caused this distressing disappearance, he hoped Shiki would come back soon before his ears fell off.

Itchy…

A lone figure weaved through the many boxes and pieces of luggage that were being carried onto a nearby ship by cargo workers. Muscle-flexing workers glanced at him and paid no mind.

Just another runt. They thought, taking note of his slim figure and too lean arms. This boy won't last long in this business...

If only they knew that just as he was, he could lift five times the amount they could. They would have been stunned.

Shiki saw their quizzical looks and carefully adjusted the red wig that covered his disarray of hazelnut hair.

No one should be able to recognize him.

He fondly patted the duffel bag that was hanging off his shoulder. It contained the clothes he had left his family's mansion in. By now, they were crumpled and had wrinkles everywhere but he didn't care. It wasn't his job to care about small details like that. That was the maids' job.

Irritated by a sudden itch, Shiki scratched his ear and frowned, just enough to turn his innocently handsome features sullen.

"Who's talking about me?" He asked no one in particular.

He looked around as he continued to walk, constantly checking behind him to see if any of the guards were following him. Satisfied when he saw there were none, he turned…and nearly fell over a girl.

The girl, who was sitting and leaning against a pile of boxes, did not move a muscle and bore no reaction when Shiki nimbly sidestepped her. Shiki glared, slightly peeved, only to find that she was already sending him a similar look with equal severity. They stared at each other in silence, so intensely that it soon became a staring contest.

Finally Shiki decided to give in and speak up. Noting her suit, he assumed she was an ill-hired worker. "Why aren't you carrying something?"

She showed a flash of vexation, immediately realizing that this odd person presumed she was hired help. That had been her intention but though she was dressed the part, she had no intention helping out. Instead, she narrowed her eyes in indignation and said, "I don't want to."

For a second, Shiki admired the defiance in the girl's eyes.

And a second later, it dawned on Shiki that he was looking down upon a vampire much like himself.

Another aristocrat? He wondered.

No lower-class vampire would have responded that way to him.

Does she know who I am?

"Do you know me?"

"No."

He could take a hint. Even if she knew who he was, it looked like she could care less. Lights danced in her too blue eyes and he marvelled at them for a split second before clearing his throat. Shiki noticed that she was eying his hair with a peculiar look and then remembered his disguise. It occured to him that he had just asked such a stupid question.

Of course she doesn't recognize me...I'm wearing a disguise...

"You don't even work here." Shiki stated, trying to cover up for his blunder. Shamelessly, with the gall of a man possessing no experience with girls, he chose to look her up and down to study her physique. Puberty was still a mere concept for him, and even now, Shiki found no interest in her body.

"I'm wearing a suit, aren't I?" She retorted evenly. Her tone amused him. No one outside his circle of friends had been so curt.

But then, if she wasn't here to work, she must have an ulterior motive.

Without warning, the girl stood up and brushed off dust from her thighs. Whilst doing so, she held his gaze and then said the most unusual thing.

"I'll give you strawberry Pocky if you pretend you didn't see me."

Her voice was cool, not at all nervous. This was considering he had the suspiscion that he had just caught her trying to sneak onto the ship. He found her rather confident and indulgent, as if bribing him was the simplest and kindest thing in the world to do.

Shiki stared at the girl for the longest moment. What she was trying to get at? Was she seriously trying to bribe him? He toyed with the idea and noted significant features that would help him identify her in the future. This would be useful when the security guards on board caught her. He'd come up with some credible story about having thought she was someone's maid and no one would be the wiser to blame him. He'd get off scot-free…...

After all, this was his family's cruise ship.

"So…" The young lady coughed politely though he could tell that she was getting impatient. She had no idea what had been running through the young master's mind. She was a short girl…though he was surely biased due to the fact that he was taller than most girls, so she could have been pretty tall if he disregarded his own height.

Concentrate Shiki… He reminded himself, already feeling himself get distracted.

He supposed that she had long hair. It was the colour of a flaxen gold and was pulled up into two messy pigtails at the sides of her head. Her face was pointed yet defined cheeks dusted with the slightest tint of rose caught his eye. Her clothes were unremarkable, just a dusty jumpsuit. He looked back to her face and saw that she was getting quite annoyed. He felt the corner of his mouth twitch.

He thought over this bizarre situation that he was in and wondered if he actually was going to give an answer. Pros and Cons...

The pro was that she was bribing him with pocky. Strawberry pocky, mind you.

The con was... What was the con again? Whatever... he had a foolproof plan anyways if any trouble arose.

Now back to thoughts of pocky. Shiki would've been surprised that she was bribing him with pocky out of all of the things in the world...if he didn't know that ever since he had debuted as a teen model, his entire profile had been posted on his company's webpage, including his everlasting love for the strawberry snack. Every now and then, Shiki cursed the internet in his free time.

I never wanted the job anyways…

Secretly, Shiki blamed his mother who had guilt-tripped him into going into the entertainment business because of her own inspirational career.

But back to the answer. The Pros won...obviously.

Shiki nodded. "Ok then."

The girl graced him with the smallest illusion of a smile and rummaged in her jacket pocket for a pink pack of the snack. She threw it to him and he easily caught it as he watched her turn around and walk towards the cargo hold.

Holding the pack in his hand without looking at it, Shiki decided to ask her one last time. Just for the heck of it.

"Are you sure you don't recognize me?"

The girl looked back and he saw that same amused smile flutter across her lips.

"No."

She mouthed the words before quickly disappearing from his view. Shiki felt a strange urge to follow her but banished it from his mind. What would others think if he suddenly went chasing after an unknown girl? She wasn't his problem anymore anyways. The man turned around and started walking off in the opposite direction, pulling off pieces of his carefully-planned disguise. The red wig and the flashy 'Baltimore Orioles' cap came off first and then the phony contacts that hid the shade of blue that he had inherited from his father. He glanced down at his clothes and sighed, he hadn't taken into account that he had no place to change into his formal clothes. Previously, he had just changed in the privacy of the family's spacious limousine. Shiki resigned himself to bearing with and wearing his current clothes selection up onto the cruise ship. Not that he cared really. It was just that his mother would wonder what happened to the three thousand dollar suit they had left in from the mansion. He felt like going up to his room straightaway right now and enjoy the spoils of his newly found pack of pocky as he made his way around the ship and towards the ramp that led to the entrance. It was a shame that his mother did not share his affinity for it but that only meant more for him. He was one greedy vampire.

Thinking of all the pocky he had ordered and had, on the sly, stowed away in his private rooms, Shiki soon grew hungry and began to lick his lips impatiently as he eyed all the people who were innocently walking around him. In the process of pulling off a fake Handlebar moustache, his mind seemed to wander again and sinister temptations took advantage. These were humans, with warm, delicious blood flowing through their veins. One missing person wouldn't cause an uproar, would it? Just one missing…

"SHIKIIIIII!"

Shiki was rudely jerked out of his thoughts at the sound of his name being called so loudly and he promptly turned his head towards its source. Unable to pull up his lips into a smile, he settled on displaying a pout to greet his companion.

"What took you so long?" Shiki questioned naively, re-adjusting the grip of his duffel bag.

Panting, Ichijo took a few moments before answering with his aggravated, yet nevertheless trademark, dazzling grin.

"Where have you been? I've been all over this place looking for you and I find you here! At the back of the ship!"

"I wanted to walk." Shiki stated calmly as if he were pointing out to his friend the most obvious thing on Earth.

Sighing for the fiftieth time today, Ichijo shook his head and said, "And you couldn't have been bothered telling anyone that?"

Shiki simply shrugged. "It didn't really matter. I wanted to see if my disguise would work."

Then he paused, thoughtful.

"But I guess it wasn't a good idea now that I think about it…"

Ichijo smiled gently at Shiki. This was one of the rare occasions where he would show a glimpse of having a concern for something that wasn't directly related to him…...

That is, that was Ichijo's interpretation until Shiki spoke his next words.

"You still found me….so next time, I'll just make a better disguise and walk further." Shiki concluded firmly.

Ichijo slapped his forehead. How Shiki. This was not one of those rare occasions after all.

"Some people could get in trouble if you do this again." Ichijo tried to make an impression on him, but Shiki's blank face told him that those words had no impact. He knew that Shiki was not intentionally trying to cause harm but he just couldn't help thinking about those poor guards.

So, for now, he gave up, and started to push Shiki in one direction.

"Come on….let's go back before heads start to roll."

"Whose heads?" Shiki asked innocently, allowing himself to get pushed.

Ichijo smiled good-naturedly at this.

"Oh there's lots of people's heads. Remember Takashi whose always picking his nose in front of the hallway mirror at the mansion? Oh, and Hanzo, that bald guy who tripped..." Ichijo's list went on and Shiki, the faithful listener, nodded his head in response to each name, wondering if he had actually met all of those people.

Meanwhile, the pocky girl was talking to herself, irritated by their meeting.

"Hmph. 'Okay.' he says…" Rima muttered quietly to herself, casually walking up the steel walkway and into the cargo hold. The men who were working along the walkways childishly whistled and stared. She paid no mind; their presence was irrelevant to her. Her full concentration was on completing what she had set out to do and nobody was going to distract her.

Hours later, Shiki is sitting on board the second floor of the ship, dressed in a proper coat and the whole bit.

The christening of the Silver Whisper had gone off without a hitch, and a celebration that could have rivaled New Year's Eve. Confetti and streamers flew through the air onto a crowd of people cheering on the docks. Shiki yawned and rubbed one eye. This was boring. He leaned over the side railing and looked down to where his mother stood with a bottle of wine in her hand. He observed as she smashed one of their best wine bottles, vintage Chateau Lafite, against the side of the ship, its purpose to commemorate the maiden voyage of the Silver Whisper. However, he knew that It wasn't that his mother had wanted to use that particular bottle (it was her favorite) but the unfortunate truth was that because things had been running late, she had been forced to use that one bottle.

Nevertheless, there she was, his wonderful superstar actress of a mother, smiling as if everything was so perfect. He has never understood her need to please others but to each his own. There was no way he would ever try that hard to others. He found it distasteful that she had told him that this lack of concern was shared with his father. No matter how much he protested though, he could not disregard the fact that Rido and he shared the same blood.

"All's the more to hate." Shiki murmured cruelly, folding his hands together, staring aimlessly at the waves that crashed against the ship's sides. Shiki yawned again and felt the ship start to tread water. Farewells and other incoherent sayings pierce the air. Wondering who they were meant for, the young man then noticed a rather peculiar scene that was occurring right on the deck below.

"What?" There is a glimpse of blonde hair fluttering in the breeze. The girl too was leaning over the railing; shadows hid defining feature but pink-stained lips were moving as a silent prayer of sorts was recited. And because he had been absorbed in trying to read her lips, Shiki was surprised when she suddenly flung her hand out and released a torrent of silver petals into the wind. They flew to the clutches of the watery depths below, but what for?

The girl withdrew her hand and bowed her head respectfully...and then she looked up.

"Shiki!"

Looking behind him, Shiki saw Ichijo and a group of people standing a little ways off.

"Come over here!" Ichijo called again.

Shiki, hardly torn between the decision to move or stay put, glanced back down to the deck below and heaved a heavy sigh.

She was gone.

He dismissed her as a distraction and joined the group. Shiki realized that all of them, except for Ichijo who he has known since childhood, were fairly new acquaintances who he had only met two to three months ago. He had barely expected himself to befriend them but thanks to Ichijo, they had forged a rather friendly relationship with each other.

"What were you looking at?" A handsome man with blond wavy hair asked.

Shiki, the forgetful person that he was, stared at the other man for a few seconds. He was trying to attach a name to that face because only God knows how many blond-haired, blue-eyed models he's seen.

Ahh…Aido...

"Aido...Hana?"

The man frowned. "Hanabusa! Not just Hana. I'm no girl!"

Whatever. Another person spoke up before Shiki could reply.

"Quiet as ever, aren't you, Shiki?" Another blond, this time a female, interjected.

This is...?

Shiki delved into his memory once more and unearthed her name quicker than Aido's. Souen Ruka.

"Come on you guys! Is that any way to treat your host?" Ichijo said admonishingly. He winked at Shiki and started on a topic that came completely out of nowhere. Rakugo.

"Shiki. "

Shiki turned and spotted a feral-looking man staring back at him. Already searching for a name, Shiki remained silent. Brown hair and golden eyes. Brown and gold….hmmm….

"Kain Akatsuki. The last time we met…I think it was a few months ago."

This man had a keen eye. Kain offered out his hand and Shiki took it, giving a short shake.

Ichijo, noted this exchange from the corner of his eye and was joyous. He exclaimed, "That's right! We're all friends here! No need for honorifics! Right, Aido, Ruka?"

The two grumbled but nodded their heads despite the fact that they were glaring daggers at each other.

"What a handful those two are…" Shiki heard Kain say as he shook his head in disbelief. Shiki smiled inwardly and kept a poker face on as he watched Ruka and Aido argue about something that Ichijo had accidentally mentioned.

"How did you guys enjoy Paris anyways?" Ichijo asked to no one in particular, successfully distracting Aido and Ruka from their bickering.

"Let's just say Paris was more attractive when you didn't actually have to be there." Kain gave a short laugh.

"But the sweets were delicious! And-" Aido argued, loud and overexcited as he defended the city.

Ruka snorted in a very unlady-like manner and haughtily stated, "You just liked the fact that all of the human girls gave you everything for free..."

Aido flushed a bright red and averted his gaze.

"T-That's not true!"

"Really, cousin?" Kain eyed him doubtfully, a smile in his words.

Looking between the combined interrogation forces of Ruka and his cousin, Aido blew up and started to walk away, shouting curses at them.

"Shut up you two! Leave me alone already!"

Ruka grinned maliciously and stalked after him, with Kain as the mediator sighing after them to prevent trouble.

Ichijo did nothing but saw now that Shiki was frowning. Ichijo anticipated a troubling question and waited patiently.

Was there something wrong with his family situation? Some one bullying him? Or maybe...girl problems? Ichijo began to secretly fret over the unspoken question and felt his palms sweat...

"Why are you all blond?"

Ichijo nearly fell over.

"Hmmmm, I wonder about that…" Ichijo replied.