---
It was raining that night.
The kind of soft, endless drizzle that blurred the city lights and made everything feel slower — like the world itself had lowered its voice.
Celeste Lorrain sat alone in the back seat of her sleek black car, one leg elegantly crossed over the other, a hand under her chin, unmoving.
Her driver, Elijah, a quiet vampire who'd been with her for nearly seventy years, finally asked, "Where to, Miss Lorrain?"
She should've said home.
Instead, her lips parted before her mind had time to censor it.
"…Do you know where the editorial interns live?"
Elijah blinked in the rearview mirror. "I… can find out."
Celeste didn't answer. She just stared out the window, her reflection pale and distant in the glass.
---
Twenty minutes later, the car pulled into a quiet residential street lined with modest flats and dim yellow lamps. Rain tapped gently against the windows.
"There," Elijah said quietly, nodding toward a building with peeling green paint. "Arata Miki. Third floor, far left unit."
Celeste looked up at the flickering light on the third floor.
A thin curtain moved.
The balcony door was slightly ajar.
She knew she shouldn't be there.
She wasn't some lost teenage vampire, drunk on obsession. She had ruled boardrooms, devoured emperors, seduced kings. She was supposed to be above this.
And yet…
She pressed a palm to the glass.
"…She's reading," Celeste said softly.
"How do you know?"
"I can feel it."
Elijah stayed silent. He knew better than to comment.
---
Celeste didn't get out.
She just sat there for a long time.
She imagined what book Miki was holding. Something worn. Probably with notes in the margins. Probably the kind of book that said more in silence than in action.
Just like her.
Celeste let her head rest against the cool glass. Her throat burned. Her fangs ached. Her fingers twitched with the temptation to leap to that balcony, tear the curtain aside, and whisper, "Let me taste you. Just once."
But she didn't.
She wasn't that monster anymore.
…Was she?
---
After almost an hour, she finally murmured, "Take me home."
Elijah turned the wheel without a word.
Celeste didn't look back.
But in that building, behind the rain-fogged window, Miki blinked, sitting with her book untouched in her lap.
And for some reason, she couldn't shake the feeling that someone had just left.