Note: I have nothing to do with Here is Greenwood and its characters except to be a fan who enjoys the OVAs a lot. This story is my extrapolation of the storylines as seen in the OVAs. I apologize if this story doesn't quite fit in with the manga.
Kazuya stared up at the night sky.
It was a cold, crisp night, and the air flowing into the room through his open window was enough to make Kazuya huddle deeper into the blankets he'd wrapped around his shoulders. Still, he couldn't bring himself to lie back and try to sleep.
The previous night had been a disaster. He'd gone to bed happy and stuffed with the celebratory meal Sumire had prepared for them. He'd also been buoyed by the hope that his brother had offered: since the break in his leg bone had been a simple break, there was a possibility that, depending on how much progress he'd made in healing, he might possibly get a lighter cast to replace the huge plaster one that encased his leg.
He'd gone to bed happy and ready to repeat the same dream he'd been dreaming for a little over a week.
However, the dream hadn't returned. Instead, he'd gone through one of the most terrifying nightmares he'd ever had, surpassing by far his fears of falling into Shinobu-sempai's sister again.
He, Shun, and a bunch of the other residents of Greenwood were crowding against a wall, hiding--more or less--behind Mitsuru and Shinbou-sempai. All of them were watching a strange conflict taking place about ten yards away. And somehow, each and every one of them recognized that their lives rested on the outcome of the battle.
One of the combatants was the young man he'd seen in his dreams. His red-brown hair shone in the light of the full moon that gazed impassively down upon them. His skin, perhaps because of the quality of the light, seemed pale and wan. As he watched, Kazuya saw a line of blood trail down from the boy's temple.
The other combatant was something entirely appropriate to a nightmare since it was something out of a nightmare. The figure hardly looked human, but it had once been human. Tatters of cloth of some sort hung in tatters around its body. Skeletal hands raked the air as it swung at the boy. What skin it still possessed had drawn tightly against the bones, as though every last bit of flesh and muscle had been removed. It had no ears or nose, but there was a gaping hole in the middle of its face where a nose might once have sat. Its eye sockets were empty save for a odd, red glow that sent chills down Kazuya's spine each time he glimpsed it.
Kazuya watched in horror as the mummy lurched forward and, with surprising speed, caught its opponent in its arms and began squeezing. The boy squirmed and struggled with increasing desperation. The mummy had turned its fearsome gaze on them, and Kazuya had felt his heart stop. Then, there was a terrible cracking sound, and the boy suddenly went limp.
"No!"
Kazuya had awakened himself from the dream, driven from sleep by the terror of it all. The only question that had remained with him was whether it had been seeing the mummy turning to look at them, or watching the boy who'd been fighting for them all crushed to death.
He was certain the boy had been trying to protect them. He wasn't sure why, but he had no doubt that was the case. He had no reason to, but he couldn't help but think of the boy as a friend. After all, he'd appeared in his dream for several nights in a row, and there'd never been anything menacing or dangerous or threatening about him. The boy had always been apologizing to him for something, and there had been such sadness and regret in his voice that Kazuya had felt sorry for him. He only wished he could understand what the boy was apologizing for so he could forgive him.
After that nightmare, Kazuya had difficulty falling back to sleep. Finally, he'd ended up getting up from bed and watching television until sunrise. As much as he tried to avoid thinking about the nightmare, he couldn't help but wonder if he'd had it because he was at home now instead of at Greenwood, and that his previous dream--which had always taken place in his room at Greenwood--would no longer come to him because he was at home instead of at school.
But if that was the case, something whispered in his mind, was it really a dream? What if it was real? Maybe the boy couldn't come to him because he wasn't at Greenwood?
His thoughts had run in cycles until nearly sunrise, when Sumire had awakened and come out to prepare breakfast. She had been surprised to see him awake before her, but they'd had some time to talk before his brother awoke.
That talk had probably been the best part of the day, a welcome distraction from his private thoughts and really the only good thing to happen all day long. He and Kazuhiro had gone to see his physician about his leg. The news he'd received hadn't been heartening.
"I don't know what's wrong, Kazuya," his doctor had said, "but for some reason you aren't healing as quickly as you should be. After all, you were getting more than enough exercise running on the track team, and your physical condition hasn't deteriorated that quickly. Someone in your condition and with your lifestyle should be well on the way to a full recovery, but...I'm afraid you'll need to keep that cast on for a while longer."
Kazuya hadn't understood it either. He was normally a fast healer. True, his ulcer had kept him out of school for a month, but all his other injuries, including the ones he'd received at Tezuka Nagisa's hands, healed in relatively short spans of time. And it was also true that he was in pretty good shape overall, which would certainly have contributed to the speed of his recovery. So why was he making such slow forward progress?
He'd fallen asleep that afternoon--after being awake since almost midnight he couldn't stop himself--but had, mercifully, not had any dreams whatsoever. When he'd awakened, though, he'd felt somehow empty and guilty, as though he'd forgotten to do something. It was only then that he realized he'd felt the same way the entire day. It wasn't necessarily that he'd forgotten to do something, but that he'd been unable to do it. No, that he'd failed to do it. It was as though he'd broken a very important promise to someone important to him, betraying that person's trust and possibly endangering him as well.
Kazuya still wasn't sure why he considered the person he'd failed as a "him," but it didn't matter. He had failed, and he wished with all his heart that he could have another chance to make things right.
He sighed. He was being ridiculous. Despite the nap he'd taken that afternoon, he was still tired. And if he was ever going to heal, he'd need to sleep as well. If only he could count on avoiding that same nightmare!
Kazuya sighed again and stared out into the night.
"Please," he whispered softly, "I don't know if you're real or just a dream, and I don't care. Please come back to me. Please come and visit me again." Even as he said it, he felt silly and embarrassed. But he suddenly felt better, as though some sort of weight had fallen from him, or as though he'd been trapped in a locked, sealed room and someone had just opened a door or window for him and he was able to breath again.
He shivered as he realized that it was probably that the night wind had picked up that had given him that last sensation. He quickly shut the window and fell back onto his bed. For some reason he no longer feared having nightmares again.
He closed his eyes and soon fell asleep.
* * *
Haru collapsed onto the bed in room 210.
Pains racked his entire body. His vision blurred repeatedly, and he'd begun hallucinating the moment he'd opened his eyes that night.
He'd thought that winter vacation had ended, and that the boys had returned to the dormitory. After descending to the lower floors, he'd seen hordes of young men moving up and down the halls. To his surprise, none of them had even noticed him. He'd even caught one boy around the chest and sunk his fangs into the boy's neck, but the boy had continued talking to his roommate as though there wasn't a vampire tearing into his throat.
At about that time Haru realized that he was delirious and very, very ill.
The food he'd taken from the room hadn't done much for him. It couldn't replace the blood he needed to survive, nor could it satisfy the thirst that had become a part of him ever since he'd become what he was. It was a temporary solution, and a poor one at that.
Now, he'd managed to eat another snack from the rapidly diminishing store of food he'd found in the room. Despite knowing that he had to control himself, his desperation to satisfy his growing thirst with solid food had caused him to eat more than he should have. And again, it had not really done the job except to make him feel like he was making some effort at surviving and remaining sane.
He'd again tested the barrier around the dormitory and found it as impregnable as before. Now, he just wanted to lie there on that familiar bed and let fate bring him what it would. He closed his eyes, trying to ignore the terrible dryness in his throat.
Suddenly a strange sensation washed over him and he started up. He glanced around wildly.
It felt as though some sort of wall had fallen away. It was almost like he was being summoned again, but not quite. It was like someone had opened a locked door and was offering him a chance to get out of the dormitory. Only it couldn't be, right?
Haru staggered to the window and flung it open, ignoring the cold air that rushed past him. He tentatively reached out the window...
...and met no resistance!
Overjoyed, he shut the window and began his transformation into mist. His thirst diminished slightly in that form, probably since he had no body to lust for blood.
He filtered out the window and tried to float towards the train station, where he knew there'd be some people he could drink from. Some strange force, however, held him in place. He struggled to move in any direction he could, but he had been blocked in on all side except two. One option was back towards the dormitory.
The other was in another direction entirely, and since he wasn't about to return to the building he'd just escaped from, he had no choice but to go in the only other way open to him.
To his surprise, he couldn't veer from his path. He floated over streets and houses, stores and office buildings. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't even enter the buildings in search of a security guard he could obtain a temporary respite from.
Finally, though, he could go no further. Something now blocked him in the front, with only the path back to the dormitory available. Haru looked around.
He was over a two-story house. It was relatively small, but it looked like it had at least two or three bedrooms in it. And...there was a familiar presence in the house!
Haru dove down. There was no mistaking it: the boy he'd been drinking from, the boy whose bunk he'd been lying on only a short while ago, the boy who had been his only source of blood for over a week...lived here!
His misty form surged to the house and in through the tiny gaps around a window with such force that the window itself actually rattled from his passage.
* * *
Kazuya started awake.
He didn't know what had jerked him from his peaceful if dreamless sleep. He listened carefully to the silence that pervaded the house, but he heard nothing. And in the darkness, he couldn't see if anything had fallen or shifted to make some noise that had awakened him.
Then he saw the mist that now hid his floor from view. It was a thick, fog-like mist that seemed to glow and shimmer, and surge and flow in some undetectable breeze. Then, as he watched, it drew into itself, gathering and piling into a cloud that thickened as it rose, become a pillar of roiling mist. And then it changed.
Kazuya's eyes widened as the mist transformed into a boy...a boy with red-brown hair. "You!" he gasped. "You're a...you're a vampire!"
The boy started towards him, then suddenly toppled to the floor. One hand reached up and clutched at Kazuya's bed, and the boy managed to lift his head up high enough that Kazuya could see his face.
The boy's face was pale and drawn, and he seemed to be shaking fiercely. Tears ran down his cheeks.
"I'm sorry," the boy said, his voice hoarse and weak, "but please, I need your blood..."
Kazuya didn't even hesitate. He reached down and pulled the boy up, helping him to sit down on the bed's edge. Then, never taking his eyes from the boy's face, he slowly fell back onto his pillow. He reached up with his right hand and drew back the collar of his pajamas. Then, still without breaking eye contact, he tilted his head to the side, further exposing his throat.
The boy seemed dazed and confused for a moment, then he slowly leaned down over him.
A part of Kazuya shouted that it was the wrong side, that he should have bared the left side of his throat instead of his right.
Another part of him screamed that what he was doing was crazy. Why in the world was he practically begging a vampire to drink his blood?
A third part drowned out the other two, telling him that he was doing the right thing. This boy, who had become a sort of friend through his dreams about him, needed his help and badly. And he wasn't about to withhold something he could give.
The boy was now practically lying atop him, his body a gentle presence above him. Kazuya felt moisture drip down on his throat as the boy leaned closer. Whatever it was felt too thin to be saliva, and he knew that the boy was still crying.
"I'm sorry," the boy whispered in his ear, his voice wretched and filled with pain.
"It's okay," Kazuya whispered back.
He felt the boy gently kissing his throat and he closed his eyes. A moment later, they flew open again. His arms snapped up and he gripped the boy's shoulders as pain erupted in his neck. It passed almost immediately, however, and instead he found himself wrapping his arms around the boy and drawing him closer.
What was happening...felt familiar. Was this what he couldn't remember in his dreams? That he had surrendered himself to a vampire and allowed him to drink his blood repeatedly? If so, he didn't understand why he should forget. There wasn't anything wrong about it. It felt right to be doing this. It was even sort of enjoyable.
The feeling that had nagged at him all day--that he'd failed to do something vitally important for someone--had passed away. This was what he hadn't done the day before. This was the person whom he had failed...but not anymore.
Kazuya felt light-headed and dizzy, but he ignored the sensations. He knew why he felt that way, but he wasn't about to stop the boy from drinking all he needed to drink.
Kazuya's eyes grew heavy. Threads of darkness pressed in on him from all sides. Finally, unable to keep them open any longer, he let them slide shut.
"It's okay," he whispered again. Then he knew no more.
* * *
Haru knew the moment the boy beneath him lost consciousness. The hands that had held him, that had drawn him closer, fell away to either side. He tried to tear away, but the thirst that he'd been fighting for so long was too strong to resist any more. It wouldn't be denied any longer.
He became desperate. He'd already taken too much from the boy as it was, what with taking some blood from him each night except the last. Now, he'd taken enough to send the boy into a swoon. He continued to fight his thirst.
Fortunately, as the thirst quenched itself, its hold over him weakened. Finally, he was able to slip his fangs free from the boy's throat. He licked lightly at the lightly seeping wounds on the boy's neck and they healed almost instantly.
Haru sat up, wiping at the tears that still dampened his cheeks. He gazed down at the boy who had offered himself up to him and felt his eyes watering.
"Why?" he demanded, his voice a ragged whisper. "Why didn't I see this? I could have spared us both this if only I'd been paying more attention!"
Crying softly, he drew the boy's blankets up over him, hopefully protecting his already weakened system from any illnesses the chill in the air might bring. Then, he sank down into the chair by the desk. He crossed his arms on the desk, buried his face in his arms, and wept.
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