Hisaki was driving back to the apartment when she received the call from the property management.
“Miss Kurose, it looks like the floor-to-ceiling window in your apartment… is broken.
“The whole pane of glass is gone from the outside. Would you like to come back and take a look?”
Hisaki pressed the accelerator all the way to the floor.
The moment she pushed open the front door, her hand paused on the doorknob for a second.
Then she saw the living room… shattered glass covering the floor…
The floor-to-ceiling window was completely gone, and the fierce wind from the 23rd floor high altitude poured in through the gap, blowing the curtains like two out-of-control flags.
The sofa was still in its place, but it was empty.
The little one who had been curled up in her arms this morning, refusing to get out of bed, clutching her collar and refusing to let go, making muffled protests—she was gone.
Hisaki’s body swayed.
A hand reached out from behind and steadily supported her shoulder.
“Sis!”
Kurose Qi stepped into the entryway from behind Hisaki…
She was slightly shorter than Hisaki, also with long black hair, and her pupils were the same dark red as Hisaki’s, but a lighter shade…
“Is it really necessary, Sis?
“To forge a soul bone ring from the third rib in your own chest for a human girl’s birthday?”
Qi’s voice was low, but every word carried barely contained fury.
“Just to be together with her forever, hearts bound as one? Is it worth it?”
Hisaki didn’t answer.
She pulled free from Qi’s support and walked toward the living room, stepping over the broken glass.
The shards crunched and cracked under her feet, some ground into powder, but she never once looked down.
“For this, you even offended Father and Mother.”
Qi followed behind her, her tone shifting from anger to something close to pleading.
“Do you know what the soul bone means?”
“It’s something a vampire noble can forge only once in a lifetime!”
“When you pulled out your third rib, did you know what you were doing?”
Hisaki stopped in front of the sofa.
The sofa was empty.
She reached out and touched the cushion… cold.
Shiro had been gone for a long time.
Impossible.
Shiro wouldn’t run.
She promised.
She said, “Okay, I’ll be good.”
She said as long as he didn’t touch her there, she could be kissed, she could be a pillow, he could touch her anywhere.
She wouldn’t run.
Hisaki’s breathing began to quicken.
She turned and strode toward the master bedroom… the door was open, the bed was messy, and the blanket still held the indentation pressed by Shiro’s body heat, but in that indentation there was no one.
The second bedroom… the door was open, and the clothes in the wardrobe were still neatly hanging…
The bathroom… the shower was dry, the bathtub was empty, only the laundry basket still held the clothes from yesterday that hadn’t been washed yet.
Hisaki returned to the living room and stood in front of the vanished floor-to-ceiling window.
The fierce wind from the 23rd floor poured in through the gap, whipping her long black hair into a wild dance in the air.
She used all her senses to capture the lingering traces in the air…
But the wind was too strong.
Shiro’s unique scent…
Had already been blown so thin by the constant wind that it was almost impossible to track.
Hisaki’s body swayed again.
“Sis!”
Qi reached out to steady her but was pushed away by Hisaki.
Hisaki’s gaze fell on the sofa.
Shiro’s phone.
It lay quietly beside the sofa cushion, right where Shiro could grab it when she curled up to watch videos.
Hisaki walked over and picked up the phone… the screen was shattered, not ordinary crack lines, but radial cracks spreading from the center outward, like it had been blasted from the inside by some kind of force.
The edges of these cracks were lined with scorched black burn marks…
Hisaki recognized that method of attack… Demon Hunter.
Shiro didn’t run away.
Shiro had been taken.
Those people, those demon hunters who specialized in hunting vampires, had taken Shiro.
Hisaki gripped the phone tightly, hard enough that the broken screen edges cut into her palm.
Blood seeped through her fingers, dripping one drop at a time onto the marble floor tiles, mixing with the glass shards.
She felt no pain.
She only felt something more terrifying than pain surging up from the depths of her chest…
“Sis, your hand…” Qi’s voice trembled.
Hisaki didn’t pay attention.
She turned and walked toward the bathroom, each step making the broken glass let out a sharp scream.
***
In the bathroom, the laundry basket was still in the corner by the sink.
Starting from this bathroom, along the apartment corridor, extending to the glass debris in the living room, then from the 23rd floor stretching outward, fading more and more, but not completely disappearing.
It pointed southeast, within a range of roughly ten to twenty kilometers.
Hisaki opened her eyes.
In those dark red pupils, a film of tears still covered the surface of her eyeballs, but the light beneath the tears was no longer fear or despair… it was precise, sharp, unstoppable killing intent.
The sound of tearing.
She carefully folded Shiro’s underwear and placed it into the pocket on her chest, close to her heart.
Hisaki stood in the center of the glass-strewn living room and closed her eyes.
Her back first arched slightly, then suddenly snapped straight.
Two cracks split the skin at her shoulder blades simultaneously, no blood splattering, only the subtle sound of bone and fascia tearing and recombining.
A pair of massive bat wings unfurled from the gashes…
With a wingspan of a full three meters, the wing membranes were a tone between dark gray and dark red, edges sharp as blades, gently flapping once in the high-altitude wind that poured through the broken glass gap.
Qi was silent for a moment, then took a deep breath.
“…I’ll drive and follow below.”
Her body began to transform…
Her entire form shrank and morphed at a visible speed, finally becoming a small bat, flapping its wings a few times in the air, flying out through the broken glass gap, and disappearing into the night.
Hisaki took one last look at the devastated living room…
Then she tightened her shoulder blades, her wings beating down fiercely, and launched her body out through the gap on the 23rd floor, flying toward the southeast where the scent trail pointed.