Chapter 35: You Can Only Be Mine

That was a kiss that lasted a quarter of an hour, nearly suffocating in its intensity.

When Sophia finally released her hold on Tulia, fresh air rushed into Tulia’s lungs, bringing not relief, but a burning sting.

Tulia slumped helplessly against the door, gasping for breath, her chest heaving violently.

Her lips were already swollen and broken, smeared with the metallic sweetness of blood and another’s taste.

The sense of suffocation was not Tulia’s alone to endure. Sophia too leaned against the doorframe, breathing raggedly, her deep violet eyes churning with the delirious joy of regained possession and a fury yet unspent.

“You’re going to kill me!”

As Tulia caught her breath, her first words were neither pleas for mercy nor curses, but a nasal, blurted-out complaint.

“Kissed for so long, my lips are swollen… almost… almost kissed me to death…”

Her tone was as if she were only chiding a lover who didn’t know their own strength.

Yet the moment the words left her lips, she froze.

As her vision refocused and she saw the face before her—still flawless, but momentarily taken aback by her words—belated fear and worry surged up from her feet, flooding every bone in her body.

She remembered.

The person before her was not some lover she could easily sulk and whine to.

It was she—Sophia—who, when Tulia was still human, had “bought” her from the filthy cage of a Slave Trader, simply because she somewhat resembled someone else, and then treated her as a soulless stand-in, imprisoning and tormenting her.

It was also she, who, for the sake of saving that precious “White Moonlight” elder sister, had dared use a Prohibition Conversion Array, but by a twist of fate, turned Tulia—intended as a mere Transformation Catalyst—into a being neither human nor ghost: a Vampire.

Even worse, a part of her sister’s Memory and Soul, too, had become fused with Tulia, as inescapable as maggots clinging to bone.

To Tulia, Sophia was an absolute superior.

Perhaps a better word—Master.

Tulia’s body began to tremble uncontrollably; the bit of courage spawned by alcohol and indulgence was wiped away by the weight of all those searing, buried memories.

But… that was more than forty years ago.

Though Tulia was afraid, that deep-seated terror seemed to have been eroded and worn smooth over those forty long years, becoming an ugly scabbed scar.

Human Memory is always like this, like a bumbling, willful editor.

It will deliberately blur the day-after-day, dull pain, but stubbornly, again and again, replay certain trivial, shining moments in high definition.

Like how she could no longer remember how she managed to survive those three years of high school after starting her first job in her last life.

All those endless exercises, those bizarre and inhumane rules, the anxiety and suffering caused by grades—all had faded into a hazy background.

But she still remembered clearly a certain drowsy afternoon, secretly comparing sketches under the desk with her short-haired deskmate.

The two held in their laughter, giving it their all, but the results only got uglier, until at last they collapsed over their desks, shoulders shaking with stifled giggles.

She also remembered graduation day, everyone’s eyes red-rimmed, solemnly writing down contact info in each other’s yearbooks, swearing, “Let’s stay in touch, okay?”

Though later, those numbers were never called again, those addresses long since dust-covered.

Yet the hope for the “future,” that youthful, naive nostalgia, forever lingered in her Memory, surfacing now and then, always with a bittersweet warmth.

Fear could fade away.

But those tiny, useless moments of beauty endured.

Because of this strange filtering of Memory, Tulia’s careless complaint came out so naturally.

That mark of fear from half a century ago, under the wash of time, had faded.

It gave her a sliver of barely-there courage to rebel.

In the past, treated like this, she would have curled up like a small animal with its tail stepped on, sobbing and pleading, “Sister… please… let me go…”

But now, she merely watched Sophia warily and stubbornly, eyes still tinged with fear, but mixed with a new anger, so raw that even she herself had never realized it.

Sophia looked at Tulia’s blend of suppressed fury and uncertainty, her deep violet eyes swirling with ever more tangled emotions.

Step by slow step, Sophia walked toward Tulia.

Tulia’s body tensed in an instant. She shut her eyes tight, turning her head to the side, bracing for the slap sure to come, crackling with rage.

But the pain she imagined never landed.

A cold hand, still faintly trembling, reached out. Slowly, with utmost gentleness, it caressed Tulia’s swollen lips.

Callused fingertips, familiar in their touch, carefully and bit by bit wiped away the traces of blood at her lips.

Tulia’s eyes snapped open in astonishment.

Sophia’s gaze was lowered, her focus lost in Tulia’s lips.

Gone was the violence from moments ago, leaving only a deep, almost overflowing sorrow and… aching tenderness.

“You’ve been drinking,” Sophia spoke, voice hoarse.

Her fingertips slid along Tulia’s jawline, slowly trailing down to her neck.

“And on you…” Sophia leaned in, nose brushing Tulia’s throat, “…there’s another woman’s scent.”

Her brows furrowed in disgust at the mingling of cheap perfume and vulgar powder.

She didn’t bother to hide her scorn, as if Tulia were stained with the filthiest trash on earth.

“Here…”

Sophia’s finger pointed to the lipstick mark at the corner of Tulia’s mouth that didn’t belong to her.

“And here…”

Her finger drifted down, pausing at the fresh, glaring love bite on Tulia’s collarbone.

“And… here.”

Finally, her hand spread over Tulia’s chest, where the liquor-soaked shirt clung tightly to her skin, outlining graceful curves.

Tulia’s whole body shuddered. She tried to retreat, but was pinned to the door with nowhere to escape.

Sophia looked at her, a faint smile on her face.

That smile bore a devilish amusement, a desire to tease.

“Dirty.”

She said softly, and then lowered her head.

Like a beast marking its territory, she pressed her lips to Tulia’s skin, beginning her “cleansing.”

With her own lips, she covered the glaring lipstick at the corner of Tulia’s mouth, grinding it away with a force that was almost biting, until the garish color faded, leaving only her own blood-tinged mark.

Next, she lowered her head further, nestling in Tulia’s neck hollow.

Her teeth found the other’s love bite, and with punishing force, she bit and kissed, erasing the mark that wasn’t hers.

“Mm…”

The sharp pain made Tulia let out a muffled cry.

She could feel Sophia imprinting a new, deeper mark, her own, over every trace left by others.

But it was not enough.

Sophia’s hands began to roughly tear at Tulia’s disheveled leather clothes, leaving one after another possessive red hickeys on her flat belly, on her smooth shoulders…

Everywhere that bore the scent of pleasure-seeking places, Sophia branded with her wild, primitive marks.

With this, over and over again, she reasserted her dominance over the body she had coveted for more than forty years.

This is mine.

From head to toe, inside and out, you can only be mine.