The slick blackness of her hair slowly dissolved into a glittering green. She brought herself up and with the eyelids swung open, the two black spots in her eyeballs shrunk into slit-shaped pupils, caged within a sea of red space. The nails grew longer and sharper, and so did her two front teeth when she bared them before the men. Standing and glaring at them now was no longer the same girl they knew, despite her still being little at size. In her stead, now stood a human beast.

  A vampire.

  ‘A-a monster!’ One of them exclaimed. The rest stayed still, their eyes and widely gaped mouth remained still. Everything was silent, except for the small hushing sound they made as they breathed in and out loudly. For the first few minutes, no one dared to move. No one but the girl, now with a new appearance, as she shifted about in her positions. Her eyes fixed on them.

  ‘Hey, hey! Why are you guys being afraid of?’

  Everyone turned to look at the straw-hair man in brown tunic as he stepped out and towered over the tiny vampire. A dagger hanging at his waist, he grinned mildly. His expression was no answer to discomfort she was feeling.

  They are not worthy of your compassion.

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  There was a momentary pause in the voice.

  Kill them.

  Her eyes flashed in green then gradually, darkened into the color of blood. In a time, shorter than the fraction of a second, those fingers of hers found their way through the man’s chest. ‘Y-You, asshole…’ Immediately, he unsheathed his dagger and swung it down at her. The blade hissed past her and dropped to the floor, followed by the man’s fall. She then turned to the others, who were no longer bound by their fear and stayed still. They lunged out at her with their fists. That alone sufficed to alert the little vampire of the danger she was about to face.

  Or the danger they were about to face. Death.

  Unlike before, the adults seemed to have the advantage in number. Their punches, however, were carelessly thrown without coordination. Some of their punches even interlocked with one another; Sometimes, they even hit each other. Seeing their messy fighting patterns has revealed openings for her to enter into the appropriate range. And, kill.

  Her house vanished without a trace, including the ones who tried to assault her earlier. She stood there, staring at the people walking about the marketplace. The streets were filled with stalls selling grocery items of every kind, and of every origin, flooded with townspeople and villagers of different backgrounds. This wasn’t the world she lived in. At that moment, unknown to her, a pair of eyes were watching her. In the midst of the waves of people, a cloaked girl was there on the ground, the cloth’s wrapping around her covered in dirt and footprints. The cloaked girl’s green hair dropped smoothly to her shoulders as she stood up.

  Her eyeballs stopped shifting around for a second, and they were fixated on the girl. Tears started to well up in both their eyes.

  At last, we meet.

  ‘Arlin.’