BLOOD CURSE ACADEMIA - PREVIOUS DRAFT EDITION -

Chapter XXXVIII (38)- Wine and Girls

At the last second, Kizu tried to pull out of the party altogether. For one thing, it felt wrong to go without Harvey. And for the other, he barely knew anyone there. The closer the time got to the event, the more his eagerness melted into mounting dread.

But of course, now that Basil knew he was invited, the shapeshifter gave him no other option.

Despite Basil’s best efforts, Mort refused to wear the matching outfit Basil sewed for him. The most he managed to coax him into was a little green bandana. And even that had been a challenge. Mort only relented once Basil made it clear he would hound him for eternity, night and day, if he didn’t compromise. And Mort valued his sleep. To be honest, before today Kizu hadn’t known Mort was even capable of compromise. He felt a bit miffed that Basil succeeded where he so often had failed.

When they arrived at the villa door, Kizu almost turned and walked away. But the moment to flee disappeared even quicker than he anticipated. Instead of knocking, Basil just swung the door open, revealing them to the party inside.

Emilia hadn’t been lying when she said the party was lowkey. It was nothing like the previous one a few weeks back. Kizu quickly counted ten other students inside. The atmosphere was completely opposite of the party from before.

A few guests glanced up at them as they stepped inside, but they went back to their idle conversations after only a cursory look. Everyone was dressed in formal clothing. A few of the boys even had lace around the collar and wrists. In that moment, Kizu was remarkably grateful to Basil for giving him an outfit besides his academy uniform. And simultaneously grateful that he hadn’t let Basil attach any lace to it.

When Emilia spotted him, she smiled and ushered him over.

“Kizu, I’m glad you could make it. Here, have a glass of wine. Imported from Edgeland.”

Kizu took a sip and blinked in surprise. It tasted nothing like the other alcohol he’d drunk. Not like the bitter swill he had snuck from the crone’s stash. Also, nothing like the ale he’d drunk with Harvey a few weeks back. The wine was sweet. It actually tasted borderline good. He took another look at the glass in disbelief. The liquid was a cherry red. He took another sip.

“I really like this,” he said lamely.

Emilia glowed at the comment. “My family owns the orchard. It’s one of their trading investments.”

“You’re from a trader family?”

“It’s not unique. Most of the student body is either from minor nobility or an international trading family. Have you not noticed?”

The thought had crossed Kizu’s mind, but he had never really put much stock in the idea. He glanced over to Basil, intending to ask about his family, but the boy was already inraptured in a conversation with one of Emilia’s friends. Kizu recognized her as one of the girls that followed Emilia around everywhere.

Emilia led him to a couch while she continued to talk about her family’s business. Kizu only half paid attention but he heard enough to know her family must be extraordinarily wealthy over in Edgeland. He wondered why her family couldn’t help Harvey out with his funding. He opened his mouth to ask, but then Mort fidgeted on his shoulder. His monkey had spotted a pile of fruit off in the distance. Kizu had to grab ahold of his tail to keep him from bounding across the room toward it.

“Mind if I sit?” Not waiting for a response, a Hon boy roughly Kizu’s age wedged himself between Kizu and Emilia.

In his irritation, Kizu released Mort’s tail, letting the monkey go find food and harass the other guests.

The boy looked almost as statuesquely perfect as Basil tonight. He barely glanced at Kizu as he began to monologue to Emilia about a group assignment. At the very least, Kizu noticed Emilia looked as irritated by the interruption as he felt.

Kizu found himself in an awkward position. More than once, he tried to jump back in the conversation, but the other boy would just disregard any comments he tried to make. It made him feel like an absolute idiot as each word he spoke was completely ignored. The boy never even acknowledged his existence.

Eventually, Kizu decided to try another strategy. He stood up and went to find more wine. As he did so, he directly asked Emilia if she wanted another glass. She nodded to him; an obviously fake smile plastered to her face as she continued to politely listen to the boy’s rambling.

Unsurprisingly, he found Basil over by the wine. The boy’s face had softened a bit from the chiseled look earlier. As he gulped down another glass, he noticed Kizu.

“Kizu!”

“How many drinks have you already had?”

“Lost count. No need to count when it’s free. You know what I mean?” He wobbled slightly as he poured Kizu a glass and handed it over.

“Do you even need to eat and drink?” Kizu asked as he took a sip of the wine.

Basil laughed. “Of course! Everything alive needs to eat and drink. It’s just a matter of what. Even a tree still gobbles up sunlight.”

“But not all magical creatures need to eat to stay alive,” Kizu said, thinking of the vampiric spawn. They felt discomfort without substance but starving them of blood wasn’t an effective way to kill them.

“Maybe not.” Basil shrugged. “But I definitely do.” Then he glanced over his shoulder at the others. “Want to see a trick?”

Before Kizu could say ‘no’ Basil had taken a buttered biscuit from the countertop and held it out in his hand. Then it slowly fell into his palm. His body absorbed the food.

“You can eat from your hands?” Kizu said, staring at the place where the biscuit had been a moment earlier.

“I can eat from anywhere. In fact, if I wanted to, I could even create mouths on my knees. I don’t have an actual digestive tract, so it's all the same to me.”

“Are there a lot of students like you?”

“Are there a lot of students like you?” Basil repeated back at him.

“I mean, not really. But there are a lot of people from Hon.”

“Oh, well there are loads of people from Tross. I think there are at least four more in this room even.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Though Kizu hadn’t known that Basil was from Tross. “Anyone else of your species.”

“No. I think the faculty have decided one of me is more than enough for them. Even if there were more like me in existence.”

“So, you’re one of a kind?”

“Aren’t we all?”

“What about your family?”

“Never met my mother. Anyway, how’s Emilia?”

“Talking to another guy.” Kizu wanted to ask about his other family but let the subject drop. “What about your date? Where did that girl go?”

Basil shrugged. “Passed out. She wanted to try to keep up with my drinking. Cute, really, but senseless. I set her down on a bed and left a bucket by her head.” After a moment of thought, he grinned. “You know, I have an idea that might solve your issue.”

Kizu did not like the sound of that. And he told Basil as much.

“Relax, don’t be so high strung. You want that dude gone, right?”

“Yes,” Kizu said hesitantly.

“I’ll be back in just a minute. Wait here.”

Basil stumbled around a corner, already his flesh seemed to be melting off him. Kizu didn’t know whether to stay put or flee the villa altogether. He went with the easier of the two options. He sipped his wine and pretended to be calm.

When Basil stumbled back into the room, he wore a completely different skin. He looked like a beautiful Hon woman. Silky black hair that dropped down past his shoulders and long eyelashes accentuating big black eyes. The only reason Kizu knew it was Basil was because of his boots. Well, that, and his drunken staggering.

“Where did you get those clothes?” Kizu asked.

“I always keep at least one spare set on me at all times.” He looked at himself in the window’s reflection and fixed the position of his hair clip. “Okay, follow my lead.”

Kizu grabbed the wine bottle to refill Emilia’s cup, but realized Basil had finished it off. He snatched the first bottle in sight and poured it into both his and Emilia’s glasses. Then he hastily followed after Basil.

When Kizu poked his head out from around the corner, the boy next to Emilia appeared still deeply enthralled in his one-way conversation with her. But as Basil walked by, Kizu saw the boy pause mid sentence. Basil met his eyes and nodded slightly over to the side. The boy quickly formed an excuse and retreated from Emilia.

Finally, Kizu returned to the room and passed Emilia her wine glass. She smiled politely and thanked him.

“Who was he?” Kizu asked.

“Oh, just the son of some duke out in a rural region of Hon.”

Kizu blinked. “The son of a duke?”

“Everyone here is the son or daughter of someone, he’s a small fry to be honest. But my parents told me never to overlook possible assets.”

“Assets?”

“The entire reason they sent me to the academy was to build connections for future trade negotiations. You don’t make any friends by staying tucked away in obscurity. My parents always tell me it’s about who you know, not what you know.”

Kizu thought about who he knew at the academy. As far as he could tell, none of his friends held much world influence. In fact, Emilia probably was his most valuable friend, from that point of view.

He wondered if that’s why his parents had sent him here. To build reliable connections for their trade empire. Though, if that was the case, at the very least he was doing better than his brother. He had yet to ever see Finn with a friend.

“And you’re okay with that?” Kizu asked. “It sounds like your parents are controlling your entire life’s future.”

Emilia laughed quietly. “And what’s wrong with that? I’ve never really understood why people resent their parents so much. They just want you to have the most successful path in your future. And they know better than I do how to achieve it.”

Kizu mulled that over. For some reason, he wasn’t sold on the idea of living up to his parents’ exact expectations. He drank a gulp of the wine. This one tasted more bitter than the first, but its aftertaste left a nice tang on his tongue. The alcohol immediately helped soothe the thought. He took another gulp.

“Besides, it’s not like they don’t trust me,” Emilia continued. “I get to make plenty of decisions for myself.”

She took a sip of her wine. Then she frowned and looked down at it.

“Kizu, this isn’t the wine I had out.”

“It was on the counter nearby. Basil finished off the other one.”

“Oh.” She looked down at her glass. “Well. In that case, maybe we should go somewhere else more private.”

“Why?”

She looked at him like he was dense. But even as he met her eyes, he felt the world mushing together. It was as if his senses had decided there was too much space between objects in sight and mashed them all.

“Actually,” Kizu amended. “Scratch that, let’s go.” He distantly felt her hand on his arm, guiding him into a different room. He heard a door latch shut behind him.

“What we just drank was experimental,” Emilia quickly started explaining. “It’s wine fermented from a berry found deep in the World Dungeon. My parents sent it to me to bring to Professor Grove for analysis. It’s supposed to-”

But whatever it was supposed to do, it seemed at that moment Emilia was hit by it just as hard as Kizu had. The world continued to compress. He felt his breathing quicken. He forced himself to calm down. Relax. No need to panic. He was safe. He was sitting in a villa. With a beautiful girl even. Even if he couldn’t see her at the moment, Emilia was by his side.

Then something else pulled his attention. Like a slash of cold water, he found himself connected to Mort’s senses. Stronger than any other occasion. It felt as if he and Mort shared one body. They jointly moved around the room, examining the students. A cherry floated in one of their drinks. He maneuvered himself into the rafters directly above the girl, then pounced. She spilled the drink and screamed, but that didn’t matter. In fact, it was convenient. The cherry sloshed out with some of the liquid. He snatched it up, midair, and darted across the room to nibble on it.

Kizu pried his awareness away from Mort’s. It felt like separating two layers of cake from one another. He could do it, but it was messy.

His awareness floated for a minute, trying to relocate his body, before something else slammed into it.

“Please,” it begged.

He blinked and found himself sitting in a large box. The inside glowed a pale scarlet. It was warm. It vaguely reminded Kizu of his little cupboard by the furnace in the crone’s hut. But something kept the box from feeling like that. Instead of relaxing him, it set him on edge.

A man peeled the top off the box. He felt himself relax at the sight of him. Comfort. Familiarity. Love. Everything missing in his life.

“Good, you’re awake.” The man bent down over the box to help him up. As he did, Kizu’s consciousness floated out. He wasn’t needed anymore. As he slipped away, he met the mismatched eyes of the body he had temporarily coexisted in. One black, the other red.

After a moment of drifting, he snapped back into focus. He was in a room in Emilia’s villa. He took a breath of the seaside air and relaxed.

“-Assist divination,” Emilia finished.