I Fell In Love With A Girl Who Died Before I Was Even Born

I stood in the middle of the forest as my mind tried to wrap around the impossible emptiness in front of me. The bus was gone.

No engine revving, no tires kicking up dust—just gone.

Not even a flash. Like it had never been there at all.

I turned, breath caught in my throat.

Behind me, only a stretch of dead, empty road and dying trees.

The forest stood motionless on either side, as if the planet were holding its breath. The air felt stale. Like it had been trapped inside a damp cellar for too long: thick, silent, heavy.

No wind. No birds. No insects humming.

Nothing moved.

Ahead, a school loomed behind an eight-foot wall of gray brick that looked like it had been standing for a century. Moss and lichen dotted the stone walls, like livers spots on a grey corpse.

A twisted wrought iron gate stood open, leading up a winding path to the main building. Beside the gate a sign hung, written in kanji.

Crescent Moon Academy.

"Until all are one."

I blinked. Then looked at the sign again.

I could read the damn kanji.

I felt lightheaded and took a step forward. I'd read enough manga to recognize kanji, but not nearly enough to have understood it.

You don't want to be late for your first day of high school.

"Lana," I said to myself.

She'd sent me to some gothic school in the middle of nowhere.

I needed to find her fast and somehow make her send me back home.

What the hell was she, and why had she sent me here?

And what did she mean I could find her but I'd lose myself?

I took a step forward, but I didn't recognize my own pants. Or my shoes.

I wasn't wearing anything I'd put on that morning.

Plaid pants. A pressed white dress shirt. A dark blazer.

A school uniform.

I half expected Lana to pop up with a camera crew, laughing, saying it was all some elaborate prank.

But I knew: This was real.

My hand dove into my pocket, searching for something—anything—familiar. My phone. My last link to sanity.

I yanked it out and nearly dropped it.

The casing was charred. The edges melted. The screen cracked like a spiderweb full of ash and smelling like smoke.

It was beyond dead.

Panic rising, I fumbled for my wallet; proof that I was still me.

But it wasn't mine.

Black leather. A single kanji carved into the side. The second I saw it, I knew.

Ryu. "Dragon."

Inside there were a few yen notes. Crisp. Neat. Foreign. I flipped through them with numb fingers.

And then I saw the ID.

I lifted the card slowly, knowing—dreading—what I'd see.

No driver's license. Not even my name.

Instead I found a student ID for Crescent Moon Academy.

The photo made my stomach lurch. It was me... but not. The hair was too full. The skin too smooth. The eyes—young, sharp, unscarred.

I looked fifteen. Maybe sixteen.

I looked at my left hand, scanning the skin, looking for the small, straight scar from that knife slip in college.

Gone.

My knees didn't ache. My back felt loose, flexible. My whole body felt like it had been rewound.

My hands shook as I read the name on the card.

Andrew Ryu Kazeyama.

What the hell?

I'm Andy Benjamin Davis.

My name had been overwritten. Erased.

I checked the birthdate.

I choked. I was fifteen.

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This wasn't a dream. My heartbeat was thunder. The cold air stung my lungs. The panic I felt was real.

I dropped to my knees, palms pressing into the ground.

I punched the earth.

"Wake up!" I yelled. "Wake up! Wake up! WAKE UP!"

I hit the ground again. And again. Until my throat burned and my hand screamed.

And then I saw where my wallet had fallen, another card poked out—half-hidden behind the student ID.

I picked it up. Flipped it over.

There it was, written in my own damn handwriting: Shin'yume-sou. Room 204.

Apparently... Whoever I was, I had a place in town.

No! I'm not staying here. I had to find Lana.

I forced myself to my feet, knees still shaking. Ahead, Crescent Moon Academy loomed like a shadow against the pale sky. Behind me, the road stretched toward the distant town of Shin'yume.

But before I could take a step forward something hit me from behind.

Pain exploded through my ribs as I was knocked off my feet, the breath driven from my lungs. I hit the ground hard, the world tilting sideways.

I groaned, pushing myself up—only to freeze as a shadow fell over me.

A girl.

Then I realized she only looked like a girl.

She stood over me, brushing dust off her skirt, her flat, lifeless eyes locked onto mine. Her skin was too pale, her face too smooth. Not simply beautiful. Flawless. Like a doll, and just as uncanny.

"Are you okay?" she asked, her voice a hollow veneer of politeness. Too formal. Wooden. DEAD.

And then—

Her entire body stiffened, head bent forward. Her eyes widened. She was looking at something. My leg.

Recognition flashed in her eyes..

But not just that. Something almost primal.

"Oh," she whispered.

I looked. My pantleg was torn from the fall, and my knee glistened red.

A scrape. Just a scratch.

But her pupils dilated.

And then, slowly, fangs pushed past her lips. I felt my blood turn to ice as I scrambled to back away, but it was already too late.

"You're bleeding."

And she took a step closer.

One second I was backing away from her, and the next—
She was on me.

Cold! She was so cold! Her arms wrapped around me like dead weight.
Sharp! Something pricked my throat.

I opened my mouth to scream, but the words muffled against her stone fingers.

Her hand was already there clamping over my mouth with the efficient, casual brutality of a butcher at work.

And then I felt it.

A slow, pulling sensation, deep in my veins, spreading outward in waves. Warmth leaving me. Draining. I felt the blood being taken: a slow siphon, deliberate and rhythmic.

The world blurred at the edges. My heartbeat—loud, sluggish, wrong.

She swallowed. And oh god, I heard it. She sucked at my throat, her lips suctioning against my skin as she slurped.

Thick. Warm. Wet.

My blood.

Being pulled from my body, consumed, taken, owned. My vision dimmed. I was going to pass out.

Then—
She stopped.

The pressure on my throat vanished, the pull snapping away like a cut lifeline. I gasped, collapsing to my knees, my fingers clawing at my own skin, expecting to feel the blood still pouring. But there was nothing. No open wound. No seeping warmth but the dull, cold ache of feeling that I had something stolen.

I looked up.

She was standing over me, her fingers twitched. Her eyes wide, still, unblinking. Then, she took a deep, steadying breath, her lips still red. Her fangs hadn't retracted.

She still wanted more.

For a split second, I thought she was going to lunge again.

I could see it. A raw, agonizing battle behind her dead, waterless eyes.

She wasn't just fighting hunger.

This was Instinct.

Her entire body shuddered, as if she fought invisible strings pulling her back. Her shoulders shook, then slowed. The look on her face became more relaxed. I heard a low, choking sound escape from her lips – almost a whisper. She clamped her mouth shut as if physically forcing herself to swallow it down.

I watched her chest rise with the motion.

Then I realized—

She wasn't breathing out.

I don't know how long we stayed like that. Seconds? An eternity?

No sigh. No exhale. Just… stillness.

Finally, her fingers relaxed. The tension in her jaw eased. She took a step back.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

I've read this scene before. Hell, I've probably watched it animated. But it never ends like this.

She didn't sound like a robot anymore. She sounded ashamed. Sad, lonely, and like she was trying to apologize.

Or maybe I just wanted her sound like she was sorry.

I stared at her. At her perfect, flawless face, at the slight frown pulling at her lips.
She looked like she wanted to cry, but no tears came.

Because they never would. Not anymore.

Her tear ducts had stopped working. Maybe a long time ago.

My hand went to my throat. She drank my blood.

Was I okay?

I coughed, forcing words past my raw throat.
"You… you're dead."

She tilted her head slightly. And for the first time, her expression flickered—just for a moment. A small, brief shift, like she hadn't expected me to say that out loud.

Then—
She nodded. Small, tired, resigned.

"Yes," she said flatly.

I swallowed. My heart was hammering against my ribs, but the adrenaline was fading. I could still feel her on me, the weight of her, the cold. She could have killed me easily. But… She didn't. She didn't move closer. She didn't explain herself. She just stood there. And that scared me more than anything.

My pulse thudded in my ears. I looked at her hands. She didn't reflexively twitch. She didn't move to adjust her balance. She simply stood there. Still. Motionless. Alien.

I looked at her chest. Not rising. Not falling. I looked into her dull, waterless eyes.

She could have easily passed as one of the mannequins in the Meadowbrook Mall, but I knew the truth.

Dead. But it was wrong to see it, to feel it.

"I… I can't help it," she whispered. "When I saw the… your blood."

The words barely left her lips. They weren't an excuse, just a statement.

She fed on me.

I felt terrified. Dizzy, and I felt… off-balance.

She ran a hand through her hair, looking away. I watched the motion, so human, but too perfect. Too fluid. Precise. Like an insect. She didn't fidget. She didn't shift her weight, scratch her leg. Her eyes didn't even dart. She just… existed.

It was too much. I turned on my heels to run straight to the Crescent Moon Academy. I hadn't even made it a single step before I felt her fingers, cold as steel, wrap around my wrist.

"I'm sorry. Just… Please. Don't go."

And it was those words that, finally, stopped sounding polite and forced. Real. Raw. Vulnerable.

My chest tightened because, for the first time, I saw her. Not the monster. Not the instinctual predator.

Just a girl. She was a girl. A girl who used to be alive and she was failing because this is what she was now. Sad. Hurt, pleading, and there's no going back.

I nodded and quit trying to rationalize… I couldn't anymore.

"Okay… it's… it's okay," I managed to get out. I lied.

I wasn't okay.

She took a slow step towards me and stuck out her hand. I saw her take a breath, and I knew she was about to speak.

"Let me help you, please. My name's Shion Kurozawa. I just started at Crescent Moon Academy. It's my first day here."

I swallowed hard, touching my throat. The skin felt smooth. Unbroken. But the memory was too fresh.

I looked up at her.

"You… didn't want to stop, did you?" I asked, waiting to see what she'd say.

A flicker, anger? Guilt? I couldn't tell, but it had been there.

"Hmm… you're an observant one, aren't you?"

I didn't answer. We studied each other.

"…no. That… that's why I'm sorry. I couldn't help myself when I saw… you know. Your blood. But –"

The thinnest smile parted her blood-stained lips.

"I did stop, though. Otherwise, I wouldn't be talking to you right now. You'd just be…" She rolled her wrist in the air, searching for the word. I heard her take another breath so she could finish speaking. "Empty."

I felt goosebumps rising on my skin. I didn't know what was worse – the matter-of-fact tone or the way she clearly didn't want to say it at all.

And the was the only person that I had met here so far.

And she was offering me her hand to help pick me off the ground.

"Thank you. I'm…"

Who? I stopped myself just in time before I blurted out the name of a forty-four year old man from West Virginia. I didn't even want to call myself Andy here. Andy didn't sound right.

"Ryu. I'm Ryu Kazeyama," I said.

I said my new name for the first time, sounding exactly like someone saying their name for the first time. Shion smirked, and I knew she looked skeptical. She had every reason to.

Was I Ryu Kazenyama? Was I Andy Benjamin Davis?

My hand touched the spot on my neck where Shion bit me. It had healed. Completely. Was I even human anymore?