Sometimes my body breaks."
The whole room went quiet. The voice in my throat disappeared.
I stared at the marks again.
She slowly buttoned her shirt back up halfway, then sat down beside my bed.
Her expression was calm. Too calm. Like someone talking about the rain when they should be talking about death instead.
"I need you to understand before this goes any further," she said.
My throat felt dry. "Understand what?"
Then she said the sentence that officially ended any remaining chance of my life being normal.
"I'm a zombie."
I just stared at her.
"No..."
"No?" She blinked.
"No. Absolutely not."
"It's true."
"You are sitting in my room, speaking normally, wearing a school uniform, and also you're not injured and your brain isn't coming out of your head. That is not zombie behavior."
She thought for a minute.
"That's fair."
"Thank you."
Then she looked at me again. "Not technically a zombie, but my family calls it a curse."
"A long time ago," she continued, "someone in my bloodline survived by feeding on human blood. Since then, the people born in my family carry the same hunger for blood."
"Most of us don't become monsters," she said. "But our bodies change. We become colder, slower, and hungrier. Then our emotions stop. Life feels distant and weak."
That explained the whole disturbing material of this story. But there is more to it.
"The scars?" I asked.
She looked down at her arms.
"Sometimes the hunger becomes more powerful than you. I used to try stopping myself. But..."
My heart felt heavy.
"I hate it," she said quietly.
That was the first emotion I ever felt from her.
Disgust.
"I hate wanting it."
For the first time since I met Airi, she didn't seem like a cold rude bitch.
She seemed more like... lonely.
Like someone who had been carrying something awful for far too long.
"When you tasted my saliva... the hunger awakened."
"What?" I frowned.
"Your body accepted me."
The sentence should sound so intimate, but it did.
"Usually my saliva carries the curse. And most people would feel disgust."
"And me?"
"You stabilized."
My fever felt very far away now.
"Every time you lick it, the curse inside of me calms down."
"So basically..." I stared at her. "Your anti-vampire nicotine patch."
She looked confused. "That comparison is strange."
"You just told me you crave blood."
"Yes."
I exhaled slowly and rubbed my face, but nothing about this conversation was acceptable or normal, and yet some part of me believed her.
Maybe because I started feeling good after she shoved her saliva in my mouth...
But then she said something that made my heart burst into pieces.
"There's also another reason."
Of course there is.
"When someone tastes my saliva enough times," she said, "the connection deepens."
I lowered my head.
"Connection?"
"It means we stop being separated."
That sentence hit harder than I expected.
"What does that mean?"
"It means my body begins adjusting to yours."
I felt my throat go dry.
"And?"
"And eventually..." she said almost in a whisper,
"We become one."