09// The Darc family (part one)

After that incident at the ramshackled barn a year ago, my pain has gone so numb to the point that I can't even feel it anymore. Kind of like Jell-O, my body has gone stiff from all the terrors and frightening, electric-like shocking events that happened within a blur of a year. And, just like Jell-O itself, every time a somewhat "shocking" event occurred, all I could do is react in the slightest way. With a shrug of my head and a sickening smile, I'd continue on my way to school like everybody else in The Requiem.

The Requiem's public school for dhatins is funded by Count Darc, the vampire who pledged to provide for my education and care until I reach senior year. Until then, I'd be more of a temporary charity cause for the Darc family.

Living in their exquisite, and elaborate victorian building, I should be grateful. In fact, I should be more than willing to live anywhere other than on the streets, begging for food that I wouldn't have the courage to beg for. My pride runs deep, and to ask for something from another, would be a death sentence to myself.

A death sentence is the last thing I want right now. The crunching in my chest starts up again, as I look at the pool of goat blood around me. The remains of my adopted mother.

I didn't even know her, so why did I feel so sad to see her go?

I have to try getting out of that feeling of remorse. Pain is better to be numbed after all.

So, after I retrieved the goat blood that remained of Ms.Nugraha, I looked at my new caregivers with a solemn smile and gave them the best bow that I could. There wasn't anything I could do, after all; with Ms.Nugraha dead and gone. I should consider myself lucky that the most powerful vampire-interspecies dhatin family, the Darc's agreed to take me in. Even just for five or six years.

" Why are you taking me in, Count Darc?" I asked the poised man, the one whose red and black streaked hair remains gelled the same.

" Consider yourself lucky, little girl," he replied trying to make it seem like they were the pitied ones. " If it weren't for your mother's status and wealth, I would've never agreed to take you in." The last sentence he mutters under his breath, like he thinks that he could get away with the gossip. I can hear him either way.

" Father, shall we call for the cab?" Violet asked, her eyes glued to her iPhone.

" Yes, of course. I'll call him to call for the cab to pick you up. I'll order the butler to bring a separate cab for Amity and I."

" What? I thought we were all going together in the same cab?" Violet complained, and continued to have her eyes glued to her phone.

" I wanted to go to your cab! Why can't you take Amity to the cab with Servant #46?" She continued have her eyes glued to her phone some more, and this time, she's giggling hesterically after aggressively scrolling through the device some more.

Count Darc rolls his eyes, " Okay, I know what you're planning Violet. You better be back before twelve o'clock, or you know the consequences." The Count's eyes glow with a tinge of red at the last word.

As Count Darc walks away from the middle of the road, where Violet stood, I noticed the way she was dressed. Envious, I peered at her fur fox coat and leather heels. The more that I looked at her, I realized that she's the same age as me. Except, based on the heels and the rosy blush that covered a constellation of freckles above her cheeks, one couldn't tell. A rich, but mature girl, Violet is about the mere age of twelve (the same as me) but she already obtained the knowledge beauty, and maturity of a teenager. And here I am. Pathetic and ugly.

" Ah, don't mind my eldest, little girl. She's may be pushy and demanding, but I know that she knows the consequences of her actions. Ha! And maybe that's why she always tries her best at semester exams and at the piano recitals. As if that's going to let me forget! However, I'll explain the rules of our household when we get there." he leads me towards a different path across the side of the rocky roads.

And there, we find the cab driver, who leads us to the great Darc family mansion.

******

Whenever I first met the Count and his family, I was too taken back by their kindness: that I couldn't tell the difference between fake kindness and pity. The way that they all treated me like one of their own at the start made me feel that perhaps I really am just some lost, pitied orphan that they're just waiting to get rid of.

Even though I smiled at every one of them, not even the servants or the butler even smiled the same way back.

Fool! What did you expect?

You are a charity case.

But, because Count Darc mostly worked as head manager of The Requiem, and attended multiple meetings, conferences, and pot-lucks throughout the week, I was more exposed to the rest of the children.

These children, they are heartless, but beautiful. They all had the same red glint in their eyes, the same white fangs, the same spotless faces.

Violet Maribel Darc, or, Countress Violet. She's the eldest of the siblings and the most beautiful and talented. According to her, she's the one who's going to inherit the family fortune.

The second eldest, Estevan Darc. The mysterious, aloof one who's mostly out of the house.

The twins, Quentin and Julian Darc, who are always fighting over the same toy.

And the baby, Nikolai Darc Jr. whom I'm stuck babysitting for the time being.

The mansion that I walked among with the rest of the Darc family is all the same: the same tall, black-wired fences that gated their grand, victorian mansion with pride. The same rusted-peeled white paint that colored the brick detailing. But while I walked in and out through the same paired glass doors like the rest of them, I wasn't treated the same. However, it made sense. Who in their right mind would treat a poor orphan like me like their own? However, despite my own feeling of being an outsider, I tried my best to deal with the temporary caregivers of mine for the time being.

But, if there was one thing that I enjoy the most about it all, is school.

*****

" Amity! Would you like to answer problem on the board? Just find out the answer to the multiplication problem dearie. " The teacher of the public Requiem schoolhouse, Ms.Smith asked me.

" Um, okay," I say as I walk up to the front of the classroom. The schoolhouse has a low ceiling, and I have to use all the force within me in order to not look like a giant in the building. Which is impossible! Why do they have to make these ceilings so low? I thought to myself, and started to think about how I ended up here.

After I answer the problem on the board correctly, Ms.Smith sticks a golden star sticker on the back of my hand, with a perky smile on her face. There definitely isn't anything great about a thriteen-year-old girl (who should be in middle school) in the middle of a fourth grade class with a bunch of ten-year-olds.

"At least I'm able to have some sort of education" My inner conscious tells myself, and I start to feel the crunching in my chest again. It's been about five years since I'd had symptoms of the Blight disease and the morphing of a dhatin of Blight, and I hope that I'll keep it that way.

I start to smile to myself at how lucky I am to be living with the Darc family in their exclusive victorian mansion. At the very least, the library back at their place has helped me get ahead in my studies....

While the rest of the Darc family children are sent to a private elite school for the dhatin of vampires, I'm sent to a local public schoolhouse. A place that's way too crowded and overpopulated that the air inside the single-schoolhouse classroom is suffocating. The children and teenagers who end up in The Requiem schoolhouse are usually dhatin of Jenglots who are here to repeat a year or those who are slower at learning than others. However, though I'm quite bright for my age, the amount of pleading doesn't suffice. No matter how much I get down on my knees to beg to the Count to send me to a better school, all I'd get is the punishment.

This punishment consists of thirty beatings from the metal and brass whip. I recall the blood seeping through my ragged dress that night.

I recall the wailing.

The torture.

The endless torture. A kind of torture I definitely didn't want to head back to.

So, here I am, stuck in the same schoolhouse, in the fourth grade. While all the other kids would move up a year, I'd be held back, all for the same reason: that I couldn't afford to go to the next level. Money determines everything in the dhatin world after all. Without money you are useless, a mere piece of scum on the wall. And, as a girl who doesn't have an ounce of rupiahs to pay for clothes for herself, she is stuck in the same grade that she's put into by the Count.

While human schools determined moving up to the next grade level through intellect, in The Requiem, the amount of money required to move up to the next grade level is necessary. Ms.Smith says I'm a student with potential. A student bright enough to earn a scholarship in a elite school.

But, does it even matter? Does it even matter that I move up a grade level or not? All I'd get is a beating anyway; and for sure Count Darc wouldn't allow it, even if moving up a level didn't cost a single rupiah.

I guess the Count doesn't want me competing in intelligence with Estevan and Violet.

Besides, what will a good education help me in anyway?

" I want you to get a good education, my dear Amity. I want you to learn the war ethics." I recall Ms.Nugraha telling me before she dispersed into goat blood.

What are the War Ethics?

Did she mean by War manners?

And, why would she want me to learn that so much?

As I walked to the Blight's Requiem to retrieve my ration of goat blood soup from the Count, (the Darc family controls what I eat and when I eat it, however, I should be grateful.) I see someone.

This someone is a small elderly man, with a black, torn robe covering his body and part of his face. The man was tacking posters with a hammer on the walls of the schoolhouse.

" Hey! What do you think you're doing? This is a school, not a place to advertise," I look at the man with a fury of hate. The only school, the only education that I was allowed to have, was being ruined by this, this homeless creep!

The man looks up at me with a devilish, creepy grin, revealing golden teeth. He then points at where the void in my chest would be, covered by my ragged and torn dress. However, the man doesn't speak, nor does he even sign language what he's trying to get across. Instead, he looks at me, and then hands me one of his flyers:

---------------------------

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----------------------------

And, when I look back at where the old man once was, I see that he started heading:

back to the Dismouth forests.

"Could this be my only chance at clearing the price for my bounty? No, it couldn't be, right?" muttering to myself, I remembered:

The reason why I'm treated with such inequality from the dhatins and the school both:

Is because my heart is still on the wanted posters being sold for $2 million bounty.