Class, today we are doing an endurance run.” Miss Garcia announced, swiftly followed by the groaning of many of the students.

Emma jumped up a couple of times to loosen up her legs and whispered to me. “You can follow me again, I’m in pretty good shape today.”

I nodded as the entire class moved on to the starting line but suddenly I had a begging Ria-chan hanging on my arm.

“Roraaaaa.” She whined. “Can’t you carry me for like a kilometer? Or maybe even two?”

“Sorry Ria…” The funny thing was that I actually probably could, but it probably wouldn’t fit my ‘normal act’.

“Awh… I’m going to die then.” She forced the corners of her mouth down.

“Please don’t.” I laughed.

“Don’t worry Corelia, I will die with you.” Pres confidently stated, taking one last sip from her drinking bottle, which presumably held tea.

Karin also nodded in agreement while Claire was just chuckling at it all. Claire had quite the physique due to her fencing, although she wasn’t really on the same level as Emma. But honestly, not a lot of people were. She always said being in shape was pretty useful for her performances, especially for musicals. And having seen some live musicals, I have to say I agree. Being able to dance and sing was quite the thing, especially while being able to hold certain facial expressions. Having been convinced to watch idols on youtube by Ria, they struck me as really impressive. Smiling while doing some serious working out isn’t the easiest thing ever.

“Okay, everyone, get ready!” Miss Garcia took her starting pistol in hand and raised it in the air.

“Don’t forget to release your breath when we run past the teach, okay?” Emma warned me while she got into her starting position.

“Mhmm. As long as you don’t push yourself too hard.” I mimicked her and also got ready to start running.

“Me, pushing myself too hard? Never.” Emma stuck out her tongue.

“Ready, set, go!” The shot rang out and the entire class group started running and quickly divided into a couple of groups. The frontrunners, which consisted of me, Emma, Claire and a couple of other of the more athletic girls from our class. Although Claire soon dropped off to the middle group to pace herself better. And then there was the last group, consisting of Pres, Karin, Ria and five others.

It didn’t take long however before me and Emma also had separated ourselves from the rest of the leaders. This signalled the beginning of operation Hold-my-breath-to-fool-the-teacher-into-thinking-I-was-actually-putting-in-effort-and-if-that-failed-faceplant-into-the-gravel. It actually seemed to work after a while as I slowly but surely had gotten a bit more tired, however, thirty minutes in, I started to notice something else, I started to get really thirsty…

“W-what’s wrong?” Emma looked over at my face. She was clearly getting a bit winded. “Is it not working?”

“That's not it… I think it’s working too well…”

Em looked strangely at me but said nothing, probably to not exhaust herself by talking too much.

“I think that, because oxygen isn’t reaching my muscles, …my vampire powers are powering them instead…”

“C-can you keep it up?”

“I think so.”

Another fifteen minutes later however, things had taken a turn for the worse. The initial thirst I’d been feeling had intensified so much that I could barely think straight.

“O-oh shit, your eyes!” Emma called out.

“Huh?” I looked over to her.

“Auro, they are red.”

“Oh fuck.”

“Can you turn them off?”

“Maybe, but I’ll need to rest.”

Emma looked ahead of us, we were getting quite close to passing Miss Garcia again. “Okay, just close your eyes once we get a bit closer and pretend like you have difficulties standing up. I got a plan.”

I did as she asked, closing my eyes and resting my hands on my knees, bending over, as I heard her call to Miss Garcia a couple of seconds later.

“Miss Garcia, Aurora is feeling really bad! I think she overdid it trying to keep up me.”

“Let me see.”

I heard the two of them approach me.

“What are you feeling Aurora?” Miss Garcia sounded concerned.

“I-I’m really n-nouseous, Miss.” I held my hand over my mouth and faked retching.

“Emma, can you take her to the bathroom, and if she doesn’t get better to the nurse’s office?” She talked to Emma. “I think she just needs to rest a bit and hydrate.”

“I will.” Emma grabbed me by my arm and started guiding me towards the gymnasium building. “Come with me, Auro.”

“Alright.” I still pretended to gag for a while until we were far enough from Miss Garcia.

“Let me check the corners first before we head in, okay? And be prepared to close your eyes on short notice.”

“You know I can probably hear them way before you see them, right?”

“I know, I just want to be sure.” Protective Emma being protective made me smile, unnecessary as it was.

“Alright then.” I let her go ahead of me but luckily enough we encountered no one in the building anyway.

Having entered and locked one of the dressing stalls I tried to calm myself and get rid of my red eyes. However, after a couple of minutes nothing seemed to change, except for me getting even thirstier.

“Shit. I think I might have relied too much on my powers.” I sighed and sat down on the small bench in the stall.

“How long did you hold your breath for?”

“Almost the entire time. Except for when we passed Miss Garcia...” -Thinking about it, putting my body in a fight or flight response for that long probably wasn’t the best idea ever…-

“Ugh, I didn’t expect the plan to backfire this badly.” Emma leaned against the door, hands in her hair. “What do we do now… wait...” She looked over to me. “Earlier, you said you were thirsty, right?… D-do you think…?”

I knew immediately what she meant. She wanted to let me feed on her, but with her confession of earlier today, it just didn’t sit right with me at all to make use of my friend like that without having answered her. “No, Em…”

“L-look, I know what you are thinking… and in any other situation... But you can’t go home looking like that...”

I looked down at the floor. “I really hate having to ask this of you…”

“J-just give me an answer as fast as you can, as a way to pay me back, okay?” She put her hands on my shoulders.

“Mhmm.” I looked up at her and smiled. “I was planning on doing that anyway.”

“Ah, in that case you can give me a box of my favourite candy as well.”

“Sure thing.” The both of us softly giggled before the atmosphere in the stall quieted down again.

“S-so… uhm… how do you want to do this?” Em asked while shyly looking around our little room.

Remembering what happened to our bodies the last time I answered. “I think sitting might be the best…”

“But there’s barely room for the two of us…” She looked at the small bench I was sitting on. These stalls were designed to only have one student at a time so I was pretty much taking up all the space by myself.

“You could…. you could sit on my lap…”

Emma’s face became even redder than it was.

“O-or we could sit on the floor! That might be better!” I quickly waved my prior suggestion away, even though we wouldn’t really have more space if we did that.

“No… your lap is fine... “ Emma clenched her fist tight, took a step towards me and stiffly sat down on my lap. “B-be gentle, okay?” She even moved her ponytail to give me easier access.

“I will… sorry again, Em…”

“D-don’t worry about it.”

I took a deep breath, unintentionally inhaling a whole load of ‘holy-shit-Emma-smells-good-do-all-cute-girls-smell-like-this?-I’m-definitely-gay-aren’t-I?’ while trying to steel my nerves. “Okay…” I lowered my mouth towards her neck and hovered over it for a second. “I’m going to bite now…”

Emma nodded and right after she did so, I softly sank my teeth into her neck, a muffled moan escaping her mouth. She’d covered her mouth with her right hand so as not to make too much noise.

At first it tasted a little salty as Emma had been sweating quite a bit during the endurance run, but the saltiness soon made way for the surprisingly sweet taste of her blood. Just like last time, the bite made my heart go completely haywire, and judging by her pulse, the same was true for Emma. As blissful as it was, I could tell that I was quickly regaining my strength. So I decided I had enough and moved my mouth away.

“Sorry…” I rested my head against her back.

“It… it’s okay…” I could feel her put her arms on mine. Apparently I had subconsciously put my arms around her waist to pull her a bit closer to me. “Just… I beg of you… just don’t wait too long with your answer...” She looked at me with a sad smile as a tear rolled down her cheek.

-I won’t, Em, I promise. I don’t think I could live with myself if I didn’t....-