Axolotl Translations

Vampires lived for an incredibly long time. So long, in fact, that humans couldn’t even really grasp it. This was especially true for purebloods.

Their lives weren’t counted in decades or even centuries, but in thousands of years—sometimes tens of thousands. When you live that long, the world naturally starts to feel a bit boring.

Very little could still grab their attention. Death didn’t really appeal to them either. So, with nothing else to want or do, many vampires just chose to sleep.

Eve had just woken up from one of these long sleeps, maybe seventy or eighty years this time.

She slowly sat up in her coffin, stretching lazily. Her mind was still deep in that familiar, lingering boredom. She just sat there in the dark, in the quiet, familiar stillness, for hours. She was kind of lost in a haze.

Her mind, which had been empty, slowly started to fill with bits of color and memories. The girl—no, the vampire—looked no older than a teenager.

She wore a fancy crimson gown that was long and flowing. Her soft hair, dark like kelp deep in the ocean, fell down her back in perfect waves.

Her porcelain face showed almost no emotion, and her pale eyes seemed to just reflect a soft, empty mist. She looked less like a living being and more like a delicate doll—too perfect, too still. Only when she blinked, or when her chest barely moved up and down, could you tell she was technically still alive.

Time passed. She didn’t keep track of it.

Then, in the dim room, a warm, amber light flickered on, lighting up a shadowy corner. In its soft glow, the room became clear. It was a large, ancient room.

The walls were a dull, earthy red, with a strange texture, like time had worn them down. Thick wooden beams curved across the high ceiling, held up by huge columns. These columns were carved with old, weather-beaten pictures that were starting to crumble and flake off. There were no windows, and not much furniture.

Only a single, huge redwood coffin sat right in the middle of the room. Its owner now sat on top of the lid, swinging her legs back and forth. The vampire, who had been asleep for so long, was finally starting to clear a small bit of the fog in her mind.

And there, in that small clear spot, she found it. A promise. A faint, fragile one. She vaguely remembered making a promise to someone. That once she woke up, she was supposed to meet them. But… who was it?

The girl tilted her head, thinking. As she moved, the bottom of her silk gown slowly slid down her leg, showing a stretch of pale, porcelain-like skin—perfectly smooth, and cold to the touch.

It took her three more days to finally remember who that person was.

When the sun went down again, she lightly jumped off the coffin, like a bird taking flight. And just like that, she left the castle—alone.

……

The phone number didn’t work.

The old cafe was long gone, torn down and rebuilt. In its place now stood a fancy shopping area, full of trendy stores and lots of people. The only smells left were a strange mix of exotic plants and clashing perfumes from the crowd. There wasn’t even a hint of coffee in the air.

The addresses saved in her phone had also been lost to time; its old electronic parts were too broken to get any information. With no other choices, Eve went to Ruan Yu. Luckily, the younger member of the family was still around, so finding him wasn’t too hard.

He had grown up a lot since the last time she’d seen him. He now wore a dark gray suit with a neat tie and gold-rimmed glasses. His leather shoes were spotless, shined to a mirror finish. He didn’t seem like one of those stuck-up purebloods. In fact, he looked more like a human, not just in how he dressed, but in how he acted too.

He still had the same young, handsome face—so perfect you couldn’t find a flaw. But somehow, he was nothing like the Ruan Yu she remembered from decades ago. Eve watched him for a long moment. Then finally, she said his name softly, with no emotion. “Ruan Yu.”

He grunted a small reply. A cigarette hung loosely from his lips. He played with a lighter in one hand, flicking it open and closed, but he didn’t light it. With every quiet snap of the lighter, the flame in his eyes seemed to flicker with it—appearing, fading, then appearing again.

“Did you sleep well?”

“Well enough,” Eve replied simply. She looked at the younger man, who was a mere fraction of her age. Her voice, despite her trying to hide it, had a hint of something else. “It’s only been a few decades… yet you’ve changed so much.”

Ruan Yu’s lips curved into a small smile—one that was too practiced, too empty to reach his eyes. “People change. It’s natural.”

Eve paused for a moment. She wanted to say, But we’re not people. We don’t change that easily. But after a moment of hesitation, she didn’t say it.

The small talk ended there. Eve was never one for casual conversation, especially with younger generations. She got straight to the point.

“Call Zhaozhao for me. I want to see him.”

A long, heavy, and unsettling silence followed. The relaxed feeling between them disappeared, replaced by a damp, cold chill.

“You want to see… Zhaozhao?” Ruan Yu’s voice came out rough. Even the way he said “Zhaozhao” sounded strange, like the name had rusted on his tongue from not being used.

Eve was surprised. She studied his expression—and something in it made her feel more and more uneasy. The worst she could imagine was that Ruan Zhao’s body had gone out of balance again, sending him into another uncontrollable sleep. For blood clans, this wasn’t uncommon. During such unconscious slumbers, their bodies could fix themselves, and their energy would slowly return over time. At worst, he’d be asleep for a few years. Maybe ten or twenty. Hardly a reason to panic. Nothing alarming. Just a longer nap, for vampires.

But Ruan Yu’s reaction was clearly more than that. Even if they were close—even if he loved his brother deeply—this level of emotion didn’t quite make sense.

Before Eve could voice her doubts, Ruan Yu’s face changed. The light drained from his features. He looked down, his eyelashes low, and mumbled in that rough, thin voice, “…I can take you to see him.”

“But we’ll need to be quiet. Please… don’t wake him.”

……

The car pulled up to a familiar estate. This was the grandest, most luxurious, and most amazing castle in all of Rox County. Hidden behind a thick, green forest, it only appeared to those who were looking for it.

Legend said it was a castle made of gold, with hills of gemstones and paths paved with colored diamonds. Its owner was rumored to have endless wealth—money, for them, was just a number to be spent without a second thought. These were exaggerations, maybe, but not by much. A big part of that legend was thanks to Eve.

Among the blood clan, she was one of the oldest, having lived longer than almost all her relatives. Even though she’d never cared much about money, time had done its work. Her accumulated fortune had grown so much that it could rival the treasuries of entire countries. Even the smallest amount that she spent was more than most humans could ever imagine. And she really spoiled her juniors. Especially this one—the only child born into the family in centuries. Of course, she gave him everything she could think of. The best of everything.

They passed the jeweled hill and the diamond path, walking for another half hour before reaching their destination. Down countless stone steps, through twisting corridors, past ancient mechanisms that creaked when they opened—and at last, they stepped into a room so ordinary it seemed out of place. There were no windows here. No sunlight ever touched this place. Yet, it wasn’t dark. Lamps lined the corridor, casting a soft, steady glow. The walls themselves had lights built into them, keeping the space always lit.

The girl in the red gown stood silently for a moment. Then her gaze fell on the coffin in the center of the room. “He’s sleeping here.” It was a statement, not a question. Even from this distance, her strong vampire senses clearly picked up his familiar presence. And around it, faint but clear, lingered the smell of death.

It was a long while before the man beside her finally spoke. “…Yes.”

“How long has he been asleep?”

“Fifteen years and six months.”

“Then… when will he wake up?”

“……”

“………”

Silence followed, thick and heavy.

Eve looked at Ruan Yu. In his quietness, she felt something terrible, something that emptied the very air between them. She took a deep breath, then another. Slowly, painfully, she let it out. Breathing had never felt so hard. The dry air scraped her windpipe like sandpaper, stinging as it went down.

“You may go see him,” Ruan Yu said softly. “But after this… don’t come back. I don’t think… they’d like being disturbed.”

The coffin was huge, almost filling half the room. And inside it lay not one figure, but two. The only child the family had seen in centuries was curled up in the arms of another man—resting in a way that showed deep trust, deep dependence. His skin was pale and bloodless; his lips were a soft, petal-like pink. Long, pale eyelashes fanned across his cheeks like butterfly wings. And on his face, the faintest shadow of a smile lingered.

He looked heartbreakingly alive. As if, in the next moment, he would slowly open those pale, glass-blue eyes, let out a sleepy yawn, and greet the one beside him with a lazy little, “Good evening.”

But Ruan Yu knew better. He knew too well. Reason whispered with cold clarity—that moment would never come.

“You know,” Ruan Yu’s voice was a hush, so soft it seemed to disappear into the still air, “Zhaozhao’s health was always fragile. It was only after meeting him that things began to improve.”

“Perhaps that’s why Zhaozhao cared so deeply for him… why he loved him.”

“But human lives are fleeting. To us, they’re like fireflies on a summer night—brilliant for a moment, and then gone.”

“Even when we do the transformation ritual to make their lives longer, what we’re really saving is just the brightest part of the flame.”

“……”

“That man, even though he was famous in human society as a powerful psychic—someone who had defeated countless first and second-generation blood kin—was still not of the race favored by time.”

“Fifty-five years after you fell into slumber… his life ended. His body started to fail, his senses slipped away one by one, and in just a few short months, he couldn’t even move his fingers.”

“In the end… Zhaozhao chose to lie beside him.”

“He said that a world without that man had no meaning for him, and so… he chose to say goodbye to us early.”

“He asked us not to grieve, not to mourn. He said he would live well in another world.”

“And even if we never met again, he would remember us. Always.”

“……”

Eve said quietly, “Such a child, after all.”

Only a child—unburdened, unafraid—could make such a firm choice. To most people, living forever is an incredible gift. Yet he… threw it away as if it meant nothing.

Eve had lived for a very, very long time. And still—she wanted to live. To go on and on, until the world itself ended. That, to her, was the most perfect ending imaginable. Even if it meant sleeping for decades just to be awake for a few days—she never once thought about giving up on her life. And she couldn’t imagine what kind of person, or what kind of love, could make her surrender to death as peacefully as Zhaozhao had.

Her fingers moved gently across the golden threads embroidered on the lid of the coffin, as if saying a final goodbye. Her soft lips parted, and in an ancient, forgotten language, she began to chant—low and slow—a blessing for the souls that had passed. After a while, her voice fell silent. Her hand became still.

The lively look on her face faded again, replaced by the stiff, empty stillness of a porcelain doll. Slowly, she lifted her head, looking upwards. That one glance seemed to go right through the tall, endless dome above.

“Xiaoyu,” she said.

Ruan Yu softly replied, “Yes?”

“Their souls… aren’t here.”

“…What?” He blinked, confused. But before he could ask anything else, her mood had already started to change. The heavy sadness that had clouded her eyes seemed to lift a little. A touch of life came back to her features. She turned, quietly closing the coffin lid, then left the chamber behind. Only when she stepped out did she speak again, seemingly to no one in particular:

“Is there anywhere nearby that sells coffee?”

“I want a cup.”

“…….”

She added, tilting her head thoughtfully, “My standards aren’t high. It’s the one Zhaozhao ordered for me seventy-one years ago. I think it had milk, hot cocoa, and sugar cubes. Shouldn’t be too hard to find.”

“……”

To a bloodkin, seventy years pass as quickly as seven months. Still… who remembers the taste of coffee from seven months ago?

“I want it now,” Eve said.

“…The nearest city is 385 kilometers away,” Ruan Yu replied helplessly.

“Oh,” she said. “And?”

And so, in the end, they rummaged through the storage room. They found some coffee beans—God only knew how long they’d been there. Neither of them had any idea how to grind coffee by hand. So they drank instant. With double milk, sugar cubes, and half a bar of freshly unwrapped chocolate. The coffee was gone in moments.

Eve licked a trace from the corner of her lips, thinking back. It tasted… exactly the same.

From the far eastern horizon, the sun began to rise, painting the sky in vivid, sweeping shades of crimson. Facing the first light of dawn, Eve turned one last time to look at the grand, gleaming castle behind her. In a whisper soft as breath, she said—”Goodnight.”

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