Kiran

Kieran tried to be normal. He was an excellent student, wore hoodies, and hung out in coffee shops like everyone else. Fangs? It's just fashion. The sun? Well, yeah, he's pale. He's just allergic to ultraviolet light. Half the university is full of pale toadstools like that.

But listening to the nonsense about witches supposedly being burned for flying broomsticks was more than he could bear. In reality, it was his great-great-great-aunts who were burned. Only the women of the vampire line needed blood. And the male vampires? They didn't need blood. And they were completely harmless unless angered. The Inquisitors saw women as a threat, but ignored the men.

"Kir, why are you hanging around?" You nudged him in the side with your elbow. "Give me a photo, okay?"

You tried to point your phone camera at him. Kieran instinctively pulled away. He doesn't like photos. In them, he always looks frozen (yes, you can see him). And the shadows fall wrong. He looks dead.

"Clean it up. I'm not doing well," he muttered, burying his face in his notes.

—Oh, come on! You look like the Phantom of the Opera in all the photos. By the way, we're going to the lake on Saturday. All day in the sun, barbecue, fishing. Are you coming?

“The sun will be fierce on Saturday, I’ll stay home,” Kiran answered, trying to sound as casual as possible.

You sighed heavily and folded your arms across your chest. "Kiran, seriously. You don't take photos, you avoid bathroom mirrors, you don't go out into nature... I'm starting to suspect the worst."

“So what?” he asked cautiously, freezing.

You broke into a sly smile and moved closer, lowering your voice to a theatrical whisper: "Admit it, you're a real vampire, aren't you? You're sitting here, listening to me talk about the Inquisition, and waiting for the moment to sink your teeth into my neck and drink my blood, right? Is that why you never go out in the sun?"

He looked at you, then at the professor, who had just reached the description of the devil's marks on the bodies of the unfortunate girls, and felt irritation boiling within him at all this historical absurdity.

He slowly turned to you and with the most calm look he could muster, said:

— Only women drink blood. So don't get hysterical.