The Tale of a Certain Vampire

This is a sad yet beautiful story of love passed down among vampires.

Once upon a time, there was an incredibly beautiful female vampire. Her name was Clarimonde. She was a sculpture-like vampire with wavy blonde hair and eyes of chrysoprase. One day, she fell in love with a young priest. At first sight, she knew this was the man she had been searching for. She saw it as destiny. Clarimonde had many lovers and had sipped blood from them, but she stopped abruptly. She wanted no blood but his; she began to find the blood of other humans loathsome.

Using her beauty, she approached the man and became close to him. Eventually, Clarimonde revealed her true nature as a vampire and begged for his blood. Just a single drop would do—only the one drop necessary to sustain her life. To her pleading, the man offered his arm without hesitation. The man abandoned his faith in God and chose Clarimonde the vampire. The two loved each other deeply. For her, it must have been the happiest time imaginable.

However, fate often does not go as planned. This was true even for her. After a while, a priest noticed the change in the once-devout man and tracked down Clarimonde. Then, before the man's eyes, he sprinkled holy water on Clarimonde and drove a cross into her jewel-like, lustrous chest. She crumbled into ash and vanished from this world in an instant. In her final moments, Clarimonde shed a tear and left these words: "Just one drop of that beautiful, crimson-shining blood."

In this world, very rarely, a human is born with the ultimate blood that vampires crave above all else. The vampires who have tasted it all say in unison that it is as mellow as wine aged for centuries and as addictive as a narcotic. And eventually, such blood came to be called the "Tears of Clarimonde." As a tribute to the devoted, beautiful vampire who met a tragic end.