Updated June 1, 2014
Why not me?
To beings like Rido Kuran, the deepest wounds of the flesh heal and return to perfection. Wounds of the soul are quite a different matter. Time is what it takes, and quite fortunately time, if anything, he could afford. Through turns of the moon and tides of the sun, his wound closed.
What it left behind was a scar featuring an intolerably persistent itch—the mystery.
Why not Rido Kuran?
If Haruka Kuran was more than enough, why not him, her brother? A being less scrutinizing would acquiesce that there were similarities enough—both male, both purebloods, both powerful, equally devoted. Equally deadly.
Yet things became more complicated than this.
Juri was as complicated as they come. She was the best anything can be. He worshiped her blood—the only relief his parched soul could know. He resolved he would drink her blood, but somehow he never acquired even a drop.
When Juri married Haruka, he wasn't exactly devastated. For Rido, it didn't matter. Marriage, customs, morals, blood relation…have any of those ever mattered in the eyes of the immortal? All he wanted was Juri, her blood, her love.
He loved her so much he wanted to drink from her until she drops dead.
After thousands of years, it was proven that the marriage did matter. Haruka was Juri's as Juri was Haruka's. They lived in their eccentric isolated state, by their own rules, and in their own world.
He cannot wait for one more day, let alone another thousand years. And even if he could, he knew waiting would not change anything, much less Juri. Not even death would convince her that Rido deserved her more than Haruka did. There was only one solution.
Still, that night, Juri wasn't his. Instead, he was trapped in slumber for years. When he awoke Juri was the first thought in his head, but she wasn't there to relieve his impatience. She wasn't anywhere in the world.
For thousands of years he waited, and he could not accept that they would all be for nothing. Juri Kuran would be his, in any way possible. If that way required risking his life, then he would not hesitate to die.
Such wretched beings cannot know joy, perhaps, but the moment Yuuki's blood touched his lips was the moment he came closest to it. It wasn't a goal achieved as much as a spark of hope found.
He asked the girl why. He hoped she had the answers to the questions as old as Rido himself. Her tears proved that in life and death Juri refused, and no explanation would ever exist nor suffice.
In the end that itch, that shallowest scar, tore apart and swallowed him with fire and blood. It didn't matter. Without Juri, Rido was an immortal nothing.
Why not me?
He would be with Juri and he could ask her for eternity.