Woman, Eating

Lydia, who goes by Lyd, is a 23-year-old vampire of Japanese, Malaysian, and English heritage. She recently moved her mother, Julie, into Crimson Orchard, a residential care home in Margate, and is attempting to live independently in London for the first time. Julie was diagnosed with "probable Alzheimer's," though Lydia believes the condition is psychological: an identity crisis triggered when Julie lost her last vampire tooth and received human-style dentures. With the new teeth came a new personality that forgets she is a vampire.

Lydia secures a windowless studio in a former biscuit factory called Kora Studios. Ben, the building's artist-manager, shows her the space. She chooses the lightless ground-floor room because she is photosensitive: Sunlight burns her skin, and artificial light overwhelms her senses. The next day, she begins an internship at the OTA gallery, nicknamed "the Otter."

Lydia's departure from Margate was wrenching. Julie clung to her house keys, wailed, and tried to bite her. Lydia drank the last of their pig blood alone at the kitchen table, reciting a prayer directed not at God but at the pigs whose blood sustained them. Julie always insisted they eat only pig blood and raised Lydia to believe they were demons, unnatural and disgusting, deserving of nothing better.

Lydia's dual nature is central to her struggle. Her demon sustains her human heart, while her human body digests the blood the demon needs. She inherited human traits from her Japanese father, Taiyo Kobayashi, including his perfectionism and shyness, and demon traits from her mother: sharp teeth, agelessness, and hunger. She also carries a trace memory of human blood from the womb, intensifying her lifelong craving.

Her first days in London prove difficult. A butcher refuses to sell her pig blood, and the luggage storage at St. Pancras loses her suitcase containing her clothes, books, and birth certificate. She orders dried pig blood online, but the delivery goes to the wrong address. She is hungry, isolated, and nearly without possessions.

At the Otter, Heather, the blond receptionist, puts Lydia in a puppet theater booth to man the tickets. She sits for hours, unseen. Inside the booth, she finds a distinctive glove puppet: a dark-headed woman with wild hair, a hooked nose, and a large chin. On her way out, Lydia slips the puppet into her rucksack.

After Ben is hit by a car while cycling, Lydia helps clean his wounds. As she extracts gravel from a cut on his hip, her face hovers near his open flesh. She leans toward his neck, teeth ready, but Ben steps away and reveals he has a fiancée. Lydia flees with the blood-soaked towel. In her studio, she sucks Ben's blood from the towel for hours. Even this small amount transforms her: She feels hints of his birth, his emotions, his first sight of her.

She visits Julie at Crimson Orchard after learning that Julie bit a nurse. Julie does not recognize Lydia, speaking in a posh British accent and claiming her daughter died at birth. A nurse named Kemi gives Lydia a list of Malaysian sweets Julie has been requesting, relics of a human childhood Lydia never considered. Before Lydia leaves, Julie briefly snaps into recognition and whispers a warning about a man who "bites."

At the gallery, the director, Gideon, reveals he collects her father's artwork and expresses interest in Lydia's own work. His behavior soon turns predatory. She catches him watching her silently from a doorway. Later, as she squeezes past him on a staircase, he gropes her and brings his mouth close to her neck. That evening, he sends a friendly email as though nothing happened.

Lydia finds a freshly dead duck on the Thames foreshore, carries it home, and drains it. The blood restores her confidence. She joins a communal dinner at The Place, the factory's shared living area, and meets the other artists, including Shakti, a stone carver, and Anju, Ben's fiancée and a painter. As she leaves, Shakti warns her about Gideon. Reading a book on Russian puppetry, Lydia discovers her puppet is Baba Yaga, a witch and figure of death from Slavic folklore who sometimes drinks milk and other times blood. She identifies deeply with Baba Yaga and paints a portrait with golden-brown human hands modeled after her own.

At the gallery opening, Lydia is assigned alone to a room of freak show paintings, where guests ignore her. Later, Ben meets her and they walk to a sculpture show at the Royal College of Art. Ben tells her his mother has entered a hospice and shares his art practice: He builds clocks from his mother's belongings. Back at Lydia's studio, they kiss and have sex. Lydia feels entirely human: Her heart beats on its own, she feels no desire to bite, and she forgets her hunger.

The aftermath shatters the moment. Ben discovers the rotting duck carcass in Lydia's sink and retches. He grows distant and guilty, saying they "shouldn't have." As the duck blood runs out, Lydia spirals into emptiness. She considers starving the demon so her human side might strengthen and throws away the pig blood and Ben's towel, vowing never to drink blood again.

Late one night, inspired by the detail that Baba Yaga sometimes drinks milk, Lydia drinks some from the communal fridge. Her body reacts violently: Her veins turn white, her limbs stiffen, and she collapses. In a vision, she sees Crimson Orchard at the end of the world, only her mother remaining, glowing in a vibrant batik dress. Lydia tells Julie, "We're not dead. We're not evil," comparing them to creatures that never age.

Maria, Lydia's floor neighbor, finds her unconscious and calls Ben. When Lydia recovers, she reaches for Ben's hand, but he pulls away: "The other night was a mistake." Lydia bares her sharp teeth at him for the first time, and he staggers back. She flees to her studio, pressing against the door, fighting the urge to pull him inside.

Alone, Lydia arrives at a pivotal realization. Reflecting on two intertwined figures from her vision, she understands she cannot separate her demon from her human. She is one unified being. She recognizes that her mother, despite everything, is truly alive, not her idealized dead father. She paints over her Baba Yaga portrait, merging human skin with the dark background so the boundary between figure and night is unclear.

Her hunger becomes unbearable. Her instincts carry her to the Otter, where she finds Gideon alone. She bites into his neck and drains him. Through his blood, she experiences his predation of women and tastes the foods of his life, among them something deeply familiar: coconut rice, tamarind, and pandan dessert, the Malaysian cuisine of her mother's human childhood. Within his memories, she finds his art collection, including her father's paintings and the puppet Baba Yaga. She drains a second man, then runs through the rain, discovering she can perceive people's remaining lifespans as tangible things.

She returns to the factory and packs: puppet Yaga, an art book, and a print of Three Girls by painter Amrita Sher-Gil. As she steps into the corridor, Ben appears holding food he brought for her. She perceives the length of his life and sees it ends in just a couple of years. She considers warning him or turning him but instead embraces him, presses her neck against his, and places her studio keys in his hand. "I have to go," she says. Ben stands speechless, blood from her mouth on his skin. Lydia leaves his life intact and walks out, heading to collect her mother and go onward, somewhere else.