Kaien Cross

Headmaster Kaien Cross (黒主理事長, Kurosu Kaien Rijicho) is a character in the manga and anime series, Vampire Knight by Matsuri Hino. In the story, he is the current Headmaster of the Cross Academy and head of the Vampire Hunters Association. He is also known as the strongest vampire hunter in history and is quite the legend. He is the adoptive father of Yuki Cross, the heroine of the story. Kaien's role in the story is largely observant and he takes little action until the hunter's association attacks the night class.

Character outline
Kaien sports a happy and lucky personality yet can be serious at the same times, it can be said he is a little strange. He enjoys ribbing his 'children', particular Zero, who refuses to consider Kaien and Yuki family, which jokingly breaks Kaien's heart. He can appear so thoughtless, often overriding and ignoring Zero's distaste for vampires.

He often only tells half of the truth to protect Zero and Yuki. He told Zero that the tattoo would prevent his awakening, but left out the part of the taming and later uses it to tame Zero to Yuki without telling what he was doing. He is however proud and very protective of Zero and Yuki. When Zero made his declaration, that he would kill all the purebloods, Kaien promised to stand in his way, should he go after Yuki, no matter if it was right or wrong.

Kaien has not always been so-happy-go-lucky. When he was at his prime as a Vampire Hunter, Kaien Cross was known as the Vampire without Fangs. Kaien is over 200 years old, speculated to be between 220-250 years old, due to the vampire genetics in hunters and he no longer ages and had to create many (possibly false) identities to keep normal humans from becoming too suspicious. When Kaien first met Toga Yagari, Yagari asked Kaien if he was a vampire, but the doctor examining Kaien told him that Kaien is not a vampire.

Background
Kaien is friends with pureblood vampire, Isaya Shouto and he also used to intentionally pick fights with him. With Juri's influence, Kaien took on Juri's dream and retired as a vampire hunter rejoining the family business of running Cross Academy 16 years prior to the story's beginning. Following the deaths of Juri and Haruka Kuran, Kaien took in their hidden daughter, Yuki after Kaname Kuran brought her to Cross for safekeeping. Cross kindly took Yuki in and adopted her within the week, becoming her very doting and slightly odd father, much to Yuki's annoyance. Kaien also took Zero Kiryu into his home several years later. He also wished to adopt Zero, but Zero refused.

Shortly after Zero's arrival, with Kaname's assistance, Kaien was finally able to establish the Night Class to promote understanding between humans and vampires. Zero refuses to attend high school and skips a year, but Kaien is able to convince him to attend the following year in order to prevent Yuki from being alone in the duties of being a guardian.

Plot Summary
Kaien has installed Yuki and Zero as the only guardians and ignores Zero's request for assistance. When Zero completely awakens as a vampire, he performs the ceremony to have Yuki tame Zero.

Kaien accompanies Yuki and Zero to the Hunter's Association's main headquarters in order to look up the records on Yuki's history, he states that it is due to his worry about the effect on Zero. Shortly after, Yuki accidently uncovers the fact that Kaien was once a vampire hunter, though Kaien ashamed for having killed vampires in the past and didn't want her to know, she states that he is her father and nothing has changed, Kaien is touched.

As Kaien is fully aware, of who Kaname is to Yuki, but he still questions what Kaname intends, when making Yuki his lover.

When Yagari returns and they go and check on Zero following Yuki's change. Kaien admits to a disgusted Zero that he knew everything. With the vampires attacking the school, Kaien admits it is no longer peaceful. But as he swears to do no violence against vampires, it is not until the Hunters arrive that he along with Yagari go out and defend the Night Class. He goes up against the president of the hunter association and discovers the president has been partially taken over by drinking a powerful vampire's blood. He dispatches the president, but the Hunters take Kaien into custody for the disaster that has occurred.

During the following year, Kaien has been in custody while Yagari acted as the chairman of the academy. Yagari and he convinced Zero to return to school, albeit allowing Zero the use of one of his apartments. Kaien is now acting as the President of the Hunter Association and returned back to the school as the Chairman. It is revealed that Yagari is actually the true head of the Hunters Association.

Kaien goes to Zero and reveals that the Hunter Association intend for Zero to become their president in the future and require him to attend the peace meeting. Kaien also tells Zero that he will stand between Yuki and Zero, if necessary, because he cares for both of them. Kaien attends the meeting with various other hunters, the meeting goes smoothly although Kaname interrupts it to inform Kaien that he will be able to see Yuki at the party, to which Kaien thanks him. Kaien expresses doubts over the way Kaname dealt with the former Vampire Council believing it too harsh and at risk of alienating the other vampires, in particular the other purebloods.

Kaien goes to see Yuki at the party, but expresses displeasure toward Kain over the difficulty in seeing her. His visit is delayed when they discover the body of a hunter. He gets to see Yuki when she walks into the room, but he finds it difficult to tell that a hunter was bitten by a pureblood. After Ouri's death is considered an assisted suicide, Kaien declares that the Hunters can never let it happen again.

He is later seen in Shouta's house, and questioned why he didn't greet Yuki before she left. He responds by saying it's fine considering that he just saw her the other day and didn't want her knowing that they were old friends, since it might influence her way of seeing things. He then goes off ranting about how adorable she is and how painful it's going to be if someone does chop off her head, even if she can't die from it, she should take care of herself properly. He then remarks about how much she does look like her mother and how the purebloods shouldn't look at her that way. He then goes on in saying that he felt as if he made a difference and it convinced him to raise a vampire child for ten years. He decided to hold onto the theory of 'what if' and go for it. He did it to try and make ripples on the surface, and that Yuuki grew up watching that. He then says that he doesn't want to delay him anymore and that he still had more visits to make. He just suspected Shouto would wake up soon and he just wanted to say hi and warn him that the hunters are still in uproar about the incident with Ouri, so he shouldn't cause any trouble.



Trivia

 * Cross or Kurosu, means "black master." Kaien is a combination of kai, meaning "ashes", and en, meaning "village gate." The kanji for en is also used for Enma the ruler of the Underworld in Buddhist mythology.
 * Kaien enjoys wearing very odd clothing and can be spotted with oversized lion feet slippers and large colourful hats.
 * Kaien also enjoys cooking very strange food and making Yuuki and Zero try it. He is often mockingly sad if they don't enjoy it.
 * Kaien often asks Yuki to refer to him as "father" when she calls him "Headmaster".
 * His hairstyle and hair color bear a certain amount of resemblance to that of Zero and Ichiru Kiryu's mother, though the implications of such similarity are uncertain at best.
 * In the manga, when Zero was tamed, Kaien says something along the lines of "If you ever need to drink someone's blood, feel free to drink mine!". In the same panel, his chest reads "GAY".