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SYNOPSIS: "can't close my eyes when i'm with you — insatiable,
the way i'm loving you."
after promising you eternity by his side, jaehyun suddenly disappears — leaving you behind, lost and alone. you wander around, spending centuries looking for him, fuelled by the love you carry for him, or maybe is it just for... revenge?
PAIRING: vampire!jaehyun x vampire!reader
GENRE: smut, angst, lovers to enemies!au, historical! & modern!au
WORD COUNT: 21.3k
FEATURING: nct 127, new jeans's minji
CONTAINS: afab reader, a bit of gore, mentions of tragedies and deaths, minor character deaths. orphan reader, mentions of wealth. pandemics and diseases, historical content combined with modern content, many flashback scenes. schumann's fantasie op 17 (which i highly recommend listening to), unprotected penetrative sex, nipple play, biting, bulge kink, feet, blood (trust the process!), dry humping, riding, creampie. some historical accuracies (dates), physical altercation. inspired by insatiable by darren hayes.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: i love this fic so much my heart literally hurts! also, listen — i know romantic things didn't go this way in the 1800's, but for the sake of the plot we'll have to overlook a bit of the inaccuracies <3 thank you to everyone who waited patiently for this fic to drop, i love all of you and i hope you enjoy reading it! <3
You’ll never forget the day you woke up in bed, your heart clenching in your chest without an apparent reason. You’ll never forget the way you walked your way out of your chambers with uncertain steps, curious yet fearful of finding out something you weren’t sure you wanted to find out.
You’ll never forget the way your stomach dropped the moment you checked Jaehyun’s chambers looking for him, and not finding him there. Because you felt like something was wrong, but you never thought Jaehyun would disappear like the earth split and swallowed him whole, leaving no trace of his existence up to that point.
You wanted to tell Jaehyun about the feeling you woke up with, looking for his loving reassurance that it was all in your head, or just one of your usual hunches you usually got even before you were given a reason to have one in the first place. It was like a premonition, a gut feeling so strong that you wondered what was going to happen during said day, — that you still had no idea about but you knew something was going to pop up.
And Jaehyun was nowhere to be found. With the curtains open, the gloomy light from outside bathed the room in greyness, no ray of sunshine in sight on the white sky, so concomitant with the turmoil inside your head, stomach, inside of every fibre of your being.
You looked around his chambers, trying to see if it was all in your head. But seeing how his stateroom trunk wasn’t in the far corner of the room, seeing how his shirts and leather shoes were missing, some of his books were nowhere to be found — you knew that it was not in your head.
Your feet were quick to take you downstairs before you could even register what you were doing. You were still in your night gown as you entered the kitchen, where you found your female maids preparing breakfast, and they all shuddered as your hurried entrance took them by surprise.
“Norma,” you called your senior maid, the most loyal woman in your service, “Did you see Master Jaehyun?” Your tone was fearful, worried, and it trembled with emotion.
You saw Norma straightening her posture, putting her wooden spoon down, “I haven’t, Mistress,”
You looked around the kitchen, not knowing what needed to be done next, or who you needed to talk to.
“But I can talk to Jeger, to see if he knows anything,” she offered, drying her hands on a cloth found around on the counters.
“Please do,” you instructed, leaving the kitchen to go back to your chambers upstairs.
How and when during the night did Jaehyun manage to get out of a house full of people? The servants in their respective chambers, the handyman’s own room downstairs by the foot of the stairs, the old wooden floors and stairs creaking even when the wind blew a bit more forcefully, so you wondered just how did he manage to walk around unnoticed. But most importantly, why did he leave?
You knew who Jaehyun was — most importantly, what he was, — and it took you months of convincing him to turn you into one as well. You remember how adamant he was at the time, so much that every time you insisted on it, it lead to a fight. “You’re too young,” and “You still need time to live,” were his excuses. Excuses that had you moaning at him and that ended with you picking up a fight with him every single time, of course.
“Tell me one good reason why not?” You barked at him, moving your hands around yourself, making your gown’s pliers shift with your gestures.
Jaehyun looked at you, and you could see you were exasperating him. With his jaw set, he took his sweet time to calm himself before he opened his mouth to give you an answer.
That’s how you knew he was trying to maintain his composure with you. He always took too long before answering every single time you asked him something that made him uncomfortable or that was pushing his buttons.
“You need to live, Y/n,” he explained, combing a hand through his hair. “To live more, that is,” he corrected himself, avoiding your gaze.
You scoffed, “What makes you think I won’t be living if you transform me?” You asked him, your voice not above a whisper.
“Please, Y/n,” he pleaded, closing his eyes. “I love you, I really do,” he started, like this should have been enough of an answer for you to drop it, “And you’ll live if I transform you, but you won’t be alive,” he tried to make you come to reason, “I need you to stop asking for this. If I ever feel like it’s a good idea, you will know it,” and with that, he exited the dining room, stairs creaking under his heavy steps.
Jaehyun was not one for confrontation. He liked peace, he liked silence. Maybe it was because of his overly sharp senses, but he knew everything going on, he heard whispers and rustling, he smelled a person from metres away, he smelled disease before people registered something was wrong.
He was lonely, he found his own peace by being in a luxurious manor house, with a few people around to help him with all the chores and matters around the property.
Norma, the most amazing and loyal woman you have ever met. She was loyal to Jaehyun at first, and consequently to you as well, once you moved in. She took care of the house, of every other woman in your service, disciplining and training them to accommodate with the requirements of her precious Master Jaehyun.
Jaehyun was a good person, he never denigrated anyone in his service, but he liked things a certain way, and Norma was the only person around the house to really understand Jaehyun without him having to tell her anything. A slouched back meant that Master Jaehyun’s muscles hurt, furrowed brows meant he needed time alone in his library, talkative Master Jaehyun meant he was at peace with a decision he had taken.
She was what Jaehyun already started to consider as family, he could lift a finger for her to notice and she would understand in a heartbeat what his message for her was, bring me my shoes, or get me a cup of tea, tell Jeger to get the horses ready. She loved Jaehyun as if he were her own child, she dedicated her life to be in his service, and she never imagined herself in any other household, for the only family she was going to service was Master Jaehyun’s, for as long as he was going to allow her.
Then there was Jeger, his handyman and the only other male around Jaehyun’s estate, he took care of all the handy work around the house and garden, on top of managing the horse stables outside. He was a calm man, he wouldn’t speak unless asked something, but in his silent state he knew everything going on around, he heard the gossip first, he knew what had happened around town way before word got to the very well trained ears of the ladies.
He reminded you of Jaehyun, with his peaceful and unbothered personality and you still remember how you closed the door to Jaehyun’s library after yourself, your back touching the cold wooden door as you looked at him setting his fountain pen down, looking at you with curious eyes in the dim lighting around the room. He smiled at you, like he knew you would ask him a silly question, one dimple on display as he nodded your way, and you relaxed a bit knowing he was paying attention to you.
“Is Jeger…” you started, and Jaehyun’s gaze didn’t give anything away, prompting you to go on, expression still as relaxed as before. You gulped, looking around the room, suddenly too aware of your surroundings, “Like you?” You whispered, and you remember thinking at that time, that Jaehyun had only been able to hear your question thanks to his sharp hearing.
He snorted, shaking his head, and you knew he had the ‘silly girl’ remark on the tip of his tongue. He usually called you this whenever your very rested mind came up with theories and all sorts of questions — which you pestered him with. He admired how driven you were, how interested you were about everything he was, everything surrounding him and his real self.
“No,” his answer was simple, curt, cut to the chase. His smile was warm, despite the shiver sent down your spine as you watched him leaning back, more comfortably in his chair.
He pushed his chair back and away from his desk, manspreading as he extended an arm towards you — and you knew he was inviting you into his embrace.
Your steps were calculated, careful, and you moved gracefully around his sitting figure, folding the pliers of your dress so you could take a comfortable seat on his lap.
“Why would you think that?” His tone was low, but still gentle, because that’s how Jaehyun was — a gentle soul with a darkness no one could ever find out about. Your gaze met his, his dark irises sparkling even in the dim lighting of the room, as he looked at you.
“He fits the criteria,” you whispered back, sliding your arms around his neck to embrace his figure better.
“The criteria?” He laughed, nose scrunching up as he shook with a silent laughter, and you felt silly once again.
“I don’t know, it’s just-” you started, looking around the dimly lit room, “Doesn’t really matter,” you changed your mind, not wanting to let him inside your mind — at least not right now.
Jaehyun could do a lot of things. He could smell someone very far away from him, he could tell health from disease, he could hear the steps of people walking outside the gates of his mansion — and their heartbeats, — he could hear the foxes laughing in the neighbouring mansion’s bushes. But he couldn’t read minds, or hear thoughts, and you were always grateful for this.
Because you knew that it would have driven him insane if he got a preview of your thoughts and the million questions lingering inside your mind every time you looked at him. And you also knew that it was for the best, because knowing that someone could be inside your head, uninvited? It made you shudder in horror.
Jaehyun’s cold touch lingered on your face, playing with a strand of your long hair.
“Are you cold?” He inquired, voice barely above a whisper, and he looked at your luscious locks between his fingers. “Go tell Jeger to take care of the fire in your chambers, you need to stay warm,” he instructed, and you did exactly as he said.
Jaehyun could never feel the cold, he let you know when you were freezing — teeth chattering and goosebumps all over your body, and he was absolutely fine. This was one of the downsides of being like this, he had to be very aware of everyone around himself, paying attention to their body language to see if they were cold or not — because otherwise he wasn’t able to really tell, and it could give him away, or at least it was going to raise some question marks.
And another thing you noticed before he turned you was that the room got cooler the moment he stepped in. Fires burning in almost all chambers, yet his presence was still making everyone shiver slightly, but only for a bit, their bodies accommodating to the feeling immediately, unsuspecting that their Master Jaehyun was some sort of dark creature many thought to be fictitious — or extinct.
Jaehyun could be sleeping close to a fire yet his flesh remained pale and freezing. His freezing touch woke you up every single time he caressed you when he spent the night in your chambers, but you learnt to live with it, especially after dropping the whole trying to convince him to turn you into a vampire as well.
Jaehyun didn’t need much sleep. Even when your exhausted self hit the comfortable bed, he would simply lay next to you, quiet as ever as he spent the entire nights watching over your sleeping figure. He usually slept on alternate days, making everyone around the house think that he was ill, with Norma taking extra care of him — and him nibbling on her food like usual. But you knew. You knew his nibbling wasn’t because he got sated easily, he craved something else, something to really calm his appetite down.
He watched you while you ate, and his heart felt content. He missed the way food felt inside his body, inside his stomach, — how the winters brought him an appetite for meat, yet fruits always tickled his tastebuds during summers. He craved it, he was yearning to be able to feel the joys of being alive at least once again, and looking at you doing all the things he couldn’t do anymore, it brought him joy. He was living through you.
And during that terrible morning, you were left suffocating as you stood at the foot of your canopy bed, your mind kept wandering to the past to try and find an answer to your unanswered questions — looking for anything, a hint that might have led up to this moment, up to Jaehyun leaving you behind like he tore your chest open and took your own being along with him.
Your night gown floated around your figure as you took rapid steps down the stairs once again, this time going to the only other chamber Jaehyun had ever claimed to be his sacred space, his library. Jaehyun might have relished into silence and unspoken words and agreements between the two of you, but you knew he had left something behind for you to find.
With Norma nowhere to be seen, somewhere outside with Jeger, you entered the library, and the first surface you checked out was his desk. Books scattered around, his favourite feather pens placed neatly next to each other on the side of the desk, exactly how he liked keeping them. No item was really misplaced, nothing that could be giving away a reason for his leaving.
Yet your eyes skipped to the small drawer under the desk, that was now ajar, and you pulled on it to have full access to its contents.
And like something was making your freezing body suddenly heat up, although impossible, your eyes landed on a piece of rag paper, on which Jaehyun’s pretty and neat handwriting was scribbled down. Your hands trembled as you reached for the letter, and your breath hitched in your throat as you read the first line.
“My dearest Y/n.
The fountain pen feels heavy in my hand, and the ink staining my skin burns through every fibre of my flesh as I write you this — only a minuscule part of all the unspoken words I have never told you, a minuscule part of what I would be dying to let you know, if that was physically possible. Although I cannot feel it, I am certain my heart feels heavy right now, and I would love to be able to feel this one more time, including the consuming love I carry for you. You, through whom I have lived for so long up until this point.” Your eyes were brimming with tears, yet you paid them no attention, and your patience started running thin — with every fibre of your being itching to latch onto every single word of his.
“My love for you cannot be sated, for you have always been my sole priority and desire, and being with you has always felt like the life that was once stolen away from me has returned back to me. Whenever you breathed, my lungs did too, whenever you slept next to me, my mind rested as well. The candy sweetness scent of you — it bathes my skin, I’m stained in you — for every time you showed me love, I felt alive once more, for sure. I am leaving you behind today, but not our love, for I am certain that we will find each other some day, again. With the hope of seeing your pulchritudinous eyes once more some day, I am leaving everything that is mine to you, as I am sure no amount of time apart can make us forget who we are and what we represent to each other. I shall wander for centuries looking for you, if it meant I would be once again feeling your ardent love, and we shall meet again if we are meant to be with each other until the end of times, the way I promised to you. I can barely close my eyes when I am with you — insatiable, the way I am loving you. And I shall not rest until we meet again.
Not sure how I will manage to be away from you for what already feels like might last an eternity, but please look for me, until we find each other again.
Forever and only yours, Master Jaehyun.”
Your lip quivered as you read his note once more, hoping to find something different, a different ending, different sentences laced with love and devotion but this time for it not to be a farewell.
You looked at his name, the detail and soft precision with which he signed his name down, and you grabbed the page, bringing it to your chest. You were short of breath, and you felt the room spinning, the words you just read finally sinking in.
A screeching shout escaped past your lips, and you fell to your knees, bending forward as you kept the page to your chest, forehead touching the wooden floor.
In the midst of all your crying and screaming, ears ringing, in the midst of all the suffering, in the midst of all your sorrow — you still heard hurried and heavy steps approaching the room you were in.
“Mistress!” You heard Norma’s voice, you acknowledged it, yet you didn’t move an inch. You heard the rustling of Norma’s skirts as she grabbed them with urgency, right before you heard a thud, someone plunging next to your aching body, and you knew Norma fell to her knees by your side.
Worried out of her mind, she grabbed you by the shoulders, lifting you up a bit, “Oh, dear heavens!” She exclaimed with horror, seeing your tears. She was making her way around the house looking for you, not knowing how to break the news to you — one of the carriages was missing and Jeger couldn’t find two horses. But judging by the room she found you in, and your state of despair, she knew you were aware of what was going on. Master Jaehyun had left.
She overlooked the red tears flowing down your pale cheeks — landing on your white night gown, staining it, — she overlooked your freezing body as she grabbed you and brought you to her chest.
“It’s okay, my child!” She consoled you, kissing your temple as you kept shaking in her arms, cries of despair still leaving you like a poor hurt animal.
And that’s exactly what you were, a creature that lost its maker, someone who you loved more than you thought was possible. You felt dead, despite who you really turned out to be thanks to Jaehyun, this was the first time you really felt death seeping through you.
Your head fell heavy on Norma’s chest, accepting her touch and love, because she had just become the only person you could rely on.
You first met Jaehyun at a soiree in your hometown, a town far away from his own.
He was dressed nicely, like a real gentleman. Dark hair on the longer side, combed through and styled with grace, he carried himself like he was the most impeccable person on earth and the most important person in that room. And he actually was.
Ladies whispered as he walked his way around, grinning and hiding their crass expressions behind expensive hand fans, — but you noticed their eyes, the vulgar way they looked at him, and then your gaze landed on him, noticing how unbothered he was, like they weren’t even there.
In all honestly, you wish you never went to that soiree. The youngest daughter of a nobleman was playing the piano in the corner, trying to show off her skills, only to have her fingers stumbling over themselves, messing the melody. You were mortified looking at her crimson cheeks while she tried to keep her calm, knowing that many pairs of eyes were on her like vultures on an agonising body right before becoming a corpse.
The sole heiress to the fortune your late parents left behind, you went to the soiree hoping to make new friends, perhaps meet the piano teacher many people talked about around town. Word travelled fast, and apparently there was a new piano teacher in town, of extremely advanced competences — fingers floated gracefully on top of the keyboards, seemingly barely touching them, sharp precision mesmerising anyone who heard the melody, and you wondered if there was truth to it — your interest was definitely piqued.
The day you lost your parents felt like a part of you died as well. You were their only child, they showered you with love, and while your mother raised you to be a great woman, your dad introduced you to the beauty of arts.
He paid the best teachers, and if the ones he found around town weren’t good enough in his eyes, he sent your household’s servants to the neighbouring towns as well, promising carriage rides and good pay to whomever satisfied his needs for a competent teacher for his daughter. Only the best teachers crossed the threshold of your house, and taught you literature, the art of painting, and music. Your talent for playing piano was described as being innate, your piano teachers quickly realised what they had on their hands, the pieces escalating quickly to the hardest ones.
You were your father’s pride and joy, and you were quite famous around town — known for your abilities in music. Piano meant the world to you, music carried you, inspired you, motivated you into hoping you would be tied to it in the future, that you would become someone whose whole being revolved around music and piano.
And when the world was ready to bow at your feet, as you had embarked on a new, staggering journey with an even more competent piano teacher, tragedy struck, ruining all your plans and your life all together.
By losing your parents, the great loves of your life at that time, you also lost your passion for music — you lost your identity, your love for the subject. Grief consumed you, and it made you give up on your talent. Burying two parents as a young woman made something shift inside of you, the cold shower of the reality of being an orphan washing over you like freezing water. You were supposed to make a name for yourself, albeit you knew it was going to be hard — but not impossible to do so; you were supposed to live life alongside your parents long enough to have your father decide whom you should have married. And it was all taken away from you.
A wrongly pressed piano key made you shudder with horror, but it was enough to take you out of your own thoughts. You found it very easy to lose yourself into the memories of the past, happier times — the ones in which your life was peaceful and orderly.
You looked around yourself, looking for the silhouette that had the whole ballroom exchanging glances, but he was nowhere to be found. Another wrongly pressed key made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, and you knew you had to gracefully save the poor lady playing the piano.
Your steps were careful, your hand fan closed as you got closer to her silhouette in the corner of the ballroom, and you touched her back, making her jolt in her seat at the unexpected contact, interrupting her playing.
“Miss Y/L/N!” She exclaimed excited, standing to her feet. “Did you want to play?” She asked you, tone full of airy innocence as she pointed at the piano next to her.
Did you want to play? No, you actually wanted to save her from a future disastrous performance as she got deeper into the piece laid in front of her eyes.
A few people you knew well from around town started amassing around the two of you, their ears perking up at the mention of you playing the piano, but you kept your focus on the young woman in front of you.
You shook your head, smiling at her, “I actually wanted to compliment you for choosing this piece! It’s a hard one!” You complimented her, because you knew how hard the piece she chose could be for someone at her level, skills not fully developed yet. You really knew you were saving her from embarrassment, because the piece was going to become progressively more demanding, and she was already tired — yet you still hoped you didn’t come across as phoney for doing so.
“Thank you, Miss Y/L/N,” she blushed, smile slowly creeping on her face, “I aspire to be like you one day!” She whispered, averting her gaze, not knowing if the words that impulsively got past her lips were going to touch a nerve.
You smiled at her, somehow fluttered at her words. “Thank you, Lady Mirabella,” you grabbed her hands, giving them a quick squeeze as you took her shyness in.
“Miss Y/L/N!” Lady Mirabella’s father was the one calling your name, taking a few steps amidst the crowd surrounding you and his daughter, and he shook your hand in greeting. “Please play something for us! It would be an honour to have you playing Mirabella’s new piano, and it shall be auspicious to her learning!”
You looked around yourself, and then you looked at the piano. You nodded slightly, not being able to refuse the nobleman — a good friend of your father’s — and just the thought of him made you think of the piece you used to love the most.
It had been two years since your father perished, and two years since you didn’t even bother throwing a look at the piano sitting in the parlour of your mansion. You learned this piece for your father, because you knew it was a hard challenge for you to take onto, and you wanted to make him proud. You were glad that he got the chance to hear you play it a few times, at least.
You took a seat at the piano, careful with your beautiful rosy dress that complimented the pallor of your skin and the blushing of your cheeks.
Dead silence surrounded you, with everyone holding their breaths as they observed you — the town’s piano prodigy, making a comeback after years of not playing. Some were new in town, curious as ever to hear you play and see for themselves if the rumours were true, others knew what to expect safe for the piece you were going to play.
Closing your eyes and taking a big breath in, the gracious movements of your fingers lulled the melody around the room, reaching everyone’s ears and hearts.
Even as one of the hardest pieces to have been discovered in the last decade, you knew it by heart. No music sheet needed, your muscle memory was strong, and the melody transported you a few years back, imagining what life used to be like when you were at your peak with your talent — when your father sat in his armchair next to your piano in the parlour, listening to you.
The hairs on the back of your neck raised, and a freezing breeze ran through you, covering your skin in goosebumps, yet it was so brief that you blamed the emotional turmoil inside of you, caused by this melody.
You opened your eyes, gaze fixed on your working fingers, trying to remain inside your own bubble and focus on the moment. The tens of pairs of eyes that were fixing you didn’t matter, yet you felt someone’s gaze piercing your whole being.
You raised your gaze briefly, eyes pointed directly where you knew the keen pair of eyes following you with ardent curiosity were situated, and then you saw him. Jaehyun was looking at you, eyebrows slightly furrowed as he heard the melody that graced his hearing, intrigued by your technique.
But you didn’t pay attention to him any longer, your attention returning to the task at hand, and it didn’t take you much longer to know it was time to end the show. You appreciated having taken on the offer to play for a bit, but you couldn’t keep everyone busy for about half an hour to play the entire piece, and when you felt like it was a good moment to cut it off, you did.
You thanked everyone who complimented you, exchanging courtesies with everyone who approached you briefly, but you decided it was time to actually leave, sending word for your carriage to pick you up.
Wearing your matching paletot on your shoulders, you exited the hall, fingers still wrapped around your hand fan as you waited for your carriage to appear. And then you felt it again, the breeze seeping through your body for a brief moment before going away completely.
A silhouette appeared next to you, and a quick glance with the intention of greeting the gentleman next to you, and you realised he was the stranger from before, the sensational main attraction of the soiree, the very man who stared at your soul while you played.
“Are you perchance a pianist?” He asked, tone low but gentle, laced with curiosity and anticipation.
You gave him a sheepish smile, and you were sure blush was creeping up your features as you looked at the side of his face. His profile was mesmerising. Sharp jaw contouring his face, full lips tempted to let countless other questions past — and he turned his head, locking eyes with you, the pearly irises piercing into your curious ones.
“Am not,” you answered to him, turning your head to look in front of you at the empty and dark street.
“You must be,” he retorted with seriousness, yet the underlying softness in his voice made you look back at him, “That is the hardest piece of piano, not even the greatest pianists can play it fully just yet. But you seemed like you knew it perfectly,”
“I learned it a few years ago,” you explained, not sure why you were even doing so, “I have not played it in a long time,” your voice was soft, barely above a whisper, and you hated how you opened up to a complete stranger after not caring about socialising for the past few years, relishing into your loneliness.
“You are very modest for being one of the greatest pianists I have ever had the pleasure of listening to, Miss Y/L/N,” a soft smile stretched across his features, and dimples formed in the plush of his cheeks.
You threw him a look, suddenly realising just how many times the word ‘pianist’ had been thrown around in the span of a few minutes, and you remembered about the new pianist in town, and wondering who that might have been. You were sure you were laying your eyes on him in flash and bones, right that moment.
“Are you a pianist, perchance?” You were positively sure he was, but you asked out of courtesy nonetheless.
“I am, indeed,” he smiled your way, looking down at your curious self, holding his hands behind his back, “I will be Miss Mirabella’s teacher for the summer, thus I will be seeing you around,” he explained, and you found tonight’s act to be a horrifying orchestration against Mirabella. You were almost positive her father made her showcase her abilities in front of everyone just so the new piano teacher could assess her promising talent, not thinking about the difficulty of the piece or how disastrous it was going to end when his daughter was inevitably going to get tired and mess everything.
“It was a pleasure meeting you,” his words snatched you out of your own thoughts once again, as he heard a carriage approaching, and he knew it was yours.
He moved around your figure, reaching your right side as the carriage stopped in front of you, and he made a gesture to the footman, moving his hand to indicate he wasn’t needed. Jaehyun extended a hand towards the carriage’s door, opening it while extending his free hand to you, offering his assistance to get you safely inside the vehicle.
You looked down at his hand, and your warm hand touched his, but his touch almost made you retract your hand. It felt like touching ice, the contrast between your body temperatures astonishing and terrifying at the same time.
He smiled at you one last time before you departed, and you managed to thank him just in time, fearing he wasn’t going to hear you — but little did you know at that time, Jaehyun heard you loud and clear, your voice rang inside his ears for a few more moments as he watched the carriage going farther away from where he was standing.
That was the night you first met Jaehyun, and he made a great first impression on you.
Making your way around town, followed by your maidservants, you spotted Jaehyun a few more times before he started making conversation with you. Things started off slowly with questions about your passion for piano, and then he wanted to know a bit more about other pieces you knew.
Jaehyun managed to crawl under your skin, making you feel at ease even through all your solitude. As summer progressed, you convinced him to play the piano for you. You had given up on the practice long ago, and even if during that night at the soiree it was proven to you that you still had your talent and had kept all your abilities still, you didn’t feel comfortable playing again. Yet you would have loved to have someone playing for you, and Jaehyun took onto the opportunity, agreeing to your proposal as soon as the words left your mouth.
Little by little, you felt more and more comfortable around Jaehyun. Little by little, you opened up to him, talking to him about your past, about your love for the arts, for the piano, letting him know how much playing had always meant to you.
Jaehyun played the piano in your house’s parlour while you observed him, sitting in your father’s armchair. His movements were gentle, comforting, and looking at him brought you peace. Jaehyun played your favourite pieces for you to relish in, and he gave in so easily when you asked him about his own favourite pieces, that you knew he was dying to be asked about. His eyes sparkled while he explained what they meant to him, his dimples were on display every time a fond memory popped up in the middle of your conversations, and your heart took a leap every single time the calmness of his voice graced your hearing.
No amount of meet ups with him could prepare you for the freezing air you felt around yourself every single time he walked into your house, or a room. No amount of scorching summer days briefly interrupted by a fleeting cold shock through your body could explain the phenomenon to you. You remembered how you felt it that night at the soiree, as well as the moment when he came outside to keep you company while waiting for your carriage, and then every single time you met him, coincidentally or planned.
Yet you never raised a brow, you never questioned him about it. You couldn’t explain the phenomenon, and at some point you thought that it could mean you were falling in love. Maybe it was an effect of falling in love with Jaehyun? But then other circumstances weren’t matching up with this theory.
Jaehyun became a constant in your life, and you in his. Jaehyun felt more alive when he was with you than he had ever felt actually being alive one hundred years ago. With the body of a twenty-two year old man, and the soul nearing a centenary, all Jaehyun wanted was for you to accept him and be by his side for eternity.
Did he want to tell you what he was? Yes. Did he want to eventually turn you as well? Not really, at least not at first.
You were one of the strongest people he had ever met during his very long time roaming the earth, and he knew a few things about knowing people and relocating every twenty or thirty years as not to raise suspicions. He couldn’t take the joy of living away from you, for he knew that he would have wanted to have lived with you for as long as life itself allowed the two you to, but under normal circumstances. Instead, you were alive, literally the sun hanging in the sky, and he was a freezing pale creature that feasted on other humans, — something inside of him told him it was wrong to take the joy of living away from you.
Yet Jaehyun wanted to be selfish for once, and he decided he would eventually turn you if that was what you wanted. If he couldn’t have normality with you, he was going to have eternity by your side — one way or another.
And as the summer passed, the fleeting looks and lingering affectionate touches led to Jaehyun not being able to let go of you. By the time his time as Miss Mirabella’s teacher was up at the end of the summer, he took you away with him, back to his town.
Surprisingly to him, you didn’t need too much time to get talked into doing it, because he knew that for a young woman like you were, with the great wealth your parents left you, moving in with a man that wasn’t your husband wasn’t normal or socially accepted. But Jaehyun didn’t mind actually marrying you, for he was sure you were the only one for him, but you didn’t even let him finish telling you his plans for the future.
So you took your belongings, your wealth, you locked your house, and by the time the middle of autumn reached, you had already moved in with Jaehyun in his manor house.
The cold touches, the breeze you felt when he walked in a room, they all started to add up in your head. You noticed how he knew you were walking up to him from the highest floor of the house, down to his library on the ground floor, he knew if you faked sleeping, you swear he knew what the maidservants talked about in the other room.
But it didn’t actually click in your head until winter came, when you had to leave for a few days to go back to your family’s mansion, and you took Jeger, Norma, and the three other maidservants with you, leaving Jaehyun alone.
Coming back was horrific. Carrying venison and other foods your friends from back home gifted you, you and everyone else were exhausted from the long journey. With the weather outside being one typical to January, with strong and freezing winds, occasional blizzards and heavy cold rain, your body was begging for the warmth of your house.
Except the house was dark, the fire in every room was dead, and the air around was freezing, almost worse than it was outside. You expected to find Jaehyun frozen to death somewhere in the house, yet your quick steps took you upstairs to his chambers, only to find him sleeping peacefully in his bed, bare torso touching the silky sheets like the whole ordeal was all inside your head.
“I heard you coming home,” he smiled, moving his head to look at you. You didn’t know he was awake, but you also didn’t know how he managed to sleep in a house that made the point of your nose and your fingertips freeze.
“Where you… sleeping?” You gulped, closing your cloak up to your chin and squeezing your gloved hands together.
He hummed, showing you a lazy smile. It was time you two had the so long awaited conversation, it was time he let you know.
Jaehyun heard your voice as soon as the carriage came down the street, up to the gates. He knew you were coming home and you were going to find a freezing house, yet he didn’t bother getting up. It was too late to do anything, anyway. When you left, you said you were going to be away for a few days, up to a week, so he didn’t know when you were going to be home, and in his defense, Jaehyun really had the fires popping in every room of the house, as always. But Jaehyun had also spent the last three days sleeping, not differentiating days from nights, so the fires had died long before, without Jaehyun bothering keeping them alive. He didn’t feel the cold, anyway.
“How,” you gulped once again, this time taking your gloves off, “How did you manage to do so?”
Jaehyun extended his hand, calling for you to get closer to him, and with no self preservation instinct, you followed his instructions. Your head was filled with doubts, with worries, with theories that you thought about once in a while, but you shook them off every single time thinking you were being silly. But now the truth was laying bare in front of your eyes, and it looked tempting and like something between life and death.
“Promise me you’ll listen to me,” he pleaded, holding your hand as you sat down on his bed.
You gulped, breath hitching in your throat, yet you nodded, prompting him to start talking.
Jaehyun’s voice was laced with emotion and sincerity. At that time, you didn’t know if lying was one of his abilities, but the Jaehyun you grew to love would have never lied to you.
Every single moment of your life in the months up to that point, you had spent it with Jaehyun, like you couldn’t breathe if you didn’t have him around. Days passed faster with him by your side, nights were slower while he devoted every fibre of his being to you, and you only. You grew to know him very well, even if at that time you weren’t in possession of any of the abilities he, for one, had.
The image of the two of you discussing right in that moment was funny, you were sure. Jaehyun was naked on his bed, and you were wrapped inside layers of fur and warming fabrics, cloak buttoned up to your chin and every single inch of your body covered. The contrast was visible, and terribly shocking — for if it were for Norma walking in right that time, you were sure she was going to black out.
The more Jaehyun talked, the more he searched your eyes, looking for a sign of just how horrified and full of terror you were. But he found none. As his story progressed, your eyes became warmer, and because Jaehyun couldn’t read your mind, he didn’t know if you were on the brink of passing out, or if you were truly accepting him for what he was.
He heard your heart beating erratically as he explained to you the circumstances that allowed him to still roam the earth. He heard your heartbeat calming down, steadying itself the more he progressed into his story, and he heard it nearly stop the moment he confessed his deepest feelings to you. Because you knew he was fond of you, you knew he loved you, but he never explicitly said it to you, words waltzing off his tongue with grace, but the look in his eyes glinted with fear. Fear of you running away from him.
His story was complicated, long, but never dull.
The night he confessed to you, he admitted being almost one hundred years old. Youngest, and only son of a family of ten members, he lost his entire family during the 1780 plague that annihilated his hometown village — and when him and his aunt were the only ones to survive the family that had perished, she made him leave in hopes he found refuge somewhere over the steep hills, inside an abbey.
“I was twenty years old at that time, and she made me promise I would fight tooth and nail in order to survive. I was the only son to be born in my family after generations of daughters, so they always made it clear who their favourite was,” he explained as he walked naked around his chamber, putting a log into the fireplace so you could start getting warm again.
“Father was the first to die, and then two of my sisters followed. Mother tried quarantining us away, but she fell sick soon after, and her sister had to take me and my other sisters in,” he went on, helping you get off his bed, making you sit down on the armchair by the fireplace. “Then my sisters fell ill and perished two by two, but they had already infected my aunt’s family, and eventually it was just me and her left. She had this leather pouch she prepared for me, with two knives and a bit of bread and cheese to survive off of, and she made me promise I would find the abbey, and that I would lie to them about my origins,”
You nodded, understanding his aunt’s concerns, “They weren’t going to take you in if they knew your village had been infected,” your brows furrowed while looking at the fire.
Jaehyun smiled at you. You were so smart, and he loved you. “It took me a few days, and the hills were surprisingly steep,” his tone was dripping with amusement, nose scrunching while recalling his adventures from decades ago, “But I made it to the abbey, and they took me in,”
“And how did you…” you didn’t finish your sentence, but Jaehyun understood what you meant, nonetheless.
He let out a huff of laughter, “You’re so impatient, my love,” he caressed your cheek, eyes sparkling in the dim lighting of the room.
You puckered your lips out of embarrassment of being called out, but Jaehyun smiled fondly as an answer, and you relaxed into your seat. He was beautiful. The light coming from the fireplace made his features sharper, eyes darker, skin even paler, and you understood you overlooked the signs until that moment, because they were all in the open for you — and anyone else — to see, yet you chose to focus on the wrong suspicions, — like why were you always cold when he made his appearance into a room?
Jaehyun looked exactly like what he was, a vampire. Not that you had met any other up to that point, but the tales, the superstitious stories you had heard suddenly made a lot of sense.
Jaehyun’s cold touch on your warm cheek made you shudder, pulling you out of your thoughts.
“I lived inside the abbey for a few weeks, until the plague reached us there,” he explained, clearing his throat, and you knew it brought bad memories back. “One of the monks inside turned me when he realised the others were dying one by one. I don’t know how he managed to live there so long without anyone being suspicious, but when the plague wrecked havoc inside the abbey I was the only mortal still uninfected by the disease. Monk Noel did me a favour that time, and we burned the abbey down so they wouldn’t know the number of survivors,”
“Where is Monk Noel now?” You whispered, curiosity taking the best of you. You weren’t going to ask about him, but your mouth spoke on its own.
“I don’t know where he is right now, he’s a pretty old creature. If still alive, of course,” he mentioned, biting on his bottom lip. His eyebrows were furrowed, and he seemed like he was thinking about his past.
“You’re the only person I have opened up to, you’re the only person who knows me to the fullest, right this moment,” he rasped, and if you didn’t know who the man in front of you was, you would have been terrified of the look in his eyes. “Do you think you can accept me for what I am?” He inquired, because it was really eating at him.
Jaehyun opened up to you in hopes it would take a bit of the burden off his shoulders. He wanted to come clean to you ever since he met you, but you were a mortal and you deserved to be allowed to live your life, with no undead creatures interfering.
“Are you going to turn me into one, as well?” You asked him, and the question took him by surprise. But he didn’t let any turmoil of emotions betray him with the way he was looking at you.
“Do you want me to?” He rasped back to you, tone low but lacking any menacing undertones to it.
You nodded immediately, because you didn’t need another five years to know you would spend an eternity by Jaehyun’s side. “Yes,” your tone was curt, getting right to the point.
But Jaehyun didn’t like you answer at that time. How could you have been so sure you were really willing to give up your life, your title as a mortal, and a beating, blood-pumping heart? How could you give yourself up so easily?
And after that night, the subject was inapproachable. Jaehyun skived every time he heard your words, sometimes he only needed a good look at you approaching him in his library to know what you were going to talk to him about.
Jaehyun wanted to transform you, wanted to be with you and teach you everything there was to know, and he wanted to help you fit into a new world, but it had to happen on his terms. He wanted you to taste foods for a bit longer, he wanted you to sleep the nights and dance during the days, for a bit longer. He wanted you to feel the cold and the warmth for a bit longer.
He was selfish. He was going to let you enjoy mundane life until he decided you were ready to be transformed, not letting you advance too much into your life so your health couldn’t decline because of you nearing your thirties — which at that time meant you were already past the half of your lifespan — and he was going to have you to himself until the end of times.
He wasn’t giving into your pressuring, which drove you insane, yet at some point — you were not sure when — you dropped the incessant asking. Not because you didn’t want him to transform you, but because you realised there was no point in trying to convince him to do something he wasn’t sure he wanted to do.
You were dying to be let into his world, but you had no power over him and his decisions, so you went on with your normal and boring life.
Days were filled with you and Jaehyun reading to each other. He played the piano for you, squinting his eyes at you every time you made an observation about his technique, but then laughing it off. He kissed your hands every time you sewed his shirts, he kissed your ankles every time you allowed him to become one with you during restless nights.
He spent painfully long times with his head in the crook of your neck, cheek pressed to your collarbone as his nose was glued to the skin of your neck, smelling the sweet scent of your flesh and listening to the way your heart pumped blood.
With you knowing who — or what — he was made it easier for him to be around you, easier to roam the earth. Knowing about him made it easier for you to help him, to get on his side, to help and protect him. You made sure no accidents involving put out fires were going to happen again, not as long as you were there to take care of it. You made sure you found good excuses every time Jaehyun needed his daytime sleep, or maybe the occasional three days in a row locked in his chambers while resting. You found excuses for Norma not to worry about her precious Master Jaehyun, making her focus more on you and your needs — albeit you had never asked her before, but you needed to keep her busy and unsuspecting.
Little by little, your passion for music came back to you. You spent time looking over music sheets like you were reading some great pieces of literature, but it took you some time to get back to playing.
And when you did, the piece you chose was the one dearest and closest to your heart. Your fingers waltzed on the keys as you played your favourite Schumann piece, the one you played the night you met Jaehyun.
And there it was, the shiver down your spine and the goosebumps across your skin, not even two minutes into the piece. You smiled, eyes still closed as you enjoyed the melody, the memories of the past that were brought back to you.
Jaehyun couldn’t believe his eyes, couldn’t believe his ears — you were finally playing something, and it was the hardest piano piece you could have chosen. The one who held a special place in your heart.
He sat on the armchair facing the piano, the one he set up for you so you could stay with him every time he played, so that you could watch the way his fingers moved.
Your gaze finally met his, and he could hear your heartbeat picking up, “You’re playing again,” he muttered, but his whole being was so proud of you. He loved you.
“I miss my father a little bit more, today,” you whispered back, eyes back on the keys, not because you didn’t know where to touch, but because you were mesmerised by the way your muscles still remembered the motion.
Jaehyun felt anxiety pooling in the pit of his stomach. He knew your story, he knew the reason you had stopped playing. And the reason you gave him for playing once again made every fibre in his body hurt for you.
You were so beautiful, wearing your silky, ivory dress, rosy cheeks on display, lips pouting with concentration that were literally begging to be kissed by him. But he stayed silent, he observed you, he admired you from his seat, and then he spoke up, breaking the silence between the two of you.
“I want to learn this for you,” he wanted to learn the piece so he could lull you every time you felt down, nostalgic, melancholy taking over you at the thought of your loved ones that you found missing some days more than others, “Let me do this for you,”
Jaehyun spent a good part of his time on earth trying to learn piano. His rules for surviving his condition were simple — stay in a place for twenty years, then move away somewhere else, rebranding his life and career. Up to that point, Jaehyun had spent three separate lives rebranded as a piano teacher, in different states. He spent half his lifetime on this earth trying to learn as many languages as possible, trying to read as many books as he could. But his love for music was always consistent.
He never transformed anyone else up to that point, no one knew who he was. But no one else managed to have him bewitched, so foolishly in love, either. So Jaehyun’s chest tingled while still watching you, knowing that it was time.
And that night, spending time nuzzling your pulse line turned into lingering touches, cold fingertips making their way up your body — reaching your chest and, small and controlled pecks turned into hungry and possessive kisses.
Jaehyun’s cold body never bothered you, especially when it was touching your burning one. Your body felt on fire every time he moved his hips in between yours, your heartbeat picked up its rhythm every time you heard him grunting with pleasure, motions slow and calculated, deliberate. His cold touch felt like a blessing, there to remind you the lengths of the pleasure you felt, yet grounding you every time you felt like it was becoming too much to bear.
Jaehyun never felt the coldness or the warmth of a room, but he felt how your body was on fire under his. Sliding in and out of you was easy, and he took one of your legs, angling it up and supporting it with his shoulder. His cold hand reached down in between your bodies, tracing its way to your lower stomach, applying gentle pressure, and your whine filled his ears like that was the sweetest melody he had ever heard.
Looking down to where your bodies met, the way you were taking him so well and obedient — it had Jaehyun lost in his own thoughts. Calculated motions of hips became more forceful, more intense, and the hand pressing on your lower stomach gained possessiveness.
Jaehyun felt you squeezing around him, felt your warm inner pulse on himself like it was pumping blood into his own body. He felt the spots his length reached inside of you, the palm of his hand felt like it was burning while his shaft moved inside of you. And the feeling of it had Jaehyun nearly losing his mind. Your skin was coated with a thin layer of sweat, and the scent of you exploded around his sharp senses, driving him insane as he was getting lost into you.
He could hear, he could feel, he could smell the blood pumping through you, the pulse on your inner ankle right next to his head made his ears start ringing. Long strokes found it harder to move as your walls prepared Jaehyun to climax, but he knew he wasn’t ready to get there just yet.
Not with your ankle so enticing, so warm to the touch, smell so sweet that it flooded his nose. He wrapped his hand around your calf, moving your leg around so he could bring your foot to him — teeth grazing the skin of your sole, his plump lips caressed the softness up to your pulse line, and he playfully bit into it. It was going to be the last time Jaehyun had you like this — warm, pulsing, alive — and he couldn’t pass on the occasion of worshipping your body the right way.
He bent down to reach your lips, leg still on his shoulder, his hips finding a new angle inside of you that had you melting, pressure building up like fire into your lower stomach, — which Jaehyun made sure to keep his hand on.
You moaned into the kiss, and the way Jaehyun could feel you around himself made him snap with something animalistic, a primal need to see your sparkling eyes like a predator did to its prey. He broke the kiss, bringing the hand that was resting on your abdomen up to your lips, fingers tracing your lips that got swollen from his kisses, from his teeth pulling on them.
Jaehyun looked into your eyes, your breath was getting heavier, more desperate, small whines were leaving your lips as he was helping you reach your release — and he felt his skin tingling just thinking of the way you were going to feel around him, of the way you were about to wrap yourself around him so perfectly.
Your eyes were droopy, but Jaehyun could see his reflection into them when you looked up at him. They were warm, loving, so accepting of him, and Jaehyun let go of your leg, guiding it around his waist, the motion having both of you moaning as he kept moving in and out of you. His lips made their way up your neck, and the moment you felt his teeth — sharper — pressing on your skin, you moaned his name.
“You still want this, my love?” He asked, not slowing down when he felt the both of you so close.
You didn’t answer, moaning his name instead, the anticipation of something you had wanted for a long time making your walls squeeze around of him.
“I need an answer, love. Now,” his rasped, tone low and menacing, panting as he tried to maintain his composure a bit longer. He needed to hear you say it.
“Yes, Jaehyun,” your loins suddenly felt like burning as you felt yourself melting around his shaft, “Please,” you managed to mewl, and Jaehyun didn’t need any more words to come out of you.
With your blood pulsating in his mouth, and your cunt pulsing around his shaft, Jaehyun came exactly like he wanted. Inside of your warmth, feeling every last bit of life dripping out of you.
Adapting to the new life wasn’t easy, but Jaehyun was there for you, guiding you through it all. You were astonished when you realised temperatures didn’t matter anymore, finally understanding how Jaehyun managed to sleep and live absolutely unbothered by the climate or by the temperature in a room.
But the most shocking thing was waking up to a head full of voices, and the smell of Jaehyun’s skin flooding your senses like that was the only thing you were supposed to sense.
“Jaehyun,” you jumped off the bed, both hands on each side of your head, covering your ears. “I can hear them, all of them,” you whispered, but you knew you were panicking. You couldn’t even hear the thoughts inside your head because you heard Norma scolding someone around the house, loud and clear. “Make it stop!” You pleaded, bending over Jaehyun’s bed.
Jaehyun pitied you, because maybe he should have prepared you before effectively turning you. There was nothing he could do to help you or take all the new things away from you, but he could guide you to learn how to live with it.
“I can’t,” he let you know, looking to you from his spot on the bed.
“What?” You screeched, squinting your eyes. You thought you heard him through the many voices in your head, but you hoped you heard him wrong.
“Make it stop. I can’t make it stop, my love,” he explained calmly, unmoving.
Your bottom lip quivered, eyes quickly brimming with tears, and that’s when you saw Jaehyun jump off the bed, reaching you in a millisecond, grabbing your wrists to bring your attention on him.
“No, no my love! You can’t cry!" He seemed like he was panicking, and you looked up at him, eyes meeting his, “You will cry blood,” he explained, squeezing your wrists.
Your breath hitched in your throat and you gulped, yet you blinked the tears away, scared of the piece of information he had just dropped on you.
“What?” Your voice was barely above a whisper, and with the way your ears were ringing and head was full of other voices from servants around the house, you weren’t sure you even spoke up in the first place.
“If you cry, they’ll be stained tears. Never cry, at least not in front of others!” He definitely should have told you all the downsides of being a vampire before he turned you into one, out of impulse.
Why didn’t he tell you all this when you were begging him to transform you?
But you never regretted anything, you never regretted agreeing to become a vampire. Never.
Eventually, as the weeks passed, you learned to tune other voices down, and peace and quiet was back into your head and ears, only focusing on other people’s voices when you chose to.
Jaehyun taught you how to hunt, how to survive among mortals. How to fake your appetite for normal food, because albeit the fact that you could still eat food and feel its taste — although a little insipid and faded on your tastebuds, — there was nothing as delicious and nutritious as human blood. Animal blood was thicker, with undertones you weren’t particularly fond of, which left a weird aftertaste in your mouth — and it felt more like a snack, not like a proper meal.
Human blood, on the other hand, was sweet and tasty. You were surprised by the newly acquired sense of smell that allowed you to sense disease, to differentiate someone who was healthy from someone who was at the beginning of growing an infection inside of them, by a discreet sniff only.
Nights were the hardest, because neither you nor Jaehyun could really sleep, and you had to tiptoe around not to raise suspicions among your servitude. But at least you had one another, getting lost into each other because you were the only one who could understand Jaehyun’s condition, and vice versa.
You loved Jaehyun, and not once did you regret your new life by his side. Not even when you woke up like your body wasn’t yours anymore, — skin a bit paler, eyes and hair a bit darker, pulse nearly gone, with your heart only pumping blood one time per minute, — and certainly not when you realised how many things had changed in your life. You only needed blood, a safe space in which you could disguise your existence as being a normal one, and Jaehyun.
Yet Jaehyun still chose to leave you behind, despite the love he claimed he carried for you, he took off, abandoning you and making you live without him like you were exiled away from his love.
The letter he left behind for you to find didn’t explain why he left, but you suspected his need to rebrand and change from monotony, but that wasn’t a plausible explanation to you — for he had told you countless times that you were going to be spending eternity by each other’s side, and you were going to rebrand every single time he did, or vice versa.
You then suspected he got tired of you. He mentioned he was living through you when you were still a mortal, and then he turned you, only to then leave you behind when he made sure you could survive with your new condition and the burden of knowing you would have to go on with living for many centuries, lacking his presence.
One year after Jaehyun’s departure, you had to bury Jeger — who died of old age, already having reached fifty years of age. The servitude left one by one, others died from colds and others from lung disease, but Norma stayed with you.
You knew Norma was a mortal. At the beginning, when Jaehyun explained to you that you would eventually grow to understand from a sniff or cocked ear who was a living being, you were adamant, looking at him like he was messing with you. You could hear Norma’s heartbeat, you could hear the murmur of her heart as it was pumping blood throughout her body, you could hear the dulcet pulsing of her arteries — but never, not even once, were you tempted to take her life just to sate your appetite.
Norma was the closest to a mother figure you could get after your own mother perished. You found a great friend in her, nothing was taboo between the two of you, — which, during those times, it really showed how close you two were, — and it was only normal to be this way, as she was the only person left that you could trust entirely. Bonded together by the love both of you carried for Master Jaehyun, — yet of course, each of different nature, — Norma never spoke about him in front of you, not wanting to upset you or disrupt your peace.
Jaehyun was like a son to her, his kindness towards her, the gentleness he carried around himself, Norma loved taking care of him, cooking for him, she was devoted to him. And after he left, she remained devoted to his household, and consequently to you, because the day Jaehyun brought you home, you were so shy to become the new mistress of the house, often going up to Jaehyun to ask for things instead of going straight to the servitude. It was easier to ask the man you loved and with whom you were comfortable, because you didn’t want to bother anyone, and you knew Jaehyun did never bat an eyelash.
Being around the house with Norma felt like routine, you sewed together, you helped her out with whatever you could, because taking someone new as servitude was very risky, not knowing to what extents they could be trusted — and if they could be, in the first place.
“Mistress,” Norma tried one evening, approaching you in Jaehyun’s library, “May I speak to you about one of my concerns?” She asked, and you put the book down right that moment.
You were worried, because Norma had never expressed any concern for as long as you had known her. You nodded, prompting her to go on.
“I have a niece, a brother of mine has left this world, leaving her behind,” she started, and you had a faint idea of where this conversation was headed to, “Would it be possible to take her in, to help around the house? I shall do my best to instruct her accordingly,”
You could hear Norma’s heartbeat going crazy inside her chest. She wasn’t frightened, you would say she was more embarrassed than scared, facing you with such proposition. But you didn’t find her proposition to be a problem, knowing that help was indeed very much needed around the house, and with her being Norma’s niece, this girl was probably worth trusting.
Minji was nice, very shy at first, but the more you had her around yourself, the more comfortable you grew with each other. She helped Norma around, and with her being her niece, Norma guided her around like she was a sergeant and your house was training camp.
“I need you to be aware of everything that needs to be learned about Mistress and her household! One day I will be gone, and hopefully you will be allowed to remain,” You heard Norma whispering from downstairs, her tone condescending.
“What if she doesn’t want me around when you’re gone?” Her niece asked, and the thought of her being so untrusting saddened you.
“Mistress has a heart of gold, never forget that!” her tone seemed offended by Minji’s concerns, “Master Jaehyun loved her a lot, and that itself was the only sign anyone needed in order to see what an amazing woman she is,” Norma scolded her, her angry whisper scaring you — so you couldn’t imagine Minji’s reaction. Norma’s whispers were somehow too loud for you to hear anything else besides them.
“You will be taking care of her, and I know she will too,” Norma concluded, and you heard steps approaching your chambers, knowing their discussion was over.
And you tried showing Minji how grateful you were for her being around. Thanks to your behaviour, and you being more open to her whenever she was around, it helped the two of your getting closer.
But good things were never here to stay, at least not around your household, and tragedy struck again.
Norma fell ill one day, out of a sudden. No epidemics had been announced, you weren’t aware of any viruses going around, and Norma only ever left the house once a week with Minji, the two of them in charge of getting food for a whole week.
So when Minji came up to your chambers crying, panicking, you knew things were bad. Norma was barely breathing, sweaty, in pain. You heard her heart struggling to keep up with everything going on inside of her, the infection spread in her body. She was delirious, seeing and talking to every single person she had ever loved, seeing them around the room, Jaehyun included.
You panicked, thinking that he was back without you sensing him, but the corner of the room towards which Norma was looking at while barely able to speak — claiming she was speaking to her Master Jaehyun, — made you realise how bad it was. At that time, even a cold could take one person’s life, so Norma’s condition was serious, and it was rapidly taking her away from you.
“What should we do?” Minji sobbed, hands trembling, and every fibre of her being was panicking. Her heartbeat was going crazy, her pressure going through the roof after realising the situation at hand.
“Minji, listen to me,” your voice was stern, but you needed her to be calm for whenever Norma was going to huff her last breath. “You need to stay away from her, don’t cross the threshold of the door, I don’t want you to catch anything,” You instructed, pointing towards the door, but your eyes were on Norma, who seemed to have come back to her senses while on her deathbed, hallucinations gone and she was once again looking at you with her usual loving gaze.
“What if you catch something, Mistress? Please, let us go find the physician,” Minji rambled, eyes sparkling as she panicked while looking at Norma’s figure laying helplessly on her bed.
“Minji!” Your tone made her jolt, raising her glossy eyes to look at you, “I won’t catch anything from her,” your voice was suddenly heavy with emotion. Not once did you think of transforming Norma, not once did you think of opening up to her. You thought that if Jaehyun didn’t do it in the first place, why should you? What if Jaehyun had his reasons, and you were going to make a mistake?
Looking at her struggling and aching body made you realise it was too late, anyway. She was too sick to be transformed, and even if you bit into her flesh, her body couldn’t recover to have enough force to survive.
“Mistress…” Norma’s whisper surprised you, not thinking she was mentally there, with you and Minji. Her eyes were glossy, lost, sporting the same look they had when she was having hallucinations. “Do not cry,” she instructed, trying her best to sound authoritarian, but her soft spoken tone made your eyes brim with tears. One look at Minji let you know just how devastated the poor child was.
Norma raised one hand, painfully slow, and made a gesture for you to get closer to her. Minji kept her distance, but her puffy eyes were on her aunt, looking over her tormented figure.
“Mistress, I know,” she started, and you felt her heart slowing down a bit, “I know what Master Jaehyun was,” she whispered to you, and your breath hitched listening to her, “If you ever see him again, give him my love,” she cried, lip quivering, but her gaze became lost once again, and aimed at the ceiling, and that was where it remained.
“Norma?” You sobbed, eyes once again full of tears. But Norma was laying still, barely breathing, eyes now close, lost in all the agony she felt in that moment, “Norma!” You screamed, shaking her, because it wasn’t supposed to end like this, not when she admitted that she was aware of everything going on inside the house, with all the tears you had spilled in her presence when you had been left behind.
Norma wasn’t dead, she was unresponsive instead. Her body was warm, but her skin was covered in sweat, the stench of death slowly bubbling inside of her.
Climbing on her bed, you took her figure into your arms, exactly like she did countless of times when she picked you up from the ground, every time you suffered after Jaehyun’s departure. Not caring about the circumstances anymore, your tears started flowing, staining their trail down your cheeks, down your neck as you sobbed and lulled Norma’s body in your arms. Her heartbeat was slow, heart struggling to pull through whatever was going on inside of her body, struggling to give her a chance of survival.
A few hours later, Norma died in your arms, and you can still recall the time when her heart stopped beating in her chest. The 1881 cholera pandemic took the last person connecting you to your past, away from you, leaving you alone in this cruel, cold world, in which everything was unfair and everything moved too slowly for your liking.
Having to explain your bloody tears to Minji came easy, as you were already exhausted by the events in your life — and it seemed like Minji wasn’t surprised of what you confessed to her, having already picked up a few signs, and you imagine yourself a few years prior, finding excuses for all the signs that were laying up in the open for you to see, yet you were blinded by the love you carried for Jaehyun.
With the cholera pandemic taking away many lives on the daily, Minji trusted you enough to let you save her, from that one and from future pandemics and disasters alike.
With Minji’s turning into a vampire, with all the training she had to go through — just like it happened to you, — and with the virus spreading fast, you took your life into your own hands, and Minji’s too, as she was too scared to be in this world all by her new self.
And with your leaving Jaehyun’s mansion behind — with every possession of his as well as yours still inside, — you also left that part of your life behind, and all the memories the two of you had shared, locked in there.
Navigating your new life with Minji was fun, but difficult. Not because she was difficult to have around, on the contrary.
Minji looked up to you. You were her creator, and she was your only creation, for you had never had the desire to turn another mortal into what the two of you were. She looked at you like you held the truth to all mysteries of this world, and you did — to a certain extent. And not Minji’s presence, behaviour or decisions were the difficult part, but the events you had to go through in order to survive.
Using Jaehyun’s rebranding method, you effectively managed to keep both your and Minji’s identities hidden, infiltrating yourselves in communities, villages, rebranding every twenty years and changing your lives completely.
You moved across countries, states, towns, you lived your life to the fullest, meeting people and making friends — that you had to leave behind always, every time traces that could lead to you and your secret life needed to get lost.
You went from wearing crinolines and corsets, to wearing miniskirts, pearls and heels. You went from long hair, to rocking a very short bob, to having long hair once again, just like the trends dictated. You went through pandemics of all sorts, natural disasters, you survived wars and famine — albeit there never was famine in your case, only for the poor mortals.
You went from wearing fur, to waring jeans and sneakers, from writing letters to phones. You went from creaking wooden floors, to tiles and soundproof systems around your houses and windows.
You even went to university when it became popular, and you loved every single bit of it. It felt exciting, remembering the tough times during which you were born, and you still made it out to live through the modern times in which women made a name for themselves, and they slowly gained more freedom and the power of identifying themselves, attending schools and making a living by themselves. You went from being called ‘mistress’, to ‘miss’.
But you never married, you never dated, because your heart kept itself tormented and yearning after one man. One man that exiled you, discarded of you, and that was the hardest part of it all. Like you had never mattered to him. You roamed the earth for more than a century trying to find him, although not deliberately. Every place you moved to, you couldn’t help but wonder if he was around there as well. Decades spent in the same places yet you never heard from him, or sensed him in the air.
The love you carried for Jaehyun back in the day, was still alive, the flame of love barely there, but still burning in your heart nonetheless. And how could you ever think of loving someone else, when Jaehyun was the only man you yearned for? And with all this, with all your love and yearning for him, you couldn’t shake the sadness and the betrayal you felt every time you were reminded of him, rage flooding you and every fibre of your being like a hasty virus.
Maybe not finding him was for the best, because you weren’t sure how you would have reacted if you found him a few feet away from you. Were you going to kill him? What other options did you have, to make him hurt just as he did you?
Everything you became, your existence, you owed him every single minute spent on this earth, but you couldn’t help but wonder what life could have been like if he was by your side, had he never left you.
And then, it was February 1994.
Coming home from your job at the art gallery downtown, you took your heels off, swollen feet thanking you for finally freeing them. Newspaper folded under your arm as you carried unnecessary groceries back home, you threw everything you were carrying in your arms, on the kitchen table of your small apartment.
Out of all the decades you had lived in throughout all your life, the 90’s were your favourite thus far. The phones, the fashion, the busses and subway, the cabs, the music and the films. You could go to the movies every single night, if it weren’t for your job that you liked keeping, despite your and Jaehyun’s huge fortunes you still carried, hidden. You weren’t in need of a job, yet you loved having one — it was more like a hobby, especially if it involved the arts.
So you picked up your newspaper, your body tingling with excitement as you couldn’t wait to see what films were going to be out that week. Yet your eyes stopped on the headline for a few seconds, written in huge, bold letters. ‘LOVED BOYBAND, KILLED IN CAR CRASH LAST NIGHT, read more on page 36’, it read, but you didn’t really care.
You only wanted the local cinema’s schedule, but then curiosity really started eating at you. What boyband? What if it was one of your favourite artists?
So you turned to page thirty six, eyes scanning the page for all the information about the car crash. Nothing suspicious, it seemed like the manager, also the designated driver that night, fell asleep and everyone in the car perished because of his mistake.
Your eyes fell on the bottom of the page, where all the members had their individual portrait pictures sitting nicely, as a posthumous homage to their fame and glory.
And there he was. Jaehyun, pictured in all his glory. Sparkling eyes staring right back at you.
With the newspaper placed on the table just under your nose, your tea had run cold while you lost track of time thinking about his picture. Sure, it was still on page thirty six, plastered there like you were finally meant to find him.
But it had to be just a macabre coincidence, right? Seeing his face after decades, centuries, made your stomach drop and your heart felt heavy with the mix of emotions battling through you. You weren’t sure of what you were going to do — given you found him — thinking you were going to take your revenge on him, but the moment your eyes laid on his picture, and all the beautiful features you once loved, the emotions within you became unbearable. And so did the thoughts.
Had he always been out there giving hints of his existence for you to find, or was this just a consequence of a miscalculated rebranding plan, in which he never took into account the possibility of being outed to the public and, most importantly, to his lover that had been searching for him for centuries after being promised eternity by his side?
It had to be a sick little game of destiny or maybe real death, because you know Jaehyun never made mistakes.
“Mistress!” The familiar voice called you, heels clanking on the marbled floors of the Parisian-style café.
Minji. She still liked using the nickname she was so accustomed to, from all those years back, and she never tried to hide her excitement when using the title now turned nickname.
“You’re very pale,” Minji’s eyebrows furrowed while looking at you, “As if that’s possible,” she joked, eyes sparkling and she bit her lip trying not to laugh out loud at the obvious joke between the two of you. But your lack of sense of humour made her smile drop, and her eyebrows furrowed once more.
“What’s wrong?” She whispered, leaning in from her spot across the table.
You looked at her for a fleeting moment, and you sighed before raising your elbows and snatching the newspaper from underneath them.
You pushed the folded object towards Minji, who was confused but still intrigued, yet she kept her hands under the table waiting for you to instruct her.
“Go to page thirty six,” you brought one hand to your mouth, biting on the nail of your thumb. You see her making slow, calculated movements, like the ones you always do with absolutely no rush in order not to make any unwanted mistakes in this world that evolves at full speed, not wanting to give away the fact that your soul and being are more than one century old — which you learned from Jaehyun, so it was only normal to pass everything you knew down to the only person you transformed.
“Tell me what you see,” you instructed, looking at her features, and the way she was so carefully reading the headline and then how she inspected the page.
“Seven men?” She asked, not knowing if that was what you wanted to hear, “They were kinda handsome, though,” she joked, a tilted and barely contained smirk creeping in the corner of her mouth.
“Mhm,” you hummed, straightening your posture, anxiety making its way through your chest, “Now read the names. Carefully,”
She took a moment to look at you, sensing hesitation, fear, but also impatience?
She cleared her throat, looking at the names below the pictures. “Johnny Suh, drummer,” she made a pause before continuing the makeshift eulogy, “Lee Haechan, bass and voice. Mark Lee, guitarist. Nakamoto Yuta, guitarist. Kim Doyoung, synth and voice. Lee Taeyong, manager. And-” she suddenly stopped, head snapping back to look for your gaze, “And Jeong Jaehyun, vocalist?” She asked incredulously.
Your gaze bore into hers, and she was like a deer in headlights waiting for you to answer. It was either the most fucked up coincidence, or Master Jaehyun just outed himself.
“Is this… Master Jaehyun?” The whisper made your ears start ringing, and you averted your gaze. Minji never saw a picture of Jaehyun, because you remembered having one in his library, but it disappeared the moment he himself also did. “Why is he so handsome?” She seemed starstruck, but she snapped herself out of it as soon as she remembered the whole situation, “And why is he in a newspaper? Did he want you to find him?”
“I don’t know,” you sighed, closing your eyes trying to elucidate this mystery in the next thirty seconds. “I also don’t know if I want to really find him, you know?”
“What?” She slapped your arms playfully. “This can’t be a coincidence, Y/n. It’s either this or he’s just really stupid for believing he wouldn’t make it on the news if he got famous and died,” she stopped her rambling, her mind pausing on one thought, and she bit her lip before opening her mouth once again to talk to you, “Did he really die?”
You shook your head, but there was a lump in your throat nonetheless, “Don’t think so, this could be his rebranding with a good excuse to disappear and start a new life,” you voice was full of uncertainties, it trembled with unspoken fear as Minji’s words sank in, “But what if he really died?”
“What does your hunch say?” Minji pushed, knowing you were going to start crying blood tears at the thought that from that moment on, you were going to roam the earth with no purpose.
“This is the first time I don’t have a hunch,” you gulped, scratching your temples, “It’s logical to rebrand, but he’s not this stupid. He knew he would be on the news and that everyone could see his face,”
“Maybe he was just careless,” Minji didn’t want to use the term stupid on someone as handsome and important as Master Jaehyun.
“Minji,” you warned, your patience wearing thin, “Everything I taught you, I learned from him. There is absolutely no way he did this on purpose,” you poked the newspaper on the table, repeatedly with your index finger. “I think he’s gone. For good this time,” you nodded, your eyes flooding with tears, and you brought a tissue to your eyes to cover the bloody stains about to start rolling down your cheeks.
The heart barely beating in your chest felt like it was breaking, like the last grams of Jaehyun that you had been carrying inside of you since he left, were gone — and that half the heart he had left behind to beat for him, waiting to be reunited with its other half he’d successfully taken away, had finally been snatched away in that moment, the memory of him fading like his presence.
Thirty more years pass by, and you rebrand again. New city, new house, new profession.
You’re now a piano teacher, even if it’s hard to live all the memories of the past as soon as you touch a key when you teach the kids. Memories of all the moments you spent with Jaehyun, the image of your moving fingers on top of the keys fading with an hallucination of seeing his. Your fingers always move with fast precision, and you envision his fingers playing instead of yours, too many times to keep track of.
Up until today, you never made peace with the thought of not being able to see him ever again. In the past, you were fuelled by the anticipation of meeting him again, making him pay for leaving you behind, hurting him, loving him. But now, the thought that you won’t be able to be in the same room as him ever again, made you suffer like a poor dying animal.
In your head, it was just not possible to come to terms with the fact that you’re alone. You still only have Minji, who now lives one hour away from you and has a loving human boyfriend, but you miss him.
Thirty years went by with you devastated and trying to come to reason, thirty years went by with Minji having to keep you in check more times than you’d like to admit.
At some point you thought you should just keep looking for him, but you stopped about twenty years ago, realising it was driving you insane. You knew Jaehyun too well, and you knew that headline in the newspaper wasn’t him escaping his old life. Too many people were involved in that car crash for him to do this as part of his plan, and you knew he wasn’t cruel enough to take away lives of innocent people.
So instead, you’ve been spending time trying to numb all the heartbreak, all the flooding memories you finally managed to suppress — safe for the piano lessons, during which they all came back to you like cold waves to the burning shore.
Mourning the mortal times you lived is something you picked up on the way, because while you have to find new things to think about that are not directly linked to Jaehyun and his condition, it seems like all your existence is tied to his.
You’re only now regretting the decision, the vehement convincing you tried to do so many times on Jaehyun. Because if it weren’t for your decision and how much you loved him, you weren’t going to live much longer. Life expectancy was so short compared to the modern times, the current lifespan of a person being more than double of what it used to be in the nineteenth century, when you were born.
And maybe this is his punishment for you. You wanted this so much, against his advice and against your better judgement, that he gave in just to make you happy, yet at the same time damning you to roam the earth living like him, but without him. Like you wanted this so vehemently, and he gave it to you, but he punished you for wanting to become this way.
Because had he not transformed you, you were bound to remain a mortal, die soon of a disease like everyone else around you did, and you would have been spared the heartache of living your life without him by your side, damned to survive all humanity for centuries to come.
No amount of interactions, no amount of loving what you do, — still gifted and a piano prodigy, — can take away the lingering pain that follows you like a shadow.
Maybe you should have looked for him with more ardour when you had the chance, when you knew he was still around. Maybe you should have spent more time trying to trace him down, and even if you resented him, even if you wanted to hurt him, have him killed, to torture him, you should have acted on time. Because now it’s too late, your racing thoughts are in vain, the recurring pain is just a reminder of how wrong your life went.
You made your research, looking into the last known trace of Jaehyun’s existence on this earth. He was in a successful band, they made great music, and it was a shock to you seeing his decision of using his real name instead of a new one, unlike all the things he instructed you not to do.
And then the mini van he was in crashed and burned, and only burned bodies were found among the charred remains left behind after the fire was extinguished. And you know Minji wanted to ask you if you really think they’re dead, but you also know that she kept her mouth shut not to upset you — upset you even more, that is.
You know they are. Jaehyun, the man you loved, would never hurt others on purpose. He managed to survive in a fast evolving world as a creature characteristic to the undead category, so you just know — even if you lost your hunch about this matter long ago. It’s like the moment you realised he died, when your stomach and heart dropped, your hunch also did.
So for the first time ever, you live your life following a routine, you wake up, go tutor kids, skip your lunches because frankly you don’t need them anyway, then you call Minji on you way home, and you go hunting late at night when people are into the deepest of slumbers.
There’s so much beauty in this world, so much literature and music you can’t help but mourn how Jaehyun chose to run away from you, when you could have lived through all the changing times and decades, with him holding your hand through it all.
And you suppose your love for music needs to be fed as well, with you visiting record stores frequently, concerts, pubs, while also becoming slave to technology, like a dog on a leash for music apps. If anybody told you when you were a little girl, that times would come to change this much, you would have laughed and called them a lunatic. Times in which you bathed at candlelight were changed for times in which people panicked during a blackout. Winter’s cold that everybody used to keep food cold while preparing canned foods and jars during summers, thinking of the heavy winters that were ahead, were exchanged for fridges and freezers. Sometimes it’s hard for you to wrap your head around all the changes and evolution of the human race.
So like usual, you stop by the record store on your way home after your last tutoring session, this time stopping by an antique store to check some vinyls out, because they have always been your favourite, even if you traded them for cds or playlists on music apps to have everything more simplified for you.
The place is huge, and it smells like old paper, the type of store you know has sold the greatest and most authentic pieces known to man judging by the smell of the store alone. The air is cool, air conditioning blowing at full speed — and you can recognise the smell of it. While you can’t feel heat or cold physically on your body, you can sense the smell. And outside is a torrid, rotting smell of a heatwave that has you nauseous after passing mortals on the street.
“Hi, welcome!” A friendly voice rings like an echo around the empty store, covering Michael Jackson’s singing voice heard throughout the ceiling speakers. It’s high in pitch, but you can sense the kindness dripping off it, “I’m sorry, but we don’t allow beverages in here,” he gives you a remorseful little smile, “We don’t want unfortunate events involving our vinyls,” he goes on with the explaining, as if he’s apologising for the store’s policy.
“It’s okay, really,” you tell him, looking at the tall glass of iced americano in your hand, shaking it a bit, the ice cubes making noise as they hit each other. You only ever drink coffee because its strong taste overpowers the disgusting smell of humans sweating outside, skin overheated in the heatwave, “I totally understand! I wouldn’t want my stuff to get destroyed either,” you reassure him, walking towards the cashier desk where he’s standing, “Can I leave this here?” You shake it in front of his figure, before setting it on the desk.
“I’ll keep it safe,” he nods, and one first, very attentive look at him, and his gaze seems to be holding yours with prying attention.
His face is adorned in moles, pouty lips chapped as he runs his tongue on them out of reflex at your attentive eyes on his figure, feeling like a deer in highlight in front of you, and he seems familiar.
A face like his doesn’t go unnoticed, so you wonder the premises of a possible encounter you might have had in the past, a fleeting moment passing him by on the street — anything, really. Because you know you’ve never been inside this record store before.
You give him a small smile, already eyeing other corners of this store, not because he makes you feel uncomfortable, but because you don’t want to make him feel this way as you try to understand the reason he’s so familiar.
Your fingers are fast as you navigate all the amazing music they have. This is indeed the greatest store you’ve entered, and you wonder who curated the inventory.
“Isn’t it torrid outside?” The young man asks you, the only customer at this time in the afternoon, so you nod and hum, acknowledging him and his question, but your mind still blown by the fact that they’re selling a rare Queen vinyl for twenty bucks.
“I suppose,” you sigh, too lost into your own thoughts, and you freeze on the spot, your mind registering the words you just let out.
“You suppose?” He laughs, showing you a perfect row of white teeth. “You just came in a few minutes ago,” he pouts, pointing at the entrance door like you’re an idiot.
Maybe you are an idiot, because why did your mouth open without your consent? This man doesn’t need to know that you don’t feel temperatures.
“I meant that,” you pause, turning to look at him as he’s slouching over the cashier desk, “I moved here a few months ago and this is my first summer here, so I wouldn’t know how to compare it to last year’s,” you try to dodge the bullet, and he seems like he buys your bullshit excuse after mulling your words over.
You try focusing once again on the piles of vinyls sitting in front of your figure, but you feel his intent gaze on your figure, lingering on your pale skin to the point you feel paranoia seeping through your pale skin.
You try to remember why he seems so familiar. A traffic light in town? A student’s relative? Perhaps you threw him a fleeting look while walking down towards your table in a restaurant? You’ve been in this small town for about six months already, but you can’t seem to be able to allocate a place or occasion to his face.
You sharpen your hearing, trying to focus on him, and then it seems like your sharp senses fail you, even abandon you. You don’t hear a heartbeat, you don't hear insides churning after the lunch he’s had today, you don’t hear blood pumping through his arteries.
And then it hits you like a truck at full speed. The newspaper thirty years ago — his black and white picture was plastered there, just a bit above Jaehyun’s, and you can still remember the same sparkly eyes he had in that photo — with which he’s looking at you right now.
You approach the cashier where you left your drink, and you wrap a fearful hand around the tall glass. His gaze bores into yours, and then he smiles at you like a child would, like one of the kids you tutor would try to persuade you to dismiss him earlier.
“You’ve been eyeing me,” he accuses with a playful tone, “Have we met before?”
There’s an urge inside of you that makes your insides burn, like you’re ready to jump this man in front of you, and you wonder if he’s playing with you right now.
If you recognised him, you’re sure he understood what you are as well, hence the question about the heatwave taking over the small town yet you’re dry as a bone, no droplets of sweat clinging to your skin. But if you recognised him from that damned newspaper you still keep in the attic of the small house you bought, you’re sure he doesn’t know who you are. You can link him to Jaehyun, but he can’t do the same to you.
“I don’t think we have, no,” you whisper after a painfully long time, eyeing him like you’re ready to put a wooden stick through his chest if he blinks one more time. “Actually,” you squint your eyes a bit, tilting your head, “You seem oddly familiar,” you retort, taking a few steps back, but you don’t wait for his answer — yet your eyes never leave his.
You throw your coffee in the first bin you find on your way back to your car, and you pick up your phone.
If his band member, who was supposedly dead, is still alive and running a record store in the small town you’re now living in, that means Jaehyun is still out somewhere, and just the thought of him having fooled you makes you choke with betrayal.
You don’t return to the record store, thinking it’d be too dangerous to face that man again. Haechan, you checked his name as soon as you arrived home. He has the same sparkling eyes, the same hair colour, yet now it’s longer than what he sported in the 90’s.
You spend the entire summer looking around yourself like a anxious paranoid freak. You know it’s all in your head, because you would actually feel it if anyone followed you — by using your hearing or trying to smell who’s in your proximity, — but you can’t help but spare looks left and right as you come home everyday, as you go to work, as you welcome your students at the entrance of your studio.
But there’s no sign of Jaehyun, Haechan, or any of the band members you made sure to memorise all the facial features of by looking at their pictures. Thank god for the internet, because you could find all the archives of their activities as a band.
“Maybe you should visit the record store again,” Minji suggested on the phone one day, making you scoff.
“No, thank you,” you let a humourless laugh escape you, eyes squinting as you inspected a box of crackers at the supermarket. “Actually, Minji,” you start, throwing the box in your cart and proceeding to grab a pack of sweet bread, “I’m thinking of rebranding,” you mumble into the phone, aware of the fact that it will mess the timeline you established for both Minji and yourself.
“What?” She screeches into the phone, and your sharp hearing is too sensitive to the sound of her voice, “So soon? But Master Jaehyun is still alive, and possibly he’s somewhere around you,”
“That’s precisely the reason, Minji,” you explain, pushing your cart around, reaching the meat section, and suddenly you’re thirsty looking at the blood-dripping liver packages sitting in the display fridges, “He said we’ll find each other if we’re meant to be, and I feel like I’ve been looking for him yet he’s the one running away from me,”
And truth be told, besides being paranoid out of your mind, you spent time mulling some things over. Some things like the fact that Jaehyun hasn’t made one single effort to find you, or how he went to extreme lengths like faking his own death that he knew would make the headlines, given his status at that time. And then there’s the fact that that man, Haechan, knows you’re around, yet no one has ever reached out to you. So you came to the conclusion that Jaehyun doesn’t want to find you, because he could have done so until now, so many times.
It’s disappointing, realising that you spent eternity looking for him only to be met with an empty promise. And honestly you’ve reached a point where you really don’t want to meet him again. You’re fearful, you’re embarrassed after making a fool of yourself, but you know you did so because you loved him. And you’re sure you’ll go on loving him for a long time, but you’re the one who has to get away right now, the mere thought of having to face a man who made you suffer for absolutely no reason until now is making your insides churn with anger.
Centuries spent in misery only to realise you were playing his game all along. Plying a game of cat and mouse, if you will, — and you’re tired.
“Come live here,” Minji suggests, “Everyone knows I have a sister, so it will be easy for you to rebrand here,” she tells you, her sweet voice bringing you comfort. Because she’s all you have, and maybe you should have turned Norma into a vampire as well. You wouldn’t have been so lonely and miserable if you did.
“I’ll think about it,” you smiled into the phone, but this time you feel like you’ll have to go even farther away.
You’re snatched out of your thoughts the moment someone’s cart bumps into yours.
“Ah! Miss Queen News of the World Fortieth Anniversary edition! What a coincidence,” the same mellow voice greets your hearing, yet this time he’s not alone. You recognise the other man to be the drummer of the band, Johnny Suh.
Extremely tall, very well built, Johnny seems to be someone that came out of a picture. Muscles defined like someone draw him with the finest pencil, clothes sitting impeccably, hugging his perfect body just the right way.
But you’re not impressed, you’re actually upset he bumped into you.
“Haven’t seen you in a while! Someone bought your vinyl a while back,” Haechan’s voice interrupts your glaring towards Johnny’s direction, “Throwing a bbq party?” He laughs, pointing at your cart half full of red meat.
For some reason, you’re beyond pissed by his cockiness.
“Is there a reason for your bumping into me here?” You ask, elbows resting on your cart as you look at the two of them uninterested.
This is just another way to confirm your suspicions. Jaehyun knows you’re here, and you’re sure he didn’t spend centuries looking for you. Running away from you, on the other hand…
“Listen,” you start, pushing the cart away and walking towards the two, “You two act like internet archives aren’t a thing, like wikipedia isn’t a click away,” you sigh coming closer to the two, “One century from now and maybe, just maybe people will overlook the fact that you two look exactly like two rockstars who died in 1994,” you bark at them tiredly, not in the mood to beat around the bush when you know exactly what they are, and you’re sure they know what you are as well, “I thought your maker was smarter than this,”
But you don’t wait for their reply, leaving Haechan’s annoyingly radiant face behind, smugness now wiped away by your words.
And you don’t bother finishing your shopping, or driving home, or calling Minji to tell her of the unpleasant encounter you just had. You drive away, and with sleep not being a problem to you, you know exactly where you’re off to.
It takes you ten more hours to reach your destination, and you park your car in one of the designated parking spots.
You look at the mansion that had been your home for so many years, and even if you wanted to go to your childhood home instead, you’re keeping that option viable for your next rebranding, that you’ve decided will come sooner than previously anticipated.
Jaehyun’s mansion was unkept for a long time after you left town with Minji, and a few decades later, when you made sure no one remembered your faces, you made Minji buy it, not having the heart to lose it — and everything inside, — to complete strangers. After a few more decades, you made the purchase, for it to then be left unkept by the city hall, and then you bought it again at the beginning of your rebranding, a few years ago.
And now you feel like it’s finally over, like there’s no reason to keep it and go out of your way to buy it every few decades to make sure no one sees how suspiciously you act. Maybe you’ll fake your own death as well, and it all ends tonight with this mansion burning down to the ground alongside all the boxes inside.
Your pace is fast, feet moving rapidly inside and past the gates, and a gentle breeze blows, carrying a melody to your ears.
You stop in your tracks, looking at the old mansion and the unkept garden around it, the entrance where Jeger parked the carriage to wait for you, the fountain and its rim — the one you used to sit on while Jaehyun read to you during sunny summer afternoons.
And then you sharpen your hearing, thinking you hallucinated and heard the sound earlier, yet another breeze blows and the melody reaches your ears — this time louder and clearer.
Judging by the piece being played on a piano, the meaning behind it, and the importance it has to you, you know who’s the one playing. And your feet move on their own, your brain freezing while you take quick steps over to the entrance, and all around the ground floor of the mansion, all the way towards the parlour where you knew the piano was, and you stop in your tracks for the second time in the span of ten minutes, a lump forming in your throat.
You’re greeted by Jaehyun, looking exactly the same as he did the last time you saw him, hair black and on the longer side, like he’s been here the whole time, like he didn’t make an appearance in a newspaper thirty years ago, sporting short, platinum hair. And he’s playing that Schumann piece.
“I told you I’ll learn this for you,” he smiles, eyes still focusing on his moving fingers.
“What are you doing here?” You ask, and it sounds like you’re being strangled.
“Well, if the mountain will not come to Muhammad…” he trails off, like he’s mocking you in some sort of way.
“Then Muhammad will come to the mountain,” you complete the saying, still in disbelief of the personal attack he just launched on you. “Is this all you have to say?” You accuse, eyes squinting at his stupidly handsome face, “After all you’ve put me through, you choose these to be among the first words you tell me?” You bark at him, your voice dripping with hurt.
He halts his movements, the melody coming to an abrupt halt, and his beautiful sparkly eyes look into your raging ones.
“You let me roam the earth, alone and scared, just to show up in a place you knew I’d take refuge in?” You accuse him once again, and you feel like you’re losing your mind. Did this man ever love you like he claimed he did?
“I heard you were going to rebrand,” he explained, bringing his arms behind his figure, “You gave up,”
“I gave up?” You shout at him, tone full of anger and disbelief, “I’ve been looking for you since the day you left, and you still managed to run away farther, and farther each time!”
“But you didn’t find me,” he whispers, and you feel like you don’t recognise him. Centuries might have passed, but you never thought Jaehyun’s way of thinking would ever change.
“And you did?” You lurch towards his figure standing next to the piano, and you push at his chest, “Did you ever look for me, Jaehyun? You promised me eternity and then you left, asking me to look for you! And I did!” You push at his chest with every accusatory sentence that you let out, “ Yet you never looked for me!”
You start crying, not caring about the bloody tears, “And the moment you feel me giving up on you, you come exactly where you know you’ll find me? Like you never did before!” You punch his chest, and he allows you to do it, still keeping his arms behind his figure.
“You left me behind and I lost everyone and everything all by myself, when you promised you’d stay with me forever,” you sob, but your tone is full of venom as you spit accusations in his face.
He grabs your wrists, having enough of all your punches to his chest, “I love you! Never, not even for one second, believe I don’t love you, or that I didn’t in the past! I looked for you with no success, I moved countries and continents and you were nowhere to be found! So never, ever, accuse me again of running away from you!” He rasps, accentuating every single sentence. His eyes are dark, menacing, angry at your accusations, and while it should make you back down, it only fuels you more.
“And whose fault is that, Jaehyun?” You retort through your teeth, wrists still wrapped in his firm grip, “You ran away from me that day, leaving a letter behind like that was supposed to hold all the answers to my questions! I had to bury Norma, Jeger, everyone else, all by myself! And the only thing you kept telling me in that letter was how much you loved me and that if we’re meant to be together, we’ll find each other again! You said you loved me but you left me behind like a kicked puppy,”
“And I’ll regret that forever!” He spits, now angry. “I’ve been yearning to be reunited with you even as soon as I left, but I had to do it! The priest started getting suspicious of me and I wanted to protect you! Taking you with me and leaving the mansion behind meant we were on the run from all accusations that priest was going to bring upon us, and I thought it was going to be easier for you to call my supposed death and erasing traces of my existence in this town, instead of you running away with me, and us possibly becoming a subject for history books!”
“What?” You ask incredulously, the information too much for you right now.
“I never ran away from you except that one time, and I came back here looking for you every single time I rebranded in the vicinity of this zone, hoping you left clues behind, clues of where you could be! I spent centuries in agonising pain trying to finally find you,” his voice breaks, it thickens with emotion as he tries to gulp away the tears.
“I can’t believe you thought I was running away from you,” he seems in disbelief, and a look into his eyes and you can tell he’s hurt.
“Then how do you explain the obnoxious presence of your band members around the town I rebranded to?” Your tone still dripped with anger, adamant to believe him.
“Haechan recognised you because of this,” he pulls a locket out of his pocket, “I always kept you with me, all these years,” he opens it with long and slender fingers, showing you a now blurry picture of yourself from 1875, “He told me about you, and how it seemed like you recognised him as well, that one time at the record store. And I knew I could find you there, yet somehow it was like the earth swallowed you whole, like every time I was getting near, you disappeared into thin air,”
He gulps, trying to control his trembling voice, “Haechan heard you might rebrand, and I thought our house could be a place you would want to visit in the next few days, so I came here just to wait for you. And I started playing the piano the moment I sensed you parking outside the gates, hoping you’ll hear me,”
His hands are suddenly on both sides of your face, squishing your cheeks as he looks into your eyes for a sign that you believe him, or that you don’t, or maybe for a sign that you still love him. A sign of anything. Give him the smallest of signs and he’ll grip to it like a drowning man looking for someone to pull him up again.
“My love,” he starts, and your stomach flutters at the words that leave his mouth, having missed them, “I love you, and eternity by your side is all I’ve ever longed for,”
You grab his wrists, pushing yourself up to reach his lips, and the moment his lips touch yours it’s like you can feel temperatures once again. They’re burning as they move on top of yours like flaming hot honey, tasting just as sweet.
He moans into the kiss, his slender fingers now making their way up in your hair, one hand reaching the back of your neck to bring you closer to the armchair by the piano, the one you used to sit in every time he played for you. And he didn’t have to take you after him, because you would have chased his lips nonetheless.
Dragging you on top of him, he never breaks the kiss. Your hands make their way up in his hair, pulling at the dark strands to elicit something out of him, and he pleases your unspoken request with a rumbling groan coming from his chest, like he’s finally relaxing knowing he found the only thing that allows him to go on with living.
“You don’t know how long I’ve waited to have you like this again, how long I’ve waited to taste your sweetness again,” he mumbles against your lips, feeling your hands travelling down his abdomen to his belt.
His hands are all over your body, gripping at your thighs, pulling at your dress, squeezing the flesh of your arms and hips, travelling up on your abdomen to your breasts.
He’s insatiable for you, too desperate to make up for the lost time, too desperate to feel your lips on him, too desperate to be one with you once again.
His big hands wrap around your breast as your fingers travel south of his happy trail, impatience making both of you messy, teeth clashing and tongues swirling in an eager battle of dominance, — and he pulls back a bit, giving you the reins and surrendering to you. He lets you set the pace, and even if he still feels the need to devour your lips and kiss you the way he’s craved for, for such long time, he lets you guide him so it feels good for you.
His senses are flooded by your smell, the sweetness he’s daydreamed of so many times until now, and it doesn’t have to be a memory of the past. You’re right here, your bare chest touching his, and with your clothed cunt causing friction on his already hard bulge.
You bite his lip as a warning to keep it down, because you’ve never heard him so vocal and desperate for your touch. You guess this is what a century of yearning does to a man.
Feeling Jaehyun so eager for you gives you so much power, so much control, he’s at your mercy but his eyes are looking at you like he’s on the edge of snapping, like he’s putting all self control into supporting your weight on top of his clothed cock, trying not to pay too much mind to it or otherwise the friction alone might make him release on the spot.
You moan his name when the friction feels too delicious, making your clit burn with anticipation, “Tell me what you want,” you look down at him, half naked under you, with his eyes glinting the moment he hears the way his name rolls off your tongue so easily, so eager, “Just say it,”
“You,” he huffs trying not to focus on the way you keep moving on top of him, relentless, “Just you,” he breathes on your neck, hands keeping you in place on top of him, “Ride me, my love,” he pleads, and it doesn’t take you too much time to do as he says.
His fingers travel between your bodies, moving your panties to the side, to impatient to let you get off him to slide them down your legs, and as you sense his movements and understand his actions and what he means, you fingers move to his boxers, pulling the elastic band away from his abs, his cock slapping against his abdomen as soon as you free it from the uncomfortable tightness of the fabric.
You squeeze it in the palm of your hand, grip travelling to its tip, and Jaehyun sucks air through his teeth, “Don’t play,” he lets out a whimper when you give it one final squeeze, before your free hand pushes him away from your neck.
He rests on his back, as much as the armchair allows him to, and you keep him into place with your hand, the other one busy lining him at your entrance.
The moment you sink down on him, you both release a sigh. With your eyes closed, you fail to see the way Jaehyun is looking up at you, eyebrows furrowed and eyes glossy, — the way you’re squeezing and pulsating around him makes his breath halt into his throat, jaw setting while looking down between your bodies at the way you’re taking him in so easily, moving your hips in a sinful motion.
The sting of the stretching fuels the burning you feel in your lower abdomen, like you’re ready to snap anytime already. It prompts you to plant the soles of your feet flat on each side of Jaehyun’s hips, and the motion has him hitting a new angle inside of you, one that has you seeing stars and your cunt squeezes him hungrily as you move up and down his cock.
The obscene squelch of your cunt taking all of him with ease is arousing, and your hands travel on his chest for support, touching his nipples and getting a whimper out of Jaehyun, one that you’ve never heard. He’s sensitive, both south of his loins and on his chest, and he has to fight and set his jaw not to release into you.
“I’m close,” he warns, and the sounds you make are enough to make his dick twitch inside of you, “Won’t be able to last any longer, my love,”
“I don’t want you to,” you let out a breathy moan, your hand travelling between your folds to rub circles on your clit, giving yourself a helping hand, “Just let go,”
And the moment your release hits you, cunt squeezing around him like a vice — thanks to your motions on your fingers, — Jaehyun groans, spilling strings of his own release inside of you, melting in the way you keep pulsing around him, milking him for all he’s worth.
Keeping him inside of you, you fall on top of him, knees on each of his sides, and your face touches his shoulder, resting against it.
“You learned Schumann’s piece for me?” You ask, your question distorted by the way he’s still keeping you against his skin, cheek squished against his shoulder, and all Jaehyun wants is to kiss your pouting lips.
“That’s all you remember from the past half an hour?” He squints his eyes down at you, but his tone is playful.
You grab his chin, pushing yourself up to reach his lips, “Your technique is rusty, but you have some more centuries to learn it!” You giggle, hand falling back in the crook of his neck, and you let out a content sigh.
You’re exactly where you were always meant to be, both you and Jaehyun, sticking to each other, ready to navigate eternity hand in hand.
HAIIII!!! It's Rose on my other acc and I wanted to say that I was really hoping to read the other Haechan fic but now I'm sad it will be posted later on 🥹🥹🥹 BUT DON'T WORRY, I'LL READ ALL YOUR FICS REGARDLESS CAUSE I LOVE THEM SO MUCH
hi rosie love!!!! dw i know it’s you 😽!!!!! dw love it’s still going to be uploaded after the mark fic!!! but im a but busy at the moment and that’s why i have been missing for a bit 💔
hi bunny! I was wondering about the mookie fic that you talked about before, will you still post it? I miss them so much 🥺
hi baby pie!!! the mookie fic turned out very self indulgent for obvious reasons (i miss my husband so much) and i wasn’t sure everyone would like it… but if you and others are interested i can try and post it this week ❤️🩹 just let me know 😽🐯💖💕💗💘💓
hello bunny baby how are you😋😋😋 how was your day😋😋😋😋 how was your week😋😋😋😋😋 soooooo you mentioned the fics being released anyway you just wanted to see which to post first😋😋😋😋😋😋 like😋😋😋😋😋😋😋 how soon are we talking😋😋😋😋😋😋😋😋
hi babylove!! 😽 im so excited for these fics to see the light of day!!!! apparently mark’s gonna be the first to be up by friday!! which are you most excited for??? 😽💘💖💕💓💗💓💕💖💘😽😽
Cant believe arranged marriage and clhga is tied. You know i choose clhga, you know i’ve been waiting for it for a long time😭 bunny pls bunny🙏🏻😭 but i gotta go with whatever you choose and trust i’ll read it, but pls😭
-✨
I CANT BELIEVE CLHGA IS LOSING OMFGGGGG 😭 i really thought i had everyone figured out 😭 but dont worry love!!! as i told the previous anon these fics are gonna be posted anyway and i just needed the poll to see what everyone wants first!!!! 😽
