▪▪▪ INTRODUCING a member of Jeju supernatural circle, 【 JO MINHO 】, or also known as 【 ASKEL THORN 】, a(n) 【 142 】 year old 【 VAMPIRE 】 who is being trusted with a role of a(n) 【 ARISOCRAT 】 and living daily with the occupation of a(n) 【 MONOLOGIST 】.
He came with the chill of the winter, a night fallen with a scream falling deaf upon the ears of the world. A hush sounding across the family, of a story told about a son being born, a new life brought to live within the four walls of their home.
As the whispers would pass in the halls, of the men cluttering together and the women holding their bated breath, Cho Min Ho was handed over to a tired woman. His mother. And with the white of the snow telling of the end of the year, the family found themselves with a blessing as he laid against a beating heart and spoken to in soft, hushed voices.
The faint music was strung in the background as they kept to themselves; newly-wed and high on the excitement for the prosperity that life would give them. Thundering hearts, demure smiles and the tickle of laughter at the corner of their lips— the marriage seemed to give them so much.
Like a child awaiting to be brought to their earth, to their home, and they prayed to the Gods for good luck and a good life. He fell in love, as quietly as he could for the blooming flower in his palm, her hair grown black against the setting sun and the grass growing greener and the days warmer, and he fell for this life quietly. They were happy.
But with the crunching of the leaves falling from the trees, the pace became shorter.
Days came to a halt, with the sound that blended into his skin and the life robbing him of his want to continue on.
In the shrill sound of his wife in the background, it played along with the cacophony of silence. Loud against his ears as if begging him for mercy against the ripples of pain.
Yet as quick as it came, it died.
Wide eyed he listened to the house doctor’s words, the twisting feeling bottling in the bottom of his stomach like cold ice.
Ground painted red— two lives lost. He felt like a failure as a husband, as a father.
He felt cold to the bone— only twenty-six years old with winter under his soles. Something had unlatched itself within himself, uncaring for the passing life around him as he mourned his wife’s life lost and the child that he had never gotten to meet.
Uncaring, reckless… a man inattentive to his life and to the people he invited into his home. Travellers that went south, or some north, and their stay short (or some long).
In the winter he invited a woman, ageless and cold in touch, with grim like smiles and pretty fallen hair. Her words were sweet as she spoke and he let her in.
With night falling and the death approaching, he had never thought that he was to die like this, his blood splattering against his pillowcase and lips strung over the column of his neck— teeth nipping, sharp searing pain.
Breath shallow, eyes unfocused.
A low voice talking against his ear, urging him through.
He hungered for years. Quenching it with lives on his hands, palms dirtied.
And there was a shrill laughter and a voice that spoke of; “More! More!”
They tore apart in a mess; his home dishonoured and the blood tainted. A heart with no thrumming of life— and they tore apart.
He travelled, far, stretching into the European cities. Languages flowed to him and he spoke, shedding himself as he went, adapting to new lives and time.
But his heart settled for the bustling life of Copenhagen, 1963 shredding into his being, making him fall in love with what he knew of life. The slow beating of heart he felt under his palm when nights grew the loneliest and the taste against his lips as the tide changed, and Europe was changing for the better.
Slowly, somehow, he forgave himself for the necessity of the killings that led him to flee from his own home; the blood red walls and the corpses remaining on the property still, lost for the world forever.
With the cold that came with Denmark and Europe, he trecked back to where he belonged: Korea.
A man with a cynical mind, deep set in the lines of perfectionism as he strives to have everything at the most perfected. And as time changes and the political powers finds themselves writing towards the future, his own conservative mind holds him back.
In the morning he grits his teeth with an impatient sigh, a tap of his foot against the floor as he wishes to break away from his locked up prison without having the feel of weakness growing steadily over his skin.
But with an impassive look on the life, he grows stoic over time. Facial expressions kept to himself at the most mundane things. His tongue speaks of the bluntness that is him as he colours himself prideful with humour, eyes lit up with the verses of books inscripted on his skin.
