@stllmnstr - Tumblr Blog

Jul 20

flowers from a tomb - part one.

pairing: yang jungwon x reader

genre: vampire au

part one word count: 9.4k

part one warnings: blood and other vampire-y things, depictions of violence and injuries, angst, morally gray characters, slow burn

note: This is my latest little brain baby, and I’m so excited to be sharing it! Super heavily inspired by enha’s vampire lore and especially the songs no way back, chaconne, and of course, still monster. The title is taken from a line in hate that I made you love me by Ariana Grande but is otherwise unrelated. This one has some heavy themes/content, but at its core is about hope and love and light in the dark places. As always, I hope you enjoy! ♡

Also, please heed the warnings on this one, especially if you are sensitive to blood/violence. There is nothing overly gory or graphic, but there are scenes that describe violence (and especially the characters’ reactions to it) in detail.

I don’t have a tag list, but all recently published stories can be found on my pinned post, and my masterlist is always up to date. Thank you!

Jungwon has been alive for a long time. Too long. So long that time has begun to lose its meaning. That days, months, and even years have started to blend into a seamless, endless cycle he can never break free from. Perhaps, he thinks, life is the wrong word for whatever immortal existence he was sentenced to centuries ago. But no matter what he calls it, it never ends. It never changes.

Until one day, he stumbles across a girl that just might just change the way he thinks about everything—life, mortality, and above it all, love.

Even with a memory that holds him hostage like a vice grip, Yang Jungwon can never quite remember when exactly he gave up on his humanity.

Perhaps it was lost the moment he made his first kill. Drowning in bloodlust he didn’t yet understand and had no ability to control, maybe it was gone the second his teeth sharpened into two identical fangs. When they pierced the warm, terrified skin of his first victim with more violence than he ever thought himself capable of.

Maybe it was even before that, gone the day, centuries ago, that the strange man stopped him in a dark alley, blocking his path home. His only exit. Hood obscuring his face from view, Jungwon still remembers the way his pulse quickened in terror. The way his instincts knew, even then, that he was in danger. That this was a predator, and he, alone on the rain-slickened cobblestones, had just become prey.

He remembers the way his instincts, his human ones, screamed at him to flee. To ignore the nausea in his gut and the burn in his legs because his life could very well depend on it.

Then, he remembers the pain. First, of his body slamming into stone with the force of something stronger than any man had the right to be. Bones aching, cracking, twisting in directions they were never meant to.

None of it compared to the agony that followed. The white hot burn of poison-coated blades on his skin, against his throat. The sensation of flames consuming him from the inside out as he writhed, nails digging into the pebbles and dirt beneath him like that tether to his surroundings would somehow help him escape. Survive.

Even as his control on his limbs began to slip, Jungwon’s mind remained aware, conscious. He felt every stab of agony, every lick of pain buried somewhere deep beneath his skin, too far to reach.

Sprawled on his back, hair matted against the stones beneath him, rain poured from the sky but did nothing to soothe the fire in his veins.

Jungwon isn’t sure when the strange man left, when he retracted his fangs and left two, perfectly circular wounds in its wake. Still dripping with blood, with the last of his stolen humanity.

He doesn’t know how long he laid there. Alone, terrified, drowning in so much agony he thought surely it would consume him whole. Wishing for death, a stroke of mercy, to end his torture.

He’s not sure how long it lasted. Pain blurred everything, made the passage of time feel like sand in a bottomless hourglass.

But he does remember how eventually, finally, the white hot blades beneath his skin began to subside, to fade until all he was left with was a muddled sort of confusion and a different kind of pain. This one was duller, more of an ache than an open flame. And it didn’t sear through his whole body.

No, this new kind of burn was narrowed down to the length of his throat. And it consumed him in a different way. It didn’t render him immobile—it spurred him to move.

Begged him to follow the strange scent that had begun to draw the attention of his nose, the scuffle of faraway footsteps his ears would never have been able to hear before.

Before… Jungwon wasn’t sure. But he knew that there had once been a before and this, whatever had happened, was after.

Pushing his palms against the cobblestones beneath him, Jungwon prepared for the pain of his body he was sure had been broken. But even as he pushed himself to a sitting position, the only thing he could feel was still just the persistent, dull ache in his throat.

He looked down at his hands, his legs. His clothes had been ruined—torn, sullied, soaked from the rain that had yet to relent. But where he expected to find shallow cuts on the skin of his palms, he found only pale, smooth, unblemished skin.

His bones that he was so certain had been snapped, twisted beyond repair, all sat exactly as they should.

But still, he could see too much, hear too much. The flutter of a bird’s wings as it flittered between nearby buildings. The paws of a stray cat slinking through a nearby alleyway, still searching for shelter from the rain. He could hear their heartbeats.

He could smell them.

That alone was terrifying. But Jungwon knew he couldn’t remain immobile in a hidden corner forever. Pushing himself to stand, he was surprised at the way in which his limbs responded with such unburdened ease. The way his skin and bones and muscles seemed to obey his every command with grace, a precision he’s sure wasn’t there before.

The son of a decently accomplished astronomer, Jungwon had learned to carry himself with as much poise as his position required. He wasn’t a noble by any means, but people trusted him, trusted the advice of his father, more when he kept his smile open and only slightly guarded. When he ensured his cloak was free from tears and stains.

His father. His mother. His home. That’s where he had been going, the night he was trapped. Jungwon is unsure how much time has passed since then, but he imagines they must be worried sick.

Jungwon, after all, made a habit of never being late.

Home, he thought. He should go home. He just needed to see his family again. The confusion, the strange burn in his throat, the mysterious perfection of his body despite the way he’d been thrown to the ground like a rag doll, all were things that could be dealt with later.

He just needed to go home, to see his family, to regain some semblance of normalcy. Feet ghosting over cobblestone with uncanny grace, Jungwon knew which direction to follow. His family lived at the far edge of town, a place where the stars shone the brightest in the night sky.

Away from other homes and families, Jungwon used to resent his father’s occupation. He wished he could have been like the butcher’s son, or even the blacksmith’s daughter, both of whom lived right in the town square and grew up in between the hustle and bustle of busy days at the village market.

Jungwon’s life was slower, quieter. But as he grew older, he came to appreciate it. The silence of the night sky, the distance of the stars, all the things that once made him feel so terribly lonely, began to carry a sense of comfort.

It didn’t matter if his day had been wonderful or terrible or remarkably ordinary. Whenever night came, the stars and planets would be there. Far away, yes, but closer with the invention of the telescope.

Jungwon came to like it, too. The way the galaxy above him moved in predictable patterns. The earth’s orbit of the sun, confirmed by recent science, meant that every night, a slightly different pattern of constellations would unfold above his eyes. One he learned to treasure, since he wouldn’t see it in an identical fashion until another year came to pass.

But now, marking a silent path towards the home he craved, Jungwon felt a distinct sense of dread. It built as cobblestones faded to well worn dirt paths the further he ventured from the town center.

Above him, dusk was claiming the sky in dull shades of violet. He knew he shouldn’t have been able to hear the footsteps from so far away, the sparse clusters of chatter as the market, nearly a fifteen-minute walk from him, closed for the day. He certainly shouldn’t have been able to pick out voices, to identify their owners, to understand what they said as they bid farewell for the evening.

To hear, just as he’d been able to with the birds in the sky and the cat in the alley, the rhythmic thumping of their heartbeats.

The burn in his throat became sharper, then. The pain he thought rather dull when he awoke was starting to sing with the same fire that had been in his veins before.

Still, he continued on. Footsteps silent against the muddied path, cloak dragging against the grass where the hem had been torn.

Eventually, the rain stopped. Above him, the moon started to shine. The stars began to glow.

And Jungwon realized—despite the way he’d been left in the downpour for an uncertain amount of time, evidenced by the way his hair fell over his forehead, strands weighed down with water, the silent drag of his soaked clothes, the small puddles that had accumulated at the soles of his boots—Jungwon wasn’t cold.

His nose, even with the scent of fresh rain filling it, didn’t feel the telltale threat of an impending illness.

Flexing his fingers beneath his soaked sleeve, Jungwon searched for the numbness, waited for a shiver. But the only thing that came was the perfect response of his own pale hands.

The only thing that remained was the burn in his throat.

As the night was swallowed by another hour, Jungwon reached his home. Saw, sharper than he should have, the shape of it in the distance.

He could hear his parents inside, shuffling, muttering, worrying. He’d been right to think that his absence would be noticed.

Even from here, he could hear it, the unmistakable panic in his mother’s voice when she pleaded, “Please. Our son has been gone for three days.”

Three days. Three days.

He didn’t understand what had come to pass, not yet, but he knew that something irreparable had happened. He knew that something was horribly, terribly wrong.

He could hear the fear, the terror in their voices, but no matter how hard he tried to focus, his mind began to narrow in on the steady, sickening pound of their pulses.

Again, his throat began to ache with renowned fervency. A fever he couldn’t see past. It wasn’t hunger, not exactly, but there was something in him begging him to take. To consume.

A voice in the periphery of his own consciousness started to drawl, lazy and cloyingly sweet, it would make the burning stop. It would make everything better.

It would soothe like cool water from a fresh mountain stream.

Jungwon felt then another stab of pain. This one was sharp, deep, and narrowed down to the two teeth that framed his once charming, boyish smile.

Brow furrowed, he ran his tongue over his top teeth, right where the ache had already begun to subside, and was horrified to find an elongated, sharpened point right where his canines should have been.

Convinced his own mind must be playing tricks—a result of his three days lying cold in the rain, a hallucination from the dehydration he didn’t yet feel and the injuries that had disappeared without a trace—he brought his finger to the seam of his lips.

And with a shuddering breath, opened his jaw just enough to press it inside. But his fingertip, slow searching, came to the same conclusion. Two of his teeth had been transformed into weapons. Even then, before he fully understood what had happened, he had a word for it. Fangs.

The kind he’d only ever seen in animals. In predators who survived through violence, who sustained their own life through killing.

Jungwon’s mind began to spin, to churn with unease, with the horrifying realization he wasn’t ready to admit to himself. But no matter how long he waited, the physical manifestations of his terror never came.

There was no nausea in his gut, no tremble in his fingers. His legs were steady, solid beneath him.

And, when he brought the two longest fingers of his left hand to the hollow just beneath his throat, he felt absolutely nothing.

There was no pulse. Just a smooth, even expanse of skin. Smoother, firmer than he’d ever known flesh to be.

Horrifying conclusions already taking shape in his mind, he brought his fingers to his wrist, pressed them firmly over the place where his heartbeat should have been strongest.

But there was nothing.

Jungwon wanted to collapse. He wanted to scream. He wanted his body to feel familiar again. He yearned for any sensation that wasn’t the burn in his throat.

But no matter how long he stood there, beneath the stars on the forest-lined path that led straight to his home, his body never became his again.

The legs that should have grown weary from supporting his weight remained steady, unburdened. The stomach that should have protested in hunger or rolled in nausea, was silent. The eyes that should have welled with hopeless, terrified tears, stayed dry and entirely too clear.

The only thing that began to shift, to build, to change at all, was the burn in his throat. The sensation he once called dull slowly but was now beginning to singe like an open flame. Sparking against him from the inside out. Begging him to put the fire out, to soothe it.

It wasn’t hunger, not exactly. Not the kind he’d become familiar with in all twenty-two years of his life. But it wanted the same things. Satiation, relief. To have, to drink, its fill.

And, with the sickening progression of a fate already sealed, it began to focus on the heartbeats of his parents.

Jungwon didn’t, couldn’t, explain what finally spurred his feet to move. He craved a familiar face, something normal amidst all the agony while the monster buried in his bones begged for relief. To be unleashed.

Jungwon wasn’t sure who he was when he approached his own home—if he was the human he’d been or the monster he’d become.

Flames licking at his throat, terror consuming what was left of his mind, he hovered just outside the entrance, tucked away in the shadows.

He could hear it, he could feel it, he could smell it—the sounds of their despair, their fear, their anguish. Desperate for relief, he hunched, heels flat against the earth, knees tucked to his chest, head hung in a dizzying mix of thirst and shame so potent it threatened to consume him.

Jungwon brought his hands to his head, covered his ears with the expanse of his palms, pressed with as much force as he could muster. But it was no use. He could still hear everything. Every swish of his mother’s skirt. Every drag of his father’s footsteps. Every traitorious beat of their living, mortal hearts.

The fear was eating at him. He knew, no matter how badly he wanted to, that he shouldn’t enter. That his own home, once a sanctuary, would transform into a battlefield of his own making were he to cross the threshold. He knew, no matter how intense the burn in his throat became, that he was not ready to have bodies in his wake. That he refused to let his own flesh and blood become victims of his doing.

Still, the voice, the monster, the urge, was becoming stronger by the second. His throat burned. As if an iron rod had been pulled from the blacksmith’s furnace and now sat inside his skin.

His humanity, whatever threads of it were left, was disappearing by the moment, vanishing into the inky black expanse of the midnight sky above him. The stars that he’d once longed for wouldn’t save him now.

He knew what his hunger was now. The truth of it, with every passing second, was becoming clearer.

Thirst.

A specific kind, one that yearned for life. Innocence., And then always back to his stolen mind’s feverish chant of the only thing that could save him now, that could end his agony. That would inevitably push him past the point of redemption.

Blood.

Almost of its own accord, his body began to move, to rise back to his full height. To turn its gaze in the direction of his home, his parents inside and the blood that flowed sweet and sure through their veins.

It would be better, he thought, if his actions truly were automatic. If the monster inside had taken full control. At least then, he would be absolved of his guilt. He wouldn’t have to feel every glasslike shard of resistance, of despair, as the havoc he was about to wreak began to feel more and more inevitable. A death march he was beating with his own traitorous drum.

He was going to do it. Him, Jungwon, with the loving son he’d once been still buried deep inside of him, still begging him not to. Repressed, but not erased. A full witness to the crime he was going to commit, to the sins he would never be able to wash from his skin.

Eyes sliding up with the steadiness of a predator, they got caught on the tiny puddle that had formed a stone’s throw from his feet. Born from the rain and held by the place where the earth dipped slightly, a small pool of water had gathered.

It reflected the night sky above it, the moon and stars contained in its slightly blurred surface.

Jungwon wasn’t sure why he did it. What gave him the strength to pause, what curiosity encouraged him to move forward. Slowly, all the way until the reflection of the sky above him was obscured by his own features.

The puddle now a mirror, a reflection for his own likeness, his gaze traced the planes of his face. The angle of his jaw, the curve of his cheekbone. The hair that spilled across his forehead and had just begin to curl at the ends, a result of the rain.

Despite the war in his mind, the agony in his throat, the violence singing beneath his skin, Jungwon recognized himself. There, his own slightly warped reflection found him nearly identical to the man he’d been three days ago.

But as his gaze lifted from the bow of his lips up the bridge of his nose, the place where it landed was enough to have a shuddering exhale spilling from his lips.

His eyes. Once dark enough to see stars within themselves, looked back at him with a bright, ruby shade of red.

For a moment, Jungwon had what he asked for. Staring at his own reflection, the horror in his own eyes, his humanity shattered through the frenzy in his mind.

He stumbled, he fell, on legs that had become infallible, all the way to his knees. Trousers soaking through with the mud beneath him, he reached his fingers forward, all the way until they hovered just above his own reflection in the puddle.

Then, with more strength than his body had ever been capable of before, more than any human could ever possess, he slammed his open palm across the surface.

Droplets flew through the air, fell harmlessly to the grass surrounding them. All Jungwon could do was heave shallow breaths through his chest. But even when the water stilled once again, when he could find his own reflection in it, all he saw was himself. All he saw was a monster.

The strength he found to stand, to turn away from the only home he’d even known, came from somewhere within him he was afraid he wouldn’t reach again if he didn’t leave now.

There was no goodbye, no explanation. He didn’t have the parchment he needed to leave so much as a note.

As far as his parents knew, as they and the rest of the town eventually came to accept, after months and months of searching, Yang Jungwon had vanished into thin air.

They weren’t wrong, but the truth was still shaped a bit differently. It couldn’t be captured in their sorrows, in their speculative attempts at explanation.

Jungwon had vanished, but he remained, too. The towns he passed through began to feel meaningless. The trail of bodies, however unwillingly, he left in his wake started to all look the same. Faces blurring together until they felt like one person. One hateful, vengeful victim that saw him for what he was and wanted him dead for it.

For years, after every kill, once the bloodlust had been dulled to a quiet trickle and his fangs once again retracted with a quick, sharp jolt of pain to look just like regular teeth, Jungwon wished for the same. He sat in open fields and above deep waters and on the precipice of steep cliffs begging for his own life, or whatever horrific echo of it was left, to end.

The creature of night he’d become didn’t deserve to live. Jungwon didn’t want him to. He searched, in every monastery and temple and piece of scholarly learning he could get his cold hands on, for anything that could end his agony.

But everywhere he went, shadows lingered. Death, not his own, followed in his wake.

He tried, once, to isolate himself away from the world completely. To let his own supply of blood run completely dry. To starve himself, he hoped, to death.

The cave he found was dark. A shadowy outcropping that even the most accomplished hunters and explorers would never dare to venture to. With resolve in his mind a slight burn already tingling in his throat, he laid down, back against the cold, wet stone beneath him.

Jungwon isn’t sure how long he laid there. Weeks, perhaps. Maybe even months. Growing weaker by the day, until the agony in his throat became just as sharp as the day he became a monster. He hadn’t felt a burn so potent, so intense, since the day he was changed.

But he felt it, then, alone in that cave.

And then, horrifyingly, he felt nothing at all. His mind, once burdened by the regret, the shame, the all-consuming guilt of what he’d become, was gone. In its wake was only sensation. The pure, fiery flames of thirst that anchored his consciousness to movement.

Jungwon didn’t want to stand, didn’t want to leave the cave. He didn’t want to do anything at all. It was as if his body has devoured his mind from the inside out and the only left was a sickening loop of the same frenzied thought.

Blood. Blood. Blood.

It played on an endless cycle through his mind as his sharpened senses carried him, with the last of his fading strength, for days. All the way until he reached the outskirts of a small village. It wasn’t all too terribly far from the one he had grown up in.

As he approached, Jungwon didn’t wonder if a butcher or a blacksmith or even an astronomer lived here too. He didn’t think about the people at all. Their lives, in his current state of mind, were only as valuable as the blood they could give him.

Jungwon didn’t feel that familiar lick of terror, the horror at what he knew he was about to do. His mind was singular and his vision was red.

And when he finally descended upon the town before him, he left more devastation in his wake than he’d ever done before.

There was no dissonance in his actions, no morality to stop him. His body knew it needed to consume, and if it had to mute his thoughts, numb his feelings to do so, it would. It did.

By the time evening fell, there were no living souls left.

Jungwon, blood dripping from his mouth, his clothes, pooling at his feet, felt his mind come back to him in slow, sickening waves.

Staring at the remnants of the violence he’d just unleashed, his mind began to fill with horror. The town his blood-addled mind had carried him to had become a battlefield. One that his victims had no chance of ever standing victorious on.

But as Jungwon gazed out on the wreckage around him, victory was the last word that came to mind.

All the guilt and shame his attempted self-starvation had muted came back and struck him with the full force of what he’d just done.

Jungwon didn’t try it again. He ensured, from that day forward, that he would never let himself get hungry enough to enter that state again. It still ate at him, still made the remnants of his humanity scream in pain every time he took a life, but he vowed to never cause such horrors, such widespread violence again.

Instead, he turned his undying efforts elsewhere. To finding that man that had done this to him, that rainy afternoon back in his village, already decades ago.

Jungwon searched every corner he could reach, scoured ancient texts for mentions of undead monsters and followed every trail he found until it ran cold. He knew he must be out there somewhere. After all, he suspected that the man who forced immortality into his veins must carry it with him as well.

He knew that he had become like him. Two sides of a terrible coin. Existing. Enduring. Sustaining themselves on the blood of others.

But no matter how many stones he unturned, Jungwon watched every lead turn to smoke in his loosening grip.

And as the centuries passed, so too did his urgency. His endless days and nights were still choked with his prayers for relief, still fueled by hope that he would one day have at least answers if he could never have his vengeance, but he eventually came to accept that he would never find any of it.

He couldn’t be killed, not by his own hand or any other. He couldn’t die.

And he couldn't find a monster that didn’t want to be found. One with the ability to slip away like shadows and never leave a trace.

He couldn’t even age. No matter how many mirrors he caught his own reflection in, what he found was always the same. Except for his eyes.

The gaze that had once glowed red had dulled to a deep crimson. One that could be mistaken for a dark brown if you didn’t look too closely. If obscured by the shadows of night.

Jungwon changed, too. The lust for blood that consumed him began to feel less like an uncontrollable, all-consuming urge and more like a simmering boil. It was always there, and it still sharpened to a blade against his throat if he let it go unsatisfied for too long, but over the centuries, the feverish urgency began to fade.

In its absence, he taught himself restraint. Control. Learned to take without killing. To minimize suffering, to subdue before striking. There were still moments when the monster in his head outweighed the person he was trying to be. When his baser instincts overruled the humanity he watched slip helplessly through his fingers like sand.

But he got better at it. And as the centuries changed, so did his options. As discoveries of blood transfusions took root in the medical world, so did the ability to extract it. Store it. Keep it for extended periods of time. Jungwon never felt good about stealing from blood banks, ransacking hospitals in the dead of night. But in his mind, thievery was a far more forgivable crime than murder.

He didn’t have to go to war with himself every time the hunger became too strong to ignore. Didn’t have to hunt down a victim, to hope that he’d be able to stop himself before the blood loss became too severe to recover from.

He didn’t have to feel the sickening slide of his mouth against their throats, the helpless gurgle of stifled pain as his elongated, sharpened teeth pierced their skin.

In the absence of bloodlust, he started looking for meaning again. One that wasn’t fueled entirely by self-hatred or revenge or the desire to end his own life.

It started small, with tiny things. First, he learned to control himself around animals. To feed the stray cats he came across, to trust himself enough to reach out and stroke the soft fur just behind their ears. To let them, once his presence became familiar, curl up in his lap, purring against his chest.

Jungwon learned that his touch could be gentle, too. That even though he’d become a monster, he was capable of holding things softly. Of making them better instead of worse.

Eventually, he learned to trust himself around people, too. Humans. Echoes of what he once was. He taught himself to hold his breath when the urge became overwhelming, to keep his supply of blood bags healthy because he always had better control when he was well-fed.

Over the centuries, the wealth he accumulated was no small amount. He began to use it—to travel, to see new parts of the world, to find homes in his favorites. At first, they were isolated. Small, unwanted, forgotten houses far away from neighbors that would test his still shaky control.

But with time, his control became more solid, less fallible. Jungwon still remembers the first apartment he ever bought, one with neighbors and families and community that he’d been isolating himself from for hundreds of years.

He was still on the outside of it, of course. He can count on one hand the number of times he actually spoke with one of his fellow tenants. But he learned that he could still exist, could co-exist without leaving bright red trails of violence in his wake.

Time passed, and he became braver. Bought colored contacts that stung his eyes but allowed him to try things he’d never imagined he would. Public transportation. Shopping malls. Amusement parks. The movie theater.

University. A job. He didn’t need it—his wealth was already compounding on itself. At least financially, he could sustain himself as long as he needed to. Indefinitely. But every hour of his first part-time position at the local library felt like a gift, like a hard won victory.

The century was turning, and technology changed with it. He learned how to use the clunky machine of a computer that whirred whenever he pushed the on button and took fifteen minutes to load the library database. He learned how to help people find the stories, the articles, the novels they searched for without feeling tethered to his urge to consume.

It was strange, having to relearn humanity all over again. But in the time that had passed, things had changed to the point of becoming nearly unrecognizable.

People talked differently, thougut differently. The social order and rules that he learned as a child didn’t apply to the twenty-first century.

But Jungwon had overcome hardships worse than accidentally committing a social faux pas, and he would rise to this challenge too.

He learned to smile at the appropriate times and speak with patience even when people approached him with complaints that weren’t his fault. He wrote down slang terms in his notebook and studied them when his shifts were slow.

He watched, observed families and friends and lovers. Strangers and colleagues. He found the way they spoke to each other, interacted with each other, moved around each other absolutely fascinating.

And eventually, he started trying it too. Talking to people, approaching them first. Starting to crave the validation of a productive conversation, a friendly exchange of words.

It wasn’t much—usually just commentary on the weather, as hed learned modern humans loved to do, but it was something.

For the first time in centuries, Jungwon began to think that his life, whatever it had become, didn’t have to be forfeit. That even if immortality had stolen meaning from his days and connection from his existence, maybe he could still find a quiet sort of peace in moments like these.

Times when his existence wasn’t a burden, a threat to others. When he was able to help, to soothe, to comfort.

And maybe, he thought, he prayed, he hoped, there would be moments, however fleeting, where that would feel like enough.

⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖

— NEW YORK CITY, 2026

With a practiced sort of mild disinterest, Yang Junwon glances up over the top of his laptop screen. Covertly, because he isn’t trying to draw attention to himself. Or the porcelain mug of overpriced coffee he’d purchased to gain access to his favorite seat in the corner of the neighborhood cafe. The one he has yet to take a single sip from.

He’s tried before. He thought it would help him build his facade of normalcy. But whether it’s coffee or tea or even something as neutral as water, he can never quite stomach the taste of human food.

Ears already attuned to the argument starting to unfold in front of him, Jungwon picks up on the sudden spike in your heartbeat.

Annoyed, he thinks you must be. Agitated. And there’s something else beneath it, something he’d recognize anywhere. Guilt.

It makes him linger. Makes him curious. Focus zeroing in on the table where you sit instead of tuning it out.

“I already asked you once,” he hears you whisper, trying to keep your voice low enough to avoid detection from unwanted ears. Despite the centuries, he still feels a bit sorry where your voice reaches him. Feels like he’s invading your privacy, even though he doesn’t mean to, not really. “Can we please not do this here?”

Jungwon glances up again, unbidden. But his curiosity gets the best of him. He still finds it so interesting, all the ways in which humans talk to one another.

There’s always so much emotion, so much simmering just beneath the surface. So much of the truth is buried in intonation and body language and words left unsaid. It’s fascinating.

With a pang of something time has dulled to regret, he remembers the arguments he used to have with the butcher’s son whenever he felt he’d been overcharged for beef. Now, those memories have become shadows, echoes of the emotions that play out in front of him, all around him. He knows that his feelings, his annoyance, were just as real once, too. But now, it just feels like a lifetime ago.

Jungwon’s focus returns to you where you sit at a table on the opposite side of the cafe, across from a man with his back turned to Jungwon.

Hand pulling through your hair, Jungwon follows the movement with his eyes. You’re young, he thinks. Maybe around the same age he was—is. The age he’s been frozen at despite the incessant forward march of time.

The tote bag you hang from your chair, emblazoned with the logo of a local university, makes him think you must be a student.

Before he can ponder it for much longer, the man across from you asks. “Then when are you going to let us have this conversation?” His irritation is different, Jungwon can tell. Born of frustration, most likely. “Graduation is in less than a week. My parents are flying in tomorrow, ____.”

____. It must be your name. Pretty, he thinks, as he lets it swirl around in his mind for a moment longer. Drips down into the growing puddle of thoughts he keeps tucked away for later.

“I don’t know.” Your words are slightly too sharp. Defensive, Jungwon notes. Your eyes are cloudy, not quite meeting the man across from you. Jungwon can tell from here. It’s plain as day, written all across your features. You’re hiding something. “I just… I’ve been busy with graduation and my internship, and I haven’t had time to think about it, okay?”

“Haven’t had time?” Even with his back turned, Jungwon can sense the disbelieving look that crosses the man’s face. “Or just haven’t wanted to?”

“That’s not fair—”

“No, what’s not fair is that we’ve been dating for almost a year now, and you still haven’t let me tell anyone about it. My own mother is up my ass about a girlfriend every phone call, every holiday I visit home, and I just have to sit there and pretend like you don’t exist. I want…” The man’s voice breaks for a moment, a sudden surge of emotion choked in his throat. It feels too big, too vulnerable an admission for a cafe. “You mean the world to me, ___,” he whispers. “I want them to meet you.”

“Jake…” Jungwon hears you sigh. Resigned, like you’ve already given something up. Like you’re not ready to admit it, even to yourself.

Jungwon’s gotten good at this, he thinks. Reading into other people’s conversations, hearing the meaning behind their words.

The man across from you, Jake, seems to have the same ability. “I just… I just don’t understand why.” The anger is gone, has shifted into something softer. Weaker. More pliable. Whatever you’re hiding, Jungwon can’t help but think that Jake would understand. Or at least would try his very best to. And Jungwon thinks he must be begging when he pleads quietly, “Help me understand.”

A moment passes. Jungwon hears your heartbeat stutter, your breath catch in your throat. He watches, as covertly as he can, as a flicker of something almost apologetic flashes through your eyes.

It’s gone just as quickly as it came. Too fast for even him to make sense of even with his supernatural abilities.

Around you, the cafe bustles with customers. Friends, families, lovers. People, like him, who are here all by themselves. Easy conversations, work calls, small bits of laughter, sound out from around him.

Even beyond the walls of the coffee shop, he can hear cars passing on the nearby street, birds fluttering between rooftops. The dull hum of a drill at a construction site he estimates to be around a mile away.

Jungwon has learned how to take it all in and let go of what he doesn’t need. The constant feed of noise isn’t as overwhelming as it once was. He can focus his hearing where he wants it and tune out the rest.

But even with sounds from all directions filling his ears, he thinks the heavy silence that’s settled at your table in the corner is most deafening of all.

You sigh, lips parting, shoulders slumping, just slightly. Jungwon’s gaze narrows in on the motion.

He’s not sure what he expects. Conversations of this nature still seem to surprise him. Sometimes they end in heartfelt declarations of love and even more often they end with a shouting match that escalates too far for public decency.

But when you finally break the silence, there’s no love on your lips or anger in your voice. All you do is, once again, sigh his name like you’re giving something up.

“Jake…”

But Jake is already shaking his head, scoffing as he drags an open palm down his face. He pushes his hair back from his forehead, like he expected this. Like he isn’t sure why he’s still trying, why he still hopes for anything but the same answer you give him every time. “You know what? It’s fine. Don’t say anything. I’ll let my mom try to set me up with her friend’s daughter again, and I’ll pretend not to recognize your name when you walk across the stage at graduation.”

Hurt, a wounded pride, both masked with sarcasm. Jungwon recognizes it well, hears the way it drips from every syllable and still sounds like defeat.

Maybe that’s the problem, he thinks, between the two of you. Jungwon is fairly certain that you had more to say. That you were going to admit whatever you’ve been holding close to the chest. But Jake wasn’t ready to let the silence simmer after you sighed his name. He wasn’t willing to wait for it. He wasn’t ready to hear the answer he was pushing for.

Humans always have such strange ways of hiding from the truth, Jungwon thinks. Disguising it, denying it, warping it to fit whatever conclusions they’ve already drawn. Whatever hopes they already hold.

Maybe, Jungwon thinks, you are in the wrong. A year together is significant, after all. Even Jungwon knows it, and he’s not exactly the best judge of time.

But he can also see things that Jake can’t. Can hear the way your heart races beneath your skin, the way your breath stutters every time you try to speak, the way words get lodged in your throat.

He’s seen it a hundred different times from a thousand different people, but something about it tugs at all the empathy he has left every time. The truth, it seems, is never an easy thing to get out.

Jungwon watches silently as Jake stands from the table, chair screeching across the hardwood floor with a noise that nearly makes him flinch. You do. Nose scrunching, brow furrowing as if the sound strikes somewhere deep. Hits you like all the accusations Jake won’t say out loud.

Your eyes fall to the table. You won’t, can't, look at him.

Above you, Jake’s heart is pounding too. Fingertips clench into fists at his sides, knuckles turning white. Then, he releases them, hands going slack. He shakes his head, dark hair rustling along his nape from the movement.

His teeth are clenched, like he wants to say something he knows he shouldn’t, something he won’t be able to take back.

A moment passes, and Jungwon hears him sigh instead. “Call me when you’re ready to talk,” he mutters, throwing the offer like it’s an old, crumpled receipt he found in a coat pocket.

Jungwon watches as Jake looks at you for a moment longer, waiting for you to meet his gaze. You never do. So, with one final shake of his head, he turns on his heel and exits the way he came, footsteps heavy against the hardwood floor.

After following for a brief second, Jungwon’s eyes turn back to you.

For a long moment, you sit motionless, eyes trained on the table beneath you. Your cup of coffee that’s just as untouched as his own, despite the differences between you.

Hand coming to your forehead, you lean into your palm, a long exhale escaping you as if you hadn’t realized you’d been holding it. Your eyes screw shut. So tightly that Jungwon thinks it must be painful.

A flicker of something—regret, he thinks it must be, furrows your brow.

Eyes opening again, you blink slowly. Your gaze lands on the empty chair where Jake had been sitting less than a minute ago. Lips parting, a breathy exhale falls out. Your brow begins to crumple, eyelashes fluttering as emotions play out across your features.

“Shit,” he hears you mutter, just under your breath. “Shit,” you repeat, glancing around now as you begin to panic, as the gravity of whatever has just come to pass sinks in fully.

This time, it’s you that stands from your chair. It scrapes across the floor in protest all the same, but now, you don’t wince. Eyes trained on the door, motions becoming frantic, the only thing you do is repeat the same panicked syllable. “Shit.”

And then you’re moving, practically running towards the door Jake disappeared out of moments ago. In your haste, you nearly knock straight into a kid waiting to order. The child, no more than nine, takes a half step back as his eyes widen in panic, a knee jerk reaction as you narrowly avoid colliding.

Pausing only for a moment, you hold your open palms in front of you in apology. “Sorry.” You’re breathless, eyes still flickering towards the door, like you’re half hoping Jake will manifest there again. Then, this time towards the adult standing just next to the child, their mother, Jungwon assumes, you repeat, “Sorry.”

Before either of them can respond, you’re moving again. Pushing through the door, ignoring the bell that chimes just above it on your exit.

In his seat, Jungwon frowns. He wonders for a moment what it’s like. To push someone away with such certainty only to chase them down moments later. To experience emotions, relationships, that make you do such fickle, unpredictable things.

There was was a time, centuries ago, when he remembers thinking that the carpenter’s daughter was rather pretty, that he liked the way she looked when she smiled. But he doesn’t think, even then, that he ever would have pushed her away just to pursue her. That he would have had so much panic, so much regret in his eyes when he did so.

He’s never felt anything that’s come close to that. And for the most part, he’s accepted that he never will. No matter what kinds of relationships he forges, he’s observed enough to understand that the ones worth pursuing require you to give up parts of yourself, too.

Vulnerability, trust, honesty. And those are things he cannot give to anyone. It doesn’t matter how much control he learns, how much restraint he practices. It doesn’t matter if he’s taught himself to make small talk with coworkers and chat about the weather with strangers.

He’ll always be tied to the things that make him different, that make him a monster. He’ll always have to go home to an empty apartment. And, when the urge becomes unbearable, he’ll always have to find himself at the end of another empty blood bag.

He’s an observer, a silent one. It’s better than complete isolation, but in moments like these, the full force of everything that’s been taken from him strikes him somewhere deep and lingers for longer than he’d care to admit.

Over the centuries, Jungwon has learned much. But he’s never quite learned how to stop wanting things. And sometimes, that greed, that deep-seated need to feel close to another person, eats at him like even bloodlust has never been able to.

It’s a cruel contradiction—that someone capable of so much violence could crave something so gentle. That the same man who has stolen lives hopes so desperately to experience the full spectrum of one himself.

No matter how many years pass, no matter how much space and time is put between what he once was and what he’s become, Jungwon has never quite been able to let it go.

And sometimes, more often than he’d care to admit, Jungwon just wants.

You’re lucky, he thinks, even though he just watched grief flash over your features, to have someone that makes you feel so much, so deeply. Someone to chase out of a coffee store in such haste that you leave your bag behind—

Your bag. The one with the university logo printed across the front. The one still hanging on the back of your now empty chair.

Jungwon isn’t sure why he does it. If someone asked, he wouldn’t be able to explain why he closes his laptop, tucking it away into his own bag. Why he stands from his chair, silently tucking it back beneath the table. Why he returns the porcelain mug to the counter, dumping the untouched liquid when he’s certain no one is looking.

But he does. And then, he crosses the cafe all the way to your empty table. For a moment, he hesitates. You’re gone, he’s sure. And it’s none of his business. You’ll probably remember, later once you’ve reconciled with Jake, that you left your bag at the coffee shop.

Humans are prone to forgetfulness, after all. It’s nothing out of the ordinary.

You’ll return together, smiling, hand-in-hand, ghost of an argument all but forgotten. Jake’s wounds will be water under the bridge, and his forgiveness won’t be something you have to work hard for.

You’ll be happy, smiling, maybe even in love when you ask the barista on closing shift if someone turned in a bag. You’ll describe the university logo on the front, and all will be well with the world again.

He could still do it. Jungwon could take your bag to the counter and leave it there for you to find.

But then, fingers sliding under the strap, he thinks of you. The furrow between your brows, the regret, the guilt, that spilled so openly across your features. The way you sighed like you have secrets, too.

And then he slides the bag up his shoulder and walks toward the door.

It’s a terrible plan, all things considered. Even with his heightened senses, Jungwon is still in the middle of a city of millions. You’ve probably hailed a cab by now or gotten onto the subway. Disappeared with a trace that would take him far too long to follow. Maybe you’re one of the wealthier students and you even have your own car.

Jungwon doesn’t know. He has no idea. That’s the point. This is ridiculous, and he could still choose to turn back around and leave your bag with the employees.

Just as he pushes through the door, quiet side street coming into view, he comes to his senses. He’s about to go back inside, to hand uour bag off. But as he turns, he realizes that maybe he doesn’t have to look as far for you as he thought.

You haven’t gotten into a cab or the subway or a car. You’ve hardly made it twenty steps. You’re sitting there, on the curb, knees pulled to your chest as pedestrians pass you by. You pay them no mind and they’re equally uninterested in the girl crouched at their feet.

But Jungwon’s eyes lock right on you. And they don’t leave. Tracing your side profile, he tries to put the pieces together. Your breath is more even now, calmer, like you’ve accepted something. Like the panic has subsided a bit, even if the guilt lingers.

Elbows bracketing your knees, eyes turned towards the pavement, you sigh.

Jungwon takes a tentative step forward. Then another. All the way until he stands, hovering just above your shoulder.

He’s recently fed, fully satiated. He has to be, to survive in a city as dense as this. But he can still hear your pulse, steady beneath your skin. His eyes zero in on where your hair has fallen over your shoulder, leaving the hollow of your throat exposed to his wandering gaze. He can still smell your blood.

Jungwon swallows.

Then, he tries, a bit too weakly, “Um.”

You don’t move. Drowned out by the sounds of the street, you don’t even hear him.

He tries again. “Excuse me.” His hand hovers over your shoulder, ready to tap if he still fails to catch your attention. But the action is unnecessary.

There’s surprise in your features when you turn halfway to face him, eyes squinting where he shadows only some of the sunlight above you. More than shock, there’s a strong flicker of annoyance in your eyes.

Your tone is short when you say, “I’m not interested.”

Jungwon’s brow furrows. “What?”

“Whatever you’re selling,” you enunciate flatly, “I’m not interested.”

“Oh.” Jungwon shakes his head. “I’m not—”

“Look, I’m really not in the mood, so can you just—”

Turning to face him fully, your words die on your lips as he slides your bag off of his shoulder, holding it out to you in an outstretched hand.

“Oh,” you breathe, earlier fire fading to a low simmer. Extinguishing completely.

A bit sheepish, your hands are tentative where you reach out to take your bag from him. And then, barely, so light that it’s hardly a touch at all, your finger brushes against his. Skin against skin.

Jungwon can’t remember the last time he felt that.

He exhales roughly, hair falling over his eyes where he looks down at you.

Something apologetic flickers through your gaze. “Sorry,” you tell him, still a bit embarrassed from your misjudgment. And then, “Thank you. I didn’t realize I’d left it behind.”

“You’re welcome,” Jungwon returns. He thinks it’s the right thing to say. Your gaze doesn’t shift, doesn’t narrow in suspicion or turn in confusion, so he must be right. “I’m glad you were still here.”

Your eyes turn back to the concrete beneath you, and even Jungwon can take the hint well enough. He’s a stranger, after all, good deed done or not. In your eyes, the exchange has been made. The conversation is done. He has no reason to keep talking to you, and you have no reason to keep looking at him.

Learned social skills aside, Jungwon doesn’t think you want him to ask you about the weather.

But still, he isn’t quite ready to let it go. To watch this moment fade into something he can only return to in memory. There’s something about your eyes, he thinks, something about the way emotions flicker through them so openly, so plainly, that fascinates him.

So, despite the way you’re no longer looking at him, he reaches into his own bag and pulls out a small, plastic card. As he did with your tote, he once again stretches his hand out towards you.

“Here,” is all he says.

Once more, you turn halfway to look at him. This time, your surprise is marred with distrust. Even though he’s just returned your bag, you’ve learned the same lessons as everyone else. Strangers that approach you on street corners are rarely good news. Your eyes make quick work of scanning his face, eyes narrow when they fall to his outstretched hand. You don’t take it.

Instead, you ask, “What’s that?”

“A gift card,” Jungwon explains. Nodding towards the door you both exited from earlier, he adds, “For the cafe.”

Your words are slow now, distrust laced through every syllable. “Why are you giving it to me?”

Jungwon’s mind scrambles for a moment, searching for an excuse. “I’m moving,” he tells you. A lie, but you don’t need to know that. Besides, it gives him something, too. A reason not to seek you out again, to contradict the alibi he’s just made for himself. “My coworker gave it to me a while ago—” not a lie. The new hire had asked when his birthday was, and Jungwon had told him the truth. Year, excluded, of course. And when the early February came to pass only weeks later, he’d been given his first birthday gift in nearly five hundred years. “—but I won’t be able to use it all before I leave.”

Your eyes, with all their distrust, are still his to read. You’re not going to take it, Jungwon thinks. Not yet.

So, after a few more steady pulses of your heartbeat, he adds, “You looked like you might be upset.” His words are quiet now, gentle. He doesn’t want to overstep, but he does want to erase that furrow between your brow. The slump in your shoulders. He wants to remember that he can do good things, kind things, too. “I thought this might make your day a little better.”

“Oh,” you breathe again, an echo of before. Only this time, your eyes aren’t so guarded. Instead, a flicker of surprise, of gratitude, flashes through them. Jungwon tilts his head, watching.Then, you reach one tentative hand up, gently pulling the gift from his grasp. “Thank you.”

Something in Jungwon lifts, surges, soars with your words. He can hear it in the way your breath becomes deeper again, reaches all the way to your diaphragm instead of heaving shallowly through your chest. You’re grateful.

Whatever wounds were opened earlier aren’t forgotten, but there’s at least a bit of sunshine there, too. Something to look back on and remember fondly when you return to this day in future memories.

Jungwon did that. He, with an ounce of kindness and a few white lies, thinks he may just have eased a fraction of your pain.

He doesn’t fully understand what he accidentally witnessed. He doesn’t know all the details of what passed between you and Jake. He has no idea if reconciliation is in your future, or if he just watched the beginning of an end.

But he’ll return to his empty apartment later with a bit less guilt drowning his consciousness and a tiny wedge of that terrible, aching want abated, at least for now.

Your eyes are still on him, and he thinks he could look into them forever. And for some unexplainable reason, moments later when the sun angles itself just right and lets him see his own reflection in your irises, he doesn’t hate it quite so much.

Then, he sees a flicker of hesitation pass through your gaze. Uncertainty that disappears with your next exhale. Lips parting, heartbeat hitching, only slightly, you ask, “What’s your name?”

And even though he knows he shouldn’t, even though he’s used a false alias with every other person who’s ever asked, he can’t quite bring himself to do it now. Not with your eyes, wide and glimmering, focused right on him.

He exhales once, and then it’s done.

“Jungwon.”

⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖

TO BE CONTINUED...

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