Jeongguk is 267. You are 60.
The hunter that waits upon the porch of the silent cottage must be no older than twenty, though his face is still that of a young boy, rather than a man. Small yet sturdy in stature, his cheeks are plump, lips full and resting into a natural pout with eyes of simmering amber that are wide almonds, the lids heavy though lacking presence of any lethargy. As he mindlessly lays pressure onto the balls of his feet, in turn, oscillating his body in the rocking chair, the gloss of his chestnut hair shimmers within the grey, overcast light of the early morning, the fringe flopping into his line of gaze as he lurches forward, yet drifting away like fine silk once he pushes back. A crossbow is loose upon his lap, fingertips gingerly stroking the lacquered foregrip and stock as though the limbs are his own. He is one with the weapon.
In truth, you should slaughter him, drink him absolutely dry and pick your teeth with the splinters of his bones. It would be an easy kill, swift and quiet, not a soul would notice, nor hear his screams in such a secluded slice of the woods. Not even Jeongguk, who must be at least four towns away by now. But although the insatiable hunger that claws iron blades at your insides, shredding you to ribbon from within, your canines refuse to sharpen, nails remaining to be bitten little ovals instead of extending into claws that can carve through metal as if it were butter, because, for a man of his kind, he is rather beautiful.
Hunters are usually rugged, unkempt beasts with scars of pearl lining their skin and murderous desire swallowing their eyes. Maybe it is the fresh youth that swells so preciously in his features or the natural casualness that caresses his form into one without intent to harm, but there is certainly something about him that encourages you to let his heart continue on beating – almost as though he deserves it.
Mindlessly, the branch that you observe him from cracks beneath your weight, and in such a serene atmosphere, it sounds like gunfire.
In his seat, he suddenly stiffens, chin cocking upward and his drooping eyes only widening just slightly, enough to survey the bland surroundings of the mostly decayed woods. The soft flesh of his lips part, the sound of the separation followed by a terse gust of air being swallowed into his lungs.
“I can sense you, monster. Show yourself!”
Without much deliberation, you drop from the branch, landing effortlessly on your booted feet in a tall, defenceless stance rather than a crouch. You do not want to be intimidating, you feel no necessity to fight, no urge to run, all the more so when he stands from the rocking chair, crossbow loaded and poised, aimed straight at your heart.
Even with instinct straightening his spine, broadening his shoulders with an almost unsure confidence as he levels the weapon to his eye, the other squinting shut to allow clarity for focus, you find him absolutely harmless.
His voice is lovely, you fondly notice. The kind of vocals that are made for singing, softer than the usual tone of a grown man, sweet nonetheless. You wish you were hearing this for the remainder of eternity rather than the blunt, hard edge of dead notes that crawl like a disease out of Jeongguk’s throat.
You shrug. “Not really, but I’m curious, why are you all alone?”
At that, he genuinely appears caught by surprise, as if he never knew such a monster would be capable of quaint conversation. His stance wavers, an opportunity that any other vampire would take to sink their fangs into human flesh, but the deep intrigue that grazes your every nerve is enough to suffice the beast that writhes in your stomach.
He swallows, his throat bobbing so violently that it appears to be a being of its own existence, yet no temptation festers in your heart, no crimson fingers claw in a vicious haze at the edges of your vision. Not yet, at least.
“I’m not,” his brow pinches at the centre, and it transforms his face entirely, hardening the angles. “Why would you say that?”
Deeply, you inhale through your nostrils, closing your eyes for no more than three seconds, the perfect gap for him to take the advantage and fire an arrow. But, if anything, the sole sound that you hear is his hands loosening, only slightly, on the weapon. When your lashes drift back apart, you try a smile, his joints appearing to seize up with shock at the sight.
“There is a scent about you,” you slowly begin, your gaze drifting down to the dirt in an attempt to appear less stoic, more of a human than a monster, “that is thick, like a dense fog, and acquires the similar heady dampness of one. I’ve noticed it on many beings, ones who have lost all that they have, and some who still have so much – yet within them, there is nothing.
“No, you are not alone in a physical sense. I can tell, I can hear them in the town right now. There is three, isn’t there? Your brothers, perhaps, who forced you into this way of living. But here–” Your palm places itself over your chest, greeted by a hollow echo of emptiness– “Isolation lives fiercely, it swallows up your heart. You may be surrounded by others, though within, you could not be more alone.”
As your sentence trails dimly into the air between you, the hunter is completely stunned silent. The crossbow that he held so equanimously now resides unguarded at his hip, the plush of his lips parted in an awed gape and truly, you remain to feel no desire to tear him to shreds and stain the earth with his blood. The fragility of his heart races a marathon against his ribs, though it is not one of fear, rather it is unadulterated realisation, acceptance.
Akin before, he gulps before he speaks, yet the movement is much gentler. “Are you truly one of them? If so, why are you telling me this, why aren’t you just killing me off?”
At that, you tilt your head to gaze into the woods, the spindly tree trunks, lacking much leafage, stick nakedly out of the ground, exposed and bare. From this distance, you cannot catch any notion of Jeongguk and his vile existence, a calming sentiment that swells comfortably within you.
“Because, you and I, young hunter, we are terribly the same,” you breathe, gradually returning your stare to his warm eyes of crackling flame. “I never wished for this life, and now I am roped up with two monsters – the one that lives inside of me and feels no necessity to kill you, and the other that I am constantly running from. Now, is it suitable that I ask you of your name?”
The hunter, for what seems to be the first time in years in the way that it falters before it fully develops like colour film, smiles with sheer divinity. It is a sight that would knock the breath out of any mundane, and even for you, it elicits an unusual warmth to hum gently across your bones, a sensation that makes you feel beyond too human to compare. The view of the crescent moon that births upon his lips fully encourages the monster to evade you, and you have never felt so pure, so clean of any blood that you once consumed, any death that you once lavishly bathed in.
“Park Jimin,” he, Park Jimin, speaks, and it is a name that you know, in centuries, you will never forget. It is engraved by his roughened, yet careful fingertips into your ribs, right above where a vessel once thrummed. “Would it be so rude to ask you what your own is?”
Visiting Jimin becomes a fortnightly habit, out of your own selfishness to feel human, or an uncanny desire to fulfil his silent desperation to not be alone, you cannot quite decipher. Though, for the both of you, it is a slice of time that is cherished, never once hurried or demanded. The visitations occur in the early mornings, always, when his brothers are out of the cottage, which slumbers like a wooden giant amongst the trees, the only sound escaping it being the creak of the rocking chair swaying underneath Jimin’s weight as he patiently anticipates your arrival. While you are there, whether it is for ten minutes or two hours, you exchange stories about your individual lifetimes – his, only stretching back a few years, whereas your own thread through numerous decades.
Jeongguk does not question, nor argue your regular disappearances. Because although they are happening in greater frequency, it is nothing out of the ordinary for you to be escaping his presence as often as you can. If anything, he stops prying about where you are leaving him to. Maybe, as long as you are not wreaking a bloodbath havoc that could wind the both of you up as dead, he does not care.
Maybe, that should have been the first sign that these encounters, this friendship, was doomed from the beginning.
Although it is nearing six in the morning, light is already gathering among the shadows of the prior night, consuming them into day. The air is crisp against your bare arms as you run, weaving between the trees at a speed unimaginable, knowing you could navigate this route with your eyes closed, it is that familiar. You come to a halt at the porch steps, not at all out of breath, just as Jimin opens the flywire screen and strolls out of the cottage with that same smile, the one that makes you feel as though you are coming home.
Something heavy chokes in your throat as you approach, because you know that today will most likely be goodbye – if not for good, it will be a very long time indeed. Jeongguk had spoken word two weeks ago of traversing to the mountains on the other side of the country, at least five days away on your own feet – all this time in between, you had been preparing yourself to sever the ties with the only friend that you have ever known.
“You’re up early,” Jimin jests, eyes curving deeper at his own hilarity and you cannot help but grin. Vampires sleeping, what an absolute joke!
“Couldn’t sleep,” you respond with the raise of an eyebrow, lacing your fingers at the base of your spine as you glide up onto the wooden planks, sitting down when Jimin props up a chair beside his own. “How have you been?”
“Good enough, a fortnight without seeing you felt a little extensive, but I coped,” Jimin sighs as he unwinds into the rocking chair, giving it a few experimental pushes before relaxing into a rhythm. He tilts his chin to the side, staring bluntly at you. “Murder many people in your time away?”
If your blood were not black and your cheeks had the capability to flush, they certainly would be doing so now. “You can’t just say something like that! How awfully morbid.”
“Says the one who drinks the blood of my kind.”
“Be careful, you might be next.” But the threat is completely empty, and he knows that entirely by the way a sharp bark of laughter escapes him, as if to say: You wish, monster.
Silence embraces the both of you, welcomed comfortably. Jimin breathes with the stead of a calm tide, waves rushing without urgency onto a shore, drawing back with tranquil leisure. His heart beats like a bird slicing its wings through the wind, only occasionally having to flutter for the current keeps it afloat. As a being, he is entirely serene, without any intent to hurt although the lifestyle that his family thrust upon him – he might be trained, but he is no born killer.
You break it to him gently, as if the wrong placement of a word will force his porcelain skin to splinter and he will shatter into a thousand pieces at your feet.
“Jimin, I think this might be the last time I get to see you.” The words shudder out of your lungs, quaking gently with the despise of who is forcing them out of you. “We’re headed for the mountains, it’s becoming too dangerous for us to stay here. This is the longest we have ever resided in a particular area, and it’s proving to become difficult.
“But I want you to know that this, visiting you, has made me feel more human than I did when I was truly alive – long before I was a monster. If I could, I would stay by your side, but I can’t let him find you, I can’t–”
“Please, don’t cry,” Jimin whispers, and it is only then that you realise you are. The tears stream hotly down your cheeks, and you cannot tell if you are terrified of abandoning his side or leaving behind how wholly human you are when he smiles at you.
Jimin, with the utmost care and precision, lays his hand atop your own, the first physical contact that the pair of you have ever made, and suddenly, at the warmth that tucks itself between your knuckles from his palm, crimson forcefully lurches into your vision as if the monster within you was waiting for the precise moment to remind you of what you truly are.
He barely blinks in the time that you rip your hand away, confusion blooming on his features as there is a shift in the wind, a breeze that was nonexistent when you arrived, which can only mean one thing and you only realise once it is too late.
The pungency of Jeongguk overwhelms your senses, and all that was human about you is torn out from underneath your feet like a rug.
There is a dull thud, Jimin’s head is finely severed and his body crumples backwards before you can even scream. His limbs, for a sparse second, twitch and writhe, the muscles seizing up as the crimson seeps into the grain of the porch, staining it in his death all the while Jeongguk gently sways in the rocking chair, sucking his fingers clean of innocent blood.
A rage you have never known lights up every nerve in your body, forcing you to leap on the monster and tear at his skin, all the while he sits and observes, unbothered. With an unusual patience, Jeongguk allows you to screech incoherent profanities and have at him until your claws start to press between his ribs, searching for something that is no longer there, and only then does he stand to action, grabbing you by the throat and dragging you off the porch, kicking and screaming, continuing to do so even when he slams you against the thick girth of a trunk with enough force to make the bark crack.
“How– How could you?!” You uselessly shriek, nails dragging at his knuckles that wrap all the firmer around your throat. “He was harmless, Jeongguk! How could you?!”
“It’s irrevocable, the ties between us monsters and the hunters,” Jeongguk placidly speaks, squeezing your neck tighter before releasing it, staring down at you with barely controlled rage as you crumple to the ground, “it can never be changed, we can never be allies. They will always hunt us, and we will forever hunt them. Start accepting that you can never be like that scum – you can never be human again.”
Like taking off a mask, something about his demeanour shifts when he sighs and crouches between your knees, a palm gingerly coming up to caress the side of your face, wiping at the furious tears, and you cannot find it in yourself to flinch away. Not even when his thumb, stained with the blood of your friend, presses against your lips. The way he looks at you is as if he is dealing with a distressed child.
“Now, aren’t you hungry, darling?” Jeongguk murmurs, using his free hand to tuck your hair behind your ear. The tip of your tongue tastes honey sweet, your stomach burns in a wildfire as the voluminous stench of death protrudes the atmosphere. You try to deny it, be rid of her, but the contact from before still lingers like an infestation upon your hand, swells greater as Jimin spills all of his human purity out of the opening cut clean across his neck. “He’s still fresh, he won’t go off for an hour or two, you know that. We’ve got a big trip ahead of us.”
It is akin a parasite taking over, where your entire body goes numb and any shred of conscience is smothered to the shadows. The fangs slide out of your gums, your chest cracks open, relenting to the irremediable truth of what Jeongguk had spoke. You never cared about the hunter, you only took pleasure in the way that he made you feel.
The monster grins, because deep down, she has always wondered what the heart of a friend must taste like.
