It’s too loud. 

The familiar setting of you coming to this exact bar at least twice a week hits a little too close to home this time around, and the eerie feeling in your gut cannot pinpoint why it does. You had received a text from a friend of yours that you haven’t talked to in a while, unsure as to why he had texted you out of the blue. It wasn’t like he was obligated to still talk to you, when it was you that had broken things off with his best friend; he should’ve cut you off in the first place. 

Yunho, however, was a man of wild cards as he had called you on his cell phone, incoherently asking you to pick him up and drop him off at his apartment in exchange for a coffee outing in the morning. You think you shouldn’t decline it in the first place, knowing that it’s the last stretch of final exams for the fall semester, and that you were just one semester away from graduating college. 

But you hated this scene. 

You currently stand out in the middle of the bar, looking for the tall man that had called you previously in hopes that you could just grab him and go, but nothing could ever prepare you for the sight that you were graced with. 

In the corner of the bar you see him, the person that you once thought that you were going to have everything with. 

Song Mingi was someone that came into your life almost unexpectedly, gracing his presence into your life at the same time that you had met Yunho. The two had almost come together as a package duo, and the you from years ago would’ve laughed at the idea of you being the one to break things off with the latter. However it was the idea of the future that had scared both you and Mingi that you had finally made a choice for the two of you; to go your separate ways before you can hurt the other. 

The breakup was still fresh in your mind, as it had only been three weeks since you had seen them both and the rest of your mutual friend group. You thought that it would’ve been best to distance yourself from them all so that you could take the time to heal and love yourself better, but standing in the middle of this bar made you feel anything but that. 

There was someone else in his lap, making out with him and he had been holding them closer to him more than you would’ve liked. 

“Are you okay?” 

The three words were said from behind you, and for some reason it comforts you in the worst ways possible. You turn to face an old flame of yours, one that you knew was also a victim in this case because from what you heard, he had recently gotten out of a relationship as well. The girl that he used to be with was someone that he told you not to worry about, but in this moment you realize that it was now him who was on your end of the stick. 

You wanted to laugh in his face at his question, but you also knew that he once knew you on the back of his hand. He knew that you had been hurting inside, because this was quite possibly your last straw with falling in love with someone; and he had known you were dating for the long run, rather than just in the moment.  

“Was it really that easy to let me go?” You whispered harshly, more towards yourself as you looked between Mingi who was now no longer in the spot that you had seen him in, and the person beside you. 

The look of pity mixed in with guilt had said everything that you needed to, and maybe tonight was not the night where you could’ve easily picked up the pieces. Maybe you needed more time to heal, and to be away from them because now that you remember it, they were all in one friend group. 

One was bound to tell the other sooner or later. 

“Y/N…”

“Y/N, there you are!” You hear Yunho say from behind you, and for a moment you think that you were saved by his timing to get you out of the suffocating place, “Are you still okay with driving me back?” 

You looked up at the latter with a fake smile, tugging on his sleeve to guide him out carefully as you left your past behind with all the unspoken words between you both. Maybe if you weren’t in such conditions, you could step forward and hear about all the things that had gone wrong between you two. 

But for now, you think that it’s better to love yourself first, before you find it even more dangerous to fall in love with someone new.

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A glass of the reddest Sanguine wine longed for Yunho on the wooden bar table, and the bartender that had made it for him ached similarly.

Wooyoung’s speakeasy job allowed him to talk to all sorts of unique faces, so there was never a shortage of conversation for him to enjoy while working and pouring illegal alcohol for all supernatural beings that knew about this underground establishment. Usually, the interactions filled him with life in the same way he could give life through his hands to corpses – but the death of his Seelie fae friend Helio had grasped him by the hands and had drained him of his vitality. Every time a Seelie fae entered the bar with their insignia pinned onto their cloak, Wooyoung was thrown back into the terrible past, his hands remembering all too vividly the feeling of Helio’s shirt on his fingers when he had gripped it and the color of the blood and bruises that coated Helio when he had laid motionless on the speakeasy floor. All of this haunted him, but what Wooyoung was most preoccupied with were Helio’s last words to him – “you saved me. Wooyoung, how?”

The words had tugged and gnawed at him so much that he couldn’t find it in him to speak to customers joyfully anymore. The truth of the matter was that he hadn’t saved Helio – he had removed his healing hands and had let Death take the reins away from him. He had watched the life leave Helio’s eyes. He had seen the funeral procession in the newspapers. Speakeasy frequenters couldn’t understand where their bubbly and amiable Wooyoung had gone – Helio’s death had broken him, and Wooyoung was helpless to find the pieces to stitch himself together again. 

When the noise of the bar died down and customers left, Wooyoung was able to find a break in his schedule. He walked into the bartender’s lounge in the back of the speakeasy. On the table, next to a pile of papers one gust away from being strewn across the floor, was a brand-new candlestick telephone that Wooyoung had purchased with the speakeasy’s net gain of profit they had seen recently. Wooyoung spun the dial to a phone number he knew by heart, put the phone to his ear, and prayed that the recipient would pick up. 

Wooyoung bit his lip while the phone buzzed. He had to answer the phone – Wooyoung had gone on months without getting better, and the recipient was one of few people he could trust and believed could make some real closure for him. The recipient couldn’t make Helio alive again, no one could, but perhaps he could be Wooyoung’s hands of revenge in the exact places where Wooyoung’s own hands had failed so fatally. Wooyoung didn’t know what he would do if the recipient wasn’t available.

Another ring. Wooyoung was nervous. Vampires were faster than this.

But then the phone clicked and Yunho’s warm voice was in his ears – “Hello?”

Wooyoung’s eyes welled up. “Yunho,” he said, warmth flooding through his body. “It’s Wooyoung. Yunho, I need your help.” 

A few days later, Yunho traversed through a dim and busy street, his black coat whipping against the autumn wind. The rain didn’t help the dimness of the street, or the fact that the wind was pushing the rain onto him, but Yunho trudged on in his leather-clad boots. He slid by warlocks gossiping about potions and avoided werewolves that were on their way home for evening dinner, searching for the alleyway that gave the entrance to Wooyoung’s speakeasy. One hand held his umbrella and the other clasped a brand-new 1922 Kodak camera with a strap around his neck for extra support. There was nothing to photograph at the moment, and certainly, the rain would make it much harder to do so, but Yunho carried it around him like an appendage for the constant purpose that there might be something worth documenting. That was something Yunho had learned in his centuries of living – there was never a shortage of photographs to be taken, and when there were photos to be taken, those were the chances Yunho could grab to make his own story. 

Yunho entered the alleyway containing the speakeasy entrance and threw it open. He was greeted with a pitch-black and musty-smelling hallway that contained more doors. The dark was no issue, he could see fine in the dark, but the smell overpowered his already powerful senses and left him reeling for a few moments while his nose calmed down. He could hear the faint tinging of glasses and laughter tens of feet away, and he used that to choose the right door to the speakeasy. Once in front of the door, Yunho knocked the specific pattern Wooyoung had told him – it changed every week – and a burly fae with muscles bigger than his head greeted him at the door. Yunho opened his mouth to say hello, but the bouncer interrupted his introduction. He poked at the camera in his hands and Yunho stiffened.

“You can’t bring witchcraft like this in here,” he said gruffly. His eyes narrowed.

Yunho, who was expecting worse from this large man, relaxed. His eyes glimmered as he became more relaxed around this bouncer. “It’s a broken camera,” he said, nodding. “Look.” Yunho picked up the camera and pointed the lens right at himself. “Take a look at the display.”

“Listen, I don’t know what you’re–” the bouncer began, but Yunho smiled at him so blindingly that he sighed. He looked at the display like Yunho had asked him, folding his beefy arms across his chest as he leaned in to see.

And instead of an image of Yunho, where the lens was pointing, the camera showed just the background around him. It was like the camera could see directly through him, an unimportant view when compared to the scenery around him.

“You see?” He said, laughing. “This damn thing is so bad at picking up things that even if I did take a photo, it wouldn’t be worth anything.” He flashed a toothy smile, fangs glimmering. The bouncer looked at him for a moment more, like he was contemplating kicking him in the rear to send him far outside of the store, and then his shoulders relaxed.

“Keep it as a necklace, bloodsucker,” he huffed. “And if I see you using it, I won’t hesitate to stake you.” His words packed power in them and Yunho didn’t doubt the truth to them, especially with a man as hefty as this one saying them. But Yunho was not fearful in the slightest  – he had outsmarted all sorts of people with his angles and fast fingers, and he would do it a thousand times more. A meathead bouncer was nothing.

“Thank you very much, sir, will do,” Yunho said with no intention of doing, flashing yet another charming smile at the bouncer before slipping by his large frame and larger muscles before he could change his mind.

Yunho entered the bar and was hit with a cacophony of noise from drunks, customers, and workers alike. In the corner, he could hear a pixie whining about the stock market. In another, a group of vampires huddled and muttered over a stack of cards with drinks at their sides. To his displeasure, he could also hear the sound of the devil’s tango and the creak of the bed they were using to dance on the floor above the speakeasy. He decided to discard that from his hearing.

“Yunho,” a voice called out over all of the chatter. Yunho turned to the voice, already knowing who it was – Wooyoung, one of his greatest friends, stood at the counter in his bartender uniform with a wide grin. Next to him was a glass of dark red liquid that made Yunho’s eyes light up.

“Wooyoung,” Yunho said smoothly, sliding into a bar seat right in front of him on the counter. He flashed a smile similar to the one he had shown the bouncer, but this one had genuine intentions. He clutched his camera with his left hand while grasping the red glass with his right. “I assume this is mine?”

“That it is,” Wooyoung nodded. “It’s on the house.”

Yunho swirled the red liquid – Sanguine wine – around in its glass. A concoction of wine and blood, it was an extremely popular drink for vampires and unsurprisingly disliked by everyone else. “Thank you, Wooyoung,” he said, looking at him thoughtfully before taking a sip. The taste of blood hit his tongue first with the alcohol following closely behind; he savored it. “It’s good to see you.” He paused. “You said you needed my help for something?” Another pause. “And my camera?”

Yunho could see the weight in Wooyoung’s eyes, and when they had called he had heard it in his voice. Yunho and Wooyoung ran risky lives so it wasn’t unusual to see pain, weight, or fear in each other quite often – but this seemed especially bearing. Yunho’s eyes softened. “Wooyoung, I’m here now.”

Wooyoung gave a sad smile to Yunho. “Can you help me frame a bastard?”

Yunho sat up in his chair, his eyebrows raised. His mouth curled. “Oh?”

Wooyoung didn’t share his enthusiasm, and again, Yunho deflated for him out of respect. “There was this fae at the speakeasy one day,” Wooyoung began, and Yunho adjusted himself in his seat and held his drink tight while he gave his attention to Wooyoung.

Wooyoung dove into the details about this fae he had befriended for a short period, Helio, and his untimely death with an Unseelie fae. Yunho listened, silently drinking his Sanguine while stroking his camera in thought.

“And I know Helio was just somebody and I probably shouldn’t be affected by this as much as I am,” Wooyoung said, furiously scrubbing at a wine glass that he had been cleaning repeatedly for the entire duration of their talk. “But I am and I feel helpless. I want vengeance for Helio, Yunho. Vengeance in a way that would hurt all Unseelie fae, because I doubt Helio’s murderer was just an isolated case of violence. Can you help me?”

Yunho had lived through more deaths than the number of decades he had been alive. Hearing Wooyoung’s story brought it all back – Helio was next to a nobody to Wooyoung, but he had been undoubtedly someone to so many. Yunho thrived in the suffering of those with higher social status, those that could easily evade consequences for actions that would ripple throughout poorer communities, or those with less. It was his immoral duty to destroy people like this and his loving duty to ease his friend’s pain.

“Of course,” he said, and Wooyoung’s visibly now brighter eyes made him pleased with his decision. “What is it that you want me to do, though?” He quipped, tapping the table with his long fingers. “You said you disposed of his murderer already.”

“I have an idea,” Wooyoung smiled and leaned into the table, ready for a spiel. “Mitha, the land of the fae, has been going through a lot of political turmoil,” he began. 

“The Seelie and Unseelie courts can’t get along. Each side is grasping for supporters but the fae are equally divided. For every fae that believes in goodness is another that believes in bloodshed.” Wooyoung pulled out, to Yunho’s appreciation, a photo of a man and placed it on the table for Yunho. Yunho craned his head to look at the man – a male fae.

A solemn fae with tricky eyes stared back at him. The fae sat on a red velvet seat and held at his side a black cane with a skull hilt. His hair was split evenly into two colors, white and black, but he was dressed in darker colors that suited the black part of his hair more than the white. Yunho wondered, idly and ironically, which side of the fae this one was on.

“This fae is Prince Hongjoong, an influential political leader in Mitha,” Wooyoung said while Yunho continued to study the photo. Yunho kept up with newspapers and somewhere, in the back of his brain, he thought he had seen him in the news before. It made sense – a man of this kind of caliber tended to grace the papers often. Yunho wondered if his publicity was usually the good or bad kind.

“So, you want me to kill this guy?” Yunho asked, raising his eyebrows.

Wooyoung snorted. “I know you’re not a murderer, of course not. I wouldn’t ask you to do that.”

Yunho touched his camera around his neck with a soft hand. “Mm, I’m not sure about that. I’m a shooter.”

Wooyoung grinned. “You’re funny. But I don’t want you murdering this man, dear Gods, I couldn’t imagine the hell you and I would be in if he perished by our hands.” He paused. “I want a worse fate for him.” Wooyoung leaned into the counter. “I want you to take photos of him.”

Yunho’s face remained even – he could feel the bouncer from earlier burning critical eyes in the back of his head. “Now that is something I can do.”

“I know you can,” Wooyoung grinned, finally placing down the glass he had been scrubbing nonstop. “Mitha won’t be a hard journey for you, will it?”

Yunho shook his head. “Nah,” he laughed. “It’s not too hard to get in when you have a reporter pass. It allows me access into lots of places.”

“I didn’t know you were hired at a reporting firm,” Wooyoung marveled.

Yunho’s eyes luminesced as he downed the last drops of his Sanguine. “Who said the reporter pass is mine?”

Wooyoung smiled so largely that his cheeks became round. “Yunho, you’re a little bastard, you know that?”

“The police call me that too often,” Yunho mused and then offered a cheeky smile to his friend. “Well, I best be going, then?”

Wooyoung glanced at the clock on the wall: Yunho had been here for an hour and a half. “Oh Gods, sure. Thank you, Yunho,” he said, bowing his head at him. “This means the world to me and more.”

“Of course, it’s no trouble at all,” Yunho smiled. “And it was good seeing you.” He snuck the photo of Prince Hongjoong Wooyoung had shown him and slid it into his coat pocket.

“Good seeing you too.”

Yunho got up from his seat and narrowly avoided hitting a very drunk goblin while doing so. He offered a perplexed look to Wooyoung, who only shrugged.

“I'll be in contact, but you'll probably see my work before you hear from me,” Yunho grinned, stretching his arms above his head, making him appear much taller than he already was.

“I’ll be on the lookout,” Wooyoung saluted. “Now, I should probably get back to my job…”

Wooyoung glanced around and saw a customer waiting to be served by him. It was a werewolf, one that was staring at Yunho like he was a stain on a white carpet. Wooyoung opened his mouth to tell his friend, but he realized Yunho had noticed him too, and his facial expression mirrored that of the werewolf’s.

Yunho was locked in Wooyoung's vision. "Yunho, no."

“About time,” the werewolf sneered at the two of them. “I’m being held up by one of that kind?” He bared his wolfish teeth at Yunho, even though it was Wooyoung’s fault that he wasn’t served immediately.

“Yunho, just go, you have more important things to worry about,” Wooyoung nudged, knowing that fights and quarrels were all too frequent at the bar, and to his relief, Yunho lost eye contact with the werewolf, but Wooyoung wasn't blind to the minute eye roll he did.

“Are you siding with him?” The werewolf roared, and Wooyoung stared daggers at Yunho, his hands gripping the wooden bar table so hard that his knuckles were white. His eyes pleaded for him to leave.

Yunho, luckily, obliged. “See you later then, Wooyoung,” he said with a little cheer in his voice, and Wooyoung watched him dart by the bouncer and exit the speakeasy. 

He then dug up his bartender personality and a smile – and thought that if dealing with a crabby and impatient werewolf was hard enough, he couldn’t imagine the hoops Yunho would have to go through to successfully photograph Hongjoong in all of the right ways, but more importantly,  in all of the wrong ways. He wished him the best of luck and then went to satisfy the werewolf.

The travel to Mitha was very similar to the travel to the Underworld – easy, relaxing, and methodical. As Yunho stood at the subway station waiting for the yellow train to Mitha, he watched demons, vampires, and spirits alike board the red train – the one to the Underworld. The yellow train was set to arrive in 20 minutes, but Yunho liked arriving early to watch people. His camera hung at his neck and his hands itched to grasp it and take photos – but there was nothing special about people traveling to hell. The mundane, while a good source for fabrication and framing, had a price to document because of the time it took to develop the photograph in a dark room. Yunho wanted his photos to be of substance, and photos of substance begged to have context; context he didn’t feel like making. He sat and twiddled his thumbs and ignored the Kodak.

Besides his camera, Yunho had his photographer license, a handful of Mitha’s coin currency tucked safely into his pocket, and a black satchel at his side. In the satchel were a few bags of blood and a change of fancier clothes. This would be an easy trip – there and back without a hitch. Perhaps he would journey through hell if he had time to spare after the photoshoot.

The yellow train arrived five minutes early at the station. Yunho was one of the first to stride onto the train and he didn’t waste any time stealing a comfy seat. As more creatures boarded the yellow train to Mitha, Yunho wondered why they were also on the train. Were they seeing friends or family? Were they on their way to work, which could explain why so many people were giving looks to Yunho, an outlier in their daily routine? He ignored their glances. They saw him; they were looking at his camera. 

Cameras, while not a new invention, had a layer of scrutiny from the public. It was considered dirty work to be a photographer in the same way as it was dirty to be a prostitute. In a world where magic, uncanny encounters, and accidents existed, a perfect mechanical machine such as a camera was the antithesis of it all. Despite years of practicing espionage magic, a photograph could foil a warlock’s criminal plans immediately. Fae found ways to step over their curse of always telling the truth to cause trickery, but a photograph could dismantle that. The camera was a powerful tool used to twist media despite an immortal’s and all-powerful’s best efforts to maintain their image. And Yunho was a master of his camera.

It was also dirty to be a vampire, but without the blood in sight, it would take longer for people to realize he was one. He certainly wasn’t a fae – his ears weren’t pointed, his eyes, hair, and skin were a natural color, and he could very much lie his way out of anything – but there were plenty of warlocks who also looked almost human, like him. Yunho eased into his seat as the train began to move. There weren’t too many people riding today – most on the train were fae, but there were also a fair amount of vampires, warlocks, and to Yunho’s distaste, a werewolf. He wrinkled his nose uncomfortably.

“The politics of Mitha are always in turmoil,” Wooyoung’s voice echoed in Yunho’s head as he focused his attention on how his encounter with Hongjoong would go instead of the werewolf. “Their court is divided into ten Seelie and ten Unseelie fae to pass laws, but all fae regardless of side vote for both sides. Being a bipartisan politician is crucial to claiming a seat. That means all fae running for a seat in the court will advertise themselves as neutral as possible to appease all fae, but after the election, they will lose their bipartisanship and be extremely Unseelie or Seelie-oriented. And nothing will get passed. Prince Hongjoong is running as a Seelie, but I don’t think that’s where his true affiliations lie. The Unseelie have high hopes for him to win the seat because if he does, the court will be Unseelie-majority for the first time in decades.”

Yunho had interacted with Unseelie before, though it wasn’t always obvious which side they affiliated with by looks alone, safe for if they had either symbol of affiliation on their clothes. Even mannerisms weren’t a way to define which side they were on – Yunho had met the kindest Seelie bikers and the most callous Unseelie mothers. The most accurate way to tell was in how they carried themselves – there was a certain aura of disdain that the Unseelies held and a sense of benevolence that the Seelies had in their personalities. He wasn’t scared of Hongjoong, but he would be lying if he said wasn’t even a little nervous diving into fae territory as a vampire. Hongjoong had the high ground – and Yunho hoped he could swipe at his ankles when he wasn’t looking.

Yunho wasn’t even truly sure what his interaction with Hongjoong would look like. From the few times he had traveled to Mitha, he had visited fae that lived in the city or suburbs, fae that weren’t coughing up riches like the royal fae were. But Yunho did his best work in the moment – and his determination to help out Wooyoung kept him going, even with his anxieties gnawing at his extremities.

It took an hour for the yellow train to reach the major train station of Mitha. Once off of the train, Yunho asked an older female fae for directions to the castle of the royal fae.

She had looked at him, puzzled. “Are you sure you want to go there?” She had questioned, and Yunho had nodded.

“I’m sure you know how much the royal fae love having their photos taken,” he laughed, having absolutely no idea if that was true or not. It didn’t matter, because the fae had shrugged like it was indeed plausible, and then she gave him the directions to the castle.

It took another hour of walking to reach the castle. Unlike in the Midworld where it had been pouring rain, Mitha’s sun blazed across the buildings, pedestrians, and cars in the cities. It was a popular, and incorrect, belief that all vampires burned in the sun. And while a few did, Yunho was of the majority that didn’t.

As Yunho walked to the castle, he took note of the stores he saw. There was a store that sold canes that doubled as weapons, and it made Yunho think about the cane that Prince Hongjoong had in the photo that Wooyoung had given him. Another store advertised mail services across Mitha, Midworld, and the Underworld. Another store advertised Mithaized Underworld food, and next to it was a jewelry store that catered to fae’s pointed ears and unique skin tones.

The closer Yunho got to the castle, the fewer of these stores he saw. Like nature had seen the urbanization of Mitha and had scoffed, trees replaced buildings and stores. The absence of stores made the gorgeous castle in the distance that much more captivating and obvious to the eye.

As he got closer to the castle, Yunho now saw clearly the golden brown bridge that separated the mass of land Yunho was on from the castle ground. At the front of the gate was a group of guards. Yunho gripped his bag and his camera tighter. With the reporter pass that he had stolen, he didn’t think it would be much trouble to get into the castle.

He was right. The guard closest to him had taken a look at him and asked to see what was inside his bag – and gave a puzzled expression to the blood but didn’t say anything – before Yunho had flashed the guard with his reporter pass.

The photo on the pass was of a man that looked eerily similar to Yunho, and never once had anyone doubted that it was him. Yunho couldn’t even have his photo taken as a vampire, anyway. Jongho, the man on the card, could.

The guard was no exception, and let Yunho cross the bridge. He enjoyed the stroll, watching fish he had never seen swim in the moat below and admiring the intricate details of the wood of the bridge.

And once Yunho was inside the castle – and how thrilled he was to be, how was it this easy? – he was paralyzed with awe at the architecture in front of him. His hands itched at his camera, to soak in and capture every beautiful curve or corner he saw. On one wall was a magnificent photo of the royal family. Hongjoong, without his cane, was there with his parents and siblings. On the ceiling hung a chandelier with what must have been thousands of gemstones adorning it. On another wall were rows and rows of statues of what Yunho could only presume were past rulers. How easy it could be to stay here for hours, swallowing up the sublime divinity of it all and let his camera run dry – but he had to find Hongjoong. He pleased his artistic eyes just a bit longer before asking a nearby guard for directions to the Prince.

“You want to go to the throne room?” The guard sputtered when Yunho reached him and asked.

This was now the second time someone thought he was brainsick for wanting to see the Prince. “Well, yes,” Yunho said, scratching his head before pointing to his camera. “I’m here to take photos of His Highness Prince Hongjoong. I’m in support of his political program and wish to convince the public to vote for him.”

When he got no response, Yunho fished out Jongho’s reporter pass again. “See?” He said, flashing it to the guard.

The guard waved away the reporter pass. “No, that’s not what–” he sighed. He shut his eyes, contemplating something, and then opened them. His eyes held nothing. “Allow me to lead the way.”

The guard led Yunho through a hallway that, once again, brought Yunho close to tears. Long tapestries of the royal fae family’s logo adorned the walls in a rainbow display. Yunho opened his mouth to ask the guard who exactly each royal fae was on the wall, but he stopped himself when he saw how stiff and tight the guard was. It wasn’t a tightness that alluded to discipline and years of training, but a stiffness that came with nerves. It was the little things that Yunho picked up on, like the guard’s tentative steps as if one wrong move would lock his knees and send him to the rock-hard velvet floor of the castle, or the way he kept looking behind his shoulder at Yunho every few seconds.

Yunho tried not to let that get to him. Maybe the guard was fearful about something else. Some fae found vampires, by nature, unsettling and disturbing, which wasn’t much better; but he couldn’t shake the ominous feeling growing in the pit of his stomach like a parasite in a petri dish.

At last, the throne room was in front of them: a gleaming gold door with handles half of the length of Yunho – so very long. Yunho secured his bag one last time and made sure all of his belongings were accounted for, and then looked up at the guard to find him staring right back. Something in his gaze sent ice-cold sensations down Yunho’s spine, alerting all of the nerves in his peripheral nervous system.

“What?” He blurted out before he could think through being silent.

The guard gave him a solemn expression. “Are you absolutely sure you want to go inside?” He asked.

Yunho grimaced. “I traveled a long way to get here,” he said. “Of course I do.” He held the gaze of the guard a little longer. He then continued: “what are you so afraid of that’s inside there?”

The guard’s eyes grew weary. Even though they were the color of a lightning bolt, white-blue, powerful, and supernatural, they looked weighed down by the weight of something – some kind of fae secret, no doubt. One that Yunho suspected with a drop of his stomach, he would soon bear as well.

“Prince Hongjoong…” he said, and then shook his head. “No,” the guard said, talking to himself. “I am not scared of him. I am scared that you will be scared of him because you are naive. You do not know the ways of the Unseelie and how they like to work, and how they don’t like to work.”

Yunho was reminded of the fact that fae could not lie and his blood temperature dropped a degree. “Okay,” he said, thinking of Wooyoung and how he needed his help, “but I want to go in.”

The guard sighed with a note of finality, realizing that he couldn’t change Yunho’s mind. “Fine.” Without a preamble, he threw open the large, golden doors to the throne room.

The first part of the throne room Yunho noticed was the large, dark grandfather clock that hung ceremoniously in the corner of the room, the hands of it itching to hit the hour. It was two minutes until two. The perimeter of it, besides being marked with numbers to tell the time, had an engraving in the fae’s ancient language that had died off centuries ago. Yunho had just been turned when the last native speaker died, and he did not know the language. The body of the clock stretched to the floor, and the large metal pendulum encased in glass on the inside of it swung back and forth as a hypnotist would in their profession.

The clock was so significant that the blood all over the floor was only the second aspect of the room he noticed – he smelled it before he saw it, and he was surprised he hadn’t smelled it outside of the doors. He had long since learned to control his bloodthirst, so he didn’t feel the need to lap up the mess on all fours, but he did feel discomfort in his stomach as anyone would that had morals. Blood had been shed, recently, and why?

Yunho then saw Hongjoong, and he immediately understood. Yunho thought back to the old vampire tales his vampire friends had told him centuries ago that listed certain facial features and personalities as more bloodthirsty than others. Yunho had never believed them, taking them as jokes or old vampire’s tales only, but taking in Hongjoong, a little inkling of fear grew in his stomach and made him shudder. 

The fae prince was seated on a throne much too tall for himself or any fae, a throne whose top almost reached the bottom curve of the clock. The prince had a long black cloak tossed over the edge of the seat of the throne and it splayed helplessly onto the floor beside him. One leg lounged on the armrest of the chair, the other knee-bent, and semi-parallel to the floor. One hand rested on the kicked-up knee, the other held that damn cane that never seemed to leave his side in all of the photos Yunho had seen of him. The prince’s crown glimmered with gold, which matched the details on his black shirt to an unsettling degree. Yunho thought if he would only smile, he would be admired by all of the women in Mitha. But what destroyed that image for Yunho was the prince’s face – a face that when described, would match the high bloodthirst requirements. Hongjoong wasn’t even a vampire, but his sharp eyes loomed over Yunho like a predator sizing up its prey. They were darker than obsidian, and the prince’s red mouth seemed curled upward in a state of perpetual arrogance. This man had the face of bloodthirst that the vampires’ tales fulfilled.

Yunho made eye contact with the prince, and he could have sworn he saw them glimmer.

“You brought me another one, guard?” Prince Hongjoong said boldly and boomingly, and Yunho had expected his voice to be deeper. It was higher, playful, and lackadaisical, and it reminded him of Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream, a person from fae history. The prince smiled, and it was not a smile that would make women swoon. This smile was one of a lion about to eat supper. “That’s three back-to-back.”

Absentmindedly, Yunho heard the clock in the room tick. Only one minute until the hour. Prince Hongjoong swung his leg over the gorgeous armrest so both of his feet were planted firmly on the ground. His stance was wide, and he used his knees as armrests. He leaned in, and Yunho expected him to make a comment at him – a dirty vampire or a silly peasant. But then Hongjoong’s head cocked to the left, away from Yunho, and Yunho followed his laser gaze.

There were two more people in the room with them, so quiet and insignificant when compared to the burst of personality on the throne. The first one was a fae man – a commoner, based on his average clothing – that looked like he was about to pass out from anxiety due to the Prince’s stares. The second man was in the shadows, one that Yunho only saw because of his enhanced vision. He was cloaked from head to toe with not even his face visible due to the shadows his clothing gave him. He was a blur of darkness against the bright throne room safe for the enormous and bloody axe he held. The blood on the sharp end of it still dripped, staining the precious white floor with beads of coagulated red.

Hongjoong raised an arm and gestured to the commoner, his smile almost kind. “Why don’t you walk to the center of the floor now, boy?”

Yunho watched as the man followed the Prince’s command, taking uneasy steps to the center of the floor, overtop of the blood that had been spilled from someone previously. Yunho eyed the axeman warily. He itched to help out this commoner, somehow save him from this axeman, but he didn’t know what to do. 

It was at that moment that the grandfather clock struck the hour. Hongjoong’s eyes narrowed with malice, and he turned his head to focus on the clock. The man in the middle of the floor also watched it, his eyes frightened and large. The grandfather clock, as grandfather clocks did, began its merry song of announcing to everyone in the room that fifteen minutes had passed since one o’clock, and then also thirty minutes, and forty-five minutes, and then, as if releasing pent-up happiness, the clock sang that it was now two o’clock, its chimes clanging merrily in an announcement.

This is what a normal grandfather clock did, but Hongjoong was still intently focused on the clock like it would do something extraordinary. No, Yunho thought suddenly. He looked at Hongjoong more closely,  he looked at how his eyes were unfocused like he was looking directly above the clock instead of right at it. His blood chilled. He’s focused on the sounds the clock is making.

The clock began its first bong that one o’clock had passed. Yunho recognized it immediately as a different sound – he wasn’t sure what about it that was different, but it wasn’t what a normal grandfather clock sounded like. He took a second to spare a look at Hongjoong – and found his eyes were glazed with malicious delirium that had not been there seconds ago. The man in the center of the room began to sob raggedly. 

The Prince stood up, his cape following him, elegant, dark, and oh-so-obsequious. Hongjoong thrust his cane so that it pointed right at the sobbing man, not caring that he was crying. His eyes were filled with fire, and the smile on his face radiated with violent lunacy. A giggle lept out of his mouth.

The skull cane in Hongjoong’s hand began to shake due to the shaking in the wielder’s body. Hongjoong’s head turned rapidly at the axeman, who had now walked out of the shadows. The man began screaming. Hongjoong’s shaking became worse and his smile widened. The clock bonged again – it was two o’clock.

“Kill him.”

It happened in an instant. One moment, the axe was in the axeman’s hands, and the next it was sliced three-fourths into the man’s neck. It had flown through the air like a hawk, finding its target with ease and spraying blood all over the room’s walls and floor.

The blood flecked onto Yunho. He screamed in surprise, but not before instinctually licking a bit off of where some had landed on his cheek. It tasted wonderful, but there were too many emotions swirling in his stomach with tornado-like tendencies for him to process it truly. He wanted to cry. He wanted to lick all of the blood off of his face. He wanted to murder Hongjoong. He wanted to melt into the floor. He wanted to stake himself. Instead, his hands found the camera around his neck.

Hongjoong did not protest, though he was focused on Yunho as the vampire fumbled around with his camera. The Prince knew what he was doing, there was no way he didn’t know what a camera was. There was a pride in his eyes that glowed as Yunho’s fingers found all of the right functions on his camera despite the fear that was traveling through his body and making him shake. He cranked the film and cocked the shutter, then took the photo – Hongjoong grinning menacingly on his throne, the victim with blood pouring out of his neck on the floor, and the sprayed out blood all over the white marble floor from when the axe had first made its impact. The axeman, who had done his job, was back in the shadows. Yunho wasn’t even sure he had made it into the photo. He would have to develop the film later to see.

A thought occurred to him amidst all of the fire alarms that were screaming in his head to get the hell out – if he could publish this photo in a newspaper, there would be no need for a photo shoot to frame Prince Hongjoong for Wooyoung. Yunho could do that all on his own with this photo. A smile tried to grow on his lips, but like a plant without sunshine, it wilted. A murder had just happened. He couldn’t smile at that.

When Yunho lowered the camera from his eyes, Hongjoong was staring at him with piercing and dark eyes.

Yunho opened his mouth to ask why he was looking at him like that, but Hongjoong was royalty. He was used to speaking first.

“You shouldn’t have seen that,” Hongjoong said serenely. He looked dazed like a child would be after eating a bag of candy. “You should not have seen that…” Prince Hongjoong paused, then inclined a hand towards him. “What are you called?”

Yunho did not lose eye contact with him, and he thought about his stolen photographer’s pass. “Jongho.”

Hongjoong nodded in a way that showed Yunho the question of his name was insignificant. “Jongho,” he said, tasting his name in his mouth and nodding. “Jongho, I’m afraid you’re going to need to die.”

“I already died fifteen hundred years ago,” Yunho said casually, instead of jumping back in terror like he should have. For a moment, he lost eye contact with the prince and noticed that the guard that had escorted him into the room was gone. He had no clue when he had decided to leave. It was just him, the corpse, his murderer, and this fae with a dark and iron hand. His attention was back on the prince. “Why do you want me dead… a second time?”​

The prince eased back into the comfort of his throne like a beast succumbing back into the catacombs from which it came. The cane had not left his right hand the entire time he had been in the throne room, though he now held it with a much more relaxed grip. Hongjoong smiled at him, and it wasn’t a nice smile – it was one similar to the one that had been plastered on his face when the axe had found its target only minutes ago. 

“You can’t let Seelie know that I kill,” Hongjoong yawned. “And you just took a photo of the murder.”

“You could have stopped me,” Yunho pointed out. “Though, I’m not sure you actually could’ve. Watching a person die in front of my eyes isn’t exactly something I see every day, and so I had to document it as a photographer.”

“It’s only okay to kill someone if it’s dinner in your book, bloodsucker,” Hongjoong nodded, his grin wider. Yunho had a sudden desire to twist Prince Hongjoong’s head off like a lid of pickles. 

“But perhaps I should have been clearer,” the Prince continued, now tapping his fingers on the skull handle of his cane while Yunho fumed. “I honestly just wanted to see you squirm. It’s a shame you’ve died already, the first death is always the worst… though you know that already,” he smiled, and then his eyes narrowed. “You might die again, is what I am saying.”

Yunho opened his mouth to ask what that exactly meant, ignoring the Prince’s other comments, but Hongjoong was ready for him. “I have no say in if you die or not if I am a righteous leader, though I can make it happen,” Hongjoong said. “The Fate Clock will decide for me since fate has brought you here anyway without my request.”

Yunho eyed the towering clock in the room again, and thought about how when that clock had struck two o’clock, Hongjoong had ordered the axeman to kill the man. A worry grew in his stomach, and he glanced down at the corpse that was emptying its bodily contents onto the floor. “How?”

Hongjoong got even comfier on his large, large throne. A lazy smile appeared on his face. “The Fate Clock is an old relic from when my ancient ancestors were young,” he said.

Wonderful, Yunho thought. Fae magic.

“It has aided my royal family throughout since the inception of its life and will continue to aid my progeny when I am long gone,” Hongjoong continued. “It can determine if someone lives or dies by how useful they will be to my family.”

“If me releasing you with that photo will do good for my people, then the clock will chime in a major key,” he paused, “do you know what that is?”

“I’m dead, not deaf,” Yunho said mundanely, though he had never thought to dabble in music in his long life.

Hongjoong took this as an acceptable answer and continued. “If the Clock chimes in a major key at the hour, I will spare your life. Though if letting you spread that photograph will only cause harm…”

There must have been a rock in Yunho’s stomach, teetering against his kidneys, unsure if it should fall or not. It chose at that moment to plummet down to his feet.

“It will chime in a minor key at the hour,” Hongjoong continued, “and you will become just like this man at my feet right now.”

Hongjoong had backed Yunho into a corner. “It’s a harsh and cruel world,” Hongjoong said with cheer, “for people that don’t have power like me. I bless the silly thought that made you desire to come and see me, vampire. More bloodshed for me.”

Yunho looked down at the corpse on the ground, and realized with a sickening punch in the gut, that he would join him soon enough. He knew, and Hongjoong knew, that at three o’clock, the Fate Clock would chime. The Clock would chime in a minor key because surely no photo of a murder would be received well – and Yunho would be gone. Wooyoung would not be avenged. Helio’s death would be in vain, and at the price of Yunho’s. For the second time, Yunho would die, and for the first time, it would be permanent. 

Yunho looked Prince Hongjoong directly in the eyes. “Then the Clock will chime in a major key,” he said, plastering on a kind smile and lying right through his teeth, “because I will never show that photo to anyone. I will only bring goodness and light to your reign, political career, and life.”

Hongjoong’s eyes glimmered. “I think you’d best benefit my life bleeding out on the floor at my feet, dear.”

The stare the two of them held could have cut glass. Hongjoong, powerful even when lounging in his chair, legs spread out in a move of dominance and fingers tapping on his cane thoughtfully stared at Yunho like he was considering all of the ways he could string Yunho’s useless and dead intestines across his wall artfully, and Yunho, feet planted firm into the ground with a strong grip on his camera on his neck and unwavering gaze to the prince. He was not going to die today. He convinced himself of this. 

Hongjoong considered Yunho a bit more, looking up and down his lithe and lanky frame before sighing. “Well, I suppose I should let you sit comfortably for your final hour.”

Hongjoong was kind enough to let Yunho sit in an old, wooden chair that the axeman had dragged across the floor to him. It creaked under his weight when he sat in it and was terrified that if he moved, the chair would break apart and he would somehow stake himself during the fall. Perhaps that was Hongjoong’s plan all along – to quench his thirst for bloodshed that couldn’t wait an hour. Yunho had not thought about death so much for the full hour of waiting. Could vampires die by an axe? Was an axe how he would die? Was there a stake underneath all of that dark and bloodstained clothing that the axeman wore that would drive through his heart? Perhaps the axeman would just pull off a leg from the chair Yunho was seated in, or Hongjoong would drive his wooden cane to end him in a painfully majestic murder.

But Yunho was most upset about the promise he had made to Wooyoung, a promise that he saw slipping through his fingers like sand. He had wanted to come back victorious, to ease Wooyoung’s troubled heart, and now he wasn’t sure how his friend would ever know he had died. And how would Wooyoung cope with two deaths when he did realize? He didn’t want to think about it. He couldn’t think about failing Wooyoung. He had failed enough times with others for greater stakes.

Yunho inclined his head towards the large doors that had led him in here. Perhaps if he ran fast enough, he could escape Hongjoong’s wrath. But that’s still failing Wooyoung, he thought. Because even if you managed to get out and release the photo, Hongjoong would hunt you down and kill you anyway.

Thus, the hour passed by very slowly. Yunho was too into his thoughts to realize it was five minutes until the hour when Hongjoong spoke up.

“Five minutes,” he sneered, the glee of slaughter emanating off of his body like smoke from a fire. “Five minutes until you’re dead.”

“Five minutes until you let me go, alive,” Yunho said. If he was to die – again – he was going to stand tall and strong up until the very last moment. “Five minutes until I release that photo, and it will prove to be useful for your throne.” He just hoped the Clock didn’t know what photo editing was. He was shaking out of anxiety now, and he hoped Hongjoong couldn’t see it.

If Hongjoong had anything other than sanguinary thoughts, he did not show them. Like a slinky, he sunk deeper into his throne. He shrugged, and Yunho prayed to whatever higher power that controlled the Clock that it would be merciful on his already damned, vampiric soul.

The five minutes were up in an instant like Hongjoong had turned its ancient hands closer to the hour himself. At some point during Yunho’s melancholic reverie, the axeman had removed the body of the man from the center of the floor and had done a poor job of wiping up the blood. The place where Yunho would soon stand was a circle of bloody pink.

“You know where you must be,” Hongjoong leered, inclining his head to the circle. Yunho said nothing, but he did obey the Prince and stood in the center of the throne room. He gripped his camera tightly and watched the Clock. There was less than a minute left. If Yunho’s heart actually worked, it would be running a marathon.

Hongjoong also watched the clock, his smile turning wider and wider as each second passed. He stood from the throne, threw back his cape, and lowered his cane to the ground.

Ten seconds. Yunho held his breath, though he hadn’t been breathing anyway. Five seconds. Yunho gripped his camera tighter. If this was how he was going to die, he was going to give the people that ransacked his body a hard time prying it from his hands.

The Clock struck three o’clock. Like a symphony being orchestrated by a conductor’s baton, the clock began its song of telling everyone in the room that fifteen minutes had passed since two o’clock, then thirty, then forty-five. Everyone in the room was transfixed by the tune. The end of its song was nearing – the chime was coming. Yunho shut his eyes.

The first chime sounded in a wondrous major key, and if that was not music to Yunho’s ears, he didn’t know what was. He opened his eyes, and found Hongjoong at the center of his vision, his face perplexed and his mouth slightly open. His brows furrowed in confusion. The second chime came, in a major key just like the first. Yunho released his fingers from the camera. The camera was now soaked in sweat. The third chime was more defined than the other two, reverberating across the room. The axeman, who had stepped briefly out of the shadows, sunk back to where he was before.

Once the third chime had finished ringing, there was a moment of silence between Prince Hongjoong and Yunho. Hongjoong looked down at him from his elevated position and had the expression of a disappointed father to his son, Yunho. Hongjoong sighed quietly and put down his cane. His shoulders dropped.

“That does not happen very often,” he said, breaking the silence. “I wish I could kill you,” he said flatly, and Yunho was too shocked to snort at that statement.

“But the Clock is never wrong. Therefore, I grant you immunity and life for the betterment of my people, Jongho.” He sat back down on his throne, and Yunho did not mistake the pout on his face. “I cannot wait to see what that photograph will do when you release it,” he said, the bitterness most recognizable in the word photograph.

Yunho couldn’t drop the smile that was now plastered across his face. “As do I.”

Hongjoong flicked his wrists, and the doors to the throne room opened. The photomeister left. There was no time to take a relaxing trip to hell like he had said he would do earlier – he had a photo to develop.

The photo-developing process took anywhere from ten to fifteen minutes – it depended on how complex the photograph was. Once back in Midworld, Yunho rushed to his home and his own, private darkroom. In complete darkness, Yunho mixed the developer mixture with water. The not-quite photograph of Prince Hongjoong was wrapped in a reel that was placed in a film tank. Yunho poured the mixture into the film tank and then waited. He turned the lights back on and eagerly awaited the results of the photograph.

Yunho first saw the dark area where the axeman lay hidden develop, the darkest part of the photo. Black lines appeared quietly around the rest of the square, outlining Hongjoong, his throne, the corpse, and the blood that coated the floor. Yunho narrowed his eyes, studying the developing photo, and then a smile appeared on his face. His hypothesis that the axeman would be too dark to see in the photo was right – there was no way to tell he had ever been there. The photo continued to develop, and there was no sign of him ever appearing – Hongjoong got darker, the blood increased in saturation, the floor became whiter, and Yunho’s ego developed with it. A story brewed in his head – Hongjoong, a political candidate for the good and kind Seelie, was caught murdering the innocent with his own hand. There would be no editing needed for the photograph – it already said everything Yunho wanted it to say.

The photo finished developing. Yunho washed off the harsh chemicals and treated it with a protective treatment so that it would not be damaged in the sun, his hands shaking as he did so. The photo was a photographer’s dream, a landscape photo that was worth a ten-thousand-word story that Hongjoong was unfit to hold a court seat for the Seelie fae. There was no way that the public would believe any other story, not when everyone thought photography was indecent practice and akin to witchcraft. What the public didn’t know, was that as perfect and mechanical a camera was, there was an imperfect being behind it, snapping shots with their own vision, view, and perspective. Yunho had them wrapped around his fingers, and he would make them see whatever vision he wanted them to see.

Yunho let out a laugh as he exited his darkroom and pocketed the photograph. He threw on a coat – it was getting chilly, and the walk to the train station to Mitha was far. “My gracious thanks to you, Prince Hongjoong,” Yunho muttered under his breath as he left his house, feeling fueled by his own version of bloodlust, “for allowing me to live so that I might be a tumultuous effect to your reign.”

Yunho entering the Seelie newspaper room two hours later caused quite a ruckus. One fae by a typewriter blinked multiple times upon seeing him like she had never seen a vampire before. Another shrieked, but that may have been because Yunho had kicked the door open before entering in a six-foot-one-inch fury of a long dark cloak and vampiric sensuality. 

“Hi, Seelie fae,” Yunho said, and then slapped the beloved photograph of Hongjoong onto the table so they could all see. “I need a story on this. Stat.”

Within the next few days, the political climate of Mitha changed rapidly. Even those not living in Mitha felt it and saw it because it appeared all over newspapers as an enormous story. Yunho’s photo was on the front page of every Seelie newspaper and on at least one page of non-fae newspapers.

Prince Hongjoong of the First Province of Mitha Violates Seelie Social Code, the headliner read. Experts predict that he will be disqualified from the ballot to obtain a Seelie court seat, underneath. And, gorgeously, Yunho’s photo was printed on thin, glossy paper, the colors vibrant and eye-catching. Hongjoong’s murderous eyes were looking directly at the camera, a detail Yunho had failed to see when he had developed the photo. Coupled with the smirk on his face, an assumption could be made that Prince Hongjoong had orchestrated every drop of blood on the floor beneath him and was proud of doing so. This was not someone fit to make decisions for Seelie fae. This was an imposter. Underneath the photo was the credit: Jeong Yunho, 1922, and those three words made Yunho’s spirits soar.

When Yunho walked into Wooyoung’s bar with a spring in his step, the bartender hollered a cry of excitement and knocked over the drink he was in the middle of making. “Yunho!” He screamed, then as a delayed reaction, his body shook in surprise that he had accidentally spilled his drink all over the table.  “Did you–”

“I did,” Yunho grinned, and he hadn’t grinned wider than this in a long time. Wooyoung looked at him adoringly, with crinkled eyes and pink in his cheeks and teeth that shone in the odd bar lighting. Yunho took a seat in front of Wooyoung, who was in the middle of cleaning up the mess he had made. “I did see it. I can’t believe it.”

“That’s a damn good photo you took,” Wooyoung marveled. “How did you do it? Well, not how, but, you know… how? What sneaky Yunho thing did you do to frame that bastard like that? Oh, he’s probably hating you right now! He wants to kill you so bad, but he can’t!” He banged his fist on the table and shouted with happiness.

Yunho thought back to Hongjoong’s words before he had left the throne room: I wish I could kill you. If only Wooyoung knew. 

“There was no editing,” Yunho grinned, allowing himself a moment of hubris as Wooyoung audibly and theatrically gasped. “That was just me and the perfect lighting and the angle of my camera.” He thought about telling Wooyoung about the clock – and he decided to when he saw how Wooyoung was vibrating out of his body every time he spoke. He owed it to him to tell him everything that had happened.

So he did – everything from the events leading up to the photograph, after the photograph, and Yunho’s terrifying hour on death row. Wooyoung clung to every word like a koala on a tree branch, his eyes growing like saucers at all of the right moments.

“And I honestly have no fucking clue why the Clock let me live,” Yunho said once he was finished with his story. “Because how is this beneficial to Hongjoong in the slightest? What does the Clock see that I don’t?”

Wooyoung quirked his lips while he cleaned up the last bit of the drink he had spilled. “I think it’s because the Clock helps all of Mitha, if I understand you correctly,” Wooyoung said after a minute. “Hongjoong missed an oversight that allowed you to live – something I suppose he missed because of how far that cane is up his ass.” Wooyoung, who was perpetually smiling, smiled even more. It was such a good sight to see him so happy. Yunho hadn’t seen him this cheery in months, and the feeling gave him warmth in his chest. Despite everything he had gone through to obtain that photo, seeing Wooyoung so satisfied made it all worth it.

“Thank you, Yunho,” Wooyoung said as if he were thinking the same thing as Yunho. “If I had known it would be this hard or life-threatening, I wouldn’t have asked you to do this. But you did it, and you did it with flying colors because you’re Jeong motherfucking Yunho. It makes me feel so good that innocent Seelie lives will be saved because Prince Hongjoong now won’t have political power.” He paused. “Or, not as much power as he could have had.” Wooyoung took a deep breath and beamed. “Fae with lives like Helio can now live.”

Yunho wished he could see Prince Hongjoong’s face right now – was he seething on his throne, clawing at the walls, crying his eyes out? – but he was certain that whatever reaction he had, it wouldn’t be as satisfying as Wooyonug’s glee right in front of him. 

[Waxing Gibbous]

“Joong? Hongjoong?”

Silence greets you in the hidden hour's eerie ambiance. You can hear the guttural noises the shadows are making down the street, louder than what you’re used to. Perhaps it's the moon phases, slowly but surely getting fuller each day, and each day, Hongjoong seems to disappear longer or have trouble appearing. Are ghosts affected by the phases? Why are you the only one who can see him? You’ve asked the apartment staff and none seem to know the existence of Kim Hongjoong.

“I’m here…”

Hongjoong looks a bit worse for wear. Did he lose weight? There are telltale of dark shadows under his eyes and his cheeks look slightly sunken in. The hidden hour. Where the dead becomes the living.

“Are the shadows giving you trouble?”

He slightly winced at your comment, it seems to hit the mark. He shut your window when the groaning of the shadows grew louder, clutching his forehead as if he had a very painful headache. You urge him to sit down, the blanket goes through him again but he never goes through your bed, what an interesting ghostly concept. He sinks further into your pillow, burying half of his face into it.

“That and my head feels like they’re splitting in half. I have dreams that don't feel like dreams. It’s always the same, it gets clearer each time.”

You reach forward to brush his fringes in comfort and your fingers painfully buzz with sharp static electricity. Well, that never happened before, your fingers usually pass through him with goosebumps trailing up your arms. He gives you an apologetic frown, too spent for another word.

“It’s alright, Joong, though I do wish I could see your dream so you don’t have to shoulder it yourself.”

His brows furrowed and he shakes his head. You should have been careful with what you wished for. It wouldn’t be long until you wished that his dream didn’t come true because that will be the last time you see your friendly ghost roommate.

[Full Moon]

Dreams do come true. The ear splitting roar you hear in your shared dream with Hongjoong becomes a reality. The bridge shakes and your footing is unstable. He can’t hear you, he’s too far. No, you couldn’t get close. There are instances where you are scared but this… This is fear.

Hongjoong is solid, he has pushed you away from him, his hands warm and strong against your shoulders. He drops to his knees, clawing at his head and letting out a heart wrenching scream. You feel suffocated within his presence.

“Make it stop! I just want to be free! I don’t want to hurt anyone!”

You jump, ignoring the handing in your ribcage, the twisting in your stomach and the cold sweat dripping down. Hongjoong, your ghost roommate, is alive. Your arms wrap around him, coughing when his elbow struck your chest but you held him. He burns inhumanly hot.

“It’s okay, Joongie. I’m right here. Be free.”

You didn’t know the implication of your statement, you didn’t know until Hongjoong looked at you with desperation, pain and guilt. But in that moment, he’s relieved and so are you. In an instant you feel bone chilling coldness seeping into you, so cold it burns. You hear shadows roaring and closing all around you, blood thick and pungent soaking your trousers, and coffins towering over you. Hongjoong starts to disappear, lighter and more translucent with each passing second.

“You must survive.”

Hongjoong’s parting word brings a specific memory. Those with potential are food for the living dead. The frantic rushing and jumping of shadows to feast, they were close enough for you to feel their teeth before you heard something shatter. The bell from the tower in the middle of the chime with intensity that rattles your teeth and eardrums.

Just like that the hidden hour ends. The twisted skyscraper disappears in a blink. The coffins towering over you turn into pedestrians, yelling and screaming at your state. You probably look similar to a notorious serial killer caught in the bloody act. In your arms is the cold body of Kim Hongjoong.

It’s like high school all over again. Except for the fact that, instead of getting sent to the principal’s office, you got a meeting with HR and instead of detention, you got to an office of your own which you are sure was a utilities closet two days prior. 

And you are shunned still, even after two weeks. People who had meaningless conversations with you while on a coffee break are now avoiding you, whispering every time you walk by about how they never thought you could be so heartless. 

The worst part is that they don’t even like Eunhee, they just dislike you even more. 

Okay, maybe the worst part is that you haven’t even told Seonghwa about how making your relationship public has turned out to be much worse than you expected at first. When it hasn't even crossed his mind that things could be like this. 

He’s too busy with work, something that doesn’t bother you at all, if anything you’re grateful you don’t have to explain why you come back home on the verge of tears practically every day. Half the time it’s tears of rage, because Eunhee is thriving on this.

You see it in the way she smirks when she passes by your office, making the most to catch your eye. You see it in the way she celebrated when your boss suggested you spend more time writing posts rather than filming videos “for the sake of the work environment.” And you see it in the clearest way possible, when she decides to make a story out of you.

“Story time about how an ex-friend stole my boyfriend just to spite me…” 

The audio narrated by Eunhee blasts from your phone and, after giving a little jump, you turn the volume down hurriedly. You’re alone in your apartment, but the embarrassment overlooks that tiny detail. You shouldn’t be looking at Eunhee’s profile, much less at her videos. But you can’t help it, because you know what’s coming, you know it’s about you. It’s the third video in a row where she tells the story of how she was ‘so in love with a guy…’ who she insists on calling “Mars”, and how a person messed their relationship up because they have always been jealous about her: Because she’s pretty, smart, creative, etc. At least she hasn’t given you a nickname. But her followers have, they call you all sorts of things in the comments, things foul enough to make your eyes fill with tears and your jaw clench just by reading the top three. 

You wipe your tears and lock your phone. You can’t keep torturing yourself like this, you can’t bear it anymore. Are you really that much of a bad guy? 

The phone rings and you jump again, clearing your throat to dissolve the knot in it before trying on a cheerful ‘Hi love!’ as Seonghwa greets you. 

“Are you okay?” he asks, you can already picture the little furrow between his brows, the most obvious gesture of his concern, and a pang of guilt runs through you. This is childish, so fucking childish.

“I’m all right, why?” you chuckle weakly, but don’t give him a chance to follow up with an answer. “How are you? Are you getting home soon?”

“In a couple hours,” Seonghwa replies, his voice already tired. “Are you sure you’re okay, babe?”

“It was just a bad day at work,” you admit finally, biting the tip of your tongue to keep yourself from spilling anything else. “But it’s good to hear your voice.”

Seonghwa laughs softly and you chat a little more about your days before he has to go back to work, him still trying to cheer you up as best he can. 

You’re grateful for him, and moreover, you feel your heart swell with love for him every time you’re together. You are in love with Seonghwa and he’s in love with you too.

So why are you thinking about leaving him?

+++

Seonghwa places a piece of cake in front of you, making a whole show of scooping icing on his fingertip to rub it in your nose gently. You force laughter distractedly as your eyes search for a napkin, you’re not in the mood to be playful, you shouldn’t even be at this party. 

“Is everything okay?” He asks, passing you a napkin himself, suddenly bashful about annoying you. “Are you not having a good time?”

“It’s not that,” you rush to reply, wiping the icing with enough force to leave your skin irritated. “I’m just–” tired? stressed? overwhelmed? You don’t know which word to pick this time to describe how you’re feeling, having overused them already every time Seonghwa asks how you’re doing. 

Your boyfriend frowns, running the tip of his finger down your sticky nose and feeling sorry again for bothering you. It’s clear you don’t even want to be here, and he doesn’t know what to do to change that. Maybe it’s been his fault from the start, for insisting that you come to Yeosang’s birthday party to introduce you to most of his friends and colleagues as his partner. 

He’s ruining everything again.

“I think i’ll just call it an early night,” you decide before putting a spoonful of cake inside your mouth. “I’m not feeling well.”

“We can go home sure,” Seonghwa runs his hand down the back of your head, too conscious about his gestures now. 

“No! I wouldn’t want you to miss the rest of the party.”

The music starts booming again because people have swallowed their tiny pieces of cake and are back to drinking and dancing. It’s fun, you think, most of the people present are doctors and nurses and you can tell they’re making the most of their night off. 

“Are you sure?” 

You nod, swallowing more cake before getting up from the seat you’ve occupied most of the night. “I’ll just grab an Uber, and call you when I’m home.”

Seonghwa lets you go after saying goodbye with a kiss on the cheek. Maybe giving you space is for the best, maybe it’s what you both need. 

But he knows it’s not. 

Maybe he is in fact fucking everything up again, you’ve probably already had enough of him not calling or texting for great spans of time, of him being too tired to hold a proper conversation, of him getting sulky and preoccupied. Or to put it in a more simple manner: You just don’t like him anymore. 

“Where’s y/n?” Yeosang asks as he approaches, San follows him closely with the camera of his phone aimed at both of them. 

“They just left,” Seonghwa explains,feigning lightness. “They didn’t feel so good.”

San raises both eyebrows at this. “Are you two fighting?”

Seonghwa shakes his head, although unsure. “It’s nothing.”

But San is the person that knows you best, maybe this nothing is something and you have told him. Seonghwa just has to get him alone for a bit, try to get him to talk. He discards the idea as soon as he gets it, what the hell is he thinking? Harassing your friends in common for answers to a problem he hasn’t bothered to bring up directly with you? He’s an idiot. 

“You two look great together,” Yeosang blurts out awkwardly. 

“Thanks,” Seonghwa chuckles, suddenly overwhelmed with exhaustion. He should go home too. 

It finally happens one Friday when you’re on the subway. Your stomach is already roiling with anxiety as you approach the stop that will leave you two blocks away from your workplace. You used to love your job, even with the slightly long commute and the lack of respect to your actual working hours. But now the mere thought of setting foot on your office makes the back of your head hurt and your tongue dry, it’s torture. And you know today will be worse because it’s finally happening: Eunhee is going to reveal who is the foul person who ruined her relationship with the love of her life. 

You should have blocked everything about her 10 part story the moment she started spewing lies (which was the very first second of part #1) but something made you addicted to knowing what else she said. The regret that you still felt about potentially hurting her, maybe. Or the fear of confirming every time that people thought you were the scum of the Earth. 

But if Eunhee actually tells everyone who you are, things are going to get real bad. Worse than they have been for the past month. People have been vile to this, so far, unreal person who made little innocent Eunhee so sad. When they can put a face to this villain, when they know their name—your name, they’re not going to stop until they see blood in the water. 

Eunhee smiles as she crosses you in the hallway, her pink mug filled with coffee to the brim, which she spills in a small puddle at your feet. The splash stains your shoes and manages to burn your toes a little. 

“My bad,” she says with a small gasp, the smirk still on her lips. 

You bite the tip of your tongue so hard it almost bleeds. You want to yell at her to stop, you wish you to have an actual fight. Not even over Seonghwa. Over how exploitative and manipulating she’s always been, how self-centered and selfish she acted through the poor excuse of a friendship you two had. You want to erase that smugness wholly, you want her to know what it feels not to get away with everything, just for once. 

But things are so fragile right now that you know the moment you confront her, your face will be all over her 20k follower page. 

You’re letting her bully you, and it’s so humiliating you step out of her way and rush to the bathroom, where you clean your stupid shoes and cry.

There is one solution to this, and you don’t need Eunhee to tell you what it is. You have to break up with Seonghwa. Seonghwa who probably has started to dislike you anyway. Thanks to your prickliness and avoidance, and the huge abyss of miscommunication you single-handedly created. 

“I think we should break up,” you break the bubble of awkward silence that surrounds you by making things worse. You’re at your apartment, sitting on opposite ends of the living room, Seonghwa with a cardiology book on his lap while you scroll through your phone, anxiety driving you to refresh Eunhee’s page every three minutes. 

You want to pause though, the moment the words leave your mouth. You break up with Seonghwa and then what? Tell Eunhee the deal is done and that she please, please, leave you alone? Let you enjoy your job again and not talk about this whole telenovela she has written by herself ever again? You know she won’t take it, it has earned her the attention she has always wanted. The attention she never stops craving. 

Seonghwa closes the book slowly, gaining time to gather his thoughts, yet the only thing that comes out of his mouth is: “What did I do wrong?”

“Nothing!” you gaps, which is a stupid thing to say. You don’t break up with someone who has done nothing wrong. “I just– I don’t think this is working.”

Seonghwa gets up from his seat and crouches in front of you. “Seriously,” he lowers his voice. “Please tell me what I did wrong.”

Your heart aches at the fact that he’s taking the whole blame, and you want to yell at him to not be an idiot and admit that you’ve been the worst partner to possibly exist. Especially this last month. 

“Was it my job? I’ll try my best, y/n. I promise I’ll try harder–”

“It’s not you,” your eyes burn with unspilled tears, “How can you even think it’s you?”

“It’s usually me,” Seonghwa says lightly, but you can tell it hurts him to admit he’s always the one to ruin his relationships. “I– I’m sorry, what can I change? I–”

“It’s me, Seonghwa, are you serious?” you don’t even know if you’re sad or angry anymore. You hate him a little bit at that moment for thinking he’s to blame. And you hate yourself too, for not telling him the truth. 

His eyes examine you for a whole minute, trying to figure you out, break you out into little pieces as if that way he could finally get into your brain. But your phone buzzes on the table and both your focus breaks, you jump to grab it, dread coming over you. 

“Tell me what it really is then,” Seonghwa says, his hand closing his hand over yours, the one that’s holding your phone shakily. 

And it is about time you break down. Because you feel so goddamn stupid. This isn’t high school anymore, yet you’re letting a mean girl step on you without telling anyone. You feel bullied and scared and alone. 

So the only thing you do as you sob is give your phone to Seonghwa, open in Eunhee’s newest video where she finally says your name and reminds everyone of where you two work. 

The worst is coming.

Seonghwa tends to feel inadequate very often. Which is very surprising for someone who appears very self-assured most of the time and whose job is to be confident in his decisions. But he doesn’t think he’s ever felt worse than at that moment, as he scrolls down the horrible comments that people are so quick and brave to make about you. The best ones, if they can even be called such, call you a homewrecker, the worst ones threaten to harm you with their own hands. He has left you to deal with this all alone. 

“I’m so sorry,” he mumbles, holding you as you still cry. “I am so, so sorry.”

In the end it is his fault, his frankly insane ex-girlfriend is making your life an actual living hell and he had no idea.

“Please quit your job,” he begs next, shaking his head. “We’ll figure something out, but please quit your job.”

The hate messages have started to pile up in your personal profiles, and people don’t take long in finding out who Seongwha is. But he’s not getting the same treatment as you are. You manipulated him, he’s not at fault here. He’s a handsome doctor who didn’t know any better. 

Seonghwa feels physically disgusted as he keeps reading everything these people have said about you. Everything Eunhee has made up. Honestly he has no idea of how you’ve managed to put up with them. And with him, because guilt is starting to eat him up, he feels responsible for putting you through this. 

“I love you,” he whispers once you’ve calmed down, his arms still wrapped around you. “I’m sorry you’ve had to go through this alone.”

You want to shrug, but it’s been enough of trying to downplay it. This has hurt you deeply, more than anything else in a very long time. But you’re grateful Seonghwa doesn’t say ‘you should have told me,’ or ‘you could have stopped this.’ 

He takes a deep breath, running his fingers through your hair. “We’ll figure this out together, y/n.”

San wants to tear Eunhee apart. And he might have, had he not known it would mortify you even more that he caused a scene, but as he enters your workplace, Seonghwa has to place a hand on his shoulder to bring him back to Earth. 

They’re picking your stuff up, you sent your resignation letter a couple days back and your boss and HR sighed collectively. Those cowards. So they said it was okay if you didn’t show up yourself to clear your desk and finally free the supply closet, but they also didn’t think you’d send your (still) boyfriend to get your stuff. It wasn’t your plan either, but Seonghwa needs to clear a lot of things up with Eunhee. 

Both guys make themselves busy with putting your things in a cardboard box, trying to rush through it until Eunhee shows up at the door, ready to feign surprise until she realizes it’s Seonghwa who’s standing in front of her. 

Suddenly she’s not so brave. 

Yena is looking above her shoulder at San and Seonghwa, and grimaces when the latter walks toward the door, but doesn’t let Eunhee slip away. This might get interesting. 

Seonghwa wants to say so many things. Things that will hurt Eunhee the way she has hurt you and your relationship. Things she will not forget in a long time and will keep her up at night, the way they keep you up with anxiety and overflowing thoughts. 

But this evilness isn’t really in him. At this point he just wants Eunhee to leave you two alone, so he turns back to the desk and finishes cleaning it up. 

Eunhee lets out a sigh and a sufficient appears on her face, she’s won. 

“You’re a liar,” Seonghwa calls before she’s able to walk away. “You are a crazy liar, and if you ever talk about y/n again, I will make sure you regret it.” He's probably digging his own grave, knowing Eunhee, but someone needs to stop her. And he doesn’t care about whatever she’ll make up about him. 

It’s San’s turn to hold Seonghwa back, they’re finished here. And she’s not worth it. 

“Crazy bitch.”  he whispers anyway, because it’s the least he can do.

+++

The hate messages have become less and less over the course of weeks. There are people who have come out in your defense, yours and Seonghwa’s friends. Other ex-boyfriend’s of Eunhee, more people she has bullied and stepped on to get her way. They have exposed her as crazy, manipulative, as the snake she truly is. But the worst one yet is Yena. Eunhee completely forgot they were two sides of the same coin, and Yena exposed every single lie she told about you and Seonghwa, not because she wanted to clear your name, but because she knew she’d get every ounce of attention Eunhee lost. 

You don’t care anymore. It’s a miracle your relationship has survived this craziness, and you don’t want to get involved with them ever again.