TW: Attempted suicide two times back to back between the arrows

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Hongjoong didn't know where his feet carried him. He escaped from the crowded streets of Oxford that hammered down on him with their overwhelming mixture of scents and noises that seemed to drill into his brain from all directions. Ran out of the city and across the surrounding fields. He didn't know which direction he was going in, only remembered the landscape flying past in a dark blur.

A lone merchant travelled through the dark. He offered Hongjoong to hop on since he looked miserable and lonely. Hongjoong listened to the clappering of hooves and rattling of wheels as the stranger brought the shivering and miserable rat of a man along his route. When the sun rose, its light seemed blinding and sweltering on Hongjoong's skin despite the hazy fog. Almost burning on his skin. He ditched the cart and ran again, into the forest, somewhere he found shade.

He was there for a while. Hugging himself and trying to come to his senses. He wasn't hungry. Wasn't cold. He should run a fever for how long he spent in his wet clothes, but he was healthy and seemed to be overflowing with energy.

Hongjoong didn't understand. What was happening to him? Nothing made sense all of a sudden, but he didn't know where he was anymore. He couldn't go back. Something was wrong. Something happened with that stranger, but he didn't realise what.

Would people search for him? He needed to return to his job, but he didn't know how to take care of this situation.

When he arrived in the next town, he found his answer. It sprang at him from the newspaper he purchased from a girl on the street before he crouched with it in an alley to flick through the pages, feverish to cling to a shred of reality. The world felt tilted under his feet and he experienced it how he had never seen it before. A permanent sweet scent was stuck in his nose, his vision was sharper than the day he had been born and he hadn't eaten in days, but none of the inns smelled appealing to him.

Once he saw it printed black on white, everything made sense and slipped out of his control even more.

Hongjoong was dead.

It had already been a week he spent in his trace, running through the forests at night and hiding during the day. They wrote he was initially assumed missing, but the amount of blood at the scene of murder ruled out his survival. Nobody had stepped forward with any news, not even that angelic man who found him. So they ruled out his survival.

Somehow, Hongjoong could feel it. That he wasn't the same anymore. That he should be dead.

But then how was he cowering against a rough building with wild hair and dirt under his fingernails? He felt alive, perhaps even more alive than he had been in a long time.

Nothing made sense anymore.

But his instinct told him to flee. To get away from people. He felt their stares on him. They could tell he was no longer the same after he encountered death. They would know, he was sure of it. They knew he wasn't like them.

So he took a ferry. Crossed the water and arrived north, somewhere on the quaint coast of Scotland. He felt safe in their little communities, in their simple, rural lifestyle, away from the bustle of any larger towns. There, he kept running, ignored Edinburgh where the scholars and clerics might have been able to tell him what was wrong with him. Perhaps only that blond man would know.

He ran some more. Took a cart, travelled by foot until he didn't know anymore where he was, only remembered the haze of turning into something different. Something inhuman.

He had no pulse anymore. He was aware, he could walk and talk, knew others saw him, for they threw him doubtful glances near a pub in the evening, but he wasn't alive. Did he even exist? No. When he passed a mirror, no reflection blinked back at him.

But neither was he a ghost. He could bump into people, could painfully scrape himself on rock.

What was he?

He tried to find answers. Tried to ask people for help in a nearby village. He was sick, that much he knew. A letter to Oxford might find that mysterious man who saved him. Or maybe someone could bring him a doctor.

But when he set foot near their cattle and their children, the people around him crowded into defensive bundles. They glared at him as Hongjoong weakly slinked around their buildings, trying to find someone who would talk to him.

"Please," he asked them and his voice sounded so hoarse in his throat that he barely recognised it as his own.

But they shuffled away from him. Scrutinised him in the dim candlelight and realised what was so frightening about his appearance.

"V-Vampire!" A woman gasped and the men immediately crowded before the children and elders. Lifted their fists since they lacked other weapons, but Hongjoong hastily stumbled backwards. He didn't want to fight. He only needed a drink since his throat was so scratchy after this long. Some help.

"No, I'm human-" He began, but they didn't listen to him. They rushed to pick up stones from the ground, throwing them at him to chase him away like a wild animal. Hongjoong felt them scrape his skin, felt the pain, but he couldn't convey to them what had happened to him.

They wouldn't have listened anyway.

"Look at those teeth! Kill him! A wooden stake, quickly!"

As soon as one of them ran off to get a weapon, Hongjoong escaped. Back into the shadows and the woods, away from all people. He ran for the scent of the sea, crying to himself since he was so crudely shunned, but he also understood why they didn't trust him.

A vampire? Impossible.

After fleeing to the edge of the coast, Hongjoong found no other answers. He was alone now. Dead. He couldn't go back, couldn't be among humans since they stared at him. Knew he was no longer one of them, whatever he truly was.

There was only him and the sky. Towering cliffs over a stormy grey ocean. The wind in his hair and rippling through the long grass. The light drizzle refreshed Hongjoong's face as he looked out over the horizon, but he had nowhere else to go.

He left all his belongings back in Oxford. Likely taken into custody by the police by now since he was presumed deceased. He had no identity, only the tattered clothes on his body.

And that scratch in his throat that wouldn't let up after he sipped from a puddle.

Hongjoong didn't know anymore who he was. He saw no way out but forward. Couldn't help but think that none of this would have happened if he had died properly. He was in a limbo between life and death, defying every law of physics.

-> It had to end.

So he gathered his breath and glimpsed over the vast ocean one last time.

Then he took the step, and he fell.

The rush of wind in his hair was euphoric. The moment of free fall freedom like no other.

But it ended, abruptly and definitely. A sharp pain met Hongjoong's leg as it shattered against the jagged cliffs and the rest of his weight followed. He should have felt bones break and skin rupture, should have wailed in agony until life left his body.

However, none of that happened.

Hongjoong hung between the rocks, contorted beyond human capabilities and with a deep gash on his head.

But little blood poured from his wounds. The pain let up as quickly as it had come as his flesh mended itself back together. A moment later, he could sit up, feeling sore but by far not dead. He pressed his fingers into the spots that should have been bruised and broken, but his skin was soft. Unmarred.

It couldn't be.

None of this made sense. He felt trapped in a dream, some purgatory of endless shadows and fear. What had he done to deserve such a fate? Which god did he anger?

Hongjoong skidded down the rocky cliffs and onto the thin stretch of beach before the roaring ocean. The skies were stormy and grey, piling clouds like the fists of giants striking from above. Lightning flashed across their perimeters, illuminating the evening in a haunting shine.

Hongjoong allowed the water to lap at his feet. It soaked his worn shoes, filled the spaces between his toes. It should have been frigid at this time of the year, but he couldn't feel anything.

Not allowing his thoughts to drift, to doubt, Hongjoong bravely stepped forward. His heart no longer fluttered with fear as he looked death right into its ashen face. When the water crashed down on him, devouring him with its endless hunger, he allowed it to happen.

He spent long minutes underwater. Gasping for breath he didn't need. Waiting for his heart that didn't beat to panic. He was thrown around like a rag doll as the sea raged around him, angry at how it couldn't reap his soul to join its endless collection. When it decided he wasn't worthy of its attention anymore, it spat him back out. Left him on a beach of black sand near the cliffs.

-> Hongjoong lay there, soaked and lonely but more alive than ever before. He gagged the water from his lungs, but he wasn't choking on it. Didn't feel its salty burn.

As he stared out over the stormy sea, he had to admit it to himself. That word he heard whispered from the townspeople. The frightening creatures of fairytales. Beings of the night, more dead than alive and driven by an endless hunger.

Vampire.

Hongjoong wasn't sure how vampires functioned. He heard of them before. Knew they prowled for lone wanderers at night and ripped their throats out. They drank blood. He knew that much. Not that he would ever do the same. He would rather starve to death.

But did that mean that angelic person turned him into this? Into a vampire? Both saved and cursed him?

Hongjoong didn't ask for that. He didn't want to live a cursed life.

When he stood, wet sand clung to his clothes and hands. He brushed off the prickly little pieces and breathed the ocean air. It was thick in his nose, the stench of decay and of salt and fish. He could smell something rotting nearby on the beach and he could smell the seagulls circling overhead on the chase for a meal.

The scratch in his throat was still there. Subtle, barely bothering him, but present.

Would it get stronger? Would he kill for a meal? Would he doom people to the same fate?

No. He couldn't. There had to be a way.

Hongjoong retreated from the beach to find one. Spent days searching and trying since death seemed like the appropriate end. But no matter how Hongjoong starved himself, no matter how often he put a blade to his flesh, he wouldn't die. He feared tasking another with his demise, but he feared hurting someone else even more.

He lived in the forest, going insane from his solitude and his fear. Ran whenever humans were near. He turned into something akin to an animal more than a person, relying on his instincts and avoiding anything else.

But he couldn't die.

After a few more weeks, he finally realised.

That person who turned him was also a vampire. Old and sane enough to know what he had been doing when he turned Hongjoong. He did this to him. He cursed him. They met in Oxford, so he was likely still there and hadn't departed anywhere. He might be able to help Hongjoong.

If there was a way to return to normal, that person would know. His cherubic face was burnt behind Hongjoong's eyes as if they were family, even if he only saw his features through a haze of rage for what he had done to him.

Hongjoong had to find him. Had to beg him to take away the curse or to kill him before Hongjoong could hurt someone.

But he would need help for that. Someone to watch over him and to guide him when he lost his mind. Someone who would understand.

He needed to find a second vampire.