𝟏𝟓𝟗𝟐 | 𝐅𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐛𝐢𝐭𝐞

- ♦♦♦ -

Seonghwa's fingers clutched the fabric of his hanbok, the soft material of woven hemp sliding against his tense digits as the stench of strong solitude reeked from the village expanding behind the large trees stretching at the foot of the mountain. Ever since last decade, tension had been growing between the citizens when the threats of the Japanese invading the peninsula had spread through the country like pest. Disputes between the kingdom and the adversary had been there for a longer while than that, but those last years had been especially hard on the villagers nearby, Seonghwa knew of that. The Yangbans, bloodlines of the noble families rooting back to the centuries when Great Joseon's own father Yi Seong-gye still was alive and breathing, had ordered all men of the fight-able ages into war services, with no excuses at all. If not, they had served their families with poverty, as if the blood of their lives weren't enough.

Seonghwa dragged his foot up on the rock he sat on and dipped his little finger into the bowl he had placed beside him. The liquid had cooled down, its ickiness clinging to his finger as he licked the digit clean, eyes lost in the view of the alarmed village in the distance. The rushing volumes of water roared in his ears from kilometers away. They were coming.

There was a bitter-sweet taste lingering in his mouth caused by his circulating thoughts of how something so horrible could awake such a strong light in his eyes. But it was senses far out of his reach that was not his responsibility to control. Something he had learned to live with, side by side, every counting day.

Eventually, Seonghwa grabbed the entire bowl with both his hands and gulped the rest down, hungrily, as he never could be sated enough. He would have work to do in the next many days, displeasing as it sounded, Seonghwa could not be more thrilled to do what he was best at.

Within the next second, he left the rock and ascended the steep slope up to the elegant construction heaving above the ground. He called it 'a moment to dwell'. By now, it had been many years since he had had scrolls of paper across his work table as he had constructed it all by himself before hiring the best carpenters in the land to raise it above the ground. It was a mess cleaning up afterward. The building was carved out of strong materials with beautiful twisting patterns, inspired by the other world. The construction could be seen from far away, and Seonghwa knew it still was a talk among the villagers of the spouseless healer in the mountain.

Seonghwa had lived there for nearly fifteen decades now. He would be alone until the very end of humanity, possibly even beyond that era.

♦

His hand trailed along the many fabrics filling the chest to the brim, although he searched a very specific clothing of the deep blue colours with the white sleeves. Then he tied his hair on the back of his head, putting away any black strands in his eyes as he changed into the other ropes. Under his hanbok, he strapped his ingeom sword, easy to be pulled with the special design the clothing gave him accessibility to it, and yet, invisible for the outer eye to detect.

The weather was gloomy, nearly in the same way he perceived his surroundings as he wandered down the streets of the village. The frost-biting temperature had left those lands of the country a few nights ago now, a sign which always joyed the villagers more than what was worth the exertion. Seonghwa was one to miss the hours spent in the cold darkness, instead. It was a long time since he had met one like himself.

Yangbans lived in the big buildings of the center of the village, out from there the jungins' homes stretched around, homes of the middle classed people. The commoners didn't own their own hanoks - they lived off working for the yangbans and some of the most wealthy jungins, being extremely underpaid compared to how much wear and tear they made out of their bodies, and that was just how it was - no discussion. Social classes, Seonghwa thought. Humans were stupid.

Through the years he had learned not to question the norms of society and save himself the trouble of protesting to make the council restructure the socioeconomics or anything related to how richness worked. Bloodlines were of utmost importance, hence why the rather conservative perspective of society. Yangbans were not to marry sangmins or even jungins - and it was not even of talk to include the cheonmins. Those were the unsaid rules and people followed them. At most.

♦

Seonghwa poked his teeth with his tongue when the aching grew into an uncomfortable soreness. The ingeom brushed his thigh now and then, but the weight didn't annoy him like the shrill sounds of a man forcing a woman to kneel on the ground as he crushed her hand with the heel of his shoe. Further down the street, people were yelling - screaming their lungs off as the smell of the penetrating strong tint of iron caught up with his nose.

Someone grabbed his arm as they frantically gasped for air. Seonghwa snapped his attentive eyes to the frantic ash-grey face, resembling a dead old man's tale before anything else he could think of.

"Sir, sir I swear by the gods don't go down there! They will slaughter you albeit you come with peace of a good man's serve! Seonghwa-ssi, please do yourself a favor and stay away from the battles even if you so desire to help the dying."

Seonghwa could feel the trembling hands all the way down into the forces rooting him into the ground. His deep eyes could do nothing but show him pity when he moved a hand around the old man's and gave it a squeeze.

"Ajusshi, I understand your concerns about my safety, but you must understand that I am well aware of the risks that I willingly take. They need me, our people need me there. Every drop of blood counts importance when it is about life or death - I cannot let them die on their own," Seonghwa told the man ever so calming with his deep melodic timbre of a voice. For a moment, the old man had nothing to say, his tearful eyes becoming dull as he felt a pang in his chest.

Slightly moving his chapped lips, the silent wind swallowed his letters out of his mouth long before they even formed into breathy words. Still, Seonghwa heard them. "The village can not be if you are not here."

His eyes flicked down to his feet after letting go of the old man again, his eyebrows furrowed the slightest as he pursed his lips for only a split second. Something pushy was felt under his ribs, and the unordinary heart's desperate beating slowly fell out of its rhythm, growing weak. Seonghwa looked up again to see the man clenching his shaking hands around his grimy wooden cane.

He gave him a soft smile before leaving the terrified man one last time, "I wish you a peaceful end."

♦

He followed the shadows out of the village and with that avoided encountering more people. Seonghwa sneered at his thoughts, the many culminating senses knotting his mind with so many notices that it made him nearly go mad. From everywhere around him blood-filled hearts could be heard, oozing out into thick, warm vessels before drawing back again. A pulse struck him in the back of his mind, seeming to be so much further away when the sounding piercing metal was swung through the air. Seonghwa swiftly pulled his ingeom just before the fiend would have cut his stomach open. He hissed at him and with his strength pushed the weapon out of his way, causing the warrior to stumble a few steps back in fear of what he was staring up at. He didn't give him enough time to recover the truth when Seonghwa stabbed his sword through the warrior's heart and ended his life with his last brave encounter with someone more superior than mortality.

Huffing as he pushed his ingeom back into the sheath under his clothes, he wiped a stench of blood from his cheek and sucked it off his thumb again, continuing to pull his clothes in place. Seonghwa then eyed the lifeless man on the ground, considering what he would do with the limp masses of oozing blood. In the end, he decided to take him with him down to the battleground.

"Great.. first catch," he mumbled to himself when he reached down to grab the warrior's hand to drag him across the ground.

Bad day for humanity he thought as he left the village behind him faster than anyone would be able to see him.

♦

Weapons clashed through the salty air as he neared the waters and as soon as he let go of the dead warrior again, screams attacked from all around him. He had no honest chance to determine if they were screams of pain or fear. Seonghwa looked down at the man laying in the grass, silently kicking him closer to the gathering of rocks. An ill feeling churned inside of him as he tried to justify his doings. He did it out of self-defense, he could not have stopped the attack from coming. His eyes followed the blue marks on the side of the head turned up and all the way down to the gushing wound in the chest, precious blood trickling down onto the ground. Seonghwa could at least have stitched him up with the needle and thread he carried in his satchel around his shoulder.

♦

The world smelled of one of his bloodthirsty nightmares - a scene of horror and lack of control, of fear and the smoldering darkness in his soul, but also of cadavers and the aftertaste of guilt.

Seonghwa saw how the soldiers' tents were set on fire as the entire settled camp was torn apart by rivals coming from ships on the sea. The men were forced out into battles with the Japanese warriors, desperately fighting for their lives even if the Joseon force was clearly outnumbered compared with the opponent. Seonghwa licked his teeth as he searched the fallen ones left alone in the swaying tall grasses. Sharply, he decided it was better to start from left where the warriors had slowly moved away from as they fought their way closer to the village's walls to conquer. He could not care less.

His long legs carried him down to the gathering of trees as he continually scented the air. It was not long after he passed a forlorn dead body. Seonghwa inspected the corpse carefully, noticing the brutal way the head nearly was pulled from the rest of the body bent in all sorts of uncomfortable angles. At the smallest contractions coming from within, it seemed like the veins were still pumping blood around as if his internal organs still fought against the sentence of death. It smelled awfully sweet.

Seonghwa crouched down to the ground smoothly, his fingers scraping against the bare soil as he crawled forward on his knees as an animal would do. Long fangs poked his lips from inside his mouth as he circled the source of blood with low rumbles coming deep down from his chest. He dropped his head, feeling how the stench of fresh blood filled all his senses.. blood everywhere.. blood, blood, warmth.. sweet, instincts pushed every conscience away and Seonghwa's eyes turned feral.

Glancing up, his sharp eyes glided across the lands around him before he madly grabbed the dead man's throat and tore the flesh further apart, watching how the tendons were stretched and veins popped with splatters of blood everywhere, sticking to his face and strands of hair there had become loose from the band he had tied it with. The pain increased through his entire body, having started from the aching roots of his fangs and followed nerves into contracting muscles that he was not able to control anymore. Seonghwa dug his face down into the open throat and met the lukewarm liquid with his slick tongue. The act made his fingers clench around the flesh, making more masses of blood flood out. It was not enough to satisfy. Crawling on top of the dead body, Seonghwa sunk his fangs down into the smooth fibers of meat before letting out a muffled growl and pressing the last remains of life out of the veins. His shoulders tensed until his entire body shook from the instant stimulation of blood on tongue, teeth grounded so deep into the wrecked throat that his cravings could have stopped at that moment.

But they did not.

Suddenly his eyes snapped open and he entirely let go of the corpse as he raised himself to sit back up. Seonghwa hurriedly licked his lips, causing only amounts of spit to blend with the red colour smeared around his mouth and cheeks. He wiped his face in the white sleeve of his hanbok before lifting to his feet again, drawing his ingeom and cutting the rest of the neck off the corpse.

Everyone would die today.

∞