Aaaaa, Sanie's here!!

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𝟏𝟔𝟑𝟕 | 𝐒𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐝 𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐤

- ♦♦♦ -

Seonghwa's hand played with the little pearls in the wooden bowl as he was staring at the pile of papers at the other end of the room. His eyes followed the swirls of ink, mindlessly tracing the letters with great boredom.

Yunho was not to be seen anywhere, but Seonghwa knew that he was to be found at least somewhere in the hanok as he was not allowed to leave the building. If it so happened that he had left, he was a dead man. He had told him.

Seonghwa didn't give it much of a thought, believing his fledgling had enough sense to not disobey an order this severe. But Seonghwa also knew that Yunho was staying away from him for a reason - a reason that he could not care less about than what he already did. Yunho rarely sought him out anyway.

Letting the little pearls roll out of his palms, Seonghwa placed the bowl down onto the soban with a soft thump. His eyes followed the moving yellow dots trying to escape their borders when another faint thump resonated through the hanok. Slowly, Seonghwa's sight raised from the bowl, warily. Another row of thumps followed.

Seonghwa furrowed his brows as he quietly got up from the ground, moving toward the reverberate of unknown noises. A body startled as soon as his silence reached the trembling hatch. Yunho nearly fled the place he had been standing, eyes widening with fright as he sighted Seonghwa just behind him.

"I-I swear, Seonghwa-ssi, I am not to blame!" The younger vampire waved his large hands in front of himself to prove his innocence with the cleanness of his hands. Seonghwa pursed his lips, but his answer was interrupted by another sharp baste from the other side of the hatch.

Sternly, Seonghwa drilled his eyes into Yunho, scaring him off, "Get away from here," he snarled.

He left Yunho no room to make his choice when he immediately flung himself against the hatch and threw it open. The cool air rose from the cellar, spreading its abhorrent smell among the soft one in the hanok. Seonghwa realised he was staring into pit darkness when his eyesight had to adjust to the absent touch of light. But he sensed nothing.

Nothing alive moved down there.

Seonghwa leaned back on his heels, brows creasing as he turned his head at Yunho another time. The other only looked as if he had seen a haunting spirit.

Clawing hands scrambled to get ahold of the surface to lift the rest of the mass up from the depths, plunging into the fabric of Seonghwa's hanbok as the body wormed itself up from the edge. It happened in a matter of no time - the creature's lips parted, throwing Seonghwa off by the horrible sight of madness splitting a face in two.

A beat later he was forced backward, limbs scrambling across the floor until his back hit the outer corner of two walls, cracking his spine. Seonghwa groaned in pain, his fangs growing out of triggered instincts that had him see red.

His mind sailed, eyes snapping at the attack forming in front of him before his chin crashed against the floor, followed by the rest of his stinging body. Seonghwa had enough.

He flung himself around with the help of his arms, Seonghwa awaited the teeth to charge at him again, but as his eyes darted around Yunho's deep growl was torn apart when the creature averted his strike and threw him across the room with no struggle whatsoever. His body crashed against a shelf stocked with a few of Seonghwa's sewing items, knocking everything down to the floor. Quicker than Yunho could possibly react, the hissing creature threw itself at Yunho, sinking its fangs deep into Yunho's neck. He kicked around all that he could muster while howling a wrenched pitch, anger tearing through his throat when the creature didn't let go no matter how powerfully he attempted to throw it off.

At that, Seonghwa pulled himself together. His body crawled over the wooden splinters as his hands quickly gathered the needles spread across the floor before he raised from it and darted ahead at an inhumane speed. Nimble fingers flexed around the sharp items before he without further notice punched the needles deep into the creature's temples.

Seonghwa's hands slid down to its wrists, pulling them away from Yunho's body as it went arrant limp in his arms from the sudden sharp pressure on its nerves. There was no pulse to seek out.

Looking up, Yunho was staring at him and the limp body with a horrified look in his red glowing eyes, "What have you done to him?"

The wording had the ancient vampire curl his mouth into a growl as he took the body with him to another room, "I made him fall asleep, now do not give me that tone when I simply saved you from losing your head."

Seonghwa did not wait for an answer, pushing the body up against a thick wooden pole in the middle of another spare room. "Yunho!" he called, "Find something strong to bind him with. I do not care what it is, it just has to be strong enough to keep his hands bound."

In the time he waited for the other to come back, Seonghwa carefully inspected the body in front of him. His head hung heavily down to his chest, as Seonghwa was only steadying his shoulders against the pole. Yunho's blood still dripped from his lips, but his appearance seemed to have changed within the last few days. His skin was more soft, pale, but healed from any scars or cuts he might have had. But dried liquids still clung to his face and torn clothes - something that smelled awfully much of poison that not even the scent of Yunho's fresh blood was able to cover. Seonghwa's eyes followed the line from the needles buried in the man's temple to his bare neck, seeing how the wound of his own venomous bite had disappeared, much like Yunho's.

He had been turned. Seonghwa had created another like himself.

But the reason.. the reason he still did not know...

A pair of footsteps stopped behind him and Seonghwa turned his head to look at Yunho. The wound on his neck had already started healing. Without saying anything, Seonghwa grabbed the thick ropes Yunho had found and started stretching the man's arms around the pole, quickly tying them together on the other side of it. When he let go, the body's weight still hung upright because of how tightly it had been tied around the wooden pole.

Yunho was staring at it with an obscure look in his eyes, his expression concerned. But Seonghwa ignored every bit of it, reaching his hands up and pressing the needles further into his skin.

Blood trickled down his hands.

♦

A subtle clattering sound echoed throughout the hanok, stirring Seonghwa in his slumber. For a moment his eyes adjusted to the darkness of his room before he slowly pulled himself to sit.

Another clanking sound resonated within the walls. Then a couple more.

Seonghwa tensed, finding the situation familiar with what had happened three days ago when the new body had decided to awaken from the dead. Nevertheless, he knew the cause of the sounds could not be anything particularly peaceful, so he got up to hunt the sound down.

Stuffing his feet down into his footwear he crept along the walls, listening to the low grumbles growing louder the closer he got to the spare room he had put the body. A step from entering the room, Seonghwa's eyesight fleetly caught a thin moving item across the floor, causing the clanking sound he had been hearing all this time. He raked his eyes over the floor, seeing how the little silver items puddled around a pair of shoes.

The growling intensified the higher Seonghwa lifted his gaze, soon rolling across a tongue with a wet snarl as he crossed the red glowing eyes. The needles had been removed and the creature was now greatly fighting against the ropes holding its hands tied around the pole. Which, after all, had to be the foremost crucial detail of it all. Having a beast loose on free feet would not please Seonghwa in their current situation.

It would make them take the entire village down.

"It is to no use," Seonghwa voiced as he calmly searched for the dagger he always carried on himself. The blade did not reflect any light when he firmly let it slide across his wrist. Seonghwa turned to the man who immediately was picking up the smell of blood. His dangling feet scrambled around the floor and the pole, desperately trying anything to get loose from the strains holding him back. Seonghwa heaved his arm to the other letting him smell the running blood a little more before he let him feed. All the time he did not move his dagger away from the newly turned vampire's throat.

Another presence had made it to the room as well, quietly observing the scene before him. But Seonghwa could still very much feel the brimming hunger in his back every time the new one swallowed his blood.

After a while, Seonghwa added to the pressure from his dagger before tearing his fangs out of his wrist. As he stepped back, Seonghwa suddenly bumped into a sturdy chest, his dagger flying around and pressing to Yunho's throat in self-defense as his entire body was flaring with averse. But everything Yunho could focus on was the gory wound on his wrist.

Seonghwa pulled away from him, turning around to look at the monster in front of them licking his lips as his eyes did not waver from his wound, either. As he took a step forward something seemed to snap within him and suddenly his eyes dilated with craze. Seonghwa felt the sudden need to startle when teeth were bared through hisses before he even reached to lay his hand around his head as he first had intended to do. The newly turned kicked around in a frenzy of rage as blood vessels darkened with Seonghwa's blood in his system. There was no pause in his movements; his head was thrown back and violently knocked against the pole while blends of blood and saliva hurled around his body in all directions every time he tossed with his head. He did not stop again.

Seonghwa frowned as he turned to Yunho, "Do not lay a finger on him."

Yunho swallowed the lump in his throat as he nodded.

♦

Things did not go as smoothly as Seonghwa originally had initiated which caused him to nearly have reached a point where cutting the body in pieces before burying everything deep in the ground seemed to be the mere logical solution he had left to choose of. For this one had failed him greatly. It might have been the poison being in his system while he died there had reacted with his venom, causing such unstoppable savagery to continue even after being fed this many times with all types of blood.

Or perhaps, Yunho had just been one unlikely happening.

However, Seonghwa was close to putting the experiment to rest instead of spending his days this rough by spilling costly drops of blood on foolish squanders like whatever this was.

He would have to ignore Yunho's dispirited eyes.

Seonghwa would not care anyway.

A loud mewling sound resonated through the walls and Seonghwa found himself sighing, knowing very well his new little monster was in a crave for more food - something he temptedly thought to omit until he had made up his mind of what to actually do with this feral creature.

But, he forced himself to pace toward the spare room, eyes rigid all along.

Strong features acted up, and a vile hiss met him long before he even entered the room, only growing more fierce as he came closer to the straining body strapped to the pole. Seonghwa tilted his head, his grand way of moving slowed for every step he took, shifting into coursing himself around the snarling body. It was only growing worse.

Seonghwa had first believed that the reason for the newly turned's loss of control was caused by his insane hunger for blood, which had made him dutifully tend to the creature every time he called in misery for weeks now. Feeding him his blood as loyal as he could ever be. But the change in his feral behaviour did not seem to change any bit, and Seonghwa was losing his patience. He did not wish to wait any longer - not when he did not see any advance in wasting his time and effort on something as insignificant as another fragile life.

He should have let it be the moment he had found the boy poisoned. The locals would not have suspected other forces to have been the murderer when the black liquid had been oozing out of his airways. And yet, Seonghwa was standing here, looking right at the one who had destroyed their peace. Seonghwa hadn't known how resentful he truly had been until now when the body he had tended to the past weeks was giving him another dirty look.

A deep rumble vibrated in his throat. "Are you willing to listen to me this time?" Seonghwa spat, his eyes glaring at the monster beginning to throw another fit. If it continued like this, he would tear his arms off sooner or later.

He guessed it was a no.

Seonghwa ground his teeth, fighting his urges to tear the head off the man already. Pressing a hand down on his instincts he kept his murderous images for himself a tad bit longer as he rounded the body hanging on the pole like was he mere bait. Luring him closer the more seconds passed. Seonghwa's eyes burned red already and he hungrily trailed them up the exposed chest of the stranger. He could reclaim what was his - what coursed through this untamed body for no good. Draining the body of blood would only make the cutting easier afterward. And Seonghwa had no intention of spending any more of his energy on this monster he had created. 

He wanted it gone from his sight. Now.

Carefully, he measured the veins pressing against the skin, now free from any savourless poison.

In a fury, Seonghwa darted forward, his body clung up against the man's while he violently jerked the hissing teeth to the side before his deep growls from his chest were forced out through his scratchy throat. The man's reaction came more fragmented than not; his knees felt like buckling underneath him while loud hisses still tried to drown out Seonghwa entirely.

Seonghwa's growls grew a notch louder and he pressed them into the bared skin of the bound man. His feet shifted restlessly, every part of his body tensing as his neck hair stiffened out of so much pent-up anger. Seonghwa's nose pressed to the man's neck, his fangs pricking against the skin as he moved his hands up to spread his shoulder and neck further apart.

He did not realise the other had long stopped struggling against him before a muffled whimper went right into his sensitive ear. Seonghwa halted, his grip on the man loosening as he turned his head ever so charily, drawing his eyes across the man whose eyes were squeezed tightly close.

Seonghwa let go of him, taking a step backward without sinking his arms, yet. The man was trembling like leaves in the wind, his limbs twitching while he moved his head close to his body again. Seonghwa squinted his own eyes when brown, terrified eyes glanced up at him through a mess of sticky, untidied hair. Then he gagged just before clumps of red liquid fell out of his mouth and hit the floor with a wet splash. The blood did not stop flowing.

The ancient vampire scrunched his nose at the sight as he watched how tears gathered in the man's eyes, making him resemble nothing but a hurt little boy.

He took a step closer. Then one more. Seonghwa bent his knees as he tilted his head the slightest at the boy without trusting the change of comportment any bit. Seonghwa's words rolled smoothly off his tongue as he spoke, "And what may the name of such an intractable young soul be?"

The boy's mouth twitched when the fear spoke louder than any might there still was to be seen in his expression, "My name's Choi San, sir.." he whispered hoarsely with the remnants of voice he still had left.

∞