𝟏𝟓𝟗𝟐 | 𝐅𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐛𝐢𝐭𝐞

- ♦♦♦ -

Stepping around the bodies on the ground, he entered his home with Yunho in his arms. Seonghwa stilled in a moment of confoundment. 'What was he doing?' he asked himself thousands of times before he eventually walked past the few rooms into his sleeping room. He stared a little at the stuffed bed, the thinking creating a deep furrow between his brows. Seonghwa crouched down when he gently laid the warrior down into his bed, grimacing at all the mud he brought into the furniture. He must ignore that for now.

He could clean it up later.

Yunho didn't stir a single time when he rolled down into the bed. It seemed life had left him anyway.

Seonghwa pulled out the chair from the corner of the minimalistic room and silently sat down, face drawn in many thoughtful lines. He had been told about this practice at a time when he had been traveling the world. At some point when he had met one of his own kind, had he stayed with her for a couple of weeks before he moved on. It was a middle-aged woman - she had been odd in every possible aspect, but Seonghwa had thought she was a rather interesting character for that. The stories that she had told him were fascinating if not entrancing; she was a true storyteller - surprising Seonghwa every time she added the most unpredictable things in the most absurd situations. One story, in particular, had caught his attention while she one evening by the open bonfire had sat on the opposite side of the fire. Seonghwa had a hard time remembering all details; only still having the way her blood-red eyes had stared deep into the flames hiding in his memories. Although he didn't remember the intense story that night, he could remember how she claimed that she could see the future. The woman was mad, for after that she had told him how it was possible to turn a dying human into one of their kind. Something that Seonghwa thought sounded absurd. He killed to live, in no way could it be true he was able to turn the dead alive again.

But she was adamant about it.

Seonghwa had never experimented with her assertion before. This had to be a first.

♦

Moving the bodies inside the spacious setup within the darkest part of his home, Seonghwa huffed at the last one as he lifted it up onto the boards going through the room. He fetched the bowl standing on the floor where he had left it a moment before and found his dagger. With the sharp item, Seonghwa started cutting the body open, leading it across the stomach and instantly pushing the bowl under where the strings of blood started to drip down against the floor. He cut open the rest hanging limbs and pushed with his foot the other empty bowls under the draining body.

Seonghwa took a step back and drew his gaze around the room, feeling satisfied with the final result of today's work. He licked his lips.

The room was cursed in any possible way. New scarlet-red drops of blood were scattered across the wooden floor, adding up to the many layers of old stains there had been drying there since the building had been built. At the time he had shown his drawings of the hanok , the carpenters had immediately seen the odd spacious room with no opening except a single door, and asked him what he was going to use all that space for. Seonghwa never gave them an answer but they became the first ones to try the new framework.

He left the heavy smells of the morgue, making sure to close the door after him. A few fat drops of the liquid rolled down his fingers, and not long after his tongue lapped over them, removing all signs of bloody murder again.

Seonghwa acted on instincts.

His legs strode to his room, feeling how nerves fickled under his skin from all the blood that had clouded his mind. Nothing had changed in the time he had been busy. Yunho still lay unmoving where he had left him a few hours ago, and Seonghwa was not sure of what to do. Considering that he had only the faint memory of the odd woman's words, it was understandable that Seonghwa found himself a seat in the chair in the corner of the room to ponder what he might have forgotten. Yunho was not exactly dead, but his breathing weakened with every moment passing.

Seonghwa was staring at him. A feeling of tensity was straining his insides in a stressful way that he could not think of had tried before. The feeling made him find an empty bowl before the knife lay in his hand again. He sat back in the chair and positioned the item in his lap, pulling up his sleeves. The blade felt cold as it slid across his skin, cutting open his entire arm that Seonghwa rather fleetly decided he wanted to drain from blood.

For Yunho to drink.

An unhealthy amount of liquid trickled out, mostly not dripping into the bowl, but Seonghwa did not mind. His clothes were dirtied anyway.

♦

It took time to fill the bowl to the brim - but when he finished, his arm had already healed on its own, leaving him with dizziness taking over his every sense. Seonghwa fidgeted with the sloshing item in his hands when he went to sit down at the edge of his bed.

Yunho seemed so frail when the urge in his fingers made Seonghwa brush the strands of hair away from his face. He examined the man's features, letting one of his hands slide down and cup the cold blood-sprayed cheek as he slowly took in how he had lost the prior glow to his skin. Seonghwa's eyes drifted from his closed eyes and down over the length of his nose, ending by the bow of his upper lip.

His fingers around Yunho's face pressed harshly down in an attempt to wake him up from his sleep, but nothing stirred as he continued digging his nails into the scratched skin. The lack of response made a rumble erupt from Seonghwa's chest and his movements became rougher as he forced a pair of his fingers into Yunho's mouth and opened his jaws wide before grabbing the full bowl with the other and starting pouring down. Seonghwa's brows furrowed in the few passing seconds where he only watched the liquid disappearing down his throat before he instantly moved his hand down and started massaging around the gorge and further down.

He did not stop, even if Yunho was choking at the foul madness running down into his airways and having him wheeze in panic. Yunho's eyes were raw with fear as he stared up at Seonghwa looking down at him like a menace, expressing nothing else but pure terror. Seonghwa pressed all his weight down onto the trashing man underneath him, holding down his wild kicking limbs as if Yunho's reason was just a mere call of overreaction. Blood was everywhere when he returned to pressing his fingers into his mouth, gagging him, and making sure the right masses came down where it was supposed to.

Honestly, Seonghwa did not know what he was doing.

Soon, Yunho had given up fighting back, Seonghwa figured from how Yunho's grip around his shoulder gradually loosened until his arms fell down to his sides. His eyes had lost focus, a lifeless touch to them coated their colour in greyscale instead of their prior brave brown.

A faint voice resonated in his head, pounding into him harder and harder every time his gaze drew over Yunho's skin.

Seal it with a vampire's kiss, she had told him, if you want to sire them, you must infect them with venom, or else, you will just have killed them.

♦

Seonghwa felt his protruding fangs dig into the inside of his mouth at just the thought of using them. The elder woman had not meant the vampire's kiss to be the literal intimate form of lips meeting lips, of course not, she had meant the violent version of him tearing his prey's skin apart and devouring masses of blood like the bloodthirsty monster he was.

Beautiful as it ever could be.

He leaned down after freeing Yunho's neck from his torn clothes and let his lips hover above the yet warm skin, feeling how the heat touched his face with tingles and so many urges. He sank his fangs down into the hide and then bit as hard as he could, grounding his teeth into the nerves and blood vessels. He tore a line through the flesh as he kissed the skin with such cruelness that would paint Yunho with bane. It was one of his own wishes, and Yunho should feel lucky that Seonghwa even bothered himself to even try.

He finished up quickly, making sure to take a step away from the bed and consider his piece of art before he probably would have to burn the corpse. Seonghwa would have liked to know more about this Jeong Yunho as he had seemed rather interesting as a person. Where had he come from and what social class? Had he any lovely family and who else would grieve the loss of him?

Now, Seonghwa would just like to tidy himself a bit and get rid of all the sticky substance clinging to his hands and hair, stains across his cheeks too, and down his throat. A clean set of clothes seemed very appealing and nice as well.

♦

Something felt off while cleaning the poor wooden planks of the hanok's floor from any blood stains that he had dirtied it with the other night. The early sun was already rising on the horizon, chasing the world of shadows away and shining brightness down on Earth. Seonghwa halted the motion with the cloth when he heard the same odd sound there had rung through the entire home some minutes before. It almost seemed like he was not alone in here. He quickly decided to go check on the noises, but before he even got to his legs, his ears caught the subtle scratch of nails against the wall on the other side at the entrance of the hanok he was crouched in. Seonghwa slowly glanced to the side without moving too quickly and possibly scaring the sound-maker away. A few long fingers peaked from the doorway, Seonghwa noticed how fresh blood dripped from one of them, and he instantly was alarmed. His thought spiraled around if any of his own kind had found him, tracked by the smell of rotting meat laying scattered around his home. But that should be impossible because Seonghwa was very neat when it came to hiding himself well.

The hand crept closer, bending around the corner now until the elbow showed. Seonghwa furrowed his brows, not knowing what kind of act of human flesh he was witnessing.

Seonghwa was then staring into two red orbs. Oh.

∞