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Namjoon was hungry. He’d been hungry for days. Jimin was teasing him about it, but indulging him with frequent trips to the market, and stopping for snacks to and from the market, and ordering late night takeout after dinner. Namjoon noticed, but didn’t say anything about the fact that Jimin was matching him bite for bite and fighting over the last chicken leg.
For a while he’d been worried about where all the food was going, but his pants weren’t getting any tighter. Jimin checked his reflection each morning, rubbing and patting his belly fondly. It was unreasonable to think that either of them had increased the number of calories they were burning to suddenly need to add extra meals, but they couldn’t stop snacking.
Jimin had called him just after ten in the morning asking if Namjoon wanted to get naengmyeon. At ten in the morning. Namjoon thought about mocking him, but his stomach betrayed him with a rumble and they met out front of Namjoon’s office and walked to the closest cafe to campus and had a very large meal, and in two hours repeated it at lunch.
After a week, Namjoon started researching digestive diseases. He joked that they had contracted tapeworms. Jimin laughed but then they both stopped and stared at each other in mute horror. They got tested and were relieved to find themselves in perfect health, except for an insatiable hunger.
They continued to drink the tea, foul though it tasted, and continued to explore and learn all the things the world had to offer. The tea kept them healthy, year after year. The tea preserved their long, extraordinary lives, and they toasted each other every morning. They had rung in their second century together. They’d visited most of the cities on their list and almost half of the wildernesses they wanted to explore, all thanks to a little scroll in a cave they’d found mostly by accident several life times ago.
It was a long time to be roommates. It was a long time to be friends. They hadn’t planned to become best friends, but so many lifetimes of shared experiences had glued them together. They had seen unexplainable things, beyond science in the murky realms of magic. A night on endless repeat, defying all laws of time and logic that only ended when they fell asleep in each other’s arms had been just the first of many odd occurrences that they never thought to link to their morning tea. More research had led them to a spirit being who mocked them only a little more than he offered explanation. Still, they both agreed that there was no better partner on the strange path they’d chosen than each other. After literally walking in each other’s skin, they couldn’t bear to go through more than a couple of weeks apart.
So they ate together, snuck out of meetings with colleagues to meet up and stuff their faces. They poured money into filling their stomachs, finding themselves getting pickier and pickier. They got hungrier and hungrier as the number of foods that were palatable shrank. Namjoon figured they were craving something specific, but neither of them could name it.
Namjoon came home to find Jimin perched over the sink, stuffing handfuls of spinach in his mouth. He claimed he was going to make a salad and just got impatient, but Namjoon wasn’t fazed. He just walked to the fridge and pulled out the carton of eggs. Grabbing a pot and covering the eggs with water would take longer than he could stand, so he put each egg in the cup of a muffin tin and turned on the oven. While they cooked, he grabbed the jar of mixed nuts and crunched away.
“We can’t keep this up,” Jimin said, mouth leafy and green.
“What, eating? We do have to eat to survive.”
“Not like this.” Jimin shook his head, but reached for the leftover bulgogi in the fridge anyway.
“Can you even imagine trying to cut down right now? I’m just so hungry. It’s not negatively affecting anything.”
“I don’t want to cut down, I want to get full. I want to be done being hungry for just a few minutes.” Jimin paced the kitchen, grabbing nuts out of the jar with each pass.
Namjoon nodded and swiped a piece of bulgogi from Jimin’s bowl. “Let’s talk this out again. What do you really want to be eating?”
“Whatever’s closest,” Jimin mumbled around a full mouth.
“No, really. If you had a magic wand to create food instantly, what would you be eating?” Namjoon drooled a little, staring into the oven to watch his eggs bake.
“I don’t know. A good steak? This bulgogi is close, but not quite what I want.”
“Yes. Steak.” Namjoon nodded and his stomach grumbled agreement. “Not overly seasoned, but well aged--”
“Nice and rare,” Jimin interrupted.
“That sounds really good.”
“Let’s go,” Jimin said, shoving the bulgogi back in the fridge. It took Namjoon less than a minute to turn off the oven and slide into his shoes.
After stuffing themselves full of high quality red meat, they strolled home in contented silence, each carrying a bag of steaks to keep in the fridge. The bags didn’t even last until morning.
“So, red meat.” Jimin crossed his arms and looked at Namjoon, who was licking bloody juice from his fingers.
“Must be an iron deficiency,” he said calmly, but his heart was racing. He couldn’t remember ever being this hungry, this insatiable, this desperate. It was disturbingly primal. He’d lived for almost two hundred years and now he was scared that it was all catching up in a way he’d never expected.
“That sounds simple. Unlikely, but simple.”
“Why unlikely?” Namjoon grabbed a towel to wipe his hands then started ticking points off on his long fingers. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve got cold hands and feet, my heart is racing, and you’ve been looking pale lately.”
“But there’s no fatigue, no weakness, no chest pains and definitely no lack of appetite. I’ve done the research, too, Namjoon. It doesn’t fit.”
“But craving red meat? Isn’t that a thing anemics do?” Namjoon was a little embarrassed that he had only skimmed the internet looking for information. Jimin was always better versed and ready with an answer. He’d taken his role of research assistant, given so many years ago that the title hadn’t existed yet, so seriously over the years that it was an inescapable part of him now.
“Of all the bizarre things that have happened over the years, you think having a bottomless pit for a stomach and a craving for essentially raw meat makes you think we’re just anemic ?” Jimin poured a glass of water and passed it to Namjoon, who drank it in silence.
“This hardly seems like the other things we’ve experienced,” Namjoon said finally.
“You’re right. No repeating evenings, no switching bodies, no hallucinations, no time travel. But it’s certainly not normal, and with us, anything out of the ordinary tends to be extraordinary,” Jimin scoffed. “Besides, you haven’t stopped licking your fingers pretty much this whole time.”
Namjoon froze, realizing that his fingers were indeed in his mouth. He looked at the counter where a pristine towel lay. Jimin was right.
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“So what now?” Namjoon asked, folding the towel to keep his hands busy and away from his face. He could still smell it though. Raw and delicious.
“Well, if you just take the symptoms we do have,” Jimin said as he climbed up to sit on the counter, “plus the extended life span from the tea, and the consequences that has brought--”
“Seriously, I had idea that a scroll we dug out of a cave was going to be this much trouble. It was just a recipe for tea, for fuck’s sake!” Namjoon huffed. He leaned against the counter next to Jimin, resting a hand on Jimin’s knee. He liked to know that Jimin was close. It was uncomfortable to be too far away from him.
“Hindsight and all that. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I think I thought vitality of the blood was just fancy old speak for being better at sex and stuff.” Jimin shrugged and his eyes crinkled with a smile.
“At the time we found that book you’d never even had sex, so how would you have known if the tea made you better?”
“Intuitively. I would have intuitively known that I was better than I should be.”
“And now, after all these years, do you think the tea has anything to do with your ability to charm the pants off of everyone you meet?” Namjoon flashed a dimple and Jimin tossed his head back to laugh.
“No. That is a gift of superior genetics and a good bb cream.”
“Finally, the secret is revealed.” Namjoon rolled his eyes fondly.
“You should have asked sooner.”
“Fair point.”
“But Namjoon, the symptoms. Cold hands. Cold everything, really. Insatiable hunger. Pale skin. And I’ve been getting pretty sensitive to bright light the last few days.”
“Well, when you say it like that it sounds like you think we’re turning into--”
“Vampires,” Jimin finished. Namjoon was still smiling, but only because his face was stuck.
“You know that’s ridiculous, right?” Namjoon coughed. He brought his hands to his face, but the lingering scent of blood was so tempting that he dropped it again.
“I don’t even want to eat the steak anymore, Namjoon. I just want to lick the plate. I don’t want the meat. I just want the--”
“Don’t. Don’t say it. I can’t. This is ridiculous.”
“You know it’s not.”
“It really is. Vampires?”
“There are actual medical conditions that produce vampirism, Namjoon. It’s not as crazy as it seems. And even if it were, how is it any crazier than the time we switched bodies? Or the hallucinations? Or--”
“Stop. I have to sit down.” Namjoon slid down to the ground, resting his back against the cabinets.
Jimin plopped down beside him and rested his head gently on Namjoon’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. It could be worse.”
Namjoon snorted. “Really? Worse than turning into vampires? What could possibly be worse than that?”
“We could be alone. At least we’re vampires together. And there’s a butcher shop nearby. We’ll just say we’re doing experiments for the university and need blood. Hell, we could actually do experiments and get grants and shit to fund our new appetite. They're always looking for new research projects, and this time, we'll be personally invested. We might even learn something.”
Namjoon sighed. “No one finds the bright side quite like you.”
“I know. It’s why you can’t live without me. And now, you won’t have to. Ever.”
“Alright, you went from sweet to creepy in about half a second.”
“It’s a skill of mine.”