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The stuttering hum of the air conditioning unit thrummed in her ears, a stark reminder that Sooyoung was only human. Forgetful, then sheepish and ultimately temporary. Lying still in their shared bed, Jinsol angled her head towards Sooyoung.
She wouldn’t wake her. Not now, nor ever.
Jinsol leaned out of bed, gingerly placing her feet on the floor as she willed herself not to make too much noise. She eyed the room - coat, socks, shoes, her phone. In one swoop, she gathered the belongings and made her way out the door.
The door closed behind her. She put her hand into a coat pocket, felt the absence of the soft metallic jingle of house keys. Jinsol could be forgetful too.
—
It had been her observation after close to two hundred years of doing this, that the taste of cheap, watered-down alcohol was infinitely worse when drunk second-hand. She would never willingly put boxed wine in her body otherwise and neither would she have downed that many shots of cheap club tequila.
Yet, here she was. Stowed quietly in the abscess of a street corner, lips pressed to the flesh of some inebriated young woman. If it served as any consolation at all, Jinsol was certain the woman would not remember the incident at all. Her kind was never truly able to linger in the memory of humans, after all.
She pulled away almost reluctantly after a few deep gulps. The thick, velvety texture of blood slunk down her throat and seemed to coat it in a deep layer of warmth. Her tongue swiped against her lips briefly; the taste of this woman was not as bad as she had been acquainted with. Then again, women tasted rarely as foul as men.
Jinsol considered herself some sort of a connoisseur. Not in the typical way one would, of course. But she did make it a rule to drink primarily from women, albeit never enough to snatch their lives away. And when she hunted, she’d always drain the men first. The taste of power always did overwhelm the bitter, acrid flavour of men.
Leaving the woman propped against a wall along the sidewalk, Jinsol pulled her coat tight around her body. It was one of the human habits she had picked up from Sooyoung. Truthfully, she hardly felt cold but she’d begun to fall into the habit simply because she couldn’t bear to see Sooyoung fuss at her. Sooyoung always removed her coat for Jinsol. And at the moment that the wind would always blow through her coat, Sooyoung had always smelt like warm butter.
—
Just as quietly as she had slipped out of bed, so did she slip back in. Jinsol pulled the covers up around herself, then stuck an arm out to tuck Sooyoung back into the covers. She couldn’t help but extend a hand to cup Sooyoung’s cheek as she watched her chest rise and fall.
She’d not always known how to breathe. Well, she must’ve known prior to her transformation but that part of her life had practically been erased the moment she woke up with an intense bloodlust coursing through every part of her body. It took years for Jinsol to perfectly replicate normal human breathing patterns. She’d studied humans diligently, faithfully.
And yet, at the moment she locked eyes with Sooyoung for the first time, it felt as if all this air had rushed into her lungs. All at once, she’d felt like she knew how to breathe again.
“It’s you. You’re the air I breathe. You’re all that matters, you know that right?” Jinsol whispered, eyes wide open as her fingers traced lines over the side of Sooyoung’s neck.
Sooyoung stirred and Jinsol pulled away abruptly, afraid to be caught in her moment of sweet nothings. She wouldn’t allow herself.
—
Months passed and Jinsol found herself settling into domestic patterns. Watering their three house plants, putting the vacuum back in it’s charging port, arranging the remote controls — even grocery shopping had become something so deeply embedded in her routine. It scared her and attracted her in equal amounts, the way she had become so comfortable in this life of normalcy.
Sooyoung remembered their anniversary. She remembered Jinsol’s favourite type of flowers too. She’d forgotten where she’d made the dinner reservation but thankfully, Jinsol had suggested they merge calendars months earlier.
They stood in the shared space of their shared bathroom, Jinsol applying mascara to her eyelashes while Sooyoung tussled her bangs about.
“It’s funny when you leave your mouth open like that,” Sooyoung commented as she smiled fondly at Jinsol’s reflection. Jinsol scoffed, shoved her lightly and applied the finishing touches to her mascara with her lips apart.
Jinsol finished, put the cap back on her mascara and turned to Sooyoung, “And it’s funny to me when you spend years fussing over your hair. Just leave it be, you look amazing as you are right now.”
She could see the tinge of red bloom at the apples of Sooyoung’s cheeks and spread upwards to the tips of her ears. She’d never been good with compliments and Jinsol knew that.
Leaning out of the bathroom, Jinsol eyed the bouquet of flowers on their dining table. She’d put them in a vase, afraid they would wilt. Flowers reminded her plenty of humans, reminded her of Sooyoung, reminded her of loss and beauty.
“Hey, let’s go. Don’t wanna miss the reservation that we’ve already almost missed once!” Sooyoung called out as she disappeared into the depths of their apartment in search of what Jinsol assumed were the car keys. She misplaced them a lot.
Jinsol hummed. She waited for Sooyoung to return.
“I love those flowers, by the way. They’re beautiful. I love you.”
Sooyoung paused in her step, her breath hitched in her throat as she slowly turned to Jinsol, “Jung Jinsol… I never thought I’d see the day.”
The blonde gasped in annoyance and walked past Sooyoung annoyedly, brushing into her shoulder with little force.
“But I love you too. You know that?”
She whipped around to face Sooyoung, who’d pulled her into a loose embrace. Hands around her waist, ghosting over the small in her back. She looked into Sooyoung’s eyes, the crescents of her smile. Sooyoung had said those words a week after they’d met too.
But to be fair, Sooyoung had always known.
—
Sooyoung ordered a thick, juicy cut of beef. Wagyu, she had exclaimed loudly when Jinsol asked her why she’d chosen to have steak when she’d already had beef for lunch. And as she’d always had, Jinsol ordered a salad with extra balsamic just the way she liked it. Plants always went down easier.
Reaching across the table, Sooyoung held Jinsol’s hand in hers. Thumb running over the back of Jinsol’s hand tenderly as if she were a lantern made of rice paper and Sooyoung was a flame.
She found herself lost in thought as she stared at their hands, resting idly on the table in perfect equilibrium. The day they’d met, Jinsol had found herself in a very similar predicament as she was in now. Overly attached and longing to be pulled away.
Sooyoung first found Jinsol at the aisle for “homeless plant babies” at their local gardening store. She was there to buy a new set of pots for her family home, and Jinsol was there because the succulent sitting in the window front had entranced her. A few wisecracks later, Sooyoung had managed to convince Jinsol to leave the store with her and sit down with her at a bar instead.
A few more wisecracks, many more drinks and one very drunken taxi ride later, they’d found themselves in the doorway of Jinsol’s apartment. The rest, as they say, was history.
They were sitting across from one another in a diner, almost as they were now when Sooyoung had first said the L-word. Jinsol had happily slipped two extra pieces of bacon over to Sooyoung’s plate with a knowing smile. She knew just how much Sooyoung loved bacon, and she was certain of how quickly she was falling in love with her too.
And there it was, as Sooyoung stared at the two strips of bacon.
“Jinsol, I think I love you.”
Moving in together happened as naturally as Sooyoung’s proclamation of love had happened. All of a sudden, Jinsol found herself making way for another person, a human at that. Reminders of Sooyoung became ingrained into the apartment, in the way a dishcloth was now permanently sat on their kitchen countertop, in the strange bowl of fruits that Sooyoung had insisted on, in the bean bag that stood out starkly from the rest of Jinsol’s pragmatic living room decor.
Compelled by some sudden force, Jinsol looked Sooyoung straight in the eye.
“Do you believe in fate? Soulmates, or whatnot?” She asked with a deep sense of seriousness, her eyes not once leaving Sooyoung’s.
The older girl pulled back with a laugh, her eyes crinkling once again as she struggled to contain her laughter. “Fate? Jinsol, you don’t even believe in magazine quizzes. And you expect me to believe that you suddenly trust in fate ?” Sooyoung wheezed as she eyed Jinsol with lighthearted scrutiny.
Jinsol huffed as she stuck out her bottom lip, “Well, because — You know… Do you think we could be soulmates?”
Sooyoung leaned forward with a sigh. She looked at Jinsol with some sort of sincerity, “I believe the universe intended for us to be made for one another.”
—
The drive back had Jinsol embroiled deeply in thought. She contemplated Sooyoung’s place in her life, the fleeting nature of Sooyoung’s existence in relation to her very own, the certainty in their parting, the empty space that would be left in her life once Sooyoung had gone.
She’d barely realised it until Sooyoung was out of the car, opening the door for her. Sooyoung had always been sweet, sensitive, selfless. It meant the world to Jinsol. Nobody had thought about her as much as Sooyoung, she supposed.
The door locks clicked close as they entered the apartment. Jinsol slumped down into the ugly bean bag wordlessly, still deeply embedded in thought.
“Jinsol, you asked a really important question tonight. And you deserve to have an answer to it.”
Jinsol looked up to see Sooyoung standing at the corner of their living room, leaning against the wall. Her posture was stiff, not as relaxed as she usually was. It struck Jinsol with a deep feeling of uneasiness as if something within her lay unsettled.
“And the thing is, we’re made for each other. We truly are, in every way conceivable, exactly what the universe intended us to be,” Sooyoung continued as she made her way across the living room. Heavy footsteps against the wooden floor, barely muffled by the socks Jinsol had bought for her.
And then, every single thing Jinsol believed in came crashing down.
She felt the cold press of metal before Sooyoung could even speak. She felt it all, the uncomfortable chill of gunmetal, the warmth of Sooyoung’s body just out of reach, the trembling in Sooyoung’s hand.
“Jinsol, don’t you get it? I have to kill you.”
—
Her childhood was an extraordinarily ordinary one. She traded stickers with her friends during their breaks, danced to MTV songs after school in front of her television, stole snacks from the refrigerator when she was supposed to be studying. In every aspect except the most important one, Sooyoung was a normal child.
Being born into a family of vampire hunters was out of her control, of course. But she couldn’t deny that something had always appealed to her about the way her family had done their jobs. The coldness, the efficiency, the sense of distance - she’d always admired that. And besides, she was a legacy. Her parents, and their own parents before them, had taken on the family trade — a sacred duty, they believed.
By her twenty-first year, it had been decided that she would join the family trade. The first few she’d sent off were easy. It was easier when she caught them in the midst of feasting on a human body animalistically. It was easier when they’d bared their fangs at her and dared her to take them on. By the time she had even encountered Jinsol, Sooyoung considered herself a veteran . She slept with her gun in her bedside drawer, always loaded.
She could’ve done it early on. In fact, she realised she had already let Jinsol off one too many times. It was her fault. She had not even realised she’d been sleeping around with a vampire until she’d been awoken by the sound of Jinsol leaving the apartment and returning with the metallic tang of blood clinging to her lips as they kissed in the dark.
In many ways, Sooyoung blamed herself. It was a weakness of her bones, a deep feeling within her that willed her not to harm Jinsol - even as she knew what she was. So, she went about her life as she had done before Jinsol. She worked the late nights and Jinsol chalked it up to her meticulous work ethic. She had tried to keep it a secret for as long as possible, but she could only do this much.
The beginning of the end came in the form of a simple beige manila envelope. A 7-paged document which detailed Jinsol’s activities, her personal information, every aspect of her life which had been noted by another vampire hunter.
Sooyoung would never forget the words emblazoned in dark red marker ink at the bottom of the last page.
Do your job. Three months to finish it, or I’ll finish it for you.
You love her? Prove it.
—
Three months to the day. Time was up, and Sooyoung believed the universe must’ve had a sick sense of humour to have let it be their anniversary. It hadn’t always been their anniversary, but Jinsol decided it would’ve been funny if their anniversary was the date of the diner incident instead of their actual anniversary. So maybe, Jinsol was the one with a sick sense of humour.
She couldn’t stop the trembling in her hands. She felt the sweat form at the edges of her forehead as she watched the emotions go through Jinsol’s head. Fear, betrayal, anger… even love.
It was torture. And Sooyoung had to grit her teeth as she watched Jinsol slump deeper into the bean bag, her body unable to react. The tears that slid down her cheeks didn’t help.
The blonde let out a quiet chuckle, “Finally found a person I love. Like, really truly love… After two hundred years of this damned existence! And it’s a vampire hunter. A fucking vampire hunter, of all people.”
Sooyoung’s index finger tensed on the trigger for a second.
“They found out, Jinsol. They found out about me… about you… about us,” Sooyoung choked out as she watched Jinsol closely.
Jinsol looked directly down the barrel of the gun. A gun loaded with silver bullets, thrice blessed no less. She locked eyes with those familiar brown eyes, eyes that had looked at her with true devotion and love all these months.
“Did you love me?”
The vampire hunter clenched her teeth together even tighter, it took everything within her not to let her guard down and take Jinsol into her arms and barrage her with endless apologies. She felt something sink into the depths of her guts as she stared at the other woman, tears almost clouding her vision.
“Yes, I did. I still do, I’ve loved you every single day that I’ve known you.”
“Then, why? Why couldn’t we be happy? Why couldn’t you leave it all behind… We could go somewhere else. They’d never find us.”
Sooyoung pressed the gun deeper into Jinsol’s temple.
“You don’t get it, do you? It’s either me, or it’s them. And they-“ Sooyoung chokes, her stomach turns at the very thought of how her family had always resolved to inflict the most torturous and painful ends to the lives of Jinsol’s kind. She wouldn’t let that happen to Jinsol.
“They’d what? They’d skin me alive, douse me in holy water, drive a wooden stake into my heart just to see me suffer? You’re no better, Sooyoung.”
She stutters, “What… What are you even saying? Jinsol, I am doing this because-“
“You come into my life. Did you do that on purpose?” Jinsol pauses, “It doesn’t matter. You put yourself in the centre of my orbit and you let me revolve around you. You put plants and artisanal coffee grounds and a bean bag in my house. You sleep in my bed and hold me and whisper sweet nothings to me. You- You make me fall in love with you, and you believe that’s a mercy killing? Fuck you, Ha Sooyoung — If that’s even your real name,” Jinsol spits as she glares at Sooyoung with a fiery intensity that could’ve only possessed a person who was about to lose as much as she was.
Her eyes flit over to their digital clock. Sooyoung bought that digital clock too- she hated reading the time on Jinsol’s analogue.
“You chose this day… Why? Because you knew I haven’t fed in two weeks? Because you believed that mercy could come in the form of my weakness? Because it was our anniversary ?”
Sooyoung’s shoulders slump, defeated, “They gave me three months.”
A moment of silence passes over them. Jinsol’s eyes remain trained on the digital clock, the gaudy design of the screen. She thinks back to every single moment she’s spent in love with Sooyoung. Every moment she felt the air had entered her lungs.
Sooyoung’s hands were trembling uncontrollably now, her aim would’ve probably been terrible if Jinsol had not been sat firmly in a bean bag which had often made it difficult for either of them to get up. Sooyoung hated that design flaw. Jinsol embraced it.
“Please don’t make it harder than it already is, Jinsol.”
As Jinsol stares down the barrel, she decides to carry out one last act of love. One final act of love for the only person she’s ever truly loved. She sees the way Sooyoung’s jaw is clenched, the way her eyes are beginning to shine with tears.
Sooyoung’s hurting just as much, she realises. Maybe even more, she muses.
So, she reaches a hand up and wraps her hand around Sooyoung’s.
Sooyoung is crying now. Jinsol hears the thrumming of Sooyoung’s blood as it courses through her veins all erratic. She recognises it as fear, humans were always predictable to her.
“Do it. Do what the universe intended for us. I’ll let you. Just say you love me one last time.”
It’s difficult, it’s so much more difficult than she believed it would be.
“Jinsol, I love you. I love you. I love you. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I love you, I’m so sorry — “
She barely registers Jinsol’s tendons tightening as her words get drowned out by the thunderous sound of the gunshot.
Only one thing left to do now.
—
The police report was brief. They came to their conclusions quickly and the respective reports were sent out to where they needed to be. Efficiency, just the way Sooyoung liked it.
One made its way back to Busan, the other to a random shophouse tucked away in Seoul. Jinsol had seen the address at the side of an instant noodle cup. Sooyoung had grown up by the countryside, by the apple trees and summer wind.
They found the letter Sooyoung had prepared too. A silly thing she never knew she’d ever needed until two weeks before it all happened. They read it well and once they had finished, what else could they do besides obey her final wishes?
Jinsol had always enjoyed going to the park, in spite of the sunlight and the people. Maybe she’d come to enjoy this plot in the meadow too, Sooyoung had always thought.
And so, they were exactly where the universe intended them to be. Even in spite of its sick sense of humour and poor sense of fate. After all, they had always been tied to one another.
She had bought the plot for a few hundred dollars. Her savings, since she presumed they would not have been of much use soon. Jinsol would enjoy the meadow air. Sooyoung would too. They would be happy. And that’s all that would’ve mattered.
— EPILOGUE —
The temperature of the room seemed to be stifling as Sooyoung lay next to Jinsol. She reached out to caress the blonde tresses of the other woman, twirling the strands around her fingers.
“You like it?” Jinsol sat up, smirking at Sooyoung.
Her bare back was delicate, Sooyoung noted. She could see the contours of Jinsol’s spine through her skin.
“Yeah, Goldilocks. You’re pretty.”
Jinsol rolled her eyes at the nickname then turned herself over to lay on Sooyoung’s chest. She was warm, by human standards, of course.
“You’re funny, you know that. You make me laugh. Like, really laugh. I love that.”
Sooyoung rests her arm around Jinsol, looking at her, really taking her in. The face framed by strands of blond, the scar etched into the corner of her eyebrow, the quirk in her lips.
“I know we’ve only just met but keep talking like that and we might have to have eternal pillow talks.”
Jinsol smiles.
“Uh-huh, you and I, side by side for the rest of time. Just laying here in each other’s arms… And how great would that be?”