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For six hours he’s been driving. Three spent in the fog. Ten is getting fed up with this shitty day, with this shitty weather. It’s dark, it’s cold, it’s damp and he can’t see shit five meters in front of him. As if it wasn’t enough, crows are joining the morbid scene that has been following him since Los Angeles.
He’ll reach his goal soon, and that’s how he holds up. His old school rock playlist playing in his ear, Sympathy for the Devil resonating in his rusty Cadillac Seville. He taps his fingers in rhythm against the wheel in a desperate attempt to distract himself from the daunting mood. Hard to do when he has to concentrate every second on the road to avoid the beasts crossing over it – he’s already met two boars since he left the main road, which is twice the number of humans that crossed his path.
He doesn’t know what came over him, giving up his job overnight to get lost here. Or, more accurately, he knows – he needed a break for too long, his last nights had been flooded with memories of never-ending corn fields, of small old towns and abandoned stone manors… and of one pale, hollow face, looking intensely at him – he didn’t think twice about it. As soon as the project he had spent his last weeks working on was done, he asked his boss for a leave. He was on the road just as fast.
It wasn’t the first time he was taking this specific road. He used to come every summer, with his parents. And then, one summer, his parents weren’t here anymore to come with him. He had buried every memory after that.
He spent years grieving, then decided that, to keep going with his life, he had to leave the past behind and move on completely.
Now he was an adult, he had the time to build a life for himself, find the job of his dreams, and friends that acted as a new family. For the first time, he felt like he was plunging back into his past. To get back his stolen moments, and finally get together with the memories of his parents.
If only he could have taken a break during the summer, and not in the middle of autumn, when the weather was so prissy. The monotony of the fog that had been following him since midday was broken by sudden rain.
“Fuck.”
Now, he struggled to even see what was right in front of him. He slows down. He doesn’t want to crush the next creature that will be unfortunate enough to cross his path, or to fall into a ravine just because he mishandled the pedals.
At that moment, he almost regrets having taken the road. But he knows how to drive, he does it well, and he’s always been careful on the road. As long as he doesn’t go too fast, what could happen?
The deafening sound of lightning makes him jump on his seat. He hits the pedal. The car stops in a screeching noise.
“Fuck!”
A tree branch comes crashing down on his car’s hood.
“Fucking hell.”
He stays in his car without moving, stares at the branch and the hood of his car: misshappen. It could be worst. It can be repaired. However he can’t move the car when it’s in this state.
He groans in frustration. Hell of a place.
He turns off the engine before things get even worse. Without electricity, it’s quick to get cold, and Ten doesn’t ponder for long before he decides to leave. To add to this serie of unfortunate events, his phone doesn’t pick up any signal, so he has to walk to his destination anyway.
He quickly realizes that, despite the terrible weather and the long years, the road is still fresh in his mind. He quickly gets to the end of the forest that runs along the road – as quickly as he can with his bag on his shoulder and the tiredness in his body – and he comes across a very familiar field.
This field, he used to spend hours playing in it, as a kid. It was the limit his parents gave him, he wasn’t allowed to go further. He never felt the need to do so. The hide and seek between the sprout of Corn, playing tag, giving a fright to your friends… There was no better playground.
Under the rain, the place was sinister at best, but he still could hear the laughs of his childhood friends, the reedy voices they all had at the time. When they were all kids it was easy to get lost, now that he was grown up – and that the fog had disappeared – he could see the field spread out in front of him, and the town that he intented to get to, on the other side.
The walk, under the rain and without any notion of time, feels never-ending, but he finally reaches the small town. He’s soaked to the skin, his shoes and pants-end covered in mud, but he couldn’t care less: he’s finally there.
The town seems empty, but it was never the most active place, and he knows where to go. He goes directly to the garage. It’s near the town’s entrance, easy to access and still with the lights on. Ten always thought it was useless – it’s not like the Suhs had so many clients, with so few people in the neighborhood – but today he’s glad about it.
The doorbell rings as soon as he pass the door.
“Coming!” is screamed from another room.
Ten’s teeth chatter. Even if it’s warmer inside, the coldness and wetness feels stronger without the wind and rain to lash his face.
Fucking irony.
A door inside the shop ends up opening, and Ten is facing a giant in a tank top, muscles out and hands covered with dirt, a grease stain on his cheek. He has a big smile on his face, small eyes, and a good thirty more centimeters since the last time Ten saw him, but there is no way he would forget his face.
“Hello! How can I help– Oh fucking god, what happened to– Fuck, Ten? Is that you?”
“A branch fell on my car.” Ten says instead of a hello.
Time stops for a few seconds where they look at each other without saying a word. Then the giant makes a step forward, and soon enough Ten has his arms full of Johnny Suh.
“Dude, you’re drenched! You know what? Your car can wait. We’re going to my place, you’re going to take a hot shower, put on dry clothes, and I'll make you a little something to eat, ok?”
Ten can only nod, not sure he can talk with how hard he’s trembling, and not confident enough in his voice not cracking up mid-way. Johnny’s voice is multiple octave lower than it was during their childhood, but he still has the same mimics and intonations. It’s comforting to know he hasn’t changed despite his appearance. He hopes the rest of the town is the same: like it was in a capsule away from the gearwheel of time.
It’s unfair ofhim to wish for that, and impossible anyway, but he wishes to come back to a town that hasn’t changed, where he can live his childhood memories again and again.
His heart clenches for a moment. This is the reason why he left for years without coming back: because he wasn’t ready to see the world change and all traces of his memories disappear.
Johnny doesn’t live with his parents anymore. Which makes sense, he’s one year older than Ten, twenty-six now. He probably has his own life, and it’s even surprising for Ten to see him here still. As a child, he kept talking about leaving, travelling around the world, become a singer… Life doesn’t always give us what we want, Ten knows a thing or two about that.
Johnny’s new house is only a few streets away from the previous one. A house because you can afford that when’s you’re twenty six and not living in a overpupolated metropolis.
Once inside, he doesn’t lose time before he gets undressed and goes take a shower. He needs a few minutes for the warmth of the water to get to hmi, and some more for his muscles to relax. He needed this more than he thought. To rest, and to stop getting worked up.
When he joins Johnny, it’s with the firm intent not to stress out for things that are out of his control.
Especially when a warm plate is waiting for him, as well as a dear friend.
“ So, wha’sup with you?”
It’s hard to summarise twelve years of a life. So Ten only talks about recent events. He talks about his job, his appartment. About his life in L.A. Johnny is curious about everything he has to tell. It feels like hours of talking. Maybe it is.
“What about you? Didn’t you want to travel around the world? What are you still doing in this godforsaken hole? Not that I’m disappointed to see you, quite the contrary.”
Johnny offers him a smile that doesn’t get to his eyes.
“This town… You know, it’s quite hard to leave, for the people bron here.”
Even if the tone is trying to be humorous, there is bitterness in his voice. As if the townfolks were cursed. But Ten understands, it’s complicated for them, because they all knew each other, grown up together. For them, leaving the town means leaving everything they know behind.
When Ten left, he didn’t have anything to lose anymore.
“Does that mean everyone else stayed?”
Johnny lets out a warm chuckle.
“Yes, they’re all here. Jungwoo works at the bar, you can find him easily, and everyone else goes there regularly. Yuta, Kun, Mark, Yangyang… They all stayed in town.”
“Even the guy that lived in the manor?”
Johnny looks at him in bewilderment.
“No ones lived in the manor, Ten. It’s been decades since anyone breathed in here. And with the stories that go around, you’re the only person I know who’s brave enough to go in there.”
Ten frowns. He was so sure he met someone there. But the memories are evading his mind.
“I must have imagined it…”
“Or he came from another village? In any case, I don’t know anything about him.”
He puts a reassuring hand on Ten’s shoulder.
“Come on, it’s time to get to sleep. I prepared a bed for you in the guest room. Tomorrow, at dawn, we’ll get your car.”
“You should never have come back.”
Ten wakes with a start.
He needs a moment to remember where he is. The sunrays passing timidly through the curtains. The storm is definitely gone, giving place to a blue sky without a cloud in sight. The birds are chirping at the windows, flying around to prepare for winter.
Ten smiles. It’s exactly the type of ambiance he needed for his break. The kind of weather that makes you want to walk around for hours, enjoying the chill air, coming back to the house to drink a hot chocolate and read books under a pile of plaids.
The only thing that bothers him is the weird impression that he forgot something. But that’s probably only his dreams which are evading him slowly. He tries to get back to the snippets of it, but all that comes back are the angular contour of a face, and the sound of a velvety voice.
If that was important, he would have remembered.
He goes down the stairs immediately, to go back to Johnny, already dressed, making himself some coffee, radio on.
“Already up? I thought you would be more tired than that, with all your adventures yesterday.” Johnny says with a smile.
Ten shrugs.
“Force of habit. I never sleep much.”
Johnny offers a sympathitc “hmm”, before he goes back to his coffee. They enjoy a quiet moment before they start their day.
The cornfield, the road and the forest are a completely different sight under the morning sun. Ten finds back the landscapes of his youth with a light heartache. He’s happy, he really is, still, it hurts.
The trip in Johnny’s truck is far quickier than Ten’s walk through the fields the day prior. In five minutes at best they’re facing the car. Ten makes a face upon seeing the damaged vehicle. It’s even worse in plain light.
“Well,” Johnny remark, “that really wasn’t your day.”
“Oh yeah? What make you think that?”
He says that in a sarcastic tone, but Johnny laughs heartely. Ten can’t help but sigh. He has a hard time laughing about it yet, but he’s relieved to still be in one piece.
What would he have done if the tree branch had fallen on him?
“You always attracted bad luck, didn’t you?”
Ten frowns.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know, I remember you in all type of weird situations. Like, the stairs of Mrs Viallet? A chubby adult woman who goes up and down those stairs a hundredth times a day, but the one time you, eight years old shrimp, takes them, it collapses? Or, the time at the river? Can’t remember exactly what happened, but you almost drowned. And that’s only two exemples.”
Ten has a vague souvenir. As a kid he was pretty much a troublemaker, always running everywhere and putting himself more or less voluntarily in danger. He couldn’t count the number of times he had climbed a tree just to fall straight away, and he still had a number of scars because of bike accidents.
Thinking back about it however… That’s true that his summers here had always been scattered with accidents.
“Hey, look, the only tree touched by the storm, and it’s for you. Honestly, you’re lucky you’re even alive.”
Ten looks around him and, indeed, there are no other branches on the road. Strange.
“You probably angered some evil entity during your childhood.”
He’s at the Moon Bar, Jungwoo behind the counter, Kun facing him. Johnny abandonned him for work, and he decided to offer a visit to his old friends. Jungwoo had welcomed him with a warm embrace, and Kun had joined them as soon as he heard their old pal was in town.
Of course, Ten ended up telling them the story of his arrival.
“An evil entity? You believe in this shit, you?”
From Jungwoo, that wouldn’t have been surprising, but Kun? It’s been years since the last time he saw him, but he’s always been the more down to earth person he knew. He’s been their moral compass for years, and god knows they needed it.
Kun only shrugs.
“I wouldn’t be surprised, coming from you. You have a tendancy to get on people’s bad side.”
Ten takes an overly dramatic look of outrage.
“Me? On people’s bad side? Impossible. I’m adorable.”
Jungwoo laughs generously, as Kun rolls his eyes.
“But, on a more serious note, don’t you think I would remember, if I had angered someone so bad that they’re still trying to attack me after years?”
Jungwoo and Kun look at each other, then Kun turns toward him, an indecipherable look on his face. Then he sighs, as he often does around Ten.
“You don’t seriously believe it? I was only kidding.”
“Of course not,” Ten answers, but his smile is tense. He never noticed before, but between Johnny’s words this morning, and Kun’s one right now… He’s starting to doubt seriously.
“Kun says that, but the people in town belienved stranger things.”
Kun nods in agreement.
“The archives are full of the most surprising stories.”
“And the manor!” Jungwoo exclaims, showing with his had the massive manor at the border of town, visible from the bar’s windows, “everyone knows it’s haunted.”
“Everyone says it’s haunted,” Kun corrects, exasperated.
Jungwoo smiles then changes the subject.
Ten, on the other hand, as a hard time thinking about anything else. He remembers vaguely when he was seven or eight years old, when his friends had told him for the first time about the haunted manor. They made a stupid bet the way children do, trying to pass the thorn bushes to enter the abandonned garden around the manor. Ten – who was a master at climbing above barbed wires to enter places that his parents formely forbid him to even get near – went without a hitch. He remembers getting so close he almost entered the manor, before he heard steps. He had realized at that moment that he was the only one of his friends to come that close, and he had turned back in a hurry before he got caught by the people living here.
All in all, that was stupid, because no one was supposed to even live there. And Ten had never thought, in years, that the steps he heards could have been the one of a thief, or a ghost.
He has memories, that he went in the manor, that he talked to someone. He even get a grasp of the tea he feels like he drank there, once, sitting on a velvety couch.
However, he has no idea how he ever went inside. What the interior could even look like, or the face of the person he talked to. It was probably a dream, like he knows he did others, years laters.
“Are you going to visit your parent’s home?” Jungwoo asks, interrupting his train of thoughs.
“Yeah, that was the plan,” Ten answers, unsure.
The house his parents lived in, the one Ten spent all his summers in. It became his when he turned eighteen years old, as everything that was once his parents’. He had cried upon seeing the papers of his inheritance, and even more when the notary had suggested him to sell, or rent, the place. At the time, he still lacked money – freshly out of the social system, looking for a job and a place to live. He had hesitated, almost did it, but he was never brave enough to actlally do it.
He had worked his fingers to the bones for years, and then things went better, and now he didn’t have any regrets.
It didn’t mean going back into the house would be easy.
“You want me to come with you?” Jungwoo asks.
“Nah, it’s something I’d rather do myself.”
From the outside, the house is exactly like Ten remembers it. An old house made out of stone, with crooked foundations and an gigantic chimney on the side. It was nothing like your typical american suburban house, and it even clashed out with the rest of the village. Ten’s parents had bought it cheap - a great deal, they used to say - and Ten always thought it was a lovely place. More than the loveliness, he felt good there, comfortable. Even on the days where he felt like the whole world was against him - the days he would come back to his parents in the worst state, after a misadventure or an other - he would felt appeased by simply being back in this house.
Despite the amount of dust and the fitting cough he got out of inhaling too much of it, today was no different. The house was in the same state it had been twelve years prior, all cleaned out, left in a pristine state as the summer was over and Ten and his family got back to their usual life.
The pictures hanging on the fridge put a lump in his throat.
How long has it been since he last saw pictures of his parents? Too long.
They look happy. Even the grumpy face of his mother, or the serious one of his father on some of them, don’t take away from the general happiness of these pictures.
He watches them closely, one after another. The ones where he was too young to understand what was happening, knee-high to a grasshopper and in the most ridiculous outfits. Then, a little bit older, and with the company of his friends, either running in the cornfields around town, standing in front of their improvised lemonade shop or covered in cake, smiling from ear to ear.
The last pictures mark the beginning of his teenage years, when there was acne on his face and he thought a red mohawk was actually a great hairstyle.
He laughs, even as he feels the tears rolling down his cheeks.
He spends the rest of his afternoon cleaning the place, trying to bring back life to the house. Without Johnny, he would have slept here the previous night. He’s glad he didn’t have to, foe twelve years of dust isn’t an easy fit to get rid of.
When he’s done, he feels exhausted. He sits on the couch, just for a moment.
Through the windows, he can see the old scarecrow in the middle of the cornfield. For some reasons, he can’t help but shivers. Then he’s out like a light.
“The witch, the witch! Burn the witch!”
There are people around him, twenty or so. Ten has a hard time breathing. There is something on his face, like a hessian bag. He only sees the scene through the tiny holes across the bag. He tries to move, unsuccessfully: he’s tied up.
The people are laughing around him and Ten panics when he sees the scythes and forks they’re holding.
He wants to talk, wants to scream something, anything but no sound get out of him mouth.
He wakes up when he’s about to be stabbed. His heart is pounding furiously, ready to escape his rib cage.
Outside, the scarecrow has not moved an inch.
Ten takes a big inspiration, and decides he needs to get some fresh air.
The sun is slowly setting, painting the sky in shades of gold and pink. Ten is strangely reassured that night still hasn’t come.
“Ten!”
Ten doesn’t have time to turn that he feels someone jumps him. Two arms are suddenly embracing him closely. He stays dumbfounded for a moment, incapable of putting a name on the person that welcomes him so warmly.
The boy must be around twenty years old, and he’s taller than Ten - not that this is hard, and that’s about it.
Ten blinks twice.
“Yangyang?”
The boy was nine years old the last time Ten had seen him, and he’d always been small for his age. He used to follow Ten everywhere, always under his feet. Ten simultaneously found him the most annoying person ever and an absolutely adorable kid that was his duty to protect. Someone akin to a little brother.
“In the flesh!” The boy can’t hide his pride, “I can’t believe you’re back! How long are you staying?”
Ten takes a few minutes to pull himself together. He still can’t believe that Yangyang grew so much. He’s an adult now. The idea feels strange in Ten’s mind. That the kid Ten’s age are all adult, yeah, of course, he wouldn’t have it any other way. But Yangyang ? Time really did pass…
“Only for a few days… But I intend to come back more often.”
Out of joy, Yangyang gives Ten another hug that Ten returns eagerly.
“What were you doing?”
“I was cleaning, but I'm done and I wanted to see people…”
“You should come to Mark's! We found old family pictures, from when his great-great-grand-parents lived in the manor! You who always wanted to see what the interior looked like, you’ll like it!”
Mark Lee. That was true that his family used to lived in the manor. Ten can’t remember exactly why they left to live with the rest of the village, a somber tale of magic, whispers would say.
“A witch, actually,” Mark explains as he opens old, dusty box. He, too, has grown a lot, but he still has that youthful air to him, with his wild eyes and his glasses too big on his nose, he is adorable,”At least, that were the rumors at the time. A witch was told to have cursed my great-great-grand-father, but the city avenged him and then my family left the manor.”
“Burn the witch, burn the witch!”
Images of Ten’s dream comes back to him, too clear.
“What happened to the witch?”
“Do you really believe those stories? I didn’t remember you being so gullible.” Says Kun, always present when archives and old stories are concerned.
Ten rolls his eyes.
“Mark says the city avenged the guy. Something must have happened.”
“I don’t know if this is because of that but… Every year, for halloween, people get reunited around the scarecrow and they… How to say that? They… Well, they use it as a pinata?”
Ten get sick.
“This is awful!”
Yangyang shrugs.
“It’s a scarecrow.”
“What if there was someone inside?”
“Well, if someone was ever inside this thing, that was the witch so I guess she deserved it?”
Kun is clearly making fun of Ten.
“Anyway, that was just an affair. My great-great-grandfather cheated on his wife, the other woman had been called a witch and that got everyone heated…”
Yangyang nods fiercely.
“In a small village like this one, it’s hard to find a decent hobby, that’s why there’s so many ridiculous legends.”
“You’ll see, Ten, in fifty years from now, you’ll be the one the legends will talk about. The boy who lamented all his life that he angered some demonic entity.”
Ten catches the cushion closest to him and sends it directly toward Kun’s head. Yangyang and Mark laugh hard. When they calm down, minutes later, Mark finally gets the pictures out of the boxes.
They’re still in a great state, hardly damaged by time. The oldest are from the twenties, a time when you had to pose for long minutes if you wanted a nice picture. Mark explains who is who. His great-great-grand father is still a kid at that time. Ten is moved at the idea of seeing him grow and to get to know more about Mark’s family.
That’s probably the artist in him, but he likes the quality of the photos, the grain and the colors, so specific of this time period. He pays extra attention to the details his friends don’t pay attention to.
Still, there’s something off about the whole ordering. He has a sense of déjà-vu.
He tries to forget about it. It’s just his mind playing tricks on him, how could he have ever seen those pictures?
Still, Ten can’t help but be distracted by Mark’s great-great-grandfather as he’s finally an adult on the photos. One, especially, catches his attention. The man is smiling, a tender air on his face as he seems to be watching the person behind the lens with all the love he can afford.
Lee Taeyong is written under the photography. Even the name sounds familiar.
“He’s sexy.”
“Hey! That’s my great-great grandfather you’re talking about!” Mark complains.
Ten lets out a dramatic sigh.
“So what? You don’t even know him… If I'm lucky enough, he’s actually an immortal vampire still wandering the manor during the night.”
Kun rolls his eyes as Yangyang laughs hard and loud.
“I would let him suck me dry… Even the blood.”
Kun groans out of frustration and Yangyang’s laugh only gets louder.
“You shouldn’t joke about that,” Mark says very seriously, “Some people in town are very superstitious!”
“Yeah? Who?” Ten asks as he goes watch through the windows and tries to remember the people in town, “Johnny? Or…”
There is a light in the darkness of the night who catches his attention. A light where there shouldn’t have been for decades: at the manor’s windows.
“See! I told you. Someone lives here.”
The three others join him, but the time it takes them to get by the window, the light is out.
“I swear! There was light! Right there!” With his finger he points at the spot where he saw the light.
The three friends look at him with confusion.
“It must have been a firefly, there are still some of them around.”
And they go back to what they were doing, not saying anything else. However, Ten can’t get the idea out of his head: this wasn’t a firefly, and there is no other explanation for what he saw than the fact that someone was inside that freaking manor.
That’s almost as disturbing as the too familiar face of Lee Taeyong, whose photo he steals from Mark, putting it safely in his back pocket. He doesn’t even know why he does it. He just knows he has to.
When Mark’s door closes behind him, after long hours of fun conversations and one last goodbye to his friends, he looks at the manor again. He had only one goal in mind for the past hours: finally getting answers about what the hell is actually happening there.
Walking through the cornfield, climbing above the portail, passing through the brambles… He does it with so much determination that he doesn’t even see time flies. As if he were in a dream, in a few steps he’s in front of the gigantic wood door. The name “Lee” is engraved on the door, and there isn’t even a bell.
He glances around. The only light is from the moon and he can hear an owl hoot in the distance. Nothing about it is comforting.
He deliberately ignores the door-knocker as he knocks on the door, which gives less chance to be heard, still afraid, in spite of himself, to indicate his presence to whoever might be inside. The place is supposed to be empty anyway, that’s not like he was intruding in someone’s home.
Not really.
At least that’s what he’s trying to convince himself when he opens the door - just enough to pass - and he starts to wander in the different hallways.
The manor is a weird mix of everything Ten would expect from a Dracula documentary - red carpet on the floor, portraits of generations of influential people in the hallways, enormous chandeliers hanging from the ceiling - and of everything that was trending in the fifties, the years the family left the place - gaudy colors that hurt his eyes, and a De Viera painting he’s agreeably surprised to see here.
He, once again, loses track of time as he continues to wander, finding similarities between the place and the pictures he saw earlier.
He yelps embarrassingly as he sees something move in the corner of his vision before he realizes it’s only his reflection. One look at himself is sufficient to know he has a terrible appearance: dark circles under his eyes, dry lips and pale complexion… He definitely had better days. He passes a quick hand through his hair to try and make them better. Not that it changes much of anything.
Then he turns back.
And face a man.
He barely holds back a scream. And then he recognizes the face in front of him. The one from his memories. The one from his dreams.
“Yongqin,” says the man.
Ten ignores it. Too taken aback.
“You exist for real,” he says in a whisper.
The man beams. He raises an arm, slowly, approaches a hand to Ten’s face, tenderly. He holds back in the last moment.
“Probably just in your mind.”
The last thing Ten sees are the pupils of the man turning a vibrant red. Then he wakes up in his bed, in his home, with a perfect view of the scarecrow that hasn’t moved, the first rays of the sun in the horizon.
He groans out of frustration. All those pictures and stupid legends made him dream of the manor and Lee Taeyong.
That fucking sucks.
He stays for a moment in bed. He should have stayed with Johnny, at least he would have had nice company and coffee ready in the morning. What was he thinking? Going back to this house, empty of life and full of ghosts?
He goes to make himself coffee when the sun is high enough in the sky. He reads for a while, trying to enjoy the quietness he knows he won’t find in Los Angeles. He doesn’t have to work, he should be making the most of it.
Unfortunately, the book is boring as no other, and he can’t find it in himself to concentrate. He decides to go in search of a possibly better read.
He goes into his father’s study - a room rarely used, for his family was only there during vacation times, but that his father had insisted was an absolute must.
He’s always surprised to rediscover the house he thought he knew everything of, but he’s even more surprised when he rummages through the desk, only to come across a hundreds of letters, written in ink, meticulously disposed in one of the drawers.
Ten frowns. He remembers his father spending hours locked up in this room, but did he have a secret correspondence with someone? The calligraphy of the letters makes it seem particularly romantic and Ten feels a fury turns his insides upside down.
He doesn’t think about it twice before he reads them. They’re in his home anyway, consequently, they’re his to do as he likes.
“My dearest love,” the letter starts, and Ten rolls his eyes, but he can feel himself getting soft for some reason. The whole letter is full of romantic words, and confirms the affair between the person who wrote those letters - a married man, with children - and the person who receives it.
Ten wants to feel anger, but he only has a heartache. There is something intense about those letters. The heavy burden of forbidden love.
He reads them like he was the one they were destined to, and feels overwhelmed about it. He easily forgets that they probably were for his father: anyway, too many things aren’t adding up for it to be his father’s, like secret meetings after christmas eve.
Ten remembers every christmas he spent with his family, and never once was his father absent. And his father would never had the time to make the trip during the night, that was simply impossible.
That’s only confirmed in the rest of the letters.
“Yongqin, my dearest, I wish i could give you so much more than a few stolen moments, but never doubt the love that my heart carry for you.
Your beloved,
Lee Taeyong.”
Well, that check out with the affair Mark told them about, he guesses. Exept that the other woman was actually a man. Ten feels like he should never had read those letters. They weren’t for him, weren’t any of his business… Then again…
Yongqin.
Li Yongqin.
In his blurred memories, when he went to the manor to drink tea, that’s the way the man he’d seen called him.
And he feels like someone called him just like that recently, but he can’t quite put his finger on it. Must’ve been Mark.
Two days pass without Ten noticing anything out of the ordinary. No lights in the manor, no branches accidentally falling on him, no weird pictures to remind him of memories he never lived. He enjoys his break, read, goes to the bar to drink beer with his friends, and visits Johnny at the mechanic shop. His car is getting better by the day and - Johnny promises - will actually soon look better than Ten ever saw it!
And then comes Halloween night.
He had almost forgotten about it, because no one in the village made the effort to put on decorations. It doesn’t mean they don’t celebrate, in their own way.
It’s Yangyang who gets him out of his home, before night falls down on the village.
“We’re going to hunt the scarecrow,” he exclaims, obviously happy about the tradition. Ten feels sick in his stomach, thinking about his dream.
“Are you sure it’s a good idea?”
“Of course! Once again, it’s a scarecrow. It’s made out of straw and fabric, it won’t suffer from it, so stop troubling yourself over this.”
“Troubling myself? Aren’t you a vampire yourself? No one talk like this.”
Yangyang sticks his tongue out, and they keep an easy banter until they join the crowd. It helps Ten relax for a while. And then everyone sings, and dance, and Ten forgets why he’s here. Or that it’s freaking cold and that he wants nothing more than get home and hide under his sheets.
But no, instead he dances the farandole with Johnny and Jungwoo, eats the dishes prepared by Kun, and talks for hours with Mark.
Then the music stop, the crowd gathers, and Mark’s mother starts a speech, as per tradition. She talks about halloween, about driving away malicious spirits, to scare them away, and, mostly, to get rid of witches. And the symbol of witchery, in this tiny village, it’s the scarecrow around which they’ve been dancing for hours.
The uneasiness goes back tenfold when forks are distributed.
“Kill the witch!” They scream in harmony. Ten has a lump in his throat.
“Burn the witch!”
Someone puts his arms around Ten. He jerks away, shakes his head. He takes a step back, then another. There is a hand around his wrist.
He gets away immediately, doesn’t even notice it’s Johnny who did it. He runs.
“Ten!” Johnny screams after him.
But Ten is already far away. He thinsk again about the burnt witch. About Lee Taeyong’s lover. Li Yongqin.
Li Yongqin.
The name the man in the manor used to call him.
He wants to puke. He keeps running, he doesn’t even know where he’s going.
“You probably angered some evil entity.”
Maybe the witch was never Lee Taeyong’s lover. Maybe the witch had always been his wife.
He passes from the cornfield to the forest.
“You won’t escape, Li Yongqin, " a voice resonates in his head, “I got you once, I will get you twice.”
Except he’s not Li Yongqin. He’s Ten, and he just wants to understand what the hell is happening.
He hears a growl. He stops in his track, looks behind. He can’t see much in the darkness of the night, but there is clearly a pair of yellow eyes observing him.
It’s a wolf. There is a wolf approaching, ready to jump him.
“Help!”
He screams but obviously, no one answers. He runs again, even more frantic than before. He can hear the dull thump of the wolf running after him, and the growling never stop. He’s going to die. He knows it, he’s going to die.
“Taeyong!” He screams as he sees the manor, “Taeyong!”
He doesn’t know why he’s persuaded the man is here. The man died some seventy years ago. It’s probably just wishful thinking.
He sees the door and think, I’m safe, except he doesn’t have time to open it. The wolf is on him.
There is a stabbing pain in his leg, that he tries to ignore. He has to get up, get away. It’s too late, the wolf is done playing with his leg and is now approaching his face. Ten doesn’t know when the tears have starting falling, he just knows they won’t stop.
“Please, please, stop.”
He knows he has no chance against the beast. He’s approaching his end. He hears a grinding behind him but doesn’t give it any mind. Not before he sees the shadow hovering over him, then crashing against the wolf.
Ten stays flabbergasted as he watches the fight happening right in front of him. And then Lee Taeyong turns toward him, in all bloodied mouth and too long fangs glory. At his feet, the corpse of the wolf.
Ten’s inside wants out.
“You shouldn’t have come back”, Taeyong says to him.
Ten finds him to have eyes too big, too shiny, too candid to be the ones of a man who just killed a wild beast with his teeth.
“I wanted too,” is the only thing he can say.
“Yongin…”
“My name is Ten.”
“You could have any name in the world, but she will always know it’s you… And she will want to hurt you for as long as you will try to get near me.”
He says that but he gets so close to Ten that they can touch. And touch Ten does. Fingers making the contour of Taeyong’s face, slight as a feather. He observes as Taeyong closes his eyes, flourishing under the simple caress. His canines disappear, little by little, but the blood stays, and Ten doesn’t even worry about the how and the why.
Who cares about myth and legend when Lee Taeyong is right in front of him, and more beautiful than anyone should be allowed to.
He gets closer, instinctively. Taeyong does the same.
Their lips are about to touch, when he remembers.
He thinks that he understands why, in a previous life, he accepted to be the target of a witch, for the love of this man.
“I don’t want you to be hurt,” Taeyong says in a murmur.
His tears are falling on Ten hands, and Ten answers with a bitter laugh.
“I get hurt without her. I get into stupid accidents all the time. So unless you know a way to avoid it…”
Ten can read in Taeyong’s eyes that there is a way. Something he’s wary of. Ten holds his gaze: if there is one thing to know about him, is that he’s stubborn. Taeyong gives in.
He kisses him again, tenderly. His lips, his jaws, his neck.
Ten can feel two fangs sink into his flesh.