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Gao Tu had always thought that when death came, it would be loud. He would see it coming. He always thought it would perhaps come at the hands of the man he called his father. Of all the ways he thought he would die, getting caught in a gang brawl and getting stabbed had not been one. He leaned against the wall of the alley, legs buckling, one hand pressed to the open wound in his abdomen. Warm blood soaked through his shirt, sticky and relentless. It didn’t even hurt anymore.
He was going to die here. Alone. In a puddle.
His vision blurred, then sharpened, then blurred again. The city lights beyond the alley stretched like watercolours. His thoughts had already started to drift — to the mess of his life, to the words he should have said, the ones he wished he hadn’t.
And then he felt it. A shift. A breath of cold air against the back of his neck, too cold to be from the rain.
A man stood at the far end of the alley. He wasn’t dressed for the weather — a long dark coat, no umbrella — but he didn’t seem wet. His face was pale in the streetlight, almost inhumanly smooth. His eyes…they were too still.
The man walked toward him slowly. Not like someone in a rush to help, or someone coming to gawk.
Gao Tu tried to push himself upright, but the pain flared hot and dizzying. He gasped, coughing and dark blood hit the pavement beside him.
The man stopped a foot away and crouched.
“You’re dying,” he said. His voice was soft.
“No shit,” Gao Tu managed.
“You don’t have to,” the man said.
“What?” Gao Tu coughed again. “You got a first aid kit under that creepy coat?”
“No. But I can still save you.”
The words meant nothing at first — a stranger’s riddles, hallucination, maybe. But then Gao Tu saw it. The glint of something sharp behind the man’s lips. Not a trick of the light.
“You—” Gao Tu started. “You’re not—real.”
“I can keep you from dying,” the man said calmly. “But it comes with a cost.”
Gao Tu swallowed. His pulse thundered in his ears, though it was already starting to slow.
“What kind of cost?”
“You’ll never be what you were.”
Gao Tu laughed, bitter and cracked. “Good. I wasn’t much to begin with.”
The man blinked, slowly. “Are you sure?”
“No,” Gao Tu said. “But I don’t want to die here. Not like this.”
“Then close your eyes.”
He felt arms wrap around him, cold and steady. Felt the press of breathless lips against his neck. Then the bite.
It was sharp and searing. His own heartbeat roaring in his ears, fading, fading—
********************
Gao Tu woke slowly. The air felt thick, like velvet against his skin. The ceiling above him was high and carved with wood. A chandelier hung low, its candles still lit.
He was lying on a bed, sheets soft and cold. He sat up with a start. His body responded like a stranger. There was no pain anymore. But something thrummed beneath his skin, something wrong and raw and new .
Then came the ache. In his throat. His chest. Deep, gnawing. He pressed a hand to his ribs. His heartbeat was there — barely.
The door creaked open. It was him. The man from the alley. Dressed in black again, but simpler now. He carried a glass in one hand, filled with dark liquid. When it caught the light, it was red and thick.
“You’re awake,” he said.
Gao Tu’s mouth was dry. “You—what did you do?”
“I kept my promise.”
Gao Tu stared at him. “You turned me into a monster.”
“I gave you a choice,” the man said, and his voice was gentle.
He walked forward and set the glass on the bedside table.
“What is that?”
“You know.”
Gao Tu turned his face away. “I’m not drinking blood.”
“You will.”
“Go to hell.”
The man didn’t respond. Just looked at him, calm, unreadable. “When you’re ready.”
He turned and left.
********************
Gao Tu lasted three days.
Three days of pacing the room, of shaking hands, of thirst like wildfire. He threw the glass at the wall once. It shattered. The next morning, a fresh one was left by the bed.
When he finally drank, he did it in the dark and wept tears of blood.
When he looked up, the man was sitting across the room, silent.
********************
The house was huge. Endless hallways, forgotten wings. Shelves filled with books in languages Gao Tu didn’t recognise. A piano. An observatory with a glass ceiling that let in the stars.
He wandered like a ghost. The man — Wenlang , he would later learn — didn’t hover, but he was never far.
He cooked, though they didn’t eat. Lit candles, though they didn’t need light. There was something ritualistic about it. Like he was holding onto pieces of humanity through habit.
They spoke more now.
“Where are we?” Gao Tu asked one night.
“Far enough,” Wenlang said.
“Why me?”
Wenlang didn’t answer for a long time. Then he said, almost in a whisper, “Because you looked at death like it wasn’t your first time seeing it.”
That shut Gao Tu up.
********************
They began to share moments.
A walk through the old garden, leaves crunching beneath their boots. Silence, not awkward, but companionable. Wenlang offering him a book — an old novel, with notes in the margins. Gao Tu writing his own in return.
They played chess once. Gao Tu lost badly. Wenlang didn’t smile, but his eyes warmed.
Still, Gao Tu fought it — the hunger, the stillness, the way he was slowly changing.
********************
Then the night of the storm came.
The wind screamed. Gao Tu hadn’t fed. The thirst was worse than ever. He lost control.
It started as a burn in his spine, a gnawing that clawed behind his ribs. He wandered the corridors with restless feet, breathing harder, faster, scenting everything. The walls smelled of old blood and dust and polished wood, but beneath it, Wenlang . Somehow smelling alive.
By the time Gao Tu entered the study, he wasn’t thinking.
Wenlang looked up from his desk, calm.
Gao Tu crossed the room in a blink. His hand clamped down on Wenlang’s shoulder, the other fisting in his collar. He shoved him against the wall.
His fangs extended without command. His mouth was on Wenlang’s throat before he could form a thought.
Wenlang didn’t struggle.
He simply said, “Gao Tu.”
Gao Tu didn’t hear it at first. The scent of blood was overwhelming. His lips grazed skin. His hands trembled.
“Stop,” Wenlang said, voice firmer. “This isn’t who you are.”
A heartbeat passed. Then another.
Gao Tu stayed there, panting, mouth open over Wenlang’s skin. Hunger warred with the flicker of shame. He was so close. One bite. Just one.
His hand slipped slightly. His fingers twitched against Wenlang’s chest.
“You’re not a monster,” Wenlang said again.
Gao Tu froze.
The words hit something deeper than logic. Like a cold wash across fire.
He jerked back, horrified.
“I almost bit you,” he gasped.
“But you didn’t,” Wenlang replied.
Gao Tu stumbled away, hands shaking.
“I wanted to.”
“You were hungry.”
“I could have killed you.”
“No,” Wenlang said. “You couldn’t have.”
Gao Tu stared at him, breathing hard. “How do you know?”
Wenlang’s voice was soft. “You’re still learning how to carry it.”
“What?”
“The thirst. The hunger. The way it makes you forget your name.”
Gao Tu swallowed hard, turned around, and left.
********************
That night, Gao Tu couldn’t sleep.
He paced the library, fingers trailing across the spines of old books, all of them now familiar. The storm had passed, but his mind hadn’t settled. He hated how tender Wenlang had been — how quiet, how kind.
He hated that it made something in him ache.
A while later, he felt Wenlang enter the room.
Gao Tu looked up, really looked at him.
“You let me hurt you earlier.”
“No,” Wenlang said. “You stopped yourself.”
“That’s not the same. You don’t flinch when I’m cruel,” Gao Tu whispered.
“Because I know it’s not cruelty. It’s confusion. Pain. Hunger.”
“You don’t even get angry.”
“I do,” Wenlang said. “But not with you.”
Their eyes locked across the room. Gao Tu walked forward slowly, stopping in front of Wenlang close enough to see the way his lashes cast faint shadows on his cheeks, the way his mouth was always held just a little too carefully.
His hand rose, unsure, to Wenlang’s collarbone. The warmth still lived there. Faint, but real.
Gao Tu leaned in. Wenlang’s lips were cold and still for a moment. Then he kissed back, slow and deliberate, like he’d been waiting for it, rehearsing this softness in the silence of a hundred nights.
Gao Tu’s other hand lifted, trembling just slightly, and cupped the side of Wenlang’s face. His thumb brushed the line of Wenlang’s cheek, then settled at the hinge of his jaw. He could feel how still he held himself. Like he didn’t want to break the moment. Or break him .
Wenlang’s lips parted just slightly, and Gao Tu responded instinctively, his body pressing in just a little closer. His fingers slid into Wenlang’s hair, which was softer than he expected, and Wenlang’s hand found Gao Tu’s waist, resting there softly.
Gao Tu pulled away, resting their foreheads together.
“I don’t know what I am becoming anymore,” Gao Tu said.
Wenlang’s eyes were dark and endless.
“You’re becoming mine,” he said, softly. “But only if you want to be.”