Work Text:
The Night of Red Rain
A wistful night longed for warmth. Rain whispered down, drop by drop, over the stones that clattered softly beneath it. The world felt frozen beneath the endless fall.
“Are you really leaving this village?” Xinlong’s voice trembled as he wrapped Junmin in his arms, unwilling to let him go.
Junmin placed his hand upon his lover’s dark hair. “Yes, my love. The politics of hierarchy are becoming tiresome.” He cupped Xinlong’s cheek tenderly. “Only for tonight, I promise. Tomorrow at noon I’ll return—and hold you until morning breaks.”
With that, Junmin vanished into the cold wind of night. Xinlong was left alone in the silence, his arms empty, his chest hollow. The unease inside him—some quiet warning—he dismissed as longing. When morning came, it felt wrong. The air is to still and too pale. Xinlong gathered firewood by himself, picked fruits and vegetables with his basket—alone, without the warmth that used to walk beside him.
Then came a noise from the river by the market—a sudden clamor, the sound of panic, and cries for help from someone drowning. Something deep within him—an instinct he’d long tried to bury—flared awake. He pushed through the crowd and saw a boy flailing in the current. “Someone, help!” the child screamed.
No one moved. Not one among the crowd knew how to save him. Xinlong’s breath caught. His basket fell into the wet grass. The quiet promise he’d made to Junmin—to live peacefully, to stay unseen—was over.
He ran into the river, the cold biting his skin as he dove into the depth that felt as heavy as mankind’s fear of its own kind. Swim, Xinlong, swim, his heart said. He reached the boy and pulled him close, dragging him toward the riverbank. “Are you all right?” Xinlong asked softly. The boy’s eyes widened with terror. He tore away and ran to his mother as if chased by fire itself. Around them, the faces of the men changed—fear, confusion, and then hatred.
A woman screamed, “WITCH!”
And like a curse loosed into the wind, the cry spread from mouth to mouth. Whispers followed: That’s what happens when you let men lie with men. Witches—deceivers, all of them. With fire in his chest, Xinlong shouted, “I am not a witch!” Then, softer, “I only saved a child from drowning.”
A broad-shouldered man stepped forward. “Then tell me, did that child not see you flying above the water, and feel relieved to be saved by a witch trick?” The crowd’s gaze turned toward the boy, who shook his head frantically and hid behind his mother—the first to scream.
“I used no trickery,” Xinlong pleaded. “Anyone could do what I did, if they learned. I studied it once, by the sea.”
But the whispers grew darker. Then the mother’s brother, a local doctor, stepped out and sneered, “You can heal the sick, can’t you? Bring back those at death’s edge? Tell me that’s not witchcraft.”
Ah, envy—one of man’s quietest sins, but the most corrosive. The good he had done became proof of the evil they wished to see. So they seized him. Bound his hands. Dragged him through the village to the barren field where witches were burned. “Burn him! Burn the sodomite! Burn the one who plays God—who revives the dead!” they screamed. Xinlong’s tears were real—not for the fire, but for the absence of Junmin’s arms to hold him through it.
Flames bloomed like red flowers. Smoke curled into a gray sky. Beneath that storm of hate, Xinlong thought for a moment he saw beauty—a red mist swirling like silk among the chaos. A portal, perhaps. But his lungs filled with smoke before he could know. Then suddenly—cold. The fire gone. And Junmin was there, holding him.
“Love… the fire’s gone now. There’s no heat, no pain, only the cold left,” Junmin whispered, his voice breaking.
Xinlong smiled faintly. “You promised to hold me until morning,” he murmured. And the sun rose above them, pale and merciless. “Promise me,” Xinlong said weakly, “don’t seek revenge. It’s exhausting.” He lifted his hand to touch Junmin’s face. Junmin held it, trembling.
Tears fell freely. “How could they burn someone so kind? How could they?” His voice echoed through the stunned crowd, trembling with grief. “Wake up, my love, and I swear I’ll let it go. Just wake up… live with me forever, please.” Xinlong’s smile deepened. To him, this was truly the end.
Junmin bit his lover’s neck, drawing blood—to make Xinlong eternal, so the fire would never take him again. But fear haunted him. What if Xinlong hated immortality, or worse, became a hollow creature—a vampire without emotion? Xinlong’s eyes fluttered open. “My love… please, drink my blood too,” Junmin begged. His voice broke. “Please.”
He guided Xinlong’s lips to his throat. “Drink.”
For one who is bitten by a Dracula, to survive, they must drink the vampire’s blood for a year—lest they become a beast without mind or memory. And so Junmin gave him his life, drop by drop. He kept his promise—not to burn the fools who had burned his lover alive, but to burn the village itself, its soil and stone, so that no one could ever again plant hatred there.
Then he carried Xinlong to his castle, locking the doors of the world behind them. So they could live—forever—where no one could wound the fragile, naïve heart that once tried only to save.