Chapter Text
Kenny's Pov
The floor was slick with sweat, not just mine but all five of ours, the kind that soaked into the polished wood and clung there as if it had no intention of leaving, mixing with the heat of the room until the air itself felt thick enough to breathe in and choke on. The mirrors lining the walls had long since fogged over, streaked with the blurred remains of our movements, reflections layered over reflections until none of them looked entirely real anymore. Someone's jacket hung over the speaker, abandoned days ago and never claimed, as though even something as simple as picking it up required more energy than any of us had left to spare.
Aito was slumped against the wall, his chest rising too quickly, his skin pale beneath the sheen of sweat, his throat exposed in a way that made something in me sharpen instinctively before I forced it down. Nathan stood a few feet away, still humming under his breath, marking the choreography in half-time even though the music had already cut out, his body refusing to let go of the rhythm even when the session should have ended an hour ago. Hyuk sat in the corner, cross-legged, eyes closed, earbuds in, his stillness more commanding than movement ever could be, because he didn't need to prove anything anymore. He had already perfected it. What he was doing now wasn't practice—it was control, a quiet reminder that no matter how far we pushed ourselves, there was always another level waiting.
And me—
I didn't stop.
I never did.
For two years, I hadn't allowed myself to.
Two years since I had stepped back into Seok's world, into a life I had once abandoned without hesitation, thinking that distance would be enough to cut whatever still bound me to him. Two years of forcing myself into something smaller than what I was, into movements that had to be measured, restrained, calculated down to the smallest detail so that no one looking too closely would notice what didn't belong.
My sneakers dragged slightly against the floor before I corrected it, smoothing the motion out before it could become noticeable, before it could become wrong. Every part of me resisted the limitation. My body wanted to move faster than the beat, to hit harder, to take up more space than it was allowed, and every second I spent holding that back felt like gripping something volatile in my bare hands, knowing that if I loosened my hold even slightly, it would tear through everything around me.
You don't get to look inhuman anymore.
That was the rule.
One more turn, one more sharp pivot of the hip, one more controlled extension of my arm, every movement landing exactly where it needed to, every detail perfected to the point where it stopped feeling like movement at all and started feeling like performance in the most artificial sense of the word.
I caught my reflection mid-turn, and for a brief moment, I didn't recognize it.
Not because it was wrong—
but because it wasn't.
There was no trace of the person I used to be, no scar, no imperfection, nothing that suggested I had ever lived a life outside of this one. Just smooth skin, controlled expression, something polished into perfection in a way that felt closer to manufactured than real.
And then there was Seok.
He hadn't moved from where he stood near Hyuk, arms crossed loosely over his chest, a water bottle untouched at his feet as if it were nothing more than a prop meant to complete the image he presented. He watched in silence, his gaze steady, assessing, and there was something about the way he stood there that dragged memory up from places I had spent years trying to bury.
He used to drink last.
Back when blood still meant something between us, when it wasn't measured out and handed to us in sterile bags, when it still felt like something alive instead of something processed and stripped of everything that made it matter. I remembered the way he would wipe his mouth afterward, quick and almost self-conscious, as if the act itself carried more weight than the hunger driving it, as if he still believed there was something in him worth preserving.
Now he stood there in clean lines and careful composure, his face untouched by anything real, and his eyes—those same eyes—fixed on me like I was something to be evaluated rather than remembered.
I hated him for that.
I hated myself more for wanting him to look at me at all.
"Reset."
Hyuk's voice cut through the room, sharp enough to pull everyone back into place without effort.
"From the second chorus."
Aito groaned under his breath but pushed himself upright anyway, Nathan wiping his face with a towel before nodding and stepping back into position without hesitation. I followed, falling into formation as naturally as breathing, every count already etched into me in a way that went beyond muscle memory and settled somewhere deeper, somewhere obsessive.
I hadn't fed in three days.
Not since the last time we'd been in this room.
It made everything worse.
The sound of Aito's heartbeat carried across the space too clearly, too insistently, the rhythm of it steady and alive in a way that made my teeth ache if I let myself focus on it for too long. Nathan's scent lingered faintly in the air, citrus and something clean, something unmistakably human, and beneath all of that—
fainter, colder—
Seok.
I swallowed hard and forced myself to focus.
The music dropped.
We moved.
Every step felt like walking a line drawn too thin to hold my weight, every motion requiring more restraint than strength, because strength wasn't the problem. It never had been. The problem was always how much of it I had to hide.
I moved ahead of the beat again, catching myself just in time, pulling back, forcing my body into alignment with something slower, something limited, even as every instinct I had pushed in the opposite direction.
Hyuk had warned me when I first joined.
Not everyone here knows.
Keep it that way.
So I did.
I danced like something that had to pretend it wasn't what it was, like something built for destruction trying to pass as harmless, every movement controlled to the point where it stopped feeling natural entirely.
By the time the music cut out again, my shirt clung to my back, my breathing steady in a way that had nothing to do with exhaustion and everything to do with performance.
Hyuk clapped once.
"Good," he said, his tone even. "Good enough."
Aito dropped to the floor with a relieved groan, Nathan stretching his arms over his head with a small smile, and I reached for my water bottle, taking a sip I didn't need just to give my hands something to do.
Seok didn't move.
I could feel his gaze before I turned, the weight of it settling between my shoulder blades in a way that felt too familiar, too close to something I had never managed to forget.
Two years.
And we still hadn't said anything that mattered.
I wiped my face slowly, giving myself a second longer than necessary before I looked at him, and when I did, the difference between memory and reality hit harder than it should have.
He looked the same.
That was the problem.
The same controlled expression, the same careful posture, the same distance in his eyes that I had once mistaken for strength instead of avoidance.
"When's vocal check?" I asked, my voice coming out flatter than I intended.
He blinked, just once, as if I had pulled him out of something he hadn't meant to linger in.
"In an hour," he said. "Studio B."
I nodded, already turning away, already ready to leave it at that, because anything more than this—anything that reached past the surface—was something I had spent two years avoiding.
"You're overcompensating."
The words stopped me where I stood.
Slowly, I turned back, something sharp settling into my chest before I even spoke.
"What?"
Seok stepped closer, his movements quiet enough that they barely registered, but the distance between us closed all the same, and I felt it more than I saw it.
"You're anticipating the beat," he said, his voice calm, measured in a way that felt almost deliberate. "Your shoulder pulls too far on the pivot. You're overcompensating."
It shouldn't have gotten to me.
It wasn't harsh.
It wasn't even wrong.
But hearing it from him—
after everything—
made something in me snap tight.
I let out a short laugh, the sound hollow even to my own ears. "Funny," I said, tilting my head slightly. "It's been a while since you cared enough to correct me."
"I'm not correcting you," he replied, and there was something in his tone that made my grip tighten around the bottle in my hand. "I'm trying to keep you from standing out."
"Right," I said, the word dragging. "Wouldn't want anyone noticing."
"That's not what I meant."
"Then what did you mean?"
For a second—just a second—something shifted in his expression, something too small for anyone else to notice, but I saw it.
I always did.
"I meant," he said slowly, "that you're not hiding the way you used to."
That did it.
I stepped forward before I could stop myself, closing the distance between us until there was barely anything left of it, my voice dropping lower without losing any of its edge.
"Maybe I don't want to hide," I said, holding his gaze in a way that felt more like a challenge than anything else.
His throat moved as he swallowed, but he didn't answer, and that silence—the same silence he had always used to avoid anything real—only made the anger simmering under my skin sharpen further.
"It's different now," I continued, my voice quieter but no less cutting. "We're not weapons anymore, Seok. We're products."
The flinch was subtle.
Barely there.
But I caught it.
The moment stretched longer than it should have, thin and taut between us, and I could feel it in the way Seok's body shifted ever so slightly, the smallest recoil that anyone else in the room would have missed entirely. It wasn't obvious, not dramatic, not even something that could be named without looking too closely—but I had always been good at noticing the things he tried to hide.
"You think I wanted this?" he asked, his voice low, controlled in that way that made it sound almost steady, even when it wasn't.
"You stayed," I replied immediately, the words cutting through the space between us without hesitation. "That's the same thing."
His jaw tightened, the only outward sign that anything I said had landed at all. "I didn't have a choice."
Something in me snapped at that—not loudly, not visibly, but deep enough that I felt it in the way my hands curled at my sides, in the way my voice dropped when I answered him.
"You always had a choice," I said, quieter now, but sharper for it.
The silence that followed wasn't empty. It stretched, drawn tight like something about to break, and for a moment, everything else in the room fell away. Nathan's voice, Aito's quiet laughter somewhere behind us, the lingering echo of the music—all of it blurred into something distant and irrelevant until it was just us again, standing too close, saying too much and not nearly enough.
Seok was the first to look away.
He always was.
"We shouldn't do this here," he said, his tone flattening back into something safe, something measured.
A humorless breath left me, not quite a laugh, not quite anything else. "Right," I muttered, turning away before I could push it further, before I said something that couldn't be taken back. "Wouldn't want to ruin the image."
I didn't wait for a response. If he had one, I didn't want to hear it—not when my chest felt too tight, not when the weight of memory had already started pressing in, thick and unrelenting. I grabbed my bag, slinging it over my shoulder with more force than necessary, and only then did I realize that my hands were shaking.
Not from exhaustion.
From him.
From everything that still hadn't settled, even after all this time.
Two years ago, I had convinced myself that coming back would be simple, that I could step into this life and treat it like any other role, any other performance. Just another idol, another face in a system built to polish people into something marketable and easy to consume.
I hadn't accounted for him.
For the way he still lingered in everything—the way my body moved, the way my voice carried, the way my thoughts circled back to him no matter how many times I forced them away.
I had told myself I was over it.
That whatever we had been had burned out long ago.
I had been wrong.
And that was the worst part.
By the time I stepped out into the hallway, the air felt different—cooler, cleaner, stripped of the heat that had clung to the practice room—but it didn't help. Nothing about this place ever did. I caught my reflection in the glass as I passed, fragmented by the angle of the light, and for a second, it didn't feel like I was looking at myself at all.
The smile didn't belong to me.
The face didn't age.
And my eyes—
my eyes still held something I refused to name.
Immortality wasn't a gift.
It was something that stayed open, something that never healed, no matter how much time passed.
And Seok—
Seok was still the deepest cut of it.
I didn't go to Studio B.
Not yet.
Instead, I walked.
No destination, no intention, just movement for the sake of it, my hoodie pulled up and my earbuds in, even though the music wasn't playing. It was enough to keep people from stopping me, enough to create the illusion that I was occupied, that I belonged exactly where I was supposed to be.
The building itself felt wrong in a way I had never managed to get used to. Too clean, too controlled, every surface polished until it reflected something back at you whether you wanted it to or not. White walls stretched endlessly, broken only by glass and soft lighting that never dimmed, and cameras sat at every angle—not for security, not really, but for visibility.
Content.
Everything here existed to be seen.
Even the things that shouldn't be.
Singing Beetle's third floor belonged to us entirely, locked away from the rest of the company in a way that felt less like privacy and more like containment. Training rooms, dorm access, private elevators, windows treated to filter out the worst of the sunlight—it was all designed to make things easier, safer, controlled.
A perfect environment.
As long as you didn't think too hard about what you were inside it.
My first year here, I had broken more things than I could count.
Phones shattered against walls, lights knocked loose from ceilings, a mirror that cracked straight down the center after I hit it too hard, a dent in the dorm wall that had to be repaired overnight before anyone could ask too many questions.
They called it stress.
Adjustment.
Pressure.
I let them.
It was easier that way.
They didn't know what it actually was.
They didn't hear the hunger.
It wasn't a thought.
It wasn't even a feeling, not in the way humans understood it.
It was a sound.
A low, constant hum that never really went away, threading through everything, growing louder the longer I ignored it.
Three days.
That was all it had taken for it to start pressing in again.
Every heartbeat in the building felt too loud, too present, each one a reminder of how thin the line really was between control and something else entirely. The scent of people lingered in the air, layered and distinct, and it would have been so easy—too easy—to follow one, to close the distance, to let instinct take over instead of fighting it every second.
I hadn't fed from a human in months.
What I had instead came in sealed bags, chilled and measured, labeled neatly as if that made it anything other than what it was.
Hyuk called it discipline.
Seok called it safety.
I called it starvation dressed up as control.
The trophy case along the wall caught my attention as I passed, the glass reflecting back a version of me that looked almost unreal under the lighting. Awards lined the shelves, polished metal and engraved plates marking achievements that didn't feel like mine, a platinum plaque from a pre-debut single that had gone viral, a mask from one of our concept stages resting behind it like something symbolic.
I barely saw any of it.
What I saw was my own reflection.
Flawless.
Untouched.
Wrong.
Vampires didn't age the way humans did, but they didn't just stop—they erased. Imperfections faded, scars disappeared, anything that suggested time or damage or history slowly stripped away until all that was left was something smooth and unmarked.
Once, I had a scar along my jaw.
A blade.
A fight we barely survived.
Seok had kissed it once, his lips lingering just long enough that I had felt it long after it should have faded.
He had said it made me look real.
Now there was nothing left of it.
No trace.
No proof.
Just perfection.
I looked away.
Kept walking.
Goryeo, 1299
The world felt quieter beneath the tree, but not in the way silence usually came. It wasn't empty, wasn't hollow—it was full, alive with the low hum of insects hidden in the grass, the distant whisper of wind threading through the mountains, the soft creak of branches shifting overhead. It wrapped around us instead of pressing in, warm and steady, like something meant to be held onto rather than endured.
It was the only kind of quiet I had ever trusted.
The sun had begun its slow descent, not yet low enough to fade but tilted just enough to spill through the leaves in broken patterns, scattering gold across the ground and over us in shifting fragments of light. We should have been gone hours ago. Patrol along the north ridge, full gear, full attention, no deviation from orders. Our captain would have torn into us without hesitation if he found out we had slipped away again.
But that had never stopped Seok.
And it had never stopped me from following.
We lay stretched out in the tall grass, our backs pressed against the thick roots of a white pine that had likely stood there longer than either of us had been alive. His shoulder rested lightly against mine, close enough that I could feel the heat of him through the thin fabric of our uniforms. My boots had been abandoned somewhere in the grass, my toes digging into the cool earth as if I needed something solid to remind me this moment was real.
Seok still had his shirt half-buttoned, the collar loose where I had tugged it open earlier, and just beneath it, near the edge of his throat, a faint red mark bloomed against his skin.
Mine.
I let my gaze linger there longer than necessary, memorizing it in a way I didn't quite understand yet.
He looked relaxed, at least at first glance, but I knew him better than that. I could see it in the subtle movements—the way his fingers curled and uncurled against his belt, the tension that never quite left his body no matter how still he tried to appear.
That was Seok.
Still on the surface.
Storm beneath.
"You're thinking too hard again," I murmured, my voice quiet enough that it didn't break the calm around us.
He didn't turn his head, but I saw the faint shift at the corner of his mouth, the smallest acknowledgment that he had heard me.
"Hard not to," he replied, his tone even, though there was something beneath it that didn't quite match the words, "when your leg keeps brushing mine every time you move."
A smile pulled at my mouth despite myself. "That's not me moving," I said lightly. "That's me reminding you that it's been three days since you kissed me properly."
That got his attention.
He turned his head then, dark hair falling just enough into his eyes to soften the sharpness of his gaze, but it didn't dull it. It never did. His eyes moved over my face in a way that felt quick and careful at the same time, like he was taking in more than he was willing to admit.
"We kissed this morning," he said.
I huffed softly. "That wasn't a kiss. That was you brushing your mouth against mine before training so no one would notice."
"It still counted."
"No," I said, shaking my head slightly, "it didn't."
A quiet sound left him, something caught between amusement and resignation. "You're insufferable."
"And you like it."
"I tolerate it."
The lie sat there, obvious and unconvincing, and I didn't bother calling him out on it—not when I could see the truth of it written more clearly in the way he looked at me than anything he would ever say aloud.
I shifted onto my side, propping myself up on one elbow so I could face him fully, closing the distance just enough to make the space between us feel intentional rather than accidental. He stayed where he was, arms now folded behind his head, but his attention didn't waver, his gaze steady in a way that made something in my chest tighten.
I reached for him slowly, giving him time to pull away if he wanted to.
He didn't.
My fingers brushed lightly against the hollow of his throat before trailing lower, skimming over the edge of his collarbone, and I felt the shift in him immediately—the subtle hitch in his breath, the way his body stilled just slightly, as if he had to think about staying where he was instead of reacting.
"You're cruel," he said, his voice quieter now, though it lacked any real accusation.
I shook my head, my thumb lingering against his skin. "No," I said softly. "I'm in love."
The words settled between us with more weight than they should have needed, and I saw it in the way his expression changed, in the way his eyes sharpened as they fixed on mine.
"Kenny..."
"You don't have to say it back," I added quickly, though the words came out rougher than I intended. "You never do."
For a moment, he didn't move.
Didn't speak.
And I felt it then—that familiar edge of doubt creeping in, the quiet fear that I had said too much again, pushed too far into something he wasn't ready to meet me in.
Then he moved.
He pushed himself upright, turning toward me fully, and before I could second-guess anything, his hands came up to frame my face, his grip firm enough to hold me there without hesitation.
And then he kissed me.
Not careful.
Not restrained.
There was nothing measured about it, nothing distant or controlled, and it stole the breath from my lungs before I even realized I had lost it. His hands trembled slightly where they held my jaw, and I grabbed at his shirt without thinking, pulling him closer as if distance itself had become something unbearable.
The world around us faded, or maybe it burned—I couldn't tell which—because all I could feel was him, the press of his mouth against mine, the heat of him, the way he held on like letting go wasn't an option.
When we finally pulled back, it was only just enough to breathe, our foreheads resting together, our breaths uneven in a way that had nothing to do with exertion.
"I do love you," he said, the words barely more than a whisper, as if speaking them any louder would make them real in a way he wasn't ready for. "I have. I do."
Something inside me gave way at that, not breaking, not quite, but shifting in a way that left me unsteady.
I leaned in again, pressing a kiss to his cheek, then his jaw, then the corner of his mouth, unable to stop myself now that I had what I had been asking for.
"I know," I murmured. "I've always known. But hearing it is better."
A quiet laugh escaped him, soft and unsteady, and then his hands slid down to my waist as he pulled me fully into his lap.
I went without hesitation, settling there like I belonged, my arms slipping around his shoulders as easily as breathing. The sunlight filtered through the branches above us, casting everything in warm gold, and for a moment, the world felt impossibly still.
We kissed again, slower this time, softer, something familiar and steady replacing the earlier intensity, and I let myself sink into it completely, knowing even then that this moment wouldn't last.
It never did.
"I wish we could stay like this," I said quietly against his lips. "Just like this. Forever."
He didn't answer right away.
When he did, his voice had changed, the softness giving way to something quieter, heavier.
"Forever's too long."
I pulled back slightly, searching his face. "You don't mean that."
"I do," he said, his hands tightening slightly at my waist, grounding himself more than me. "We're not meant for forever, Kenny. We're meant for now. And whatever comes after."
I didn't like that.
Not from him.
"Is something wrong?" I asked, my voice losing some of its ease. "Did something happen?"
He hesitated, just long enough to confirm that something had.
Then he shook his head anyway. "Just a feeling," he said. "Like something's changing."
The words settled uneasily in my chest, but I forced a small smile, trying to pull us back from whatever edge he was standing on.
"You're getting poetic again," I said.
He didn't return it.
"I had a dream," he continued, his voice quieter now. "You were bleeding. I couldn't stop it."
The air shifted.
I felt it in the way my chest tightened, in the way the warmth of the moment dulled slightly at the edges.
"Was it a vision?" I asked.
He didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
I knew.
Seok had always been like that, his instincts sharper than anyone else's, his dreams brushing too close to something real more often than they should have. The others called it luck.
I knew better.
"I'm not going anywhere," I said, reaching for him again, grounding both of us. "And even if I was, you'd stop it."
He looked at me in a way I couldn't quite read.
"I'm not sure I could," he said.
And something in me didn't like that at all.
Seoul, 2025
It was nearing two in the morning when I finally stopped pretending that sleep was something I could reach.
The dorm had settled into that artificial quiet that only existed in places like this, where silence wasn't natural but constructed—layered over the faint mechanical hum of appliances, the distant shift of pipes behind the walls, the occasional creak of a building that never truly rested. Somewhere down the hall, Nathan had fallen asleep with his earbuds still in, whatever music he'd left playing likely bleeding softly into the dark. Aito had claimed the couch hours ago, curled in on himself with the kind of careless exhaustion that only someone still close to humanity could manage, his breathing steady except for the occasional soft snore that broke the silence in predictable intervals.
I lay on my back, staring up at the ceiling, one arm tucked behind my head, the other resting loosely across my chest, as if the position alone might trick my body into believing it was tired.
It didn't work.
It never did.
Seoul didn't have stars. Not the kind I remembered, not the kind that used to stretch endlessly across the sky in places untouched by light. Here, the night was artificial, fractured into glowing reflections—neon signs flickering across glass, streetlights bleeding into the haze of pollution, the steady blink of a surveillance drone hovering somewhere beyond the balcony like a watchful eye that never closed.
I found myself wondering, not for the first time, whether the tree was still there.
The white pine.
The one from that day.
I already knew the answer.
The world didn't keep things like that.
Not for people like us.
Especially not for something that refused to die.
With a quiet exhale, I pushed myself upright, letting my legs swing over the edge of the bed. My phone buzzed softly against the nightstand, the screen lighting up with a reminder from management—vocal conditioning, eight in the morning, restrictions listed neatly beneath it like instructions for maintaining something fragile.
No caffeine. No honey. Hydrate.
I dismissed it without reading it twice.
The screen lingered just long enough to expose the image I hadn't bothered to change in months—a blurry backstage photo, all of us caught mid-laughter, sweat still clinging to our skin, water bottles raised like a celebration of something that didn't quite feel like ours.
Hyuk was at the center.
Nathan leaning in.
Aito half out of frame.
And behind us—
Seok.
Not part of the moment.
Just watching.
He was always watching.
I stood, moving quietly out of the room, my bare feet making no sound against the floor as I stepped into the main space. The city stretched beyond the glass, glittering in fractured light, every building outlined in neon that pulsed and flickered in a way that felt too alive for something so artificial.
A convenience store sign buzzed faintly across the street.
A plastic surgery clinic glowed just beneath it.
Everything here felt temporary.
Replaceable.
Even us.
The mini fridge sat tucked against the counter, its low hum almost comforting in its consistency. When I opened it, the cold air spilled out in a soft rush, revealing the neatly arranged blood packs inside, each labeled, each measured, each reduced to something clinical.
Controlled.
I stared at mine for longer than I should have.
Didn't take it.
The hunger had already begun to settle in, slow and deliberate, pressing behind my teeth like a warning I had learned to ignore. It wasn't sharp yet, not unbearable, but it was there—constant, patient, waiting for the moment I slipped.
I closed the fridge without reaching for it.
Leaning back against the counter, I let my eyes fall shut, but that only made it worse.
The memory came back immediately.
Sunlight against skin.
The scent of pine and earth.
Seok's breath warm against my ear.
That single day beneath the tree had stayed with me longer than anything else—not the battles, not the blood, not even the night everything changed. It lingered in a way nothing else did, untouched by time in a way that felt almost cruel.
Back then, he had just been Seok.
And I had just been me.
We hadn't been anything more.
We hadn't needed to be.
Now, everything about it felt distant, unreachable, something that belonged to a life that no longer existed except in fragments I couldn't let go of.
Now I lived in the same space as him again, moving through the same routines, breathing the same air, existing in a proximity that should have made things easier but instead only made everything sharper.
He hadn't come to my room.
Not that I expected him to.
Whatever we had been had ended long before this—buried somewhere between duty and silence and choices neither of us had ever really undone.
Or maybe it hadn't ended at all.
Maybe it had just been waiting.
I pressed my hand lightly against my chest, as if that would ease the tension there, as if it would quiet something that had never really settled in the first place.
It didn't.
My thoughts dragged me back further than I wanted them to go.
Back to the night everything changed.
The night they chose us.
I could still see it—how the noble had entered without sound, how the air itself had shifted around him in a way that felt wrong, like something unnatural had stepped into a place it didn't belong. He had called us forward without explanation, out of forty men, his voice calm in a way that didn't match what followed.
Me.
And Seok.
Chosen.
For loyalty.
For strength.
For something they called love.
No one had warned us that love would be the first thing they would take.
My fingers brushed unconsciously against my lips, the memory of Seok's kiss still lingering there in a way that time hadn't erased, something ancient and unfinished that refused to fade no matter how many years had passed.
A soft creak broke the silence.
I opened my eyes.
Seok stood in the hallway.
Barefoot.
Shirtless.
His hair still damp from a shower, water catching faintly in the low light as it traced down the line of his neck. Without the colored lenses, his eyes were exposed—silver catching the darkness in a way that made them look almost unreal.
For a moment, neither of us moved.
The distance between us wasn't far.
But it felt like something heavier than space.
He looked at me like something reopened, something he hadn't meant to touch again.
I looked at him the way I always did—
like I hated him for what he'd done, and hated myself more for still wanting him anyway.
He moved first.
Crossing the room slowly, deliberately, stopping beside the fridge as if he needed something to do with his hands, something to anchor himself.
"You should sleep," he said, his voice low, steady, controlled.
"I'm not tired," I replied, my tone just as flat.
He didn't argue.
Didn't push.
He never did.
He opened the fridge, pulled out a blood pack, and bit into it cleanly, his movements precise enough that not a single drop spilled. Even something as simple as feeding became ritual in his hands—controlled, measured, contained.
I watched his throat move as he swallowed.
Felt the ache in my own mouth sharpen in response.
Of course he noticed.
He always noticed.
Without looking at me directly, he extended the pack toward me.
I hesitated.
"You don't have to starve yourself to prove anything," he said quietly.
The words settled heavier than they should have.
I took it from him carefully, making sure our fingers didn't touch, even though the space between us already felt too small.
The blood was warm enough to feel real, but not enough to satisfy anything beyond the surface, and I swallowed it anyway, forcing the hunger back just enough to dull the edge.
We stood there side by side, the silence stretching between us again, filled only by the faint hum of the fridge and the distant noise of the city beyond the glass.
Two monsters.
Dressed like something else.
"How long are we going to do this?" I asked finally, my voice quieter now, but no less steady.
He didn't look at me. "Do what?"
"This," I said, turning slightly toward him, the frustration I had been holding back slipping through. "The pretending. The distance. Acting like none of it meant anything."
"That was a long time ago."
"Not to me."
The answer came too quickly, too sharp to take back, but I didn't try.
Seok exhaled slowly, running a hand through his damp hair, the gesture more revealing than anything he said.
"You think I don't remember?" he asked, his voice tightening despite himself. "You think I don't wake up with your name still there and nothing to do with it?"
The words hit harder than anything else he had said.
Not because they were loud.
Because they weren't.
I stepped closer before I could stop myself.
"Then say it," I said.
His gaze snapped to mine.
"Say what?"
"That you still love me."
The space between us shrank to nothing.
He flinched.
And this time—
he couldn't hide it.
"Say it, Seok," I pressed, my voice low but unrelenting. "Or lie to me. But don't stand there and pretend you feel nothing."
For a moment, he looked like he might refuse.
Like he might choose silence again.
Then his composure cracked—just enough.
"I never stopped," he said, the words rough at the edges, like they had been held back too long.
Something in my chest tightened painfully at that.
We stood there, close enough that I could feel the heat of him again, but neither of us moved to close the distance the rest of the way.
Outside, the city continued as if nothing had changed, lights blinking, voices carrying faintly through the glass, the world moving forward without pause.
Inside—
everything had shifted.
I reached out slowly, giving him time to pull away.
He didn't.
My fingers closed around his hand, the contact brief but grounding, something real in a way nothing else had felt in a long time.
And for the first time in centuries—
the silence between us meant something different.