Chapter Text
Tis’ not death I fear but loneliness, as I spend my eternity here upon this Earth. Human life is yet so fleeting and fragile. I have witnessed it once more. Those I had called my friends have fallen ill of this deadly disease. Soon they will leave this mortal coil. I fear I will be alone again, as I always am, in the end.”
From the diary of Lee Minhyuk, 1350
--
The black death rules over London with an iron fist. The once so noble city now desolate and in disarray, what once was the kingdom of men is now the kingdom of rats.
The streets are filled with the dead and the dying. The stench of sick, rotten flesh is unbearable. The wails of those who have lost and those who are losing echoes through the narrow streets. The city is lost. The city is dying.
A man dressed in black makes his way through the bodies. He wears a mask to cover his face. (but unlike those who call themselves plague doctors, it protects him from the rays of the sun, and allows for anonymous travel) Its curved beak is filled with herbs and spices. (they foolishly believe it will protect them from the disease. It does not, but he prefers it over the smell of death.)
Wretched hands cling onto the tails of his overcoat. He pities them, these brave souls so desperately clutching onto life. He cannot save them. They are too far gone. Their black flesh rotten, their skin covered in bleeding buboes, their breaths ragged and shallow. There is no hope for them. No salvation. Only death. (All he can do is pray it comes quickly.)
Perhaps death shall visit them at night. A merciful end to all their suffering. He smiles beneath the mask. He shall not go hungry tonight, or tomorrow, or anytime soon for as long as the plague continues to spread. (For three more years does the plague rage on, claiming millions of lives across the whole of Europe.)
--
Night falls, but the city never really sleeps. The sick do not stop dying, instead, the crying continues in the dark. He has taken off the mask. He has no need for it. He wades through the bodies. He drinks from some, snapping their necks after he has had enough, silencing their endless cries. He feels no joy in taking their lives, but it is the most humane thing he can do for them.
He tastes the sickness in their blood, but it does not harm him, as no mortal sickness can.
As he moves from street to street, he hears a voice. He follows its sweet sound, finding a boy singing softly while holding the body of a woman. He is crying, the boy, crying over the loss of his mother. Minhyuk watches from a distance with a sad smile. The boy’s voice is beautiful, soothing, sorrowful. A welcome change from the cries of the dying. He gently brushes his mother’s hair. The boy cannot be older than twenty. (He, too, had also not been much older than twenty when he died, Minhyuk reminds himself.)
He isn’t wearing any protective gear, or anything, when he touches the dead. It cannot last long before he, too, is infected.
He follows him, over the next few months, from a distance. The boy is surprisingly resilient, staying healthy in a city of the dead and the dying. But one can only delay the inevitable for so long.
The boy falls sick.
And Minhyuk makes a choice.
He has grown attached to the boy. He does not wish to see him suffer, he does not wish to see him slowly perish. So he visits him, one night, when the sickness hasn’t claimed any of his limbs yet and his flesh is not yet covered in sores and boils.
“Are you an angel?” The boy asks, as Minhyuk descends from the roof dressed in black. “Have you come to take me away?”
“I am no angel, boy.” Minhyuk says. “But I will take away your suffering, if you so please.”
--
The boy, whose name is Shin Hoseok, dies at the age of twenty-two. And from his mortal form is born a vampire, a creature of the night eternal, a living undead.
His skin is as white as the first snow. His hair is the color of chestnut. His eyes are a dark auburn. He is kind, and he is gentle.
The boy, whose name is Shin Hoseok, becomes Minhyuk’s first, true friend.
--
“Solitude is all that I have known for a great many years. Now it is but a distant memory. Hoseok rarely ever leaves my side. He is eager to learn, and eager to please. He is a wonderful companion. Our travels have taken us across Europe, and beyond. We have crossed a great amount of land, and sea. I do not yet know where we are headed, but I suppose it does not matter. Time is on our side.”
From the diary of Lee Minhyuk, 1368
They arrive in what they later find out is the city of Nanjing at the time of a great celebration. Red banners are hung from every building. Flags are paraded around. People are cheering. Soldiers are proudly lined up in front of the royal palace, where the new emperor waves to his people. An era of chaos and turmoil had ended, ushering in a dynasty of (relative) peace and prosperity.
It is here, that Minhyuk loses Hoseok in a crowd. Minhyuk is overwhelmed by the roar of the crowd, the sound of music coming from every side, the bright flashing colors, the smell of food and alcohol and the big city. Hoseok is not. Hoseok is excited and curious, and he lets himself be swept away in the waves of people.
Minhyuk doesn’t see him again for almost a whole year. He is worried sick, but Hoseok has disappeared without a trace. It’s as if he has dropped off the face of the earth.
The Hoseok that comes back is different. He is still the sweet, good kid that he found singing in the streets, but he is different, still. Quieter. Darker. More mature. He won’t talk about what happened, or where he had been, but Minhyuk knows something must have happened.
They do not return to China, after that.