ChaeYoung raised her pencil to her scarf, itching the bite mindlessly as she watched her Literature teacher wave his arms, growing passionate about his subject. She felt a chill rush down her spine as a students book hit the ground. Her hands were on her neck instantly, the crawl of her assailants breath ghosted through her mind tricking her senses. She could almost pretend he was there, her mind was pretending he was after all. With a scowl she threw her books into her bag and stood up, not bothering to be quiet as she left the room. She felt the rooms eyes on her, but she didn't care. She would deal with the consequences later. No doubt her teacher would tell her father, and her father would get angry with her. She could deal with it. 

  Every step made her jeans itch at her wounds, making her legs burn. She had smothered them in a healing paste earlier but it had yet to help. Grumbling she stumbled into the library and sat at her table. Her fingers shook as they twitched through her hair, trying to smooth the frizzy strands. She imagined even Job looked better than she did at the worst of his times. Her tongue swished in as she felt the curious twinge in her stomach again. All morning she had been struck with cravings, she had tried pizza, doughnuts, kimchi, chocolate, even natto but nothing had soothed her. Her skin was still itchy from shredding it with soap and a cloth the night previous, and every sound made her jump. She was a mess. Her body was lost between panic and temptation, one half of it made sense, the other half was lost with no meaning. Her fingers twitched against her scalp as a cynical laugh burst past her lips. Perhaps she was attacked by a vampire, maybe she was losing her humanity. Maybe the taste that had been left in was blood, she could be losing herself to a fictional world. 

  The burning pain in her legs brought her to reality. 

  She had been attacked last night, bitten by some maniac, she hadn't found a real creature of the night. Chaeyoung scowled at the table she was sitting at as she scolded herself. She was trying to romanticize the situation to try and make it less terrifying. If she pretended it was some fantastical event perhaps she could rationalize it and pretend she had never been attacked, maybe it was just the mans self defense, maybe he was just hungry. But she wasn't going to be that weak. She refused to lean upon the ideas of some love-sick and illogical preteen. Instead she would have to admit to herself that she had merely been assaulted and that was that. Some lunatic thought he was a va