I raised the cup to my lips and drained it in one swallow. The amber liquid burned my throat like I'd just stuck a branding iron down it. I raised my hand and got the bartender's attention. "Another one." I said, shaking the small glass between my thumb and forefinger. "Don't you think you've had enough, sir?" He asked skeptically. "I have the money to pay if that's what you're worried about." I said dryly. "And if you had the night I had you'd be drinking even more."

The bartender looked at me for a second, then shrugged and filled my glass. "Leave the bottle." I said, putting some money on the counter. Taking the money, he slammed the bottle next to the glass, and left off to attend his other customers.

I drained the glass again, then got up carrying the bottle, and headed out the door. The bar I was in wasn't exactly in the best part of town, but seeing as what I did on a daily basis disgusted the out of me and was hardly legal, I couldn't bring myself to go to the brighter lit, casino like bars in the upper class part of town, even if I did have the money to afford spending an entire week in one.

As I staggered on my way to the dingy attic like room that I called home, a figure detached itself from the wall ahead of me.

He looked me up and down, then his eyes focused on the bottle in my hand, which was already more than half empty. "I see you're drunk again." He said.

"Hello to you too brother." I slurred.

"When will you get used to the idea of killing people for a living? You disgust me with your drinking habits." He said.

"It's not the killing, Hyunbin. It's what you do to the bodies afterwards." I said, as I staggered to the alley wall and leaned heavily on it. "It's what the smell of their blood does to me."

"You should be used to it by now." He said in a mocking tone. "How many people did you kill this past month?"

"I kill because you tell me to, not because I enjoy it." The alley started spinning around me and I closed my eyes, sliding down the wall to sit on the floor.

"Why do you do this to yourself? Enjoy your life while you still can, brother. Go party all night with beautiful girls throwing themselves at you. Hell, you look like broke beggar trash with those dirty muddied clothes of yours, and women still eye you like a piece of forbidden candy. Go buy yourself some proper clothes, get a room in a good hotel,  wash the stench of alcohol off you, and see how life will brighten up in front of your eyes!"

I looked up at him with disgust on my face. "How do you do it?"

"Simple. I don't have a conscience to torment me." He said, looking down at me. He threw a package at my feet. "Here. Your part of the money for today's job. Try spending it on luxury, and not just alcohol." And with that, he left.

I looked down at the package. It was big. Must have been quite some money in there.

Sighing, I leaned my head back on the dirty wall behind me. After what seemed like hours, I got up, picked up the package and continued walking home. Draining the last drop in the bottle before I even reached halfway to my room. I threw the bottle in another alley and it smashed to smithereens, the shards gleaming under the light of the moon. I stood there and continued to stare at the sparkling pieces. I heard footsteps behind me, but I didn't care enough to turn around. "Give me that package." Said a gravelly voice, and I felt the pressure of a knife on my back. "How about a deal?" I said. "Why don't you just stab me, and you can take the package and leave. Make sure you kill me though, I don't want to stay here lying in agony for hours."

"You want me to kill ya?" The voice said.

"What's stopping you? You've probably killed many people for scrapes of food before. You can kill me and enjoy the fortune that's in that package." I said, sounding dazed.

Next thing I knew, the knife slipped through my back like a hot knife through butter, and the burn in my throat increased to the point where I thought I was actually on fire. My vision turned red, and I whirled around, taking in the man's shocked expression. I felt warm liquid running down my throat, and the fire eased then was gone. My mind finally caught up with my actions, and I stared in horror at what I had just done. The man lay in my arms, his throat torn to pieces, his blood covering both of us dripped on the floor in massive droplets. I threw the man's body away from me, and turned around and retched all over the ground. When my stomach finally stopped trying to come out of my throat, I sat there shaking, wondering what I should do.

Hyunbin, he should know. I thought to myself. And as if he felt me, he was there crouching in front of me. "So you're not entirely human like I thought you were, huh, brother?" He said, amused.

"I… I just drank a man's blood. What the hell am I?"

"A vampire, obviously. Unless you feel the urge to go and nibble on a piece of him. Do you?" He asked curiously.

I felt my stomach stirring again. "No." I chocked out.

"Come on, get up. Go clean up, and go to sleep. You won't feel a thing in the morning."

I did as he said. I went home and cleaned myself up from the blood, and tried going to sleep. It didn't come easily, but the alcohol and the tiredness from vomiting finally pulled me under. He was wrong though. I didn't feel better when I woke up. I felt worse, much much worse.

The man's horrified look kept haunting me, and the burn in my throat was worse than any other day. That night, when Hyunbin came over with another job, I went in the hope of forgetting the man's face. But when he cut the throat of the wealthy man we were paid to get rid of, my body moved on its own, my eyes glued to the vein still spurting blood like a fountain.

I came back to my senses, and pushed away from the man that Hyunbin was still holding.

"Why didn't you pull me off of him?" I asked, horrified.

"You're a vampire, Woohyun. You need the blood. Embrace it." He said as he searched the man's body for anything valuable, then pushed it into the river.

"So you're not going to help me through this?" I was shocked.

"I am helping you through this. I'm not judging you now, am I?" He said. "I'm going to get the rest of our money. Go wash up." And with that, he left.

At that moment it dawned on me that he had purposefully slit the man's throat in front of me, and not just stabbed him like any other victim from before.

I got to my feet and walked back to my room, washed up, packed everything I needed and left that town for good.

I arrived at the capital a couple of weeks later, late at night. I walked into a cheap inn and rented a room, then headed straight to the closest bar, I got so drunk that night that I don't remember anything after my third bottle, not getting into a fight with the drunk man who teased me for being a poor drinker, not getting thrown out of the bar, and definitely, not stalking that man and drinking his blood.

When I woke up the next morning, I felt dazed. What little light came from the crack in the curtains made my eyes water. I sat up on my bed, and waited for the room to stop spinning, then got up and went to the bathroom. Stumbling to the sink I bent down to wash my face. As I looked up trying to find my tooth brush, I caught sight of my reflection in the dirty mirror, and saw trails of some red substance dripping down my chin. I looked down, and saw the blood covering my shirt. I gulped, trying to remember how the blood got there, but my brain was fuzzy. I washed up properly, then walked back to my room to pack up and leave again. I didn't know who might have seen me coming back here with blood all over me.

Within thirty minutes I was outside the inn and heading to the opposite part of the city. Trying to get away from what I had done.

My life continued like that for months. Every day, I would get drunk at some bar, the next day I'd wake up covered in blood, and I would flee from town to town in a desperate attempt to leave everything I had committed behind.

I was leaving another bar in a town I didn't even bother memorizing the name of, when someone bumped into me, and the smell wafting off him made my throat burn like no tomorrow. I had turned around, followed him for a couple of streets, then when we were alone in some alley, grabbed him and was about to sink my teeth into his throat when a firm hand grabbed me by my shirt and yanked me off the poor man.

"I apologize sir, this man is insane, he has crazy fits, I'll be taking him back to the hospital now." A young man I didn't know said.

I got to my feet and snarled at him as the man quickly got out of the alley, muttering about crazy people.

"Finally found you. You're harder to find than I thought you would be." The young man who had saved me from killing another innocent human muttered under his breath.

"Who are you?" I asked, my voice rough from the burn I felt in my throat. I took a gulp from the bottle that had survived my being yanked away so roughly.

"Are you insane?!" The young man exclaimed, as he quickly moved toward me and yanked the bottle out of my hand. "No wonder you've been leaving such a bloody trail behind you."

"What the hell? Give me back my drink! I paid for it!" I demanded.

"I'm not giving you back anything! I'll be taking you with me, however." He said, as he placed his fingers on my neck, and my world turned black.

I woke up, groaning, in a luxurious hotel room. Squinting my eyes against the light, I looked around only to find the young man sitting in a chair next to me.

"Oh, good, sleeping beauty is finally awake." He said as a morning greeting.

"Good morning to you too." I grumbled, as I sat up in the bed I was on.

"It's more like noon now. Would you like some lunch?" He asked.

"No, thank you." I said. "But I would appreciate it if you told me who you are and how the hell you know what I am."

"Easy as pie, that. My name is Sunggyu, and I know what you are because I'm a vampire myself."

"How did you find me?"

"The council sent me to find out who was behind those murders you committed. It was obviously the work of a new vamp."

"Council? What council?"

"The Vampire Council." He said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"There is such a thing?" I asked.

"Yup."  He said with a smile. "Oh and let me ask you something. Didn't your sire explain to you that a newly turned vampire shouldn't drink alcohol? It'll drive your blood lust out of control."

"Sire? What's that?" I asked, curious. "And do you mean to tell me that I've been killing people because I was drunk?"

"Yes, sire. The vampire who turned you. And no, not just because of the alcohol, you would have gone berserk with blood lust eventually, if you didn't recognize the signs of when you needed to get some fresh blood in your system, but your habit of drinking made the blood lust go haywire." He said, like he was explaining some experiment.

"I don't have a sire." I said, as I tried to process everything he just said with my barely functioning brain.

"Of course you have a sire! You can't be a vampire if you don't have a sire!"

"But I don't. At least none that I'm aware of."

"You mean you never met your sire?! Who could be this irresponsible, so as to turn someone and just walk away?!" He asked, incredulously.

"I wouldn't know." I said.

"Well then, first things first. Let me explain to you what you are, and how you will be living the rest of your very long life." He said, as he launched into an explanation of everything that my supposed sire was supposed to explain to me.

To be honest, the only thing I got from that very long explanation was that I wasn't allowed to drink another drop of alcohol until I learned how to control my feeding urges.

We stayed at that town for a couple of weeks, then he told me we needed to head back to where his home was.

As we travelled, he continued to teach me control, and the proper ways of feeding, so I wouldn't accidentally kill someone, since vampires don't kill their blood donors unless they were found out, he said that something in a vampire's saliva would erase the victim's memory of what happened.

We arrived at his home late at night after two more weeks of travel.

As he opened the door to usher me in, a guy jumped into his face blocking his entrance and view of the inside of the house.

"Oh, hi. You're home! Welcome back!" He said with a big toothy smile. Even I was convinced there was something wrong with the way he acted.

"What did you do this time Dongwoo?" He asked dryly.

"Me? Do something? Oh, come on! I wouldn't do anything to upset you!" He said, widening his eyes in innocence.

"Oh, God… Did you kill someone? No, wait, that's not something you would be so desperate to hide. DID YOU BURN ONE OF MY BOOKS AGAIN?" He practically shouted.

"NO NO NO!!! I didn't burn any of your books! I did however kill some people. But they were scum! I mean, they were murderers themselves! And I wouldn't have actually killed them, but I didn't have a choice, since the leader of the gang I signed on in to pass the time while you were away ordered it and they would have died anyway, by someone else! And then I met this guy, who has a passion for dance, just like I do, you know how much I love to dance, so I wanted to be his friend, only it turned out he's in this other rival gang, and I had to drop him clues to meet him – you have no idea how tough that was, you know I don't really use my brain – so eventually we met, and we fought and I won and he was going to go clubbing with me, but then his boss orders his murder, so he gets stabbed in the back, and I just couldn't leave him there to die, so I kinda, sorta turned him into one of us!" The guy named Dongwoo said in one breath while backing away from the furious glare that Sunggyu was giving him.

Before any of us could say anything, we heard a snarl coming from inside the house.

"Oh, !" Dongwoo said and rushed in.

We walked inside the house, and saw Dongwoo struggling with the snarling guy on the floor.

"Damn it, Dongwoo! I leave you for two months – two friggin' months, a blip in a vampire's life – and what do you do? You go join a friggin' gang! Didn't I tell you to lie low, for God's sake?!" Sunggyu shouted. I'd never heard him so irritated before.

"Ugh! Yea… Listen, could you – damn! Stop struggling! – Could you stop nagging and –UGH! DAMN IT! That hurt! – help me out with this thrashing newbie?!" Dongwoo struggled to say.

The two of them continued bickering and I had a feeling that my life was going to be so much fun with these two around.

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Hey guys!

Sorry to keep you waiting so long, uni is eating away my time and I barely have time to study, let alone write.

Thank you for sticking around <3

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