CHAPTER THIRTY

Curious Cases

 Jaehwa tossed another look over her shoulder before she knocked three times, each with two beats spaced between. When the princes told her that Soojung had been captured and charged as the culprit for the fire, it became evident that her long and gruesome day was going to become prolonged. In such an event, she decided to head back to her quarters to gather a few supplies and take a cold shower – something she never thought she’d actually need until that morning.

She had timed her journey perfectly so that no one caught her on her way there and back. All the maintenance girls were at breakfast and at six in the morning, the students were all sleeping soundly.

A few moments later, the door eased open very slowly.

“It’s me.” She whispered through the crack and immediately the door gave way to the image of D.O. Kyungsoo. Shorter than the rest, he was of a sturdy build and though it had barely been half an hour since she had left, she couldn’t help but notice how fresh faced he looked. There was truly something magnificent about Vampires – a kind of cool, collected and easy perfection.

Just as she was about to walk inside, hugging the book she had borrowed from the library with her, a bruised and battered softball rolled up to her feet. She stopped it and picked it up in her small hands before she closed the door behind her.

Scattered about the sports equipment storage room, twelve princes were holding a meeting. The room was dark, crammed and stuffy but no one had a better hiding area in mind. Apart from the lock that bolted the heavy metal door, security was minimal and without having to examine it, Jaehwa knew that getting in had been easy.

“Anything yet?” Jaehwa asked hopefully as D.O. waved Chen off his wooden seat and pulled it up behind Jaehwa. She smiled and nodded in thanks – a gesture which he waved off with equal warmth.

The grave expressions that were given as a response to her question was enough to answer her question. She pressed her lips into a thin line as the knot in her brows tightened. The truth was, she had withheld some information from the brothers and in her time alone, she had thought of a possible way to save Soojung. Yet, all of that came as an expense to her own plans for revenge because at the centre of everything was HyeRyung.

She cast a look at Luhan who stood silently in the corner with his arms and legs crossed. His black brown hair hung over his doe eyes but she didn’t have to look into them to know that the usual glimmer they held had dimmed. Almost instantly, she knew that her duties lay with the events unfolding at the present moment – that she shouldn’t be the one to dampen Luhan’s hopes; the one erasing the beauty in his soul.

Even if it was difficult to achieve, Jaehwa knew that Luhan was right – that her heart lay with his beliefs. One life shouldn’t be valued more than another, especially one that no longer held any value to anyone else but herself.

Tao sat helplessly against the brick wall, lifelessly pitching the tennis ball at the opposite wall. He set a gentle beat that seemed to race against time rather than keep it. No one was sure whether it was their anxiety that made everything seem more urgent or if it was simply that Tao had lost his sense of touch with rhythm.

“God damn it, Tao.” Chanyeol intervened in the path of the moving ball, catching it singlehandedly. “Stop it.” Without blinking, Chanyeol pitched the ball right into Tao’s gut and without needing a single moment to recover, the latter was on his feet.

“What the s your problem?” He hissed as he forced Chanyeol into a pile of racquets.

“You being an annoying little brat.” Chanyeol shot back as he picked up a racquet from under his body and aimed it at Tao’s head but Tao blocked it easily.

The rest of the brothers scrambled to their feet and worked to peel the two brothers from each other. It was clear to everyone that their fist fight wasn’t anything personal – it was simply an expression of their aggravation. They would never actually fatally injure each other.

“Stop it! The both of you!” Kris hollered as he stood between them as Sehun, Kai and Suho held Tao back and Chen, Baekhyun, Lay and Xiumin pulled Chanyeol back onto his feet.

“We’re all frustrated, that’s understandable but what the hell are you the two of you doing?” Suho glared at the two competing brothers who were still exchanging venomous glances from across the room.

Jaehwa sighed heavily as she finally rose to her feet, wincing as the chair scratched against the dusty concrete floors.

“Well… if there are no other ideas then…” She cleared , “Then perhaps Sehun…” Her voice lowered itself as she uttered his name, “Perhaps Sehun and I should pay HyeRyung a visit.”

Sehun lifted his head as she proposed the idea and though she refused to meet his eyes, he knew that she had heard and understood what he had said earlier. In a sense, she had given up her stance to ignore his side of the story and had accepted his attempts to right the wrongs of the past. The flicker of a smile crossed his face but he hid it behind a sly smirk of triumph.

The room hung with an awkward silence and somehow the mention of HyeRyung eased Tao and Chanyeol’s anger. They seemed to question her decision and in the midst of something so great, they wondered if jealousy would intervene in their attempts to save Soojung’s life.

“We’ve been through everything that we know… multiple times. Are you sure seeing HyeRyung’s going to help?” Xiumin asked sceptically – well aware that he was treading on thin ice by even mentioning her name in front of Jaehwa.

Jaehwa released something between a sad smile and a cold laugh, “I think she knows more than we do considering the fact that she’s been held prisoner here for over a few decades.”

“What?” Lay shot back.

“What are you talking about?”

Confusion rippled through her audience.

“When I said that I saw HyeRyung last night… I didn’t specify in what particular state I saw her in.” Jaehwa clarified before she turned to Lay, “I’m not sure if you know but when the Eligorians took over the lands, there were large scale massacres of vampires who were taking refuge in deserted caves. The strange thing about these cases was that, these vampires were dying of old age – a slow and gradual process in which the system breaks down.”

“You’re talking about visvieillissement.” Lay nodded, “Remember when we studied medical transcripts. There was this rune that took the form of a double V-“

“Yeah, no one paid attention during those lectures, Lay.” Baekhyun was brutal in his honesty but his brothers wouldn’t have had it any other way, knowing that he was saving them from another one of Lay’s educational rants. “What are you trying to say?”

Unfazed by Baekhyun’s comment, Lay continued, “Well… they stood for visvieillissement which means a condition of accelerated aging. If the rune is hatched onto