He seems so sad, and she wants something more for him.

She doesn’t know why, and she knows she hasn’t earned the right, but she thinks that if he would just give her a chance, she could help him find something he didn’t know he needed.

She doesn’t even know his name, and she’s ambitious enough to label herself indispensible.

Nana was upset about her boyfriend passing away, but she didn’t know him as well as she assumed she did. She had met him three months ago at the first party she had ever visited. He was drunk, something she hadn’t known was a repetitive vice of his; and she was feeling a streak of unrest. They had ‘hooked up’, as some would say, and they ‘dated’ ever since.

Nana didn’t really like him, but she felt sorry for him. She felt sorry that there was a hole in his heart that she couldn’t fill. He was always empty, and he sought drugs and alcohol to soothe that emptiness, but the time he spent with his mind in the clouds or his stomach on the ground was never long enough for him to forget that void. She thought that if she stayed with him, he would change; not because of anything she did, but because of what she was. A presence. A person. A girl with two shoulders, and if he needed her to, she would let him lean on her.

But eventually the darkness in his heart consumed him, and he was gone before she could input more effort.

Then she met that boy who had punched her boyfriend and ran away. She was afraid of him because he seemed so ethereal, but she was also ashamed to look at his eyes. They seemed to adore sadness, and that scared her. She had never met anyone before who wanted to be nothing but miserable.

He didn’t know it before

But he discovered now

That the kiss of death

Was so hauntingly

Beautiful.

Sehun pauses from writing and pulls out the calendar from his desk. He flips through the pages until he finds a date with a large, red circle drawn around it. In four months, on the anniversary of his failure, he will try again.

He stares at the box of pills on his desk. He can do it. He can endure for four more months.

He doesn’t need blood.

“Move it to the other wall.”

“Right here, sir?”

Himchan steps back and watches his employee adjust the canvas painting. “A little higher.” The painting rises. “To the left.” It moves. “Tilt the right side up.” And so the employee does as Himchan says. “Perfect.”

Himchan claps his hands clean, as if he had worked at all, and then he asks his employee to bring him a cup of iced coffee. As he waits, he purges his phone of useless contacts. A blur of names scrolls through the screen – there’s the waiter from that rival café, the hostess from a popular hotel chain, and even that lady who owned a boutique around the corner. All of them have professed their love for him. It amazed Himchan how easily women clung to him. They honestly believed that he could complete them, when he wasn’t even complete himself.

“Here,” his employee says. Himchan rips open a packet of sugar and spills it into the cup. Mixing it with a red straw, he watches the couple on the other side of the café eating their lunch together. The saccharine smiles on their faces compete with the sugar in his coffee. He wants to light a stick to rid of them, but he knows he needs their business more than he needs to satisfy his view.

The door opens. The employee greets the female customer, but when he asks her what she would like to order, she ignores him. Her eyes are neither on the menu nor on his face. Her eyes are on his boss’s table, where she sees him stirring his drink and browsing his phone.

“Who is that man?” She asks. The employee has never seen nor heard anyone speak like her before. There is refinement in her voice, even grace in the movement of her lips.

“That’s my boss.”

“Really.”

“Um, what can I get you?”

“Whatever he has,” she replies. “I’ll buy it.”

“Are you sure?”

She looks at him and smiles. She enchants him. “Yes.”

He hurries to fulfill her order. When he gives her the drink, she smiles again and walks away. The employee doesn’t even question that she sets her drink on the same table that Himchan is occupying. All the employee can muse is how lucky his boss is with girls.

Himchan doesn’t look up from his phone when he hears the cup tap his table. “There are several empty tables in this café. Choose another one.”

“I thought you wanted me here.”

“Well,” he looks up, “that depends – “

“On what?” The woman smiles. It’s her again. What is she doing here? “On whether it’s me?”

“ … Yes.” Himchan narrows his eyes. “And because it’s you, I’m asking you to choose a different table.”

“Because your pride won’t allow my company, is that it?” She sits down. “I’ve given you a piece of my time, as you wanted, yet you’re turning me away.”

“I don’t find fickle girls particularly enamoring.”

“You’re a hypocrite.”

Himchan laughs. “And you aren’t?”

She smirks. “Of course I am.”

Himchan watches her in consideration. “What’s your name?”

She responds more easily than he expected. “Chaeri.”

“Himchan.”

Chaeri tastes her drink. It’s bitter, but she doesn’t want to show her distaste in case he’d think of her as ‘fickle’ again. “I want to know your story, Himchan.” She thinks of the scar on his neck, which he covers with the collar of his coat. “I want to know why you like me so much.”

“Past tense would be a more fitting description,” he replies. “Even then, it wouldn’t be accurate. I don’t like very many people.”

“You’re surrounded with them.”

“But I don’t like them.”

“So you tolerate them?”

“On a daily basis.”

“Humans,” she leans forward, “are sometimes difficult to tolerate.”

Himchan crosses his arms. “You must be referring to yourself.”

“I’m not what you think I am.” She lifts her cup in the air. “This drink. What do you think it is?”

“Coffee.”

“Coffee. But you don’t know what kind until you taste it.” She opens the lid. “It’s black. Same as yours.”

Himchan glances at his drink. “Sure.”

“People are going to think we’re simply humans. Even you have fallen to that assumption and grouped me into that race. But we are very, very different from them. We are the bitterest of any species.”

Himchan grows uncomfortable at the ominous, underlying tone in her voice. “I may be a jerk, but I’m living.”

“I didn’t say anything about living.”

Himchan drinks his coffee to hide the tremble in his throat. “Then what are you saying?”

“Himchan,” she shakes her head, “stop lying to yourself. You’ve been corrupted, and there’s nothing you can do to change that. All because of one moment.” Chaeri reaches to fold away the collar at Himchan’s neck and reveal the scar. “An action that led to a mistake.”

Himchan clamps a hand over hers and slowly pushes her hand up his face. Allowing her to cup his cheek, he replies, “Is it possible for a face like this to have a single mistake?”

“No,” Chaeri admits. “But I can feel it.”

In those seconds, she feels the vacant pulse of Himchan beneath her fingertips. What she doesn’t feel only validates the knowledge she already knew, and she knows that Himchan is aware of it, too.

He can no longer prevent or hide his desire for her.

Himchan slaps her hand away and stands up. “This café is about to close. You should leave.”

“You plan to avoid the issue again, don’t you?”

“It isn’t an issue if I plan to use it to my advantage.” Himchan turns his back on her. “I won’t look for you. But if you come to me, I won’t turn away from you, either.”

Before he walks away, she responds, “Then you can count on me to bother you.”

The Tender rips the gloves away from his broad hands and tosses it into the trash can. What a bloody, messy mission it is to keep the lines of fate from crossing. Occasionally, stopping destiny is his job, and he would be damned for interfering if he hadn’t already been blessed to a life that was neither for the living, nor for the dead.

Although most people would view it as a curse.

After pulling the wretched creature into an alley where it will not regain consciousness until daylight hits its skin, the Tender leans over the targeted human on the ground. He was too late; she was bitten, and in the night, too. The only thing he can hope is that she won’t resist her transformation. Doing that might turn her savage. He doesn’t house soon-to-be halves very often, but ever since he had helped Sehun, he feels that he owes them – both Sehun, and the human he had infected.