“Where was N today?” Luhan asked as he walked with Bora, “and Ken was missing, too. The others said that Leo and a few of the others weren’t in class either. Suji, Jiwook, Nara, and Gayun didn’t say anything about it, so I thought I would ask you.”

“We’re going our separate ways for the time being,” Bora told him, fighting to keep her voice as dull and emotionless as possible, “if either of our groups find themselves in trouble, the other will help. But for right now we’re going to do our own things.”

That was only partly true. If N and the others needed help, she’d go in a heartbeat to aid them. And she knew as N would do the same for her, even if he was mad and hurt right now. The part that wasn’t true was saying that it was just temporary. Bora had no idea how long N would be away, if he would come back at all. She could only hope he and the others would return.

But she wasn’t going to tell Luhan that and have him worry about her. She needed him to focus on the task at hand, not her. Finding and sealing Shin was the top priority, not her personal problems with N and the others leaving.

Luhan watched her for a moment, knowing that she wasn’t telling him something. However he let it drop and returned his focus to their current job. Bora had her reasons for doing everything she did, reasons that he never knew until later in the game. She’d tell him when she was ready or when it was time. Nothing he could do until then but wait.

The pair walked in silence until they heard something ahead of them, rummaging through a trash can. Bora sniffed the air and nodded. This was what she had been looking for, the person who was holding onto the stone she was looking for. She had no idea when Luhan had seen the stone before, but all that mattered was that this person should still have it.

“Hello Jessica,” Bora called out. Jessica turned around, her eyes radiating the hate she felt for the older vampire. Bora looked the girl over, eyes focusing on the stone that hung around her neck.

“What are you doing here, monster?” Jessica hissed.

“I’ve come for that stone around your neck,” Bora replied, “it’s about time I took it back, wouldn’t you say?”

“Like hell I’ll let you touch it,” Jessica yelled, “not after what you did to me.”

“What did Bora do to you, noona?” Luhan asked, looking between the two girls confused, “and how do you two know each other?”

“Well that explains how you’ve seen the stone,” Bora glanced between the vampire girl and hybrid boy, “you two have met. Probably around the time I turned Jessica here.”

“You turned her?” Luhan gasped, “Why?”

“Do you have any idea what kind of monster stands beside you?” the vampire girl hissed, glaring at Bora who returned it with her own glare.

“What are you talking about?” Luhan asked. Guilt flared in Bora’s gut. She always felt the guilt of her past wrongs, it was a reminder that her inner demon was always there. But sometimes, when face to face with the evidence, the guilt felt a hundred times worse.

“She butchered my family,” the girl growled, “we had just sat down to dinner when she walked in. Like an angel of death all dressed in black. My father stood up to confront her, but he was dead before he even got a word out. She took his head off in one swing of her hand.”

Bora remembered that man. The night before he’d put a stake through Suji’s chest, just missing her heart. It wouldn’t have killed her, but it did hurt her. He, along with several other members of his family of Hunters, had attacked them. That was how Jessica got her hands on the stone around her neck; her family took it during the attack.

“My mother was next,” Jessica kept going, grinning darkly at the horrified look on Luhan’s face, “that ripped her heart out. Dropped it on the ground like it was nothing but trash. Then she tossed my mother’s body aside and let her blood smear all over the wall.”

The woman had put a knife to Hyuk’s throat trying to threaten Bora into submission. Bora had let her go that night, too hurt from the wood dagger sticking out of her stomach and the oak splinters sticking out of her back to bother attacking. Bora had been the only one other than N and Leo who could still stand by then. Threatening to behead Hyuk and Ravi had been part of the exit strategy once the Hunters had gotten what they wanted, but they hadn’t needed to use it. Their surprise attack had done so much damage to the vampires that the Hunters could have just walked away without worry of a counter attack.

“My sister made a run for it, but the demon stopped her,” the Jessica finished, “she forced both of us to drink her blood before killing us. When we woke up, she’d killed our aunts and uncles, too. Cut down everyone over eighteen and turning everyone younger into vampires.”

Bora hadn’t felt proud about what she’d done to the coven of Hunters, but she’d felt safer. She’d killed them or turned them for the sake of her family, but she’d felt awful about taking their lives the way she had. Her anger had clouded her mind and she’d spent every day since regretting that night.

Bora glanced at the horrified look on Luhan’s face and felt even worse. But she didn’t justify herself. She didn’t try to defend her decision by telling him what the Jessica’s family had done to her own family. Luhan knew her and he would have to base his own decision on that. She’d just have to trust him to know she had a good reason. If he now saw her as a demonic monster, if he was the type to forget what kind of person she was just by hearing this one account, then she didn’t want someone like that in her life.

“Just give back the stone your family took from mine,” Bora sighed, turning her attention back to Jessica, “I have other, more important people to worry about. I’m in no mood to deal with you.”

“Just where do you get off talking to me like that,” Jessica hissed, “stupid, evil monster!” she ran at Bora, trying her best to claw the older vampire’s eyes out.

Things didn’t work out like that, however. Bora caught Jessica’s wrist, stopping the girl’s movement. Jessica growled darkly, swinging her other hand only to have that arm caught by Bora, too.

“I have no interest in hurting you, let alone killing you,” Bora frowned, “but I will if you push my buttons. Now I’ve been having a bad day, so just hand over the blasted stone and we can go our separate ways. You’ll never see me again, I promise.” “

I’ll hold you to that, demon,” Jessica snarled after a pause, pulling her arms free when Bora released her grip. Without another word, she yanked the stone from her necklace, tossing it on the ground at Bora’s feet.

“Thank you,” Bora nodded her head before taking the stone and leaving. Luhan followed after her, silent as the grave. He said nothing until they’d gotten a few blocks away from where they’d seen Jessica.

“Why?” he finally asked, “why would you do that to her and her family?”

“I don’t have to justify my actions, to say something to make what I did look better,” Bora told him, “I did what I did at the time because that was what I felt the situation called for.”

If knowing about this made Luhan see her as a monster, then nothing she could say would change that. She’d like to believe he had more faith in her then that, but she’d thought that about others before and it hadn’t ended well. She just had to have faith in him, right? He was different from those other people, right?

A/N: So what is Luhan going to do? Will he see Bora as a monster who hurt someone he – apparently – once knew? Or will he have faith in her? We’ll just have to wait and see what he does next. And to everyone who were sad that N was gone ‘cuz it gave Luhan a clean shot at Bora: I told ya that he wasn’t gonna get a clean shot.