It feels…right.

That’s the only thing Jaejoong can think of. The kiss is intoxicating and heady, going into Jaejoong’s head like strong wine. His brain is screaming things at him, how such things don’t happen and Yunho’s lying and Yunho killed his father and doesn’t deserve to be trusted and he should get out of the house right about now but Yunho’s kissing him and god it feels so right.

When Yunho’s lips finally leave his, Jaejoong just stops himself from whimpering.

“He offered me something,” Yunho repeats, eyes never once leaving Jaejoong’s. Like before, they are mesmerising in all their faded crimson glory, and Jaejoong can’t look away even if he wants to.

 “A vampire himself, he offered to make me his Keeper, a minder of the Blood Singers of whom he was the Owner.”

Keeper? Owner? Blood Singer?

By the dim light emitting from behind him, Jaejoong can vaguely see Yunho’s smile. “Have you ever drank human blood before?”

Of course not! Jaejoong’s tasted blood before, but he’s never actually drank it.

“I’d recommend you don’t. It’s revolting.”

But vampires—                            

“Joongie, there are some things humans don’t understand, and what they don’t understand they come up with far-fetched explanations for. Vampires are one of them. Tell me, what do you think you know about vampires?”

Jaejoong immediately thinks of blood-drinking and immortality and garlic, but he doesn’t bother trying to recall the less common ones because Yunho’s started snickering and Jaejoong’s pretty sure that if he goes on Yunho is going to choke on his own laughter.

“They’re right about the immortality,” Yunho says, much to Jaejoong’s surprise. “But the blood is wrong. They do drink blood, but they’ve never willingly touched human blood and they’re not going to. They only drink from Blood Singers. They're the Owners—every Owner has five to twenty Blood Singer families to himself, and every Blood Singer born into the family automatically belongs to him. If the Owner should for some reason die, the families go to his descendants, or whoever he wills them to.”

And Blood Singers are?

“To be honest, no one really knows…vampires live among humans, and if they tried to do research on it it’ll look suspicious. So it’s a toss-up between whether Blood Singers are a completely separate species from humans or whether they’re human with rare dominant genes that make them who they are, but for the sake of this discussion let’s think of them as a different species. They can have children with humans, but the odds of a child coming out as a Blood Singer or a human is fifty-fifty. There’s no in between. We do know that they’re similar to humans in every way except that their blood is a lot more…agreeable to the vampire palate, but vampires…anyone, for that matter…can’t tell the difference unless they bite into one, and they don’t want to bite into human if they can help it. Sometimes, a human’s blood could even poison them, and they’re only immune to old age, not illnesses. They’ll only bite a human if the population of Blood Singers is low, which can happen if there are too many Singer-human marriages that resulted in human children or Blood Singers simply didn’t have any kids,  because vampire’s venom will make humans Blood Singers.

“Of course, the most practical thing would be to group all the Blood Singers together, but vampires won’t do that…they’re not cattle breeders. So they established a system by which they, the Owners, would each drink solely from a certain amount of Blood Singers, and a Keeper would mind the said Blood Singers for them. A Keeper’s like a weaker version of a vampire who’s immortal but has human characteristics, like not drinking blood, and their job is to know where the Blood Singers are in the world, whether they’re safe or in danger, whether they have spouses and children, so that when the Owner is thirsty, no matter where he is, he knows where to look for a drink. Every Owner has one, no more, no less. To keep track of the Owner’s Blood Singers, the Keepers all have a certain mark—” Yunho’s fingers lightly caress the teardrop-shaped spot he himself placed on Jaejoong, “—they place on the Blood Singers in their charge, and that mark enables them to read the Blood Singers’ minds and track down their locations.”

So…so that’s how…

“Yes. It’s also for commanding Blood Singers to do something and…giving out warnings or punishments if the Blood Singer…misbehaves.”

Jaejoong gasps and grabs at the mark below his collarbone. Even though he knows it’s not going to come off—he’s had ten years to try—his fingers claw at the skin anyway, as though if he scraped his skin hard enough the mark would come out. Yunho has to gently force his hand back down onto the armrest, and even then Jaejoong doesn’t stop clenching and unclenching his fist.

“Calm down,” Yunho says, and Jaejoong’s rage gives out just like that. It’s like everything’s been stored in a container that Yunho’s holding the lid down on with just those two words alone.

But why did you agree to do this? Jaejoong questions. Wasn’t Yunho going to kill himself? What could have possibly made him not only choose to live, but choose to live forever?

“He told me…that as a human, you would be reborn again and again and again, and as a human, so would I. But he warned me that the world is not made of flowers and sunshine, and sometimes even the most bonded of soulmates don’t find each other in their next lives. After that, it was easy for me to say yes to his offer. The fact that we could pass each other on the street in our next lives and spare each other a second glance…I didn’t want that to happen to us. I was afraid, Joongie, that we wouldn’t be together in our next life and the life after that. I became a Keeper so that no matter what happened, at least one of us would remember…well, us. I thought that even if you forgot me, at the very least, I would remember you, and I could bring us back together again and again, as many times as I had to.”

So why didn’t you just change me when you could?

A snort. “Yes, I’m sure you’d like to spend the rest of eternity as a ten or eleven year old.”

At that tiny tinge of humour, Jaejoong’s lips can’t help up curl up a little. It’s amazing and scary at the same time, how often his moods switch along it Yunho’s.

Almost as it they were meant to be.

At that thought, Jaejoong shakes his head furiously, as if he shook hard enough the thought would fly out his head. I’m going crazy, he thinks. He needs space, he needs to be alone, he needs air, he needs to breathe…

But more than any of that, he needs the answer to one question, a question that might not mean much in the light of what Yunho’s revealed but means all the world to him. The same question that haunted him ever since Yunho, with his cloak as black as midnight and the most beautiful eyes, appeared in Jaejoong’s life and disappeared just as suddenly.

Why did you kill my father?

Silence. The longest one so far. A sigh. “Your father…he turned traitor. He got a blood transfusion that messed up his original Singer’s blood and made it…contaminated. If he’d gotten a blood transfusion because of an accident or something like that, I would never have been forced to act, but he got the blood transfusion because as a scientist, he had access to all kinds of viruses, and he purposely infected himself with one that gave him a liver disease that stopped his body from properly making blood. That’s why I had to kill him. If I didn’t, they’d have killed me, and I…I didn’t want to…you…”

Jaejoong holds out a hand. Stop, he says, and even though he only says it in his mind it still sounds choked. Just stop.

Yunho does. “I am so, so sorry, Joongie,” he says, voice full of remorse, and even in his current mental state Jaejoong doesn’t bother to point out how inappropriate that endearment is coming from the guy that killed your dad, no matter the reason. “I’m sorry I killed your father. I’m sorry I lied to you about not being the one to save you from Yoochun. I’m sorry for all I did to protect you but ended up hurting you instead. If you hate me, I understand, but please, remember that I—”

With a silent sob, Jaejoong pushes past him and all but barges his way out of the room, blindly climbing up the stairs to get back to his room because Yunho won’t follow him there, not when Changmin’s with him. He’s too tired and in shock to care about what Changmin has to do with all this. As long as Changmin can be his brother for him, at the moment he doesn’t care what else Changmin is.

But even long after he’s woken Changmin up and nestled deep in his arms like a baby chick, avoiding all Changmin’s gentle urgings to explain what’s wrong, he still can’t take his mind off Yunho, and his brain, traitorous organ that it is, won’t stop telling him over and over the unfinished half of Yunho’s final sentence, the part that Yunho never managed to say but Jaejoong just knows the contents of.

I still love you.