Humans, the living or the undead, are going through their days on earth while looking for a connection.

Some pass their days while looking for their other halves. And when they find them, they will connect. They will unite. They call themselves family. Some look for those who have the same interest. When they meet, they will connect, they’ll make a group. Some others connect through their similar experience, belief, culture, through kindness to each other, and the list goes on.

Jung Yonghwa had been feeling so lonely for the past year. Living alone in the megacity called Seoul, with no one he could relate. He desperately wanted to connect. Some people might choose suicide if they went through what Jung Yonghwa had been having. Some might even go crazy by going through only half of it. But Jung Yonghwa kept on living, though the definition of living for him might be different. And he stayed sane. It wasn’t that Jung Yonghwa was strong mentally and spiritually, he just couldn’t do either one, or both. It was impossible for him to go crazy like those ordinary human beings. And it was even more difficult for him to die.

One day, more than a year ago, he found himself in so much pain. He didn’t know where he was, what time of the day it was, whether it was dark or bright, or if he was alone or there was someone else around. The only thing he knew was he was in so much pain. There was a loud hammering inside his head, his bones were aching, his skin felt like it was burnt, and his heart might be exploding inside his ribcage. It was like he lost all his senses and the only thing he could feel was hurt. He thought he was dying. He didn’t know how long he was in misery. He wanted to scream to release his pain, to ask for help. He might have screamed, actually. But no one came, according to his hazy memory.

When he was finally conscious, he opened his eyes to a foreign dark room with star embedded ceiling. He was laying on the floor beside a couch. The pain had subsided. He still felt a bit dizzy, but he got all his senses back. And it was overwhelming. The room was stinking so bad and it was so noisy outside, multiplying his headache. He looked around and strangely he could make all the things in the room in spite of the darkness, and he noticed that the room was in a mess.

He felt his throat dry so he tried to wake up, using the couch as a crutch and searched for water. He opened the fridge and finished all the liquid stored in it. He ran to the kitchen sink and put his head under the faucet to let the water flowed down to his stomach through his open mouth. He even stood under the shower in the bathroom. But no matter how much water he gulped down, his thirst remained insatiable.

He wobbly walked to the front door. He tried to get out of the room to find something, because damn, he was so thirsty. But when the door was opened and he was immediately exposed to the bright sun, his skin on his forearm was burnt. He flinched and rushed back inside and slammed down the door.

That was when he started to panic.

He was having mental breakdown, indescribably confused of what just happened. He sat in silence on his couch, trying hard to recall few days back. It took a while, but he eventually remembered the tragedy that happened to him some times before, which involved a dark alley, a shadow in the high walls, a pair of fangs, and sting on his neck. He somehow managed to punch the creature, hailed a taxi and run away from it then arrived home safely.

Home. Yes, it was his home. He was in his own apartment. He smiled a little knowing that he was home, but then his smile vanished when he realized that he had turned into something else.

Something not human.

~!@#$%^&*()_+

He spent the next day learning about himself, tried to remember who he was before he transformed, not minding his thirst and hunger. The first thing he did was familiarizing himself with his home. His apartment was messed up, probably caused by him when he was transforming. So he tried to rearrange it while examining his belongings one by one. He looked at the pictures scattered around and tried to recall the people posing with him. He was first confused when he found his cell phone, having no clue about what it was. But somehow he gained back his knowledge about technology, so he recharged the gadget. Unending tones from his cell phone stole his attention, and soon enough he found himself crouching under the lamp light beside his TV set, awkwardly tapped the monitor, checking text and voice messages people sent to him for days.

From all the sources he got, he could finally conclude who he was.

His name was Jung Yonghwa, born June 22, 1989. He had just celebrated his 24^th birthday with his friends from college when he was attacked. He was the second son of two, his parents lived in Busan. He worked as a legal consultant in a law firm. He had no girlfriend.

He glanced at his phone’s wallpaper, showing the picture of a dandelion. June 29, 2013. 22:13 KST. 31° Mostly Cloudy.

Jung Yonghwa would always remember that day as the day he rediscovered himself.

The rain poured down not long after. While listening to the peaceful sound of the water dropping outside the window, Jung Yonghwa sat silently in the couch in his dark apartment, thinking about what he would do next.

~!@#$%^&*()_+

Living as an undead wasn’t that bad, mostly because he didn’t feel tired or sick or pain or sleepy like he used to. He didn’t fear anything. He could hear a whisper from a mile away. He could see people’s faces down on the streets from the top of the building. He could trace humans by their scent. He could run as fast as the wind, jumped from the highest tower without getting injured, and his complexion. Man, his complexion. He used to think he was born with a good look, but now that he had changed, he looked even better. He got perfect complexion, his sharp nose and jaw were more divine, and his eyes. His eyes would sparkle brightly like amber when he was full, and would turn smoldering and dark when he was hungry. He could easily take a girl to bed just by looking. And he would honestly do that if he was still human. But now that he wasn’t human anymore, girl humans were just mere food to him. The only place he would love to take them was the dining table – which was why he always cringed when he watched those TV series that depicted the love story between a vampire and a girl human. Please. It was like a man falling in love with kimchi. Or watermelon. And that was just wrong.

He might sound superior in many aspects, but he got his own weaknesses, like the sun. Yes, sun was his cryptonyte. He definitely couldn’t stand the sun. So he opted to stay home in the day, and only wander around the city at night. He could, though, do some tricks so he could go out in the day, like covering his whole body without sparing even a millimeter of skin. But then he would look like a weirdo, especially it was summer then. He couldn’t possibly be all wrapped up like a Christmas present when everyone else was showing more skin.

The other set back would be he couldn’t taste food anymore. The only thing he deemed delicious was blood. Human blood was probably the most delicious, it was like the most expensive wine. But he wouldn’t know because he hadn’t had it yet since he was transformed.

Exactly, Jung Yonghwa never bit human. He got his own reasons, of course.

First was because of his family. On his first night as an undead, when the rain poured hard and he was deep in his thought, trying hard to swallow the fact that he had changed, his phone had rung. Startled, he let it ring for several minutes before he checked the caller ID. It was listed as his Mother.

Something inside him boiled over for no reason. He was choked. Maybe if he still had feelings like humans, he would cry. He blinked once then picked up the call. Even though he couldn’t feel human emotion, he felt bad for making her worried over him because he didn’t answer his phone for a week. Without thinking much he convinced his Mother that he was fine. When he ended the call and realized what he just did, he couldn’t undo it.  He just told his Mother that his dead son was still alive. And living fine. Sighing, he decided that in the meantime he would continue to live as Jung Yonghwa. He would think about other things later when he needed to.

So as the son of human parents, and a brother of a man, he decided not to touch humans, because it felt like he killed his own family.

The second reason, it would leave traces. No one would mourn over a dead animal, or dead animals. And no one would bother to investigate the cause of homeless animals’ deaths. But a dead human? It would make an uproar.

But the main reason was because he was afraid. He couldn’t forget his own tragic experience. He was afraid that when he attacked a human and the human was strong enough to fight back – like him – and he couldn’t finish his food, he would transform another human into his kind. And he didn’t like that. He didn’t want to change other humans to become something like him. Because in all honesty, despite all the perks of being immortal, he hated the monster that he was.

And so Jung Yonghwa decided that his diet only consisted of animal blood. Whatever animal he could find.

~!@#$%^&*()_+

Jung Yonghwa resigned from his job on the first day of July that year. He had hunted the night before, curing his thirst of blood by dry some wild cats around the city. Some cats actually tasted good, especially those with collar tag – Okay, maybe they weren’t all wild.

Feeling good after his supper the previous night, he dared himself to fax his resignation letter. He called his boss to tell him that he got terminal illness that didn’t allow him to go out and get exposed to the sun. He said his illness was called Xeroderma Pigmentosum (XP), a disease that made the ultraviolet radiation of sunlight potentially lethal to him and enabled him to continue working normally.

Of course, he lied.

He incidentally found out about the disease when he was browsing about “sun” and “illness” in the internet.

His boss had no other choice but to let him go. He wished for Jung Yonghwa’s recovery and promised that he, along with his other co-workers, would find time to visit him. Yonghwa thought it was okay to have guests, so he said he would anticipate their visit.

Even though so far he could still live without money – for abandoned animals’ blood was free – he still needed money to pay his rent, his phone bills, to buy tickets to visit his parents in Busan once in a while, or to buy coats in winter even though he couldn’t feel the cold. So he decided to find another job to make a living. He considered some night job, something easy to get and easy to do.

He first tried to work in a convenient store. He specifically asked to only be given the night shift. Except the growing number of female customers at night, the job was totally boring.

Resigning after only a month, Jung Yonghwa then worked in a night club. It was because of this TV drama he accidentally watched. The title was Vampire Prosecutor, and in one episode it showed how the vampire prosecutor got to drink human blood in a night club, buying it from some supplier hiding in the deepest side of the club. And the club’s name was “Blood”.

It gave Jung Yonghwa an idea. He could buy blood. He could taste human blood. So he started to search a club with a name related to his kind. He found it after wandering for 8 days, a club in Mapo named “Bats”. He thought it was pretty close – Bats, Vampires, Mosquitoes – and no harm in trying anyway.

He applied as a waiter and was immediately accepted because of his good look – the manager thought he could attract more female customers. The next thing he did was searching for the supplier of the blood. There were a bunch of drug dealers doing business in his work place, but never had he found a blood seller. After a month, he asked one of the drug dealers that frequented his service where he could buy blood. And what a surprise to him that the drug dealer – named Dalsoo – could also provide blood if he really wanted. But it was a little pricey, though. Even if he didn’t have it too often, maybe about once a week, it wouldn’t be enough to make ends meet with his salary from the club. But then he remembered that he still had some saving that was initially intended to pay his wedding – if he found the one. Well, now that he was a monster, he didn’t think he would ever marry, so he decided to just use the money to feed him instead.

He worked in the club for a while. He managed to drink human blood once every other week and his saving was still in the green line. He just hated how those girl humans kept ually harassing him by touching and groping whenever he walked pass them. He didn’t mind with ogling, but touching and groping was another thing.

Those kimchi.

Sometimes he just wanted to forget his principles and them dry like what he did to those wild cats. So he resigned.

~!@#$%^&*()_+

Now that he was jobless, he spent his days and nights at home in front of the TV. His couch was practically his bed – or coffin, based on some horror flicks. He was lazying around without bothering to hunt. He had spent all his separation pay to buy blood from Dalsoo and stored them in his fridge. Coincidentally, he stopped working on December, and a few days after his resignation, he got a call from his Mother asking him whether he would come home for Christmas or not.

He was actually reluctant, but then he caught his Mother’s hopeful tone, so he decided he would go home. He thought it would be fine. He could grab the ticket of last flight to Busan. He’d stay at home all days and nights, reasoning that he was too tired due to work, or maybe faking flu. He’d stay maybe around 3-4 days and then go back to Seoul with the last flight.

He thought that was all he needed to worry about. Never had flashed on his mind, that his visit home would trigger something he didn’t know he could feel as an undead. He never thought he would long for something like that.

After spending three days and four nights in Busan, bonding with his parents and older brother, meeting his other family members in the Christmas party his uncle held, and caught up with his high school buddies through soju, he started feeling it.

Difference.

For the first time since he changed, he felt different. He knew he wasn’t the same anymore. He was aware he was no longer human, hell he even thought of humans as food he avoided eating. But he never realized how different he was from the rest of the creatures around him. It was because he never cared. But ever since he went back home, reconnected with people he used to care, it was down on him how they would all grow old and one day die. And he would keep on living. Alone.

Then the next thing he felt was loneliness.

He felt so alone in the big city. Since the day he knew he had changed, he had never found the likes of him, ever. He was suddenly worried that he might be the only one in Seoul. He might even be the only vampire in the universe.

Okay, scratch that. That was impossible, because there was still this bastard who bit him after his birthday celebration and transformed him into this disgusting creature. Beautiful, but still, disgusting – If he really wanted to be beautiful, he could go buy expensive skincare products and be beautiful without being disgusting.

Maybe he wasn’t alone after all. Maybe he could find the other victims. Maybe he could find another one like him.

~!@#$%^&*()_+

On New Year’s Eve of 2014, Jung Yonghwa wandered around the city, not to hunt, but to find another one like him. And how convenient it was that almost everyone lived in the city came out and celebrated the beginning of a new year.

He searched and searched.

But everywhere he went, he could only smell blood, he could only hear beating hearts. He was in a buffet but had no appetite to eat. Because he had no company.

He continued his search for almost a month, until he ran out of blood in his fridge. One night, he came to “Bats”, looking for Dalsoo to buy more blood. Truthfully, he kind of liked Dalsoo. He wasn’t so bad of a kimchi. No matter how much he asked for blood, Dalsoo would readily provide without asking any questions, as long as he paid accordingly. He would sometimes give him discounts, too, if he bought a lot.

After placing his order and agreed to meet again two days after, he decided to leave. He had already stood up and was about to walk out when Dalsoo playfully said that he should have worked in a hospital or a blood bank so he could have blood for free anytime.

That piqued his interest.

His saving was decreasing and it was saddening him. He still had an eternity to worry about. He badly needed a job.

He immediately browsed for a night job in hospitals and blood banks. After several minutes looking in the internet, he found a vacancy in a hospital in Gangnam as a security guard. And luckily, they were looking for guards for night shift.

Without further ado, Jung Yonghwa sent in his application.

~!@#$%^&*()_+

It was great working as a night guard in a hospital.

First of all, less attention. No one really cared about handsome security guard in a hospital at night.

Second of all, just like Dalsoo said, free access to blood inventories. He absolutely despised stealing, and he honored his profession as the one who kept the security and safety around the establishment, so he had never stolen. But there were often time when the patient died during surgery and there was leftover blood which was formerly used to transfuse, discarded by the nurses. Using his super speed, he would collect it without anyone noticing. Or when he couldn’t help it, he would fresh corpse in the morgue, even though it didn’t taste as good as the blood he usually got from Dalsoo. And his pay was far better than before when he was a club waiter, so he could still afford to buy blood from Dalsoo. He sometimes wondered how fresh human blood tasted, but he would immediately brush it off.

And the last benefit was Jung Yonghwa could use his superior ability for something good, like protecting human race – or preserving resources, he’d like to say – by keeping the safety of the people in the hospital where he worked.

So far, it was the longest job he had after he changed.

~!@#$%^&*()_+

After almost a year working in the hospital, Jung Yonghwa couldn’t help but associate with the other security guards, especially those who often stationed in the same post as him at the same shift. Even though he couldn’t taste human food, he tried to appreciate the hot coffee they bought him from the vending machine and homemade kimbab they usually brought. He listened to their stories and joined their conversation. But he would never get attached to them. He still thought it was silly to befriend kimchi. He even almost gagged when one of his co-workers tried to match make him with the new janitor who was – according to them – surprisingly very pretty, but very quiet.

Even though he could proudly say that he had a life despite his condition, with a well-paid job and good colleagues, and also a loving family in Busan, he still felt lonely. Jung Yonghwa wanted to relate, to connect, with someone like him – Someone who experienced the excruciating pain like him; someone who craved for blood like him; someone who didn’t sleep like him; someone who was not kimchi.

He spent his days off to continue his search. He still looked for his kind in the vast Seoul. He even had expanded his search to other cities around Seoul. He started to think that he wouldn’t get anywhere if he kept working. Maybe it was time for him to resign and focus on his search.

Just when he decided to send in his resignation letter at the end of that week, the security department was shaken by thievery. It was only found out then that some blood was missing from the blood storage. There was an officer whose job was to record the blood supplies in the hospital, then count it physically every month to cross check with the record. Apparently, the amount of blood recorded in the book and the real amount physically was mismatched. The number of blood in the storage was far less than what was recorded. It was the first time it happened since the said officer was in charge three years ago, and he swore he had meticulously recorded everything. The officer claimed those missing blood ampuls were stolen.

Oddly enough, when the security department investigated it by checking the CCTV along the hallway to the blood storage, they couldn’t find anything. Too bad there wasn’t any CCTV camera at the door or inside the storage room, because the low temperature of the room could damage the devices.

The security executives held a meeting to find ways to solve the case. Some security staffs rewound and replayed the video retrieved from the CCTV over and over again but could only scratch their head in confusion.

But for Jung Yonghwa, it only took a glimpse and he knew what happened.

His eyes lit up when he saw it. It wasn’t caught in the CCTV who – or  what – entered the blood storage to steal, but he saw in the monitor how an insignificant thing, a discarded tissue on the floor, suddenly floated in the air as if there was wind blew it away when in fact, there was no window near the facility.

He suddenly felt excited.

Maybe, just maybe, it was what he thought it was.

~!@#$%^&*()_+

Jung Yonghwa had made a note of the time when the phenomenon happened. It was Wednesday, three weeks ago, at 01.33 KST. Based on the calculation made by the storage officer, the blood was stolen at least one ampul a week since January – because the last time he counted at the beginning of January, it was still matched. And Jung Yonghwa dared to bet, one ampul was gone every Wednesday.

He exchanged shifts with his co-worker so he could take the next Wednesday shift with an excuse that he’d have a date on his supposedly shift. His co-worker was more than happy to help, though he was hoping Jung Yonghwa would want to give the pretty new janitor, named Seo Juhyun, a chance. Because he thought Jung Yonghwa and Seo Juhyun would be so perfect together.

He gave his co-worker a fake nervous laugh he had mastered over the year to close the case.

On the D day, Jung Yonghwa set his trap. Just like how he caught the act, he put a piece of tissue on the floor, on the same spot where he saw it on the video. He then sat on his seat in the control room, looking intently at his monitor, waiting for the same occurrence to happen again.

Nothing happened even until past midnight. But Jung Yonghwa was patient. He was also sure of his deduction, so he kept waiting.

He stared at the monitor without blinking. He was so focused he didn’t even move.

And then he saw it. The tissue he set earlier floated in the air with no reason. The right corner of his lips moved upwards before he suddenly disappeared. And a minute after, the monitor showed the same tissue that was starting to land floated again even higher.

~!@#$%^&*()_+

Jung Yonghwa slammed the storage door open, and there he saw it, he saw her, in one corner of the room, stood frozen with an ampul of blood in her hands. Her head turned to his direction and her eyes were staring at him.

It was the new janitor, Seo Juhyun, still in her uniform, and it was apparent in her eyes that she was startled by his appearance.

But Jung Yonghwa was ecstatic.

At the speed of lightning she turned around and lurched toward him, dropping the blood on the floor. In no time, she got him pinned down to the door behind him with her unbelievable strength. The collision made another loud noise. She then pushed him roughly to the door once again to scare him and showed him her fangs. She hissed while slowly cradled his neck with her left hand.

She glared at him menacingly while whispering, “If you value your life-“

But then she stopped mid-sentence.

The look on her eyes turned from threatening into confusion. She then moved her face closer to his neck as she held his shoulder with both her hands. The tip of her nose brushed his skin as she sniffed around his neck urgently. Her right hand then slid down to his left chest and lingered there for a few seconds as she stared at him in disbelief.

And for the first time since he changed, Jung Yonghwa grinned so wide. His cheeks burst, his eyes crinkled, and his fangs appeared.

On Wednesday, February 11, 2015, at 02.45 KST, Jung Yonghwa finally found the one he had been looking for.

(end)