Epilogue
A Red Sun Rises
He buries Kibum and Taemin under the tree in their backyard. He digs the hole himself, and lays them side by side in the dark, rich soil.
There will never come a day when he won't regret his actions last night. He had been angry with his children and he had intended to make clear his lesson that nothing but pain could come out of consorting with humans. But in failing to take into account the strength and viciousness of a blood moon vampire - a vampire born on the night of a blood moon - Jinki had failed them.
How the two of them came to know this human, Jinki can only guess. Why Taemin turned him, why Kibum hid this from him; these are questions to which he will never find an answer.
"Forgive me," Jinki asks of them. He covers the grave mechanically. He wants to remember his children - the one he sired and the one he adopted - as they would want to be remembered; alive, full of mischief and devoted to one another. He wants to remember the smile on Taemin's face when he first learnt to change his colours. He wants to remember how eagerly Kibum threw himself into each new thing he learnt.
When the grave is covered and ground levelled, Jinki lays a bouquet of daisies on top of it.
As for the other vampire's body, Jinki had chopped its limbs to pieces and set them alight in a shallow grave; he had covered it only once he had been satisfied that there was no possibility of it rising again.
At sunrise, Jinki closes the door of their house - once ringing with laughter, now silent and foreboding - and leaves, never to return.
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