“It has been reported that Park Chanyeol has suddenly died, reportedly from snake venom.”

In such a small town, death is a big issue. Death of course, is a big deal to begin with. Here, you have a small town with such a small crime rate that something like murder was absolutely unheard of. The last accident that happened was ten years ago, when my parents both died in a car accident. Key word: accident. These things don't happen around here.

Now when you have an entire pack of werewolves plus me, gathering around to watch the emergency broadcast, suspicion fills the air. The picture of the boy who was only a few years older than me was at the top right corner, but the story the anchorwoman spoke of made absolutely no sense to us.

I watched the eyes in all of the members darken knowingly that the report must have been falsified in some way. His body was found in some alleyway, leaning against a garbage can. Snakes just don’t wander into town; we don’t have that kind of problem at all here. Usually the snakes are deep in the forest and don’t come out until the nightfall.

Smaller details were the issue on our end, because humans probably didn’t think too much about it. The supposed “snake bite” was in his neck. That made Sunggyu especially, question everything. Two puncture holes in the neck, sound familiar? Then again, we have never had that problem in our area either. At least...not to our knowledge.

A buzz came from my pocket at Sehun’s name lit up on my screen.

Are you watching this? The whole town must have been watching this. The fact that the guy was so young made it even more devastating. My eyes moved up to the TV back down to my phone multiple times as I tried balancing texting and paying attention to the broadcast.

We’re watching.

He texted me back asking, We?

I told him the whole pack was at my house, and it took him a while to text me back after that. I know that he had this weird attitude when I was around my brother’s friends but it seemed like this was much more important.

He texted again after I got distracted by the broadcast. This seems…kinda fake.

Yeah… I couldn’t say much; I didn’t really know if I was allowed to say anything at all. The feuds between species were rather secretive. I wasn't even sure that was knowledge Woohyun knew. Only select pack leaders.

I went in town with Myungsoo the next day and noticed the immediate change within the people of our town. The silence was unbearable, which was saying a lot for me because I liked it when it was quiet. A lot of people were wearing black out of respect, eye contact was rare as we walked around.

We stopped by the post office to drop of a package for Myungsoo. Jin Joo’s birthday was in a couple of weeks, but Myungsoo struggled with going. It was as if something was keeping him here, preventing him from leaving. As if he needed to stay.

When Myungsoo finished with that errand, it was off to another errand. This was how my cousin numbed his mind of things that were stressing him out, keeping himself busy. My eyes wandered around the town, scoping out people passing when I saw an unfortunate familiar face.

In all honesty, I expected Sera to be one of those ex-girlfriends who was an emotional wreck after a break up. Seeing her with a different guy every time I went into town was a bit of a surprise to me.

Her arm was linked around a guy that was clearly much older than us, maybe in his 30s and completely different than Sehun. He was shorter, meatier, and he kind of looked like a tool. They walked off behind a shop away from my eyesight.

Now, werewolves don’t exactly like wind. For the most part, it throws off our sense of smell for about a mile. Something far away could smell like it was right next to us. A heavy gust picked up and the foulest scent I had ever smelled filled up my nostrils.

It started off smelling like…metal. Not the most pleasant smell but it got worse. It was that feeling where the smell itself hits you all the way through to your stomach. Something was…putrid. I had never known something so utterly disgusting, but the only thing I was able to establish was that this meant danger…

Myungsoo completely forgot about the errands he needed to run, stopping in his tracks as the smell hit him. He held his hand out in front of me, stopping the both of us from walking.

“Go back to the car.” He spoke in a hushed tone. I was right about the danger bit.

“What?”

“Now!” Myungsoo was never really harsh with me, not strict like Woohyun. He was being strict like Woohyun used to be.

With a hand on my back, my cousin pushed me all the way back to the car and raced home like it was the biggest emergency ever. When we reached the house, he told me to go to my room and stay there for the rest of the day. I had sat at my desk for a majority of that day, trying to hear anything that Myungsoo might be telling Woohyun. Yet, the house stayed silent as if I was the only soul inside.

I took advantage of the lack of communication. Myungsoo only told me to stay in the house that day, and Sehun wanted to hang out and take pictures. I wasn’t going to be stopped from spending time with Sehun because of a danger that I didn’t even know about.

Sehun waited at our front door, casually standing with his camera bag hanging on his shoulder. Once I opened the door and stepped out side, he smiled and my heart swooned. “Hey.”

I furrowed my eyebrows, “Every time you say that I don’t know if you’re saying my name or greeting me.”

He playfully rolled his eyes and chuckled, “Hi.”

Sehun didn’t keep any distance between us as we walked side by side. His hand brushed against mine a few times, so I moved my hand to hold the strap of my camera bag. I didn’t know if I imagined it, but I could have sworn I heard Sehun grumbling to himself. We walked down the street and arrived at the edge of the forest. “So…did you know the guy who died?”

He sighed, looking down at his shoes. “No, but Baekhyun did. He’s a wreck right now.”

I only hummed, not really knowing how to react. He talked about Baekhyun a few times but I didn’t know either of them to be sad about it. It didn’t seem like Sehun was too upset either. We were like the rest of the town, confused about what we should be feeling about this sudden death.

The forest was nicely covered in shade was we walked through it. I looked at Sehun to see if he had any plan as to where to go. “You lead today.”

I shrugged, not even thinking of a place to go we walked through. Somewhere in all that walking I ended up ahead of him, looking around and admiring nature instead of taking any pictures.

Behind me, I heard Sehun’s shutter go off rapidly. He was constantly taking pictures, and it only made me more curious as to what he captured behind his lens. He was being so secretive about his photography when I was the one who taught him all along.

The silence was getting to me again. It’s ironic when people say silence is deafening but something in me related to that saying as I looked up at the sky. Someone died. I had a strong feeling that it wasn’t died…but murdered.

There was one time where I told Sehun that nothing scared me. It was a blatant lie. The idea of someone having the capability and mindset to murder was beyond terrifying. Killing…death…it was all terrifying to me. I couldn’t even think of an instance that would bring me to kill.

“Hye?” I looked back at Sehun who had his camera down to his chest looking over at me with a look of concern. “What’s wrong?”

I guess my fears were that easy to read on my face if Sehun was able to see it. He slowly walked over to me, hanging his camera around his neck. He repeated his question once more, “What’s wrong?”

All of the little details were really freaking me out. I told him about smelling something out in the town and he gave me a funny look. All I had to do was point at my nose, “Dog nose, remember?”

He reached over and pinched my nose, probably not liking that I referred to myself as a dog. “So you smelled something bad?”

“Not…bad. I don’t know how to explain it, but it wasn’t really a smell like how you would think. Foul…” I found myself slipping into Sehun’s habit of mumbling to himself.

“Gar…bage?” Sehun’s guessing was actually slightly cute. To me, the human mind was so effortlessly simple.

I threw my head back and groaned dramatically at the frustration in trying to explain the emotion that wafted through my nose. But it hit me that it was actually an emotion and not a smell. I skipped over trying to explain me smelling an emotion as a part of my sensory system and went to being blunt instead. “No…it was just…evil.”

As we walked the terrain became rocky and difficult to navigate through. We were hopping from one giant boulder to the next. Sehun and I both remembered this spot. We hadn’t been back since seeing such a gruesome display of dead animals, whose carcasses had been cleared out for some time now.

“Do you think those animals and the guy’s death are connected?” He looked up at me and held out a hand for me to jump down. I technically didn’t need it since I was most likely more balanced than he was. It’s not like I was going to pass on the opportunity to hold his hand even for a second.

I didn’t even take the idea into any consideration at first. But now that he brought it up a connection would have made sense. There couldn’t have been more than one killer on the loose. Not in an area like this…

“It’s quite possible. I don’t really know anything about that though.” I looked down at my shoes, kicking a small rock and listening to it clack down the boulder.

“At least we know it has nothing to do with either of us right?” Sehun offered positivism I needed to hear. He reassured me that we were out of this…but I had a bad feeling about it anyways.

We wandered that whole day, me being in front of Sehun the entire time leading us through the forest. The sun started to go down and we backtracked through the same way. Sehun took over leading, holding his hand out for me while we were climbing through the boulders.

He held his hand out one last time as we finally hit level ground, but as he pulled me up he didn’t let go of my hand. Actually, he held onto it quite firmly as we walked back to my house. Our fingers were intertwined; his thumb would occasionally brush over the back of my hand and it hit me. I was holding hands with Oh Sehun. He was holding my hand, tugging me along through my neighborhood.

It became a habit for him to hug me when we separated. Each hug was longer than the last, to me seemingly more desperate for affection. Today his forehead was against my neck, arms wrapped around my shoulders. Before he left he poked my nose, smiling down at me. How does he expect me to live after doing something like that?

I needed a morning by myself to catch up on developing film so I texted Sehun that night that I’d meet him in the afternoon. It felt like forever since I developed film, and I actually had new pictures I took with some of my older cameras. I couldn’t shake the bad feeling I was having no matter how hard I tried to convince myself that it would be a good day. Something seemed off.

I ignored it as I entered the back of the camera store in town, equipped with a full darkroom. It was relaxing to develop photos the old fashioned way. In a dark room with a stop bath, surrounded by drying pictures. I chose carefully which ones I wanted to develop as only some of them looked good in black and white, carefully putting the negatives in their stop bath.

I walked through the room, watching the drying photos develop slowly. It was both fascinating but a bit boring at this same time. I realized I must have accidentally made a negative of a picture I didn’t need, also remembering that I actually took this picture in the first place.

It was a picture of Sehun I secretly captured. Trees surrounded him; he was looking up at something and showing off that glorious jaw line. There were visible traces of sunrays peeking down and shining upon him like he was some kind of god. Basically a perfect picture of Sehun, and luckily he didn’t realize that I took it.

The background started becoming more developed, the trees and shadows becoming more defined. I wished they hadn’t. I must have not noticed it when I actually took the picture; either that or it was intentionally blocked from my supernatural eyesight.

Sehun wouldn’t have seen it lurking in the dark, mythological creatures have the ability to hide from humans if they really wanted to but it takes an incredible amount of focus. My eyes are trained to see things like this, but it was even more rare to see this in a picture…they weren’t supposed to show up in any kind of reflection.

Even though the picture was black and white, I could already tell that the glow in this monster’s eyes must have been red as blood, like a demon; red like blood. What was even more evident was the lust for blood, eyes set not on the camera but…on Sehun.

I don’t like being angry. I don’t like being lied to. Secrets are hard for me to swallow. And a combination of those three were just revealed in what was revealed in the shadows of this picture I was looking at.

I didn’t care if it wasn’t finished drying yet; I grabbed it and held it closer to my face to make sure my eyes weren’t deceiving me. I lost the will to control my anger because at this point it was like all of my suffering didn’t even have to happen.

It seemed like it was a trick, staring at the familiar for with such unfamiliar features. But thinking about it, it all made sense. The hatred towards me, the distinct actions directed at me, even things that may have just seemed like accidents I now realized were probably on purpose.

My whole body felt like it was on fire. My hands crushed the photo, crumpling it until I couldn’t see either figure anymore.

“All this time…” I mumbled to myself. The comical side of me said I was turning into Sehun and he was turning into me. But I quickly forgot about that. I paced back and forth, worried, terrified, concerned; all because of this new discovery. I picked up the picture and smoothened it out, looking again for any sign that I was wrong about who it was in the shadows.

I held onto the picture in my hand and walked out of the darkroom. I held it against my chest, frantically avoiding eye contact with every person that I passed. I probably looked incredibly suspicious walking through town, but at the rate my anger was increasing at, I needed to get away from these people as fast as I could and go back home.

Looking down at my feet was a bad idea. My senses were heightened as I walked, but I wasn’t able to avoid the inevitable of running into someone. It was Sera.

The picture I clutched so desperately to my chest dropped as I got knocked back, and landed right in front of her feet. Her face showed absolutely no emotion as she picked up the picture of her ex-boyfriend. But at me, the emotion changed.

I stared at her in bewilderment. It was different. Everything about her changed and my own mind didn’t know what to believe. She didn’t seem too fond of me at the moment as she gave me a look of utter disgust. I held out a hand, keeping my distance.

“You…you stay away from me.” I snatched the picture out of her hand and walked right past her, quickening my pace even faster than before. It didn’t help. I guess I was being a klutz today because I ran into another person.

“Hye, what’s wrong? It looks like you’ve seen a ghost…” I crashed straight into his chest, but he gently pushed me back as I wide-eyed him. I would have rather seen a ghost if I had the choice. “I’m about to get drinks, want to come?”

“S-sure…” I shoved the picture in the back pocket of my shorts, pretending like it wasn’t there. Sehun knew I was acting suspicious and I hated that he pressed me for answers.

“Something up?” He questioned me, and I always felt bad for keeping things from him when I hated secrets just as much. I forgot that I had more than one secret I was keeping from him.

I decided to give him a half-truth, just not the whole thing. “I’m still paranoid I guess.”

He ruffled my hair, “I told you not to worry. Come on, let’s go.”

It really knowing the good intentions behind his reassurance, knowing that he was dead wrong about more than one thing. I should be worried…and all of this had to do with both of us. We were both victims, and that was beginning to make me panic to no ends. Now I knew Sehun was in as much danger as I was.

I was able to go on throughout the whole day, but only barely making it. Not only did Sehun know nothing, I had to keep it from Woohyun and Myungsoo. I decided for myself that I would take care of it myself and I didn’t want to be babied by them anymore. As a growing woman…I had to figure this one out by myself

I had no ability to sleep on the information. I stared straight up at my ceiling as I was laying on my bed, occasionally looking over to the window. I was able to confirm so many things. Who shot me, why there were days I felt paranoid while I was with Sehun, who was outside both my window and Sehun’s window, and who killed Park Chanyeol all led to the same person.

Perhaps this…monster…had a personal vendetta against me. I supposed now I could understand a reason. Perhaps my identity and connection to Sehun were easily revealed. I just hated that all of this really did revolve around me.

Having no sleep was troubling, but I acted like everything was normal. Normal In Hye going to meet Sehun out in the forest. Normal day taking pictures with him and making sure it seemed like I was A-Okay. And yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being followed. Before I wouldn’t have noticed, but now that she made herself known to me, it changed things.

I wanted to see how long I could go, how long it would be until something or someone was revealed. I walked slower, keeping my guard up as I did. My throat welled up, my heart was racing and I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to face her. So I turned around, ready to stand my ground. This was my domain after all.

“I thought I told you to stay away from me.” I look over at that smirk, the face that had seemingly everyone deceived. I was ashamed of myself too. I let myself think that a person could actually be that innocent. But here’s the thing about monsters: none of us are innocent. We’re just really good at faking it.

“Why? We play on our own rules.” Words that I never expected to here. It’s not like I was afraid. Reality was I was terrified after being ignorant for so long. There were signs that I should have seen.

“Leave me alone. I don’t associate with vampires.” I tried turning around to leave, but vampires have this super speed thing about them that even I can’t escape. As soon as I turned, I was faced with the same nasty smirk.

“You must be sad that your mate is already claimed by another.” The voice was different, more taunting and much less fake. The façade that she kept up for so long was finally being destroyed. No point in hiding her true colors.

“Claimed? I really don’t think that is the case after you cheated on him. Or should I say killed that poor Chanyeol kid?”

If the neck veins weren’t enough to show her anger, a slight glow appeared in her eyes. Same as the picture that was left somewhere in my room. The blood thirst was back and seemed even stronger than before. My eyes were immediately drawn to the fangs piercing out. I’m such an idiot. Here I thought she was nice to me at first, and I ended up denying all of the possible suspicions.

“Stay away from Sehun.” As expected, exactly what I was waiting to hear. Even if I could, there was no way in hell I would ever listen to a word or threat she had to say to me.

“Oh?” I chuckled, at the failed attempted to both threat and intimidate me. “And why should I, Sera?”

• ┻━┻ ︵ヽ(`Д´)ﾉ︵ ┻━┻ 

All right, bring it on. How many of you called this?? ;D ps sorry Chanyeol fans ;A;