He pretends not to notice her presence from almost twenty metres away, but his heightened sense of smell and sight betrays him. When the song ends, Ahra turns away and is about to leave when he calls out her name.

The look on her face is something he realises he’s never seen before. Something between forlorn and lonely, rejected and resigned.

“Hey, if you hear my music, you have to give some money!” He shouts.

Her signature scowl and her usual look of composure isn’t there, instead she paints the perfect picture of a deer in headlights when she hears her and walks towards Sihoo. He half-expects her to say something like “Why aren’t you at school,” but she doesn’t. Granted, she’s skipping school herself, but it’s so uncharacteristic of her to just stand there with puppy eyes, listening.

And so, Sihoo sings. He sings something impromptu, but the lyrics have been eating at him for quite a while.

“There is a certain someone… who seems ordinary. You may not be interested, but the person quietly spends the day alone. Certain people…just can’t talk about all of the old stories. So, they just live on their own.”

Ahra stands there, her eyes looking down on the ground, and wait are those tears? He’s suddenly filled with an overwhelming urge to make her feel better, despite knowing that she’s the same girl that pulled the tomato juice prank on Mari four months ago.

“There’s somebody,” he ends, “Somebody who wants to be normal.”

She bites her lip and runs a hand through her hair. Finally, her eyes meet his, for just a split second. And honestly, it makes him very uncomfortable that Jo Ahra is sad. He picks up the case, empties the change and keeps his guitar.

They walk alongside each other on the streets, and he can hear some murmurs of the people passing by that echo their curiosity as to why she’s not in school although she’s wearing the school uniform. Ahra doesn’t question him following her as they step into a hair accessory shop. She tries on a few clips that hold up her side parting as she peers into the mirror on the shelf. Sihoo wonders if this is what girls do when they’re miserable – go shopping.

“That one’s pretty. I’ll buy it for you,” he says. He doesn’t actually know why he said it, but it’s too late to take it back now. She does look very pretty in it, but then again, she looks pretty in anything. Sihoo tries to justify his actions with a “I’m doing this so that you’ll be nice to Baek Mari. The girls in class only listen to you.”

“Do you like her, too?”

“Why would I like such a stupid kid?”

After furrowing her eyebrows, Ahra looks to him in thought. “A while ago, the tomato juice incident… you didn’t do it, did you?”

“Duh. You did it. Wasn’t it all planned?” He questions. Guilt flashes over her face for a second. Back then, she’d obviously done it because of her jealousy between that dumb-pire and Jaemin.

Ahra bites her lips as she recalls the incident and peers at him as she collects her thoughts.

“At that time, the packed tomato juice…”

Oh.

“Maybe, perhaps…” Ahra says, her eyes searching, “Are you a vampire too?”

Should I tell her?

Sihoo catches a glimpse of her hand. You know what, this. He trails over her forearm with a gentle finger, and her eyes widen as he says, “Jo Ahra, even your veins are pretty.”

She isn’t screaming, she isn’t audio recording his sentence for blackmail, she isn’t freaking out and she doesn’t even flinch. Ahra’s taking this whole situation much better than he expects.

However, in such close contact, instinctive vampirical thoughts like” AB blood! Rare and sweet AB blood! Her veins! Blood! Blood that’s far sweeter than what Mari boasts about Jaemin! You haven’t eaten! Your meal has arrived!” eats at Sihoo as he unconsciously brings her wrist to his lips.

Aish, what have I done; now I gotta explain myself.

He leans over and catches a glimpse of Ahra looking very alarmed and being very quiet.

“Breathe,” he whispers against her skin, “Are you scared?”

 “No, not as much as I thought,” she says, but her eyes flit around nervously.

And yeah, she looks pretty when she’s shocked. Sihoo decides to spice up the drama when he looks up and says, “Don’t be scared… we….”

He makes sure he whispers the last part scandalously.

“… don’t eat human blood.”

Ahra snatches her hand away and gathers herself by pushing her fallen half-bangs off her face. “Ha, Queen Bee Jo Ahra being flustered is absolute gold.” Sihoo chuckles to himself as he takes the hairclip he had previously offered to pay for.

She has such a weird habit of like, picking five accessories and then putting back all of them while muttering about “don’t be a shopaholic” to herself, Sihoo notices as they make their way to the counter. Only two items lay in the basket, a stark contrast to the amount that she had picked initially; ten? Eleven? He’s lost count.

Before she searches through her purse for the payment, Sihoo intercepts and gives the store manager--cashier a 10 000 won bill.

As they exit the shop, the manager stops him.

“Student, do you want a part-time job here? Your image fits our shop.”

True, I need funds, now that I’m living with my uncle and I don’t want to leech off my own teacher.

Still, this is a good opportunity to tease Ahra.

“Hold on, I need to ask my girlfriend for permission first,” he says and turns to her. Ahra’s eyes instantly widen at the mention of “girlfriend”.

Sihoo bends forward to her eye level. “Go ahead, tell her that I’m a vampire,” he dares her.

Ahra only blinks before countering him with unexpected spunk and confidence.

“Get a job and earn some money. You said you’d treat me to tomato juice. Don’t you remember?”

Remember about the tomato juice? Or-

She looks at him, point blank in the eye, and does the biting thing. The thing he had done that day to complete his “cool” exit from the class after surficially confessing to Jo Ahra like, five months ago. Back when he attend school, before the whole suicide thing.

And it’s horribly cute, it makes him want to cringe for infinity and curl up into a ball but it’s unbearably adorable and oh man. Oh man.

Approximately 5 seconds later, Ahra covers her face in embarrassment with her hands and runs out of the store when the manager brings him to the counter to sign up for a job interview.

This is so fun. In one day, I’ve seen sides of Ahra that I’ve never seen before.

When he emerges from the store, Ahra is still there. She doesn’t know he’s here, and she’s talking to herself. Sihoo can hear her hilarious pep talk and self-lecturing from a distance.

“-And like, Jo Ahra, you’ve lost your mind. Vampire! A vampire. You should have run. He said my blood veins were pretty. Pretty. Ughhhhh this Han Sihoo son of a… well… vampire… Why did I have to meet him, huh? This secret is a burden. Or is it even a secret?”

Sihoo’s eyebrows quirk up with every sentence. “Is he coming out? A vampire coming out? To me? Why does this sound like an LGBT kind of thing; coming out… aish, this is confusing, why did he sing? Why did he skip school?”

“Well did you expect me to donate blood today?”

Ahra looks visibly shocked when she hears Sihoo’s voice from the door.

“You heard me?”

“Nah. But you should have gone though. The Korean Blood Bank recently sent out notices that they were short of platelets. You’re AB, aren’t you?”

“What’s that supposed to mean? Are you using blood-typing to determine my personality? Like woah man, thanks, I know ABs are the weird ones but-”

“No, I’m saying that AB+ might be the universal receiver in red blood cells, but you’re the universal donor for platelets.”

She stares at him weirdly.

“I’m saying, you could be helping out the community, you know?”

“How do you even know all of this?”

Sihoo gives her a “really?” face. “You know what I am.”

A black Mercedez rolls into view and pulls over at the side, gesturing for Ahra to get in, to which she does. Sihoo guesses this is her father.

“Bye,” he mouths silently as he watches her go. Suddenly, he’s hit with a bout of hunger as he remembers he hasn’t taken his 12-hourly blood dosage.

(Sihoo also belatedly remembers that he kind of unconsciously put away the urge to feed while he was with Ahra; for like, a full hour, and he doesn’t know how.)