It wasn’t as if this was the first time. No, rather it was perhaps the third or maybe even the fourth time he’d seen such a man that looked like him.

The first time it had only been the shape of eye and the twitch of a lip that had sparked a passing resemblance. And the second and third had been just as vague – the resemblance in the way the man moved or the way his fingers carded through his hair.

Every time it seemed that just as Kyungsoo was on the cusp of forgetting – every time he struggled to recall his defining features – one of these men popped up to remind him of what had been, remind him of what he had lost. But he could never help but wonder if it was really the boys that looked like the man, or whether he, himself, was projecting that image onto them in some sort of twisted fantasy. But even as he struggled more and more with the passing time to truly remember his face, when he saw Jongin, Kyungsoo knew without a shadow of a doubt that Kai’s body had returned to the world.

After the initial shock of the scent – seeming so similar to what his had been –he realized that the odor was overall pleasing to him, albeit strongly, and was nothing to really ponder over. Rather, he worried more about the boy’s resemblance.

At first, he scrutinized the boy’s features, trying to find fault in his appearance, and had almost convinced himself that he was projecting again - perhaps his eyes were too droopy, or his height too tall. But the more Kyungsoo watched, the less convinced he became of himself and the more he started to question his own logic.

Even if their features were the same, their attitudes were so different that Kyungsoo knew they must be two different people. And yet, the boy slouched in the back row, his mouth hung open stupidly as he scribbled in his notebook and his eyes rolled whenever Professor Kim said something particularly uninteresting. Kyungsoo had never seen him make any of these uncouth expressions in the time they had been together, but he became sure that if he were to, then they would look just like that.

Perhaps this shouldn’t have been enough to convince Kyungsoo, and it really wasn’t. But Kyungsoo began to question his own conclusions when he finally noticed the boy’s friend.

He had hardly given the partner any attention when they’d snuck into the room – as captivated by Jongin as he was – but when he had heard the other boy whisper about him, recognition in his tone, he had chanced a glance at the other.

There he was, the same pointy-faced servant that had been by his side all those years ago, following around what looked like the reincarnation of he, himself. And if Kyungsoo had not already believed in fate before then he would have been convinced of it now – the same two bodies, finding each other in the same lifetime, hundreds of years after their passing.

A memory extracted itself from the depths of his past and echoed across the forefront of his mind.

“After all this time do you still doubt my ability to return to your side?”

A frightening shadow fell over Kyungsoo’s face and, without realizing, his fingers crushed the corners of the desk within his grip, splintering the wood. Luckily, the small crunch it made within his fist was relatively quiet. Although, the girls in the front row that had been quietly and annoyingly whispering about him throughout the lecture were finally silenced and exchanged a look between them before turning back to the professor with nervous expressions.

It was when he noticed the exchange that he remembered to relax, soften his expression. His ‘character’ was not prone to outbursts of rage. No, he had made sure that despite his mistakes early on, Do Kyungsoo was a polite young man with a low profile reputation.

It was as he reminded himself of this that he realized it didn’t matter. Nothing about this boy, or even his friend, mattered at all to him. Kyungsoo was in this city for one purpose and one purpose only. Perhaps, if anything, this appearance served as a reminder – karma for Kyungsoo admitting that he was “tired” of the chase. Perhaps this was the universe’s reminder that his duties were not finished yet – the universe reminding him of what had been lost, the soul that had been violently destroyed so many years ago.

And it did just so.

It was as if he abruptly felt a fire lit in his chest, and his breathing started to deepen at once – as if he could actually feel the air in his lungs. It was odd to feel so awake and alive so suddenly, as if he could actually sleep, or as if his heart actually beat.

---

The class ended without incident; but despite Kyungsoo’s resolution and revelation that those two humans didn’t affect him, he couldn’t help but glare at them as they passed out the doorway. His ears perked to a voice that seemed to rise higher than the crowd of gabbling students, although he knew it was said in a whisper.

“So what do you think was his problem?”

“You mean you don’t know?” his friend whispered back, sounding surprised.

So the friend knows the rumors, the thought unexpectedly alarmed him, and before he knew it he was crossing the threshold of the lecture hall and meeting the pointy-chinned man’s eyes, locking them in a harsh glare.

The blonde boy seemed surprised, his shoulders tensing suddenly and he dropped his voice to a lower whisper – one that still didn’t manage to escape Kyungsoo superior hearing.

“I’ll tell you later, Jongin.”

Jongin, he now knew was his name, turned to stare at Kyungsoo, and in return Kyungsoo’s gaze flickered back and forth between the two. The boy, Jongin, seemed to gain an understanding of the situation though no words were spoken and grabbed his friend firmly by the elbow, tugging him down the hallway and out the doors.

Kyungsoo must have stood in the doorway only half a second after that, but it seemed like eternity to his quick mind. Impossibly, he shuddered. The image of the boy before him had seemed too haunting, too ethereal to be real. Those milk chocolate eyes that had held his gaze for only a second seemed to stare back at him with recognition, although their owner’s face showed otherwise. And it took those few moments in the doorway for Kyungsoo to remind himself that those eyes were not his, no matter how much they looked alike.

He had watched those eyes close for the last time before they disappeared into dust and shattered in the sunlight.

But a part of him still wondered, where did the soul go once the body scattered?

---

The weekend could not come soon enough.

The next time Romantic Literature met that week was decidedly uneventful, because although the Jongin boy and his friend – Sehun, as he learned – showed up to class on time and prepared there was no special or fateful encounter with the teacher’s assistant.

But Kyungsoo was quite irritated with the man.

There was nothing that Jongin did to put him at fault with Kyungsoo, per say, aside from sharing an admittedly close resemblance to him. But rather, it was a startling revelation on Kyungsoo’s part that had him wishing the week would end sooner and Jongin would disappear.

The problem was that Jongin smelled.

The second day of class had been the beginning of an Indian summer in the autumn city, the heatwave burning feet on the asphalt and scorching students as they sat in the older buildings without air conditioning. The windows had all been opened in an attempt to combat the settling and sticky humidity with the breeze, but all the wind served to do was to push the scents of the students downwind in the hall and straight into Kyungsoo’s nose.

Now, Kyungsoo could not particularly feel the heat of the day, nor the breeze of the window on his hair, but he certainly felt the sting of his throat and the throb in his head as a particularly strong odor curled and lay deep in his nostrils. The scent was pungent, undermining all of the others that had mixed in with it and causing his mouth to go dry.

It had been quite a while since Kyungsoo had last come into contact with a scent so powerfully aromatic – not since America, and that had been so many years ago.

The scent was not bad by any means. In fact, it was positively delicious – somehow so ripe and sweet at the same time – which made it a problem. It made him twitch in his seat, grip the desk a bit too tightly as he tried to remind himself that he was no longer a newborn. He no longer needed to fight to restrain himself – he was in control, and had been for a long time.

Bravely, he took another deep breath, and somehow it failed to take him by surprise when he discovered the smell’s owner. Jongin, the boy - his head rested peacefully on his hand as he lazily watched the professor - had no idea what kind of effect he was having on Kyungsoo by just sitting there.

Most likely, Kyungsoo had been so overwhelmed by his appearance last time that the smell hadn’t even phased him. But now that he was no longer caught off-guard, the smell hit him with surprising intensity.

He was causing him all sorts of pain and discomfort that Kyungsoo knew he must endure - until Friday - and this was the root cause of his current irritation, but another was his revelation.

This pain meant that Kyungsoo was hungry, abruptly and without warning.

It had been less than a week since he’d last ‘ate’, and yet he found himself yearning to quench the burning dryness of his throat. It was most unusual.

Throughout the duration of the class he thought on it, and came to an unsatisfactory conclusion. Jongin was the cause.

His scent had been so striking to Kyungsoo that it had caused him to thirst all over again. Perhaps it was even his blood in particular that Kyungsoo was now craving due to its extraordinary smell, and the thought brought up some unpleasant memories.

What was it that he had said so, so long ago?

“Your blood is very…potent,” Kyungsoo seemed to recall, the memory fading in and out. ”…blood so strong and sweet …It was one of the reasons I was so drawn to you…”

It had only been described to him before, but perhaps this is how he had felt the first time he smelled Kyungsoo. The face in his memory that he’d tried so hard to focus on all these years morphed, and that sad expression that Kyungsoo recalled became clearly confused, his features a little dumber – he became Jongin. And even simply picturing him suddenly renewed his sense of thirst and caused him to hiss between his gritted teeth, possibly a bit too loudly as it seemed to alarm some of the students in the front row. And it was then that he made up his mind. He absolutely must go out this