The Academy was always Seungri’s dream. Ever since he was little, he looked up to the officers of the Unit. When he found out that not everyone in the world was human, his initial reaction wasn’t fear or distrust, it was curiosity. The first time he saw one, Seungri was 7. He was at a park, running around. Him and his friends were playing tag and Seungri was weaving through the playground attempting to not be caught. He glanced back to check to see if Jonghoon was still chasing him when he ran into something, or rather someone. It knocked Seungri off his feet and he braced himself on his wrists. The 7 year old shook his head and noticed the pair of legs in front of him, slowly glancing up to see a smiling man before him.

He was clearly a dad. Everything from the watch to the sweater to the loafers screamed dad. The assumed father looked down at Seungri and offered him a hand. As Seungri reached up, the man above him’s smile grew, revealing his teeth, and the 7 year old froze: he had fangs. Seungri’s mom had told him that vampires existed but he had never met one before, or at least, he hadn’t realized it. But this man had fangs and Seungri couldn’t be more intrigued. At first the stranger looked to be disappointed by the young child’s actions but then noted the sparkle in Seungri’s eyes and heard the small “whoa” escape his small mouth and the stranger smiled.

“Is this the first time you’ve seen someone’s fangs?” The father asked, lifting Seungri from the ground by his hand.

Seungri nodded, eyes watching the stranger’s mouth as he spoke. At the corner of the man’s eyes, wrinkles appeared as he smiled wider, giving him a soft and friendly appearance. There was nothing about him that screamed danger to Seungri. His friends made vampires out to be something scary, like their fangs were ominous or something, but Seungri didn’t feel threatened at all.

In fact, he was trying his hardest to not to touch them. They weren’t that big, the 7 year old thought. A classmate described them in a way that had Seungri thinking that a vampire’s fangs were huge, maybe even hanging lower than their bottom lip. They did look sharp, Seungri concluded, but they just seemed like slightly longer canines than the average human possessed. Before he could stop himself, Seungri lifted his finger in want to touch and the father laughed softly.

“Did you want to touch them?” He asked.

Seungri’s eyes widened and he nodded vigorously. The man crouched down so that he was eye to eye with the 7 year old and grinned. Seungri moved his finger to his fangs but suddenly heard his mom’s voice.

“Lee Seunghyun!” She called, coming closer to see what her curious son was doing. “You can’t just touch other people’s teeth! Those are not the manners that I raised you with.”

The 7 year old gazed up at her, pushing his bottom lip out in a pout. His finger had still been on the stranger’s fang.

“Oh, it’s quite alright,” the stranger said, the eye crinkles were back. “Your son was just curious, I don’t mind.”

But as he moved his lips to speak, they pushed Seungri’s finger down the side of the father’s tooth, slicing through the flesh of his fingertip. Seungri flinched and grabbed his hand, tears welled up in his eyes.

The stranger’s reflexes were fast and he went to pull the 7 year old’s finger towards him to examine the damage, “Oh, no! Did my fang cut you? I’m so sorry, let me take a look.”

But as he got closer, Seungri’s mother picked her son up and gave the stranger a cold stare, “See, honey? That’s what you get for mingling with that folk.”

The 7 year old scrunched up his face at her, “But mom, it wasn’t his fault! His teeth are just sharp!”

It wasn’t that the world was against vampires, persay, they just weren’t trusted completely. Most of the city was segregated. Humans lived in certain parts of the city and vampires in others, but some sections had vampires and humans. Sometimes fights would break out between the races and that’s when the Unit comes in.

The Unit was mandated by the government, a way to keep peace between vampires and humans. They weren’t meant to put someone in their place, but rather to keep one race from hurting the other. Every now and then Seungri would hear about a group of humans trying to hunt down vampires and vice versa. He never understood the hate that some people held in their hearts about vampires. They seemed like normal people, just with fangs and a lust for blood.

That was another thing the Unit was there for: blood. It was a rule that vampires wouldn’t feed off humans. They were given a supply of blood each week and that was enough for most people. Sometimes extremists would rise up and say that this wasn’t how vampires were meant to live and deserved live blood, leading to attacking humans. Fortunately, most vampires didn’t share that view. For them, humans were their co-workers, their neighbors, their friends. Because of these extremist views, some humans still felt threatened by vampires and some refused to associate themselves with the other race at all.

Seungri had never agreed with those people. All throughout high school, Seungri wanted to learn more about vampires. He begged his family to let him go to a bi-species school, but his mother thought it was too unsafe. When he announced that he was joining the Academy as soon as he graduated, she shook her head. The Academy was where one would learn how to be apart of the Unit. It was the only job that could promise Seungri a chance to interact with vampires and to learn more about them.

So far, he had been there for semester. His roommate, Daesung, was a computer whiz. They were both there for a similar reason, but aimed to be apart of different sections of the Unit. Daesung wanted to be behind the scenes while Seungri wanted to be front and center. He wanted to apart of the action, to solve disputes firsthand.

He was in a forest, everything was dark and he was alone. It was eerie. The moon was out by gray clouds and everywhere Seungri turned were more trees. The farther he walked, the denser the trees got. He realized he couldn’t go any further, the trees were too close together but when Seungri tried to turn back around, the path he was just on vanished. Panic crept in and he spun around in attempt to see someway out of this when Seungri saw pink. It seemed like a floating pink blob, everything else was too dark to distinguish. Just as Seungri realized it was hair, he started hearing someone yell his name. At first it was in the distance, but then the world started shaking and the voice kept getting louder and louder.

“Seungri for the hundredth time, wake up!” Daesung said from above him. “You know we have our first field trip today and we can’t be late!”

The younger put his arm in front of his face, trying out block out the brightness of the lights and groaned. Daesung kept pushing at him.

“Seriously, Seungri,” he sighed. “If you don’t get up right now you aren’t going to have time to shower and I am so not going to listen to you complain about it for the rest of the day.”

At that, Seungri groaned again but realized that Daesung had a point. He pulled off his covers and made his way to their shared bathroom. When he came out, Daesung was sitting at his desk typing away at his computer.

Upon hearing, Seungri announce that he was ready, Daesung looked up at him with a smile, “Perfect, just enough time to grab coffee.”

“Coffee? I thought you said I barely had time to shower?” Seungri asked, his shoulders slack.

Daesung smiled mischievously as he grabbed a sweater from his wardrobe and pulled it over his head.

As they were walking towards the cafe in their building, Seungri said, “Wait, is this because you want to see Dara? Because she always gets coffee before class?”

Daesung rolled his eyes, not giving Seungri much of a reaction. He pulled the door of the cafe open but didn’t hold it open for his friend. The dark-haired mediator in training grinned and followed his blond friend inside.

“Oh my god, you’re so into her,” Seungri smiled, catching up with Daesung in line. Being annoying was his speciality.

“Seungri, seriously, I’m not into her,” Daesung said. “Or Bom. Or Leehi. Or Soohyun.”

They had just gotten to the register when Seungri huffed, “You know Dae, I’m starting to think that you don’t like girls.”

The blond didn’t look at him when he handed the cashier the money and said, “And I’m starting to think that for once you might be right.”

Seungri’s eyes widened and he completely forgot about getting his usual chai tea latte as he followed Daesung to the end of the barista bar.

“You don’t like girls?” He asked, surprised.

Daesung raised an eyebrow at him, “And you do?”

Opening his mouth to reply but looking more like a gaping fish, Seungri tried to make some retort back but Daesung just said, “You aren’t exactly subtle.”

“W-What?” Seungri said, caught off guard. “I’m totally subtle!”

Just then, a guy from Class C walked by and Seungri’s eyes immediately went to roam over the guy’s clothes. The barista called for Daesung and handed him his coffee.

As Daesung went to grab it he said, “See? How was that not obvious? No straight guy cares that much about what other guys are wearing.”

Seungri pouted, feeling a little vulnerable about being called out, “Okay, but you have to admit that orange was totally not his color.”

Daesung smiled and took a sip of his coffee.

Their class instructor was this overly passionate guy named Tablo. He took everything too seriously but anyone could tell how much Tablo cared about the subject matter. He was so determined to teach his students everything he could that Seungri couldn’t not respect him. Though, as much as Seungri wanted to become a Mediator, a person who goes out into the field and helps people sort out problems between species, he dreaded going to class sometimes because Tablo would spend a whole week on learning just one thing. He sat by the window and often found himself staring out it instead of paying attention as Tablo droned on about the safety rules of some procedure. The mint haired guy in front of him was always asleep, but when tests were handed back, Seungri could see the red A on the corner of every test. It bewildered Seungri to no end. How could this guy get better grades than him? Since he was always asleep, Seungri never really talked to him. He thought his name was something with a Y but the friend next to the sleeping guy called him Suga sometimes. The friend was like a ray of sunshine. He reminded Seungri of Daesung, but his name was Taehyung. Not to be confused with Taehyun, a blond kid in class B. Seungri and Daesung were both in class A.

Today, nobody was in their seats. Everyone was standing around chatting, the buzz of being able to go out into the field got everyone excited. Seungri and Daesung walked over to Dara and Bom, who were standing by their usual seats.

“Hey guys!” Seungri greeted them as he and Daesung approached where the two were chatting.

“Hi!” Bom greeted them. “I’m so excited, this is going to be so much fun.”

Dara snickered, “Yeah, if our instructor would ever get here.”

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