Quietus

He was cold. For some unfathomable reason, he was ing cold.

Hyunseung never imagined hell to be a cold place – more like scolding hot, filled with eternal fires and red wallpapers, or some other like that. Instead, he found out hell was a room. A regular room, really, with nothing special about it. Aside from the woman that sat on the armchair in front of him, of course.

He recognized her.

"Y-you! You killed me!" He sat up on the bed he was previously lying on.

"Only a little." She chuckled. "Besides, you don't look like you're dead, do you?"

"I remember it." He countered, sure of what his mind told him. "You killed me. Slit my throat!" His hands instinctively rose to his neck. And there it was – the long, deep, dried cut across his flesh. His fingers trailed over it, but it didn't hurt, somehow. It must've looked rather ugly, though.

The woman chuckled again – her voice was sweet, a complete contrast to her entire being – and picked up a glass of a liquid too red to be wine. She took a sip, her pretty face twisting in delight. "I ed you. You had to return the favor somehow."

Flashes from the night prior – of bodies, wet sounds and soft sheets – filled his mind. Gulping, he put them aside, his brown eyes focusing on what she was holding. "Is that…"

"Your blood." She confirmed. "Want some?"

"Are you a vampire?" He couldn't help but ask.

She stared at him for a long second, before rolling her chocolate eyes. "So human of you. What, because I drink blood I must be a vampire?" She scoffed darkly. "You people are so stupid sometimes."

He gaped at her – truly, openly gaped. Was she ing real?

"What are you then?" He shivered from the cold again.

"Ugh, it's too complicated for your simple mind." She took another sip of his blood. Was it good? Her face told him she enjoyed it. "If you want, you can pretend that I'm a vampire. I don't have fangs, though, if you're into that kind of stuff."

He fell silent. The idea of being dead, and yet not being dead was so foreign to him. "Is this hell?" He couldn't help but ask her.

"No… that's my apartment. But the landlord is a ing devil."

For someone who had killed him and drank his blood so casually, that woman was quite funny, in a dry, sarcastic kind of way.

"You're taking the whole being dead thing rather well." She acknowledged.

He found that weird, too. But he couldn't help it. Somehow, being dead didn't faze him that much. He was much more concerned about the ugly scar on his throat (and what the beautiful woman in front of him may think of it).

Maybe it was because he was dead, and there weren't any feelings in him anymore. Or maybe he was just a ed up person. Hyunseung guessed the latter.

She put the glass of blood aside and ran a hand through her brownish-red hair. Curiosity flickered on her face, and she leaned forward in her chair. Her cleavage was visible that way, Hyunseung noticed vaguely. It was a rather nice cleavage. "I'm curious, what else do you remember from last night?"

He concentrated, his fingers going absentmindedly to the slit on his throat. "Hyuna."

She was surprised, he pleasantly noticed. "I didn't tell you my name."

"I saw it on your ID when you flashed it to the barman." He said smugly.

"Maybe I was using a fake ID."

"You weren't though, were you?"

"Nah, there's no point in that." She affirmed. "Anything else?"

"The was good."

Hyuna rolled her eyes. She did it a lot, he noticed. "Of course it was good – it was with me."

He chuckled at her antics, but then shivered again. The jeans and shirt (soaked with half-dried blood, he now noted) did nothing to warm him up. "Why am I so cold?"

"There's no blood in your body, so there's nothing to regulate your internal temperature." She explained. "You'll get used to it. That's what they tell me, at least. You can try sunbathing in the meantime, like a snake." She giggled at the idea.

"You don't know it yourself?" he was surprised. "Didn't someone kill you, too?"

"Um, no. I'm the one killing, not the other way around."

"So I won't start killing now like you?"

"Of course not." She eyed him as if he was retarded. "I didn't turn you into a psycho. I just killed you, jeez."

"Oh." That was good news. "Okay."

Hyuna crossed her long legs and picked up the glass of his blood again. "You sure you don't want to try it? I promise it's good."

To be honest, he was kind of curious. Hyunseung nodded, and she handed him the glass. He took a tentative sip, and his eyes lit up in surprise. "It's not bad." He said, taking another sip. "Tastes like… a Bloody Mary, I think?"

Hyuna clapped he