Like eagles, we flock to each other in the end. 

“Even if you want to go alone,

I’ll be waiting when you’re coming home,

And if you need someone to ease the pain,

You can lean on me, my love will still remain.”

—Michael Learns To Rock, Complicated Heart. 

His face lined with wrinkles. His beard all thick and full, grey. His eyes lost its youthful sparkle. But she kisses him deep. Passionate. And he would pull himself away. Dark eyes flicker anywhere but her face. Shakes his head sideways, and the smile on his lips flattens into a thin line.

“Not here,” his deep voice resigns. So low, it might have been a whisper.

Lately, he’s been keeping a distance between them. More so, when they’re in the eyes of public.

His touches ghostly on her smooth skin. His lips hover over hers, pecks a chaste kiss. Sighs are frequent, to any display of affections she makes. There’s sadness in those dark eyes. She wishes she could take his despair away.

She tries again. Another kiss denied. He doesn’t shove her away. He never does. He’s a gentleman. Always has. He jerks his head away from her hands. His soft eyes hardens.

“Ma-ri, please not here,” he barks, sharp. The bitter edge coating each word’s evident. Ma-ri shrinks. Notices the scrutinising stares and gazes.

“Oh,” she mumbles, apologetic.

Yes, they’re in public. How could she forget that crucial fact? His cautionary words ring within her ears every time they step a foot outside their home.

He sighs, and apologises, “I’m sorry, my dear.” His speech’s formal, but affectionate. Uses the tone one bestows on one’s grandchild.

“No, that’s my mistake,” she counters. Because it is. He’s not the boy she met forty years ago. On the way to school. In a crowded train, with his eyes were hawk-like on her. And she wished nothing more than to be human.

This is not the past. He wears dark suits. Befitting for a man who’d personally overseen his empire grew from a ground level office to a skyscraper in the middle of the hottest district in Seoul.

She’s grown too. Not by a large stretch. Forty years flew in a blink of an eye, Ma-ri switches jobs every ten years, changes her name, and once in a while, she colours her hair to the hues of rainbow.

Most of all, she plays too many roles she’d lost count. Once upon a time, she’s a girlfriend. Or a lover. Or a wife. Then, she’s a daughter. A step-child. Lately, she’s a grandchild he’d cherished deeply.

He once whispered into her ears, that she doesn’t need to play pretend. She’s who she is. He can’t change that. Nor will he changes himself to be what she is. But the discrimination is persistent. Like a cockroach, it survives to fester within the minds of the people. Just out of the reach of the eyes. Hidden and engrained inside the folds of the human brains and hearts.

Baek Ma-ri is not the girl Jung Jae-min knew at school. She bears the name Gong Na-ri now.      

His lips twisting into a smile that never reaches his eyes. It’s a smile that Ma-ri gradually finds herself growing familiar with.

She wants to tell him, that she still sees him as the boy she fell in love with.

He doesn’t listen. Instead, he drapes himself with the reality he craves for. One where his delusions are strong. Pulsating deep within him, fuels his every waking day.

Her love for him, has long left them both. That’s his reality.

It’s not true. She loves him too much. The mere thought of his impending death results in her newly acquired smoking habit. Baek Ma-ri can’t move his view, even if she braces the sun kissing her skin, smears fire on to her bones. She’d walk a mile without any protection, if that hammers her love for him into his head (it doesn’t, not anymore).

These days, she sleeps alone in their bed. It’s written on his stiff muscles of the hindrance he imposes on himself. On their relationship. Sometimes, as she looks over the large windows of their home, onto the city below, the stale air chokes her bit by bit and she finds herself wishing she accept the love given to her by the boy who knew her best.

There’s a reason why wishful thinking remains as whimsical dreams. Baek Ma-ri locks that part of her yearning deep inside the dark cesspit of her non-human heart. Shakes her head. Shakes those thoughts. Shakes that burgeoning sadness.

No matter how hard she tries to delude herself. It’s oh-so very clear. To anyone with functional eyes to see.    

The fiery passion that once fuels their romance dwindles to low fire. It will succumb to its natural death. Just like Jae-min will. It may not be today. Or tomorrow.

His movements hums on a slower note. His eyes requires tinted glasses for him to see. His ears no longer catches her soft whispers. Every now and then, there’s flashes of green in his dark eyes. Ma-ri pretends she fails to notice.

The day she’s tasked to oversee his funeral. Will be the day Ma-ri’s heart shattered beyond her capability to repair herself. She mutters prayers every night. For that day to be postponed again. Again. And again.  

But that day will never truly arrives. She wakes up to an empty room. This is typical. Goes on with her day, as she’s accustomed to. And plays the waiting game for him to greet her.

She slips into the clothes of a CEO’s grandchild. The next successor to Jae-min’s empire.

He’s so punctual to greet her by nine in the morning. It’s the one thing that anchors this Jae-min to the Jae-min she knew and loved. His voice doesn’t warm her ears. Nor does his fresh sweet blood entices her in the morning.

She doesn’t leave the apartment. For days, that morphed into weeks. Jung Jae-min builds a new life in a different continent. That she finds out from his personal assistant of five years.

Her heart explodes into figurative fragments. So tiny that it prickles her fingers as she tries to gather them back. It’s no use. Her entire world crumbles around her. And she’s fallen into a grave for broken hearts. Unable to get herself out.

It’s July, 24^th that Baek Ma-ri sheds her identity as Gong Na-ri and reclaims a fresh identity; Seo Eun-soo, a twenty-something college student. She doesn’t look back. Selects a random flight and leaves Seoul. 

She spends her wandering days across Europe. Finds herself in a small town by a lake. Somewhere in Germany. She gets by with minimal English. It is times like these, she’s grateful for one stop centres, easy access to her blood supply and sun protection. She doesn’t move in the morning, unless she has to.

At the edge of the forests where she fears no animals but hunters, she sleeps quietly in her tent. Her home for the last few weeks.

Doesn’t hide her strength for any men with suspicious gazes. She prefers to leave them unconscious by the roadside, or the police station if she’s feeling a little generous.

She squanders few more days in that town. Somewhere along the secluded street, she losses herself to the view. Of ancient castles, endless valleys and thick forests. Her feet brings her away from the main path, into a road swallowed by shrubs.

A playful tease cuts into her concertation, “Doing a little soul-searching too?”

It’s a voice she hasn’t hear over forty years. And she doesn’t turn around immediately. Instead closes her eyes. The end of her lips quirking upwards on its own.

She’d known him for years end. Since they were not older than five. Shared the same bowl of blood. Nostalgia assaults her with the picture of his lopsided and cocky grin. That smug expression on his face that hides a boy so sensitive, he refuses to show it to the world—

Sans her.

(She’s always his exception. And maybe he is hers too.)

“Aren’t you a bit too old to take up stalking again?” Ma-ri retorts, no malice in her tone. She feels his body radiating heat beside her. He bumps his shoulder with hers.

“Am not,” he replies a little too quickly, then amends, “but for a dear friend like you, I’m never too old.”

“I’m truly touched,” she lies, and perhaps it’s not what she meant.

“Are you going to stare at this boring view until night falls?” he groans, runs his slim fingers through his messy hair. It’s longer than she’s used to seeing on him. His jaw, littered with five o’clock shadows. All to serve an illusion that he’s older.

That he’s not twenty-five. But ten years older. Or the fact that they’re both are not twenty-five or thirty.

“You got some place to be?”

His long hair flops left and right. “Nope,” and he pops the ‘p’ in his mouth. “But it’s getting dark and we need to catch up. For old time’s sake.”

She nods, curtly. “All right, lead the way.”

“Make sure you keep up, don’t falter behind,” he says. Mischief twinkles in his purple irises. He bares his fangs for her eyes only. Her own lips curling into impish sneer, “You too, old man.”

They sprint across the forest. Faster than the human eyes could see. Underneath the dark skies, the tiring masquerade of being humans falls forgotten. And she misses being in her skin. Being alive for what they are. Not humans. But vampires.

And they end up in a quaint tavern. The lights are so dim that she wonders if the bulbs used are ancient as the bartender or that they simply wanted to save cost. He picks the corner most table. Orders two pint of special brew.

She drops the hood of her windbreaker. And for the first in forty years, he leans too close to her face. His brown eyes like chestnut wood scrutinises her with utmost care. Awkward silence slithers in between them, without a warning.

She turns to gaze at medieval paintings adorning the walls. “So, who are you supposed to be?”

“Colin,” he returns, leans back into his seat. One brow quirk upwards, “And you?”

“Seo Eun-soo.”

They don’t explain how they came to be in this quaint tavern. In an obscure town in Germany. Instead, she basks in the familiar comfort his presence offers. She thinks, he’s doing the same. They exchange tales of these few past months. Of their individual experiences in Europe. Until he decided to trail her to the hill they met.

An hour or so, he slaps euros on the counter. Permits that boyish smile on his lips, and bids his farewell at the bartender. She follows him from the tavern to a cabin at the fringes of the forest.  

He ushers her in. Tells her to make herself at home. The cabin’s weathered like the castles she’d seen. Tucked behind large pine trees. Inside the cabin, there’s enough facilities for one person like them to live off. They don’t need a kitchenette for sure. Just the bathroom, fireplace and the bed.

It’s cosy—almost being the operative word. She sinks onto the springy bed. The lightbulb above her head flickers twice.

Shi-hoo stacks the firewood into the fireplace. Strikes a match down his wrist. Tosses the flaming match into the fire, slowly fans the fire big enough. Satisfied, he plops himself next to her. There’s no sofa, saved for the rickety dining chairs.

“Jae-min left me,” she confesses into the gloomy room. Unsure what possess her to part the knowledge of her current predicament so willingly. She’d been adamant that she’s happy with Jae-min. That their love for each other will allow them to overcome the problems that comes with human-vampire romance. Jae-min’s no Bella Swan and she’s no Edward Cullen.   

She and Jae-min are not Shi-hoo and Ah-ra. After ten years, Ah-ra buckled underneath the pressure of such relationship. She cannot stomach a future where Shi-hoo remains youthful, whereas she grew into her features, according to her human physiology.

Ma-ri recalls the rumours of Ah-ra begging Shi-hoo to turn her into one of them. The VSC will never allow such practice to exists. Not since the prece treaty was in full effect. 

Jae-min insisted that he’ll never turn into Ah-ra. Their bond is stronger—she knows it in her bones. It was strong. For forty years. Then it withered to the ground. 

He gets to his feet, plucks two mugs he could find in the cabinet. Pours the blood up to the brim of the mugs. He hands one mug to her. Settles back on his bed. Shi-hoo releases a sigh of his own. Bites his lower lip, like he always does, before going in for the kill. 

She embraces his ‘I told you so’ speech. Empties the blood from her mug. Crosses her arms over her chest.

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“He’s not dead,” she bluntly scoffs.

Shi-hoo snorts. And she misses that sound he makes. “I’m not talking about him being dead. I was referring to your relationship,” he quips, with the same mockery she remembered from a long forgotten time.

Their eyes meet. Stoic faces inches away. Howls of mangled cries and laughter erupts from them both. They laugh until he doubles over, wheezing and she wipes unshed tears.

There’s one lesson she learnt from her years with Jae-min, no matter how many times she repeat to herself that she’s one of them (mimicking them to a perfect T), she’ll never be.

With the ghost of Jae-min’s haggard smile looming over her, and perhaps Ah-ra’s picture perfect smile hovers over him—she gives in. To the supressed curiosity dancing in her mind. To thirst for contact of a familiar solace. To the craving of a woman lost her identity to please her lover.

Ma-ri inclines her body forward, over his. He lays flat on his back. Her fingers splayed over his well-defined chest. Presses her weight against him, pins him underneath her. He could easily shoves her away. But he doesn’t.

Ma-ri nestles her nose against the side of his neck. Lips leaving a trail of kisses on his skin. His fingers tangling in her short dark hair, pulls her closer into him.

Her eyes flashes purple. Her fangs brush against his skin. Cuts his skin, like a pen to paper. His blood trickles onto the bed.

Light brown eyes shifts into an eerie glow of purple, matching hers. He hunts hungrily for her lips.

There’s sparks in her heart. That explodes into full-blown fireworks. Their kisses deepens on its accord. Her body moves to a rhythm she just re-discovered. And the night progresses to morning.

Only stop briefly from them consuming each other’s bodies, when the bed breaks underneath the ruckus they create.

By the next morning, she leaves the cabin. All healed from last night’s bliss. After breakfast, of course.

They cross paths. A year later. In Seoul.

“I’m Kang Seon-hye,” she says, offers a smirk and a hand. He takes her hand, gives it a shake. His lips carves that stupid lopsided grin she misses, “Yang Young-woong,” he replies, all cocky.

This time, she invites him over to the apartment she bought as Gong Na-ri. It’s when they’re sitting across from each other, drowning themselves with synthetic blood to the music Jae-min loved, that she loses all control and cries into his chest.

He sobs. For the enemy-turned-friend. The only one he had. The one human friend that mattered. 

No, they didn’t attend the funeral. But Jae-min left them each a letter. He spilled his regrets and secrets on the letters. And she’s not quite sure why she cries.

In the last ten years, indifference is all Jae-min’s willing to gift her. No, she mourns for the boy Jae-min was. And for the man he became before their relationship suffers. Shi-hoo keeps his letter’s content a secret.

Ma-ri doesn’t pry. It’s not her place.

They sway to the tango of the mourning death. Manic movements to mourn the loss of a loved one. A tradition they shared over the years of prolonged adolescence. Losing themselves to the kisses that numbs the pain bleeding from their hearts. 

Three months whiz by, they’d settled in a co-habitation of sort. After a while, they enjoy certain benefits. Every now and then, Seon-hye needs a date for her office’s parties and Young-woong steps up to play the role she needs.

Once in a blue moon, she entertains childish whims. Amuses herself with ‘what ifs’ games. It won’t work. Baek Ma-ri and Han Shi-hoo. Four decades ago, she chose Jung Jae-min. Nonetheless, Jae-min’s not part of this world anymore. And Ah-ra? She got her happily-ever-after with a painter.

So, what’s really the obstacle that prevents them from pursuing down the line? Ma-ri locks those thoughts away. It can never work. It feels weird.  

It’s different for Seon-hye and Young-woong. She doesn’t have Jae-min in her heart. Or rather Jae-min is a memory that Ma-ri and Shi-hoo reminisces. Not Seon-hye and Young-woong. Two musicians living in obscurity.   

Then the role-playing stops. Without them both realising it. First, they go to great lengths to prove they’re friends. To banish the perception that they’re a couple. Until the fatigue of a useless gesture overwhelms them.

A white picket fence house, 2.5 kids and a dog (or a cat, Shi-hoo insists) becomes something they both agreed without saying. That’s how a decade passes, with three kids born between them. And a dog named Colin.

With a blanket safely tucked over her child, Ma-ri gazes at two toddlers resting over Shi-hoo’s chest. His light snores doesn’t seem to bother all three children. She settles on the armchair nearby, quietly takes in their presence.

She loves Shi-hoo. Probably always had since they were kids. His love for her never really did change, despite what he claimed all those years ago. While she’s still with Jae-min.

Her love for Shi-hoo isn’t comparable to the epic romance between Jae-min and her. But it’s still love by any other name. They don’t try to change each other. Or force the other to love harder. And that’s more than enough for the Baek Ma-ri of present.