“Baekhyun!” I yelled, my tiny, beady eyes catching his small body walking with Sehun and another taller boy I couldn’t recognize, his eyes wide. A prickling sensation of outmost warmth invaded my body at seeing him, and when he turned around to face me, hearing me calling him and beaming back at me; that feeling within me intensified. I found myself running toward him, my legs oddly tiny and my body just as equally, like I’ve aged backwards until I was nothing more than a child of six years. 

Baekhyun too, was small, perhaps seven years old. I didn’t know how I recognized him when I couldn’t remember him at all. But the smile on his face was square, his eyes tiny, and his hair black, like the night without the moonlight. When I jumped on his back, I didn’t think he’d catch me, but he did; and I so easily leaned forward, pressing a kiss on his cheek, hearing the protesting ‘eww’ coming from my twin. 

“My mom let me leave early today,” I heard my small yet sharp voice squeal in his left ear, wrapping my somewhat chubby arms around his thin neck. He held my legs around his waist without any protest, humming in answer to my exciting words. “So I want to come with you guys in your adventure!”

“Ew! Girls are gross!” The tall male whose name my head could not provide, and my magic - which I couldn’t feel - couldn’t produce; exclaimed, pointing at me over Baekhyun’s back. “How do you hold her like this, Baekhyun? She’s gross! Luhan Hyung said girls have cooties!” 

I could feel myself pout over Baekhyun’s body, tightening my arms around him; while watching the tall boy exclaim like a little jerk about how disgusting girls are.

“Hana is not gross!” My twin, Sehun, tried to hop on his legs so he could smack the taller boy. It was strange to see Sehun without his body length. “Hana is the cleanest girl I’ve ever seen! She smells like vanilla and Mom’s perfume!”

“It’s true.” Baekhyun aided, hopping up so that he could hold my falling weight over his tiny body, just as small as mine. He never once pulled his arms away from me and leave me to fall, something usual for boys his age to do. “She smells like vanilla! And her lips taste like raspberry!”

                                   *

Jongdae’s words, throughout the moving days, kept ringing in my head.

I hadn’t really thought his mother would be bitten, which is something hard to happen for vampires, considering their sharp agility and their incredible speed that made them almost impossible to catch. But actually meeting a wounded vampire close to me was magnificent. Horrible, but still magnificent.

I mean, strong beasts wounded and in desperate need of constant supply of blood was horrible to witness — not like I witnessed it by my two eyes, since Jongdae didn’t want me to see her quite yet, but I had sensed her. I was able to feel her withering power right across the door. It was obvious she, his mother, was a strong vampire, an older vampire, but she was also waning, growing incredibly weak — but I thought of it as interesting. I had asked Jongdae to let me see her, but I knew my humane blood could trigger her unstable beast and she’d attack me.

I could stop her, of course, but Jongdae didn’t want to risk it. I didn’t force him to it. I could sense his mother’s weakening powers anyway, and I wouldn’t want Jongdae’s building trust for me to crumble away. I knew after the blood bags (I managed to steal through magic from a whole new hospital away from Busan) that he was beginning to trust me, and it felt nice to be trusted by a vampire; creatures that knew nothing of trust and believed in it little.

“How’s your Mom?” I asked the first thing when I saw Jongdae in the classroom; sitting a few seats away from his usual seat, right next to the window. He was leaning his elbow on the windowsill and his head on his palm, lolling to the sides as if he was going to fall asleep any seconds. There was a small, yet noticeable pattern his chest was taking with falling and rising, resembling breathing. For a hybrid like Jongdae, I could easily catch the real pattern. He wasn’t faking it; he truly was breathing. 

“I’d like to say she’s fine,” Jongdae answered quickly, without bothering to lift his head or glance at me. He could easily catch my scent. I sat on the chair in front of him, facing his table and straddling the chair. I was wearing black shorts under my skirt. “But she’s not. She’s getting worse every day.”

Jongdae’s mutter came out soothing, despite the absolute anxiety that painted it, the anxiety in which he tried to hide but failed. I’m assuming that a werewolf’s bite could never be something good, not to vampires at least. It didn’t make me hate the werewolves at all. There has to be balance in this world. No one should be strong without consequences, and nature wasn’t going to cancel someone’s existence when it could simply create what makes them perish. 

If a vampire is venomous, then it’s only fair they have something else they’re vulnerable against. 

A werewolf’s bite.

“Listen,” I suddenly forced my voice to take its most weakest volume, worrying not about Jongdae’s ability to hear it, but everyone else’s around me. Sensing the urgency in my tone, Jongdae faced me with a frown. “I’ve been searching for a.. medicine, to give your Mom, and I..”

“You found something?” He leaned toward me, eagerness in his eyes and excitement in his body gesture, as he pressed his fingers around the tips of his desk forcefully. I saw a glimpse of red in his eyes, but fortunately, it was gone as soon as it came.

“I found something,” I nodded assuringly. “A spell, an easy one for a controlled mage like me to practice, but it’d need a single ingredient that could be hard to find.”

“Please don’t tell me what I think you’re about to tell me.” There was a plea of desperation in his voice, his eyes growing vulnerable. I wanted to say something else than what I originally wanted to say, for him; but you can’t change a spell’s ingredients, it’ll cause vigor.

“I am, I’m sorry.” I turned around in my seat, searching for my backpack to take a piece of paper from any notebook I catch first; and then turning back to face Jongdae. ‘We need the blood of a werewolf. To extract the venom of the bite from your mother’s body, we need a blood of a similar specie; a werewolf. But, that’s going to be hard.’

I gave the paper for him to read and once he did; he turned to me with worry in his mocha eyes, fair and free of any reddish hue his vampire blood spilled over occasionally. Jongdae was a handsome man, with sharp edges to his face and a permanent tick to his lips. The vampire blood in him enhanced that beauty of his to help him be an easy predator luring preys of both genders to him. However, I couldn’t see him as the satanic creatures he was supposed to be; for his deep worry reflected nothing but the pureness of his heart.

“What should we do?” Came his broken whisper of despair and utter helplessness, and I reached out for his cold hand, squeezing for reassurance I didn’t even feel.

“Don’t worry. I can get some.”

“How?” He asked, wonderment painting his face and softening his rough slopes. His hair fell on his eyebrows, tickling his eyes; and I reached for them, ruffling them away with a smile on my face.

“You got yourself a strong person as a friend, Jongdae. I’ll figure it out. I’ll help her, Okay?”

Jongdae didn’t speak for a longer time than I thought he would. He stared at me with curiously in his face, questions in his eyes; and distrust in his body movement. I couldn’t blame him, really, for being a person that trusted harder than normal, for being cautious in a place that taught him to be on his tiptoes. I’d have been the same, but it didn’t stop me from craving to be trusted. 

“Okay. I’ll count on you.” Even though he answered me, I didn’t feel his words to be ultimately genuine; maybe a little bit to convince himself, but mostly, he was reluctant. However, knowing he has no other person to depend on, he could only lean on me.

I dropped his hand and leaned away from him; fixing my legs on the chair so I wouldn’t straddle it any more, turning around to press my back on my chair, looking at the front with my eyes slightly furrowed, thinking of every available solution. The only werewolf who knows of my real character is Baekhyun, but he doesn’t know of Jongdae’s. He is a smart guy, with intellectual curiosity that would easily expose me and my real intentions. Asking him would put both Jongdae and I in danger, since we are in his territory; Alpha-to-be or not. I could give him a reason, a reason that is not real; but things built on lies are eventually discovered, no matter the time you take to hide them from others is.

And, something in me hated to lie to Baekhyun, no matter what he did or who he was to me.

I clicked on my fingers on the table, my eyes slithering toward the door and my heart jumping, realizing exactly who I was waiting for. I hadn’t had a decent interaction with him after what happened in his penthouse; for whatever reason. I wasn’t even truly avoiding him, and he wasn’t gone. He was always there in my Old English class and my Advanced Physics. We would share eye-contact but we wouldn’t dare to approach the other. There seemed to be a new wall built between us, a wall that both he and I created out of thin air. My magic didn’t like it; not one bit. It’d keen inside of me in a sad, pathetic wail each time he and I would hold our eyes together but say nothing, floating around me like a fish out of its water bowl, hungry for food. It was insane.

Baekhyun, whether I liked to admit it or not (my magic very much adored the idea) seemed to react in a similar way, for his eyes would flash a soft bronze, before fading away when looking away. I knew he was reacting to me, but he wasn’t letting those feelings of his leading him on; not this time. He’d sit and stare, occasionally smile, a smile that was small and wane, little, pathetic. It wasn’t considered a smile at all, even to me, the idiot