*KIND OF DARK*

Immortality had always been what people sought for. From powerful and influential people to those poor farmers who haven't had a good harvest ever since the drought. None could escape death except for one.
 
Bae Irene walked among men for centuries. She was an immortal. Born as Bae Joohyun, the daughter of the wealthiest merchant in town. Spoiled by her father and those suitors, she grew up having everything. The looks, the wealth. Her beauty adored by the people, 'the town's muse' they called her. Her mansion filled with hundreds of portraits of her.
 
She lived a happy yet self-absorbed life, until she realised she couldn't overcome time. Her looks would soon wither and her existence will be forgotten just like everybody else. She didn't want that, she knew she possessed beauty in it's finest form. Nobody could compare.
 
If the someone told you that the devil would grant you everything you wished for just on one single condition, would you have accepted it? The condition was simple, it was to have your soul locked away in your favourite possession. 
 
A vain and narcissistic girl like Bae Joohyun couldn't have known better. And so she accepted it. It was simple right? She just wanted her beauty to last, nothing else was more important.  

The deal worked, yes. But was it really worth it? For your soul provided the very existence of love and emotions.
 
Bae Joohyun would soon learn that beauty wasn't everything. Her beauty was everlasting, but what was the use of it when she stopped feeling? 
 

Joohyun went numb. Nothing could excite her anymore. The colours of the world grew dull. A few centuries have gotten her familiar with things in the world. She had all the time after all. Centuries passed, yet nothing changed. Men still went to war due to their never-ending greed, people still coveting over immortality. Everything was the same to her, because she was indifferent to all of them.

The only emotion she could feel was misery. A punishment from above for selling her soul she guessed. She wallowed in misery yet nobody really saw her. Beauty was now a curse.

She would sit in her room for days, looking at her portrait. The portrait in which her soul was locked in. Her portrait moved occasionally. The woman in the portrait sometimes cried, while it would sometimes smile bitterly at her. Those were the emotions she longed to have. Anything but misery. She wanted to feel again. Yet the painting was a proof that those were nothing but wishful thinking. Because as long as this painting exists, everything else but her beauty will cease to exist.
 
Her desire for that undying beauty would have caused her an eternity's worth of loneliness. What use was her beauty when she could only see an empty shell in the mirror. 
 
Bae Joohyun can never die except she was already dead.
 

A/N: This chapter is relatively short but the next part would be longer! This is inspired by The Picture of Dorian Gray.

So I realised that quite a few people have expressed interest in a seperate Baby Wenrene fic. I will have to consider because my updates are quite slow usually.