Mankind has always feared and shunned the unknown for as long as history could record. In a way, it was this fear and precaution that protected mankind and ensured its survival until today.

But it was also this same fear that drove away those who didn’t particularly fall within the scope of “mankind”.

One of the kinds of beings that fell outside the scope that made up “mankind” was vampires.

Chanyeol is and has been a vampire for hundreds upon hundreds of years, for as long as he could remember.

In fact, he had been around for so long that he even forgot if he always had been a vampire or if he too was human before that.

If Chanyeol had a hometown once, he had forgotten it now. And if he had friends and a family once, they were surely long dead now. In fact, he couldn’t quite remember if Chanyeol was really his name or just some name he adopted along the way.

Chanyeol’s oldest memory was from less than two hundred years ago, although he was sure that he had been around twice longer than that. He just didn’t remember anything earlier than that.

Chanyeol rarely ever met other vampires and they all seemed to be like him too. Vampires were either forgetful, lived too long to remember too many things or they just had no one to remind them of things.

It was easy to lose track of time when all one did was hide away, alone, in a dark place out of reach from everyone else.

It was not like vampires were all antisocial and voluntarily chose to isolate themselves from society. Sure, there were a few antisocial ones who actually enjoyed being alone.

But it wasn’t their choice alone that forced themselves to hide away; it was the humans’ decision that made them so. 

In Chanyeol’s oldest memory, it was probably sometime around the middle 19th century because he still remembered the era he lived in; that was now gone and only a part of history.  

Chanyeol just himself was older than that era but he just didn’t remember the details. He just knew.

Chanyeol only lived in large cities, moving around every decade or so, maybe earlier if the humans were beginning to grow suspicious of him.

It was easier to live in densely populated places because there were a lot of people, people didn’t know each other as well as in small towns and he wouldn’t stand out too much for all the wrong reasons.

On the rare occasion that Chanyeol stumbled upon a human suffering on their deathbed, Chanyeol would drink their blood and drain them completely, hastening their already imminent deaths.

It was a mutually beneficial act. Chanyeol would be ending the human’s suffering when they were surely going to die, and all the blood from an adult human was enough to keep a vampire full for up to a decade.

Being alive too long without anything to do and not having to feed often did get boring though. Especially when Chanyeol noticed that humans spent a lot of time on meals a day, even making meal time a bonding and socializing event with others.

There was a time when Chanyeol actually envied how humans banded together and formed groups and a community with each other in order to survive.

Unlike human beings who were naturally social beings, vampires were solitary beings.

Chanyeol couldn’t say that he didn’t try because he did and maybe there was a reason why nature dictated that vampires should be solitary beings, after all.

Try as he may befriend the humans, Chanyeol would never be more than the wolf in sheep’s clothing, despite his good intentions.

In a series of events that culminated whereby some humans eventually found out about him being a vampire, Chanyeol ended up being persecuted for who he was as a being.

Chanyeol was chased out from the town he had called home and attempts on his life were made too, all so the humans could feel safe because of how they had perceived Chanyeol as a threat to humanity.

Sure, there were vampires who killed humans by drinking blood more than necessary, for the purpose of pleasure and not to sate a hunger. But Chanyeol was not one of those vampires.

It was hard to change what the human’s believed though. Chanyeol couldn’t blame them either for wanting to eliminate what they deemed as a threat to their lives. It was every being’s natural instinct to act as so.

After Chanyeol was forced to leave the town, he remembered traveling through the expanse of mountains, forests and barren plains in the height of the snowy winter.

Chanyeol traveled during the night and rested in the morning in caves, under rocks and beneath the roots of massive trees that were bare in the coldest season.

While Chanyeol would not vaporize or simply die under the sun like the tales of vampire told them to be, sunlight did severely weaken vampires and they would die under prolonged exposure.

It would be a few more years until Chanyeol got hungry again. He had no destination in mind but he was keen on finding someplace to settle for a bit before the winter ended; when the days would get longer than the nights and the sun would shine intensely.

If there was one thing that worked for Chanyeol, it was that he managed to find someplace before that year’s winter ended.

The place Chanyeol found was an abandoned mansion on a country estate that presumably used to belong to someone rich, powerful and long dead.

The mansion was way beyond inhabitable for a human and the knowledge comforted Chanyeol that he would be undisturbed while he remained there.

The estate itself was isolated and a ways bit from the nearest town, making it the perfect place for Chanyeol.

Some lore about vampire was true, as some weren’t. One of those that wasn’t true was the myth that vampires needed an invitation before entering a place.

Chanyeol was grateful for this because he soon made this abandoned mansion his new home.

Vampires are able to hibernate and they can do so for up to hundreds of years without having to wake up to feed on blood.

Usually, a vampire would go into hibernation when they are at risk of danger and persecution by the humans, or if they are unable to find blood sources to sustain themselves for a long time.

This way, it would allow time to pass naturally until it was safe or secure enough for the said vampire to emerge from their hibernation.

Thus, Chanyeol decided it was best that he too went into an indefinite hibernation at the time.

Not only did Chanyeol actually feel threatened for his life, but he also felt utterly disappointed at himself after being chased and hunted from the last town he settled in.

Chanyeol was devastated because he wanted to be the proof that maybe vampires and humans could get along. But all he ever did was proving himself wrong.

Early in the morning that same winter, Chanyeol gazed from a window that was almost falling out from its hinges, at the falling snow that blanketed the entire mansion’s compound with its white color.

At the same time, a chilling draft blew into the attic from the holes in the ceiling and walls of the dilapidated mansions. But Chanyeol was no human and he wasn’t able to feel the cold.

That would be the last view that Chanyeol saw before locking himself in a long empty chest he found in the attic, where he went into hibernation and continued to do so for many more winters.

If Chanyeol could will it, he would choose to sleep forever. He was no immortal being but he was too invincible to kill himself either.

This was the closest thing he could get to death without dying if that was even a word for his kind.

With a slight sliver of hope, Chanyeol hoped that the world would be a different place when he awoke from his hibernation.

Since then, a long time had passed. In fact, it was such a long time that an entire generation of humans was born, grew old and died during the time Chanyeol was in hibernation.

And when the subsequent new generation was born and grew old enough to have children of their own, it was only then that Chanyeol awoke from his hibernation- unintentionally.

Chanyeol had a good few more decades or so before his body would go hungry and needed blood to drink.

There was no need to wake up now and Chanyeol wasn’t the best judge to determine if the current era was a suitable one for a vampire like himself too.

What awoken Chanyeol from his hibernation after all these years were the loud sounds of apparent hammering and knocking, going on in the mansion in the floors below the attic.

For a long time, Chanyeol had been undisturbed in his slumber until that happened. For the first time in many years, there actually was or were humans who were daring enough to cross into the grounds and make their way into the mansion.

Worse still, these humans were not only repairing and remodeling the mansion, but they were also planning to move in and inhabit the place.

Chanyeol considered himself lucky still though because the humans weren’t able to find the passage to the attic and had yet to learn of the attic’s existence.

When Chanyeol woke up for the first time in so long, it was night time and the season was summer. Chanyeol had lost track of time and he had no idea how long it had been since he begun hibernating.

Chanyeol eventually found a newspaper lying around, left behind by the repairmen who only came around to work on the mansion during the day.

It hadn’t been long enough for the regional language to drastically evolve and become unintelligible to Chanyeol. Newspapers already existed at that time and although they read and looked slightly differently now, Chanyeol felt an oddly comforting feeling that he wasn’t too far off left behind.

If Chanyeol remembered the dates correctly with his bad vampire memory, it would have been almost a century-and-a-half since his hibernation.

It had been long enough that Chanyeol was only left with fuzzy and blurred memories of how he got to the mansion and why he was there in the first place.

Chanyeol only remembered how he felt at that time and why he did what he did, but not of the exact events that led