Boarding school actually turned out better than Kyungsoo expected it to be. Maybe he had been too pessimistic regarding the unfavorable idea of being shipped out hundreds of miles to school for an entire year.

But it wasn’t the idea of being sent away that bothered Kyungsoo more than the thought that of his family “physically distancing” him from them.

Kyungsoo was aware of how he stood in the eyes of his family, but he wasn’t brave enough to accept or acknowledge the truth.

Then, Chanyeol came along and Kyungsoo was even heavy-hearted to leave his new home, contradicting his earlier feelings towards it.

Just when Kyungsoo felt like he had a close friend with whom he could open up to personally, he had to leave Chanyeol behind.

It did make Kyungsoo feel like he wasn’t allowed to have nice things, especially when he believed that he actually deserved them.

In a way, Kyungsoo felt that life was being cruel to him but then again, when had life ever been fair to him?

In boarding school in a new place where no one knew who he was, Kyungsoo was able to make new friends who were also human and around his age.

Kyungsoo was at first reluctant to make new friends but he was constantly reminded of Chanyeol telling him to actually do so.

Maybe it was Kyungsoo’s own want but part of it was also owed to Chanyeol’s advice. Kyungsoo eventually made friends with his two roommates in boarding school.

In the school, rooms were shared among three people and for the first few weeks, Kyungsoo kept to himself as much as possible with minimal possible interaction between his two other roommates.

Eventually, Kyungsoo did slowly begin getting close to them. The three of them would walk to class together, eat together and study in the library together.

Kyungsoo felt that maybe he was wrong all the while; when he thought that most people wouldn’t want to be friends or be around him.  Because Kyungsoo’s new friends were actually nice and friendly to him.

On one occasion, Kyungsoo almost tripped on the many stairs in the school’s building while switching classes. Kyungsoo’s legs had gotten tired but his two new friends were there to catch him in time before he tumbled down the steps.

After that, Kyungsoo began opening up to them regarding his illness and his condition when he realized that they wouldn’t judge him or treat him differently because of that.

It put a new perspective to Kyungsoo that most people were actually nice, and that it was just his family who were less than nice to him.

Kyungsoo made more friends and joined clubs where he could play games with other people, something he always wanted to do.

Kyungsoo did fairly well in class thanks to one year of pre-studying for the syllabus and was well liked by his teachers for being cooperative and attentive in class.

Kyungsoo didn’t feel too lonely too much anymore. He looked forward to every new day spent in boarding school, and actually dreaded the thought of having to go back to the mansion his family lived in once the holidays came around.

Kyungsoo began to see that Chanyeol was right.

There indeed was a larger world out there with countless possibilities and lots more things that could be done, even for people like Kyungsoo who felt like he never had a place to belong to.

If anything, Kyungsoo was thankful to his parents for getting rid of him by sending him to boarding school, despite how much he detested the real reason behind why they did so.

But above it all, Kyungsoo always found himself looking out through the window at nights, wondering what his vampire friend was up to and where he was at now.

They still kept in touch now that Chanyeol could use a smartphone and work out how to send emails.  But for the most part, Chanyeol was somewhere isolated and far off from civilization where he was unreachable by most means.

Kyungsoo could only wait then until the next time he could hear from Chanyeol.

Right after Kyungsoo left to boarding school, Chanyeol too left the mansion to trace down and discover his origins.

It was difficult because so many years had passed since then and Chanyeol’s memory wasn’t the most reliable source out there.

But Chanyeol was convinced that if he found the place he used to live in, he would be able to track down the trails and find where he started at.

Vampires were either born or created. Chanyeol wasn’t sure if he was born a vampire or if he was a human once. Either way, Chanyeol would have to have either a family or a creator.

For so long, Chanyeol could care less regarding his origins as his main goal was to just keep surviving and not getting killed off.

It was not until he met Kyungsoo and read that book from the mansion’s library did he yearn to seek for the answers, and maybe answer his purpose of being.

Chanyeol remembered passing through a barren tundra of ice and snow, before reaching into vast forests that eventually led him to the mansion on the outskirts of a town.

Chanyeol went the same way he came from, tracing his previous journey to hopefully find the previous settlement he once lived in if it still did exist in the present day.

Chanyeol began his journey in the fall right after Kyungsoo’s departure.

With the money and documents Kyungsoo left behind for Chanyeol, he was able to take numerous form of transports to reach that place from trains to buses to cars.

Chanyeol traveled only by ground as that was what was familiar to him.

Along his journey, Chanyeol often took pictures on a camera Kyungsoo had given him. Chanyeol wrapped this camera up properly in his bag pack to protect it.

Chanyeol eventually reached the end of the vast forest that opened up to the tundra with a tall mountain range in the distance.

While deserted the last time he was there, a small town had been built there with people living in it.

It was almost winter when Chanyeol reached there but it was colder out on the tundra. Chanyeol was able to recognize the same barren, icy plains now that he was there again.

But due to the change in the political landscape over the time Chanyeol was in hibernation, he was unable to pass through into the tundra and over the mountains because it was now part of a different and hostile country.

While that would have mattered if he was a human, Chanyeol was not.

Despite people from the small town at the edge of the tundra telling him that it was a dangerous journey, Chanyeol left one night and crossed the tundra by feet to reach the mountains.

It didn’t matter to him. Chanyeol couldn’t feel the cold, he didn’t need to feed for another year and he was adept at avoiding humans from his hundreds of years of experience doing so.

The further Chanyeol traveled, the more he began recognizing his surroundings and the way back to where he had come from.

The closer he got, the more hopeful Chanyeol got that he would actually be able to answer the questions regarding his origins and existence.

Chanyeol wasn’t even sure why he cared to know about it only now.

Chanyeol was hardly alone during his journey across the cold vicious landscape.

Sometimes, he’d come across a mountain goat herder who would be at first surprised to see Chanyeol there before offering him something to eat.

Chanyeol would always politely decline the food but then ask for pictures, most of the time they would happily oblige.

Then, Chanyeol would continue on his journey and leave them puzzled as to how someone would be so far up there alone in such harsh conditions.

At other times, Chanyeol would stumble upon an eagle’s nest with eggs in it among the rocks. Chanyeol would take pictures of these too, which he intended to share with Kyungsoo later on once they could meet each other again.

When Chanyeol reached the top ridge of the mountains, from where he could see the land of the two countries that bordered on either side of it; Chanyeol could only think of Kyungsoo and of how his human friend was doing.

Chanyeol had so many pictures and so many things to tell Kyungsoo already, even though he had just barely begun his journey.

Chanyeol knew he had to find his answers so he could leave his old life behind before he could return to Kyungsoo.

The next time Kyungsoo heard from Chanyeol again, it was early December; three-and-a-half months since they had last seen each other and almost a month since they last heard from each other.

Kyungsoo’s final exams were approaching, which he had to go through before the two weeks year-end break holiday.

Kyungsoo’s parents, out of obligation, had bought him tickets to return home for the year-end break, but Kyungsoo wasn’t really eager to go home.

Kyungsoo’s friends had offered him to spend the holidays with them. Kyungsoo was delighted at the offer but he was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to spend time with Chanyeol in that case.

Kyungsoo had to decline his friend’s invitation by lying that he had other matters to attend to at that time.

Kyungsoo couldn’t tell them yet that he was actually best friends and in love with a vampire.

By then, Chanyeol had just arrived in the second closest city to the mountains on the other side from where he had come from.

It had taken him weeks, almost a month, of traveling just by foot through the tundra, up the mountains, and down the mountains again to get over the other side.

Then, Chanyeol had to travel a bit further to several cities near it to find the one which he used to live in.

It had taken a long time because Chanyeol had to travel by foot and only at night because he was afraid of being discovered.

When Chanyeol did find the city he used to live in, he found himself oddly calm but not yet feeling rather fulfilled.

It had changed so much by then, leaving it almost unrecognizable except for a few key buildings and locations that remained from the days of the old.

The house that Chanyeol used to live in no longer existed, and its place was a taller newer building with several families living in it.

Every human in the city that Chanyeol used to know was long dead and gone. There was no one here now that knew who he was, no one to know that he was already ousted as a vampire and hunted until he was forced to leave.

While the city had held significance in the past, it was just another city now like the many that Chanyeol had been through over the course of his journey.

More importantly, this wasn’t the place that Chanyeol wanted to visit the most.

Chanyeol may have lived there in the past but he was more interested in going to the place from his earliest memory; of the one memory, he would never forget.

Chanyeol knew that the odds of having the questions regarding his origins answered was unlikely, he was still convinced that he would at least feel fulfilled once he found the place from his earliest memory.