Himchan stumbles from the woman and smears his mouth with the back of his dry hand. When he sees the magnitude of what he has done, his legs hit the floor and his hands cover his eyes, as if the overlapping lines of skin and bone will erase the memory. Ever since he met Chaeri, he has moved deeper and deeper down a spiral of regret. He sees no way out of this endless hole. The only way forward, is down.

The dissonance of swears upon swears plays upon his lips as he washes his hands and grabs a towel. He cleans the poor stranger’s neck and carries her to his bed. As she lies in a state of half-open eyelids and slow heartbeats, Himchan rummages her purse and finds a sign of identification. He then uses his cellphone to call the front desk downstairs.

“Seongsu Apartments’ Information Desk, how may I help you?”

“Hello. I was wondering if you could tell me my girlfriend’s room number. It’s her birthday, and I wanted to surprise her.”

“What’s her name?”

Himchan peers at the name on the woman’s license. “Han Jiae.”

“One moment please.” A click. “I don’t think I can give you that information.”

“Yeonji, it’s Himchan.”

He hears the woman sigh on the other end. “Never thought you’d date a neighbor.”

“Do this for me. Please?”

“I can’t give people’s room numbers willy-nilly.”

“Yes, but you know me.” Himchan inserts the license back into the wallet. He already knows he’s won the argument. “I’ll give you a deal. Free coffee at my café for a week.”

“A week? That saves me around 35,000 won.”

“Fine. Two weeks. Free coffee, and free refills.”

“Fine.” Another click. “Room 53. And Himchan?”

“Yes?”

“Quit playing around with girls.”

“I’m not playing with her. I’m returning her.” Himchan hangs up. After stretching his back, he carries the unconscious girl in his arms and boards the elevator. Once he reaches the fifth floor, he uses the key in her purse to enter her room. It’s immaculate, which puts a smile on his tired face.

He leaves her on her bed, and after making sure she is comfortable, he returns to his room.

The next day, Sehun reads the poem again. With a pen, he underlines the last stanza. He draws an asterisk beside the title, and then he folds the paper along its creases.

He read that poem twenty times before midnight, and seven times after midnight. Each time, it was a new message. He thought he understood it the moment he finished reading it for the first time, but when he read it over, and over, and over, he began to see the nuances, the connotations, the details he had not seen when he walked home with a crick in his neck and the wind in his eyes.

He memorized it word for word.

Dialing the Tender’s number, he waits for the call to begin whilst drawing smiling punctuations on the paper. He hears the phone shuffle against cloth. The Tender must have balanced it between his cheek and shoulder. He answers, “Sehun?”

“Do you have Nana’s number?”

He hears the Tender tap the phone. “I don’t have it. I thought you didn’t like her.”

“I don’t.” Sehun writes her name in cursive. “I’m curious.”

“When she comes in, I’ll ask her.”

“Does she come in often?”

“Rarely.”

“Where does she live?”

“That’s not something I’m familiar with.”

“For goodness’ sake, you’re a Binder, these are the kind of things you have to know.”

“I’ll text you the address.”

“Immediately, Tender.”

Sehun begins to hang up, but the Tender intercedes, “Do you want me to bring you your things?”

“What things?”

“The pills, and the envelope. You forgot them last night when you left.”

Sehun dithers. “I’ll get them myself.”

The Tender waits for the beep of a completed call before setting the phone aside. What a miracle that Sehun would forget something as vital as his lifeline. He must have been sufficiently distracted by Nana’s message. What could she have possibly written?

When Sehun receives the address, he dons a jacket and leaves his room. She doesn’t live far from him, judging from the name of the street. Since the day is early, he is cautious to cover every centimeter of his body. His hands stay inside gloves and his face hides beneath a hood and aviators. Walking briskly through the city, he calls upon his mental map and navigates through the narrow roads. Once he is a block away from her street, he remembers why the name of it had sounded so familiar. It was beside the alley where he had allegedly killed her ex-boyfriend.

It’s a bad part of the city to live in, and Sehun can guess from the chalky walls and thin roofs that these houses have been used and reused for generations. As he peruses the street for her house number, he comes across a particularly different home. This one attempts to hide its embarrassing identity with fresh blue paint and clean windows. Sehun checks the label beside the door. The number matches the one in the text message.

Sehun could knock the door, but he’s never been the type to initiate greetings, even before he was turned. He is a person who prides himself in a cold front. Attention is given to him, never from him.

How silly of Sehun to think that it would be easy. He turns around; paper in hand, eyes downcast, when two feet dressed in worn red boots slice the top of his vision.

“Oh Sehun?” Nana asks, holding the circular vowel in his name.

“You read my poem.”

She sees her poem in his hand. “You read my letter.” Sehun doesn’t answer. “Why are you in front of my house?”

“I was looking for you. Here,” Sehun says, and stretches his arm towards her. She stares at the paper.

“It’s okay. You can keep it.”

“You returned my work. I’m here to return yours.”

“Letters aren’t meant to be returned. That’s yours to keep.”

“Mine?”

“It’s a gift.”

Nobody gives him gifts. “Why?”

“What do you mean, why?”

“Why did you write this?”

She blinks the exact number of paragraphs Sehun underlined in her letter. She’s like a canvas, and Sehun wants to spread his words all over her. “Your poem inspired me to write. I haven’t written in a while, and – why are you wearing sunglasses, anyway? It’s the morning.”

“You live in an awful area.”

“I know. That’s why I painted my house,” she chuckles. “I wanted it to look respectable, at least.”

It’s no wonder she’s lost her way numerous times. People love to discourage an optimist. She’s a target for people who want to throw their woes. Sehun sees this by the nervous flicker in her eyes, the hesitant stutter of her tongue, and the protective slump in her shoulders.

“How are you?”

The syllables clumsily roll out of his mouth, bumping against his teeth in the process. He his lips, swallows, tries again. “How have you been?”

Her smile, like the gradual rise of the sun, congratulates his attempt. “I’m okay. I’ve been working.”

“Where do you work?”

Another question, this time flying from his lips unwarrantedly. He’s agitated. He needs pills.

“I’m a photographer,” she replies. “I’m currently working on a winter portfolio to submit to my editor. I wish it would snow, though. Do you think it will snow?”

“I don’t know.” Sehun hasn’t watched Mizu Tae’s weather channel lately.

“I hope it will. It’s my favorite season.”

Winter is his favorite season, too.

“Well, I have to go,” she excuses herself, stepping past him and brushing his arm with the sleeve of her sweater. “Thanks for coming by, but you really can keep that poem. It’s for you.”

Sehun listens as her keys rattle against each other. Before she can unlock her door, Sehun says, “I’m sorry about how we had to meet each other.”

The keys stop chatting. In a volume as small as her voice on paper, she says, “I’m sorry we didn’t meet sooner.” The door opens. The lock closes. Sehun leaves her poem on her doorstep.

Before the Tender begins his work shift, he begins at the nearest infection point for his monthly rounds. Just this morning, he updated his phone with the latest Blood List. Some are people he has quarantined himself; others, his colleagues have controlled. Generally, Davers and Nivers who have been turned for more than a year are docile. Those people have become his acquaintances or friends, like Sehun. As for the others, the Tender isn't as strict to cross their name off. Humans that have recently turned are hostile and tough to contain. The activity of these beasts, monitored by the number of times innocent blood is been spilled, shows as red dots on the phone screen. Each dot comes with a name, a photograph, and a location. When the Tender details into the dot, their entire profile documents their exchanges with human life in the past two weeks. That’s the reason why Sehun knew that the Tender had Nana's address. He knew that the Tender saved Sehun's dot in his top five favorites.

A Daver is the Tender's next target. He knows the name. It's one of the people that were affected in the bar. The venue of his job attracts and breeds pure and half bloods. It's the peak of conglomeration, a paralyzed affair for both humans and creatures. Such is his responsibility that he must serve both leeches and people.

The Daver is not at his house. The Tender even breaks through the back door, but the Daver is simply absent. The Tender worries that the Daver is fighting the boundaries. He isn't where the Blood List says he should be, and that's either an error, or a warning. The Tender chooses the latter and contacts a Tracker.

"Speaking."

"I need you to find a Daver for me," the Tender says as he patrols the neighborhood.

"What's his code?"

"0612777."

"I know him. He was last seen at his house."

"When?"

"Thirty minutes ago, according to a Tracker that saw him on his way to the bar. I really need to visit your bar sometime, by the way. I hear it's great."

"It's a good place to get drunk," the Tender says. "Where was he headed?"

"West.”

The Tender reaches a row of apartments. Something about its rotten vertebrae of wood reminds him of someone. When he sees electric blue paint, his throat tightens. Nana lives here.

The Tender runs toward the house in hopes that the Daver hasn't fed on her. She won't be turned, but she'll be traumatized, and he can only change so many memories before he changes the people, too. Without reserve, he forces the door open.

Nana never intended to call him back. Nana never planned on opening the door, stepping on her own poem, and shouting his name across the street. A foreign feeling prompted her to do it. Adrenalin, maybe. Anticipation, mostly. When she pronounced his name for the second time, he had raised his hand. At first she thought he was waving at her, but when her eyes focused on the stone, she couldn’t believe he’d hate her so much as to want to throw a rock at her.

But it never hit her. It hit a man she had not known was inside her house. It had hit a creature that, at that moment, was baring its fangs while her back was turned.

And here they are now, resting inside an alleyway’s darkness with an unconscious stranger between them.

“How did you know he was in my house?” Nana’s withering voice asks.

“I got a whiff of him when you opened the door.”

A whiff. Was the man some sort of a meal?

“Did you kill him?”

“I can’t.”

The rock had opened a large gash across the man’s chest. He is bleeding through his jacket.

“You didn’t have to … hurt him so badly … “

“I made sure he would lose his target. Your blood is too strong.”

“Excuse me?”

Sehun rotates his wrist. “Beautiful people tend to have that curse.”

“What are you?”

The inquiry hits his ears before Nana can even notice the question. She reminds herself that’s a rude thing to ask, but that foreign feeling again, that adrenalin or anticipation or whatever, had made her say it. She can’t be quiet around him. His self-effacement is as loud as the rapid beating of her heart.

With a sickly sweet smile, Sehun responds, “I’m a nightmare.”