“Your business is not mine to deal with, Tender.”

Before Sehun can stop the Tender from entering his room, the Tender forces his way inside. “I’m sorry for intruding, but it’s important we help him before he causes any more trouble.” The Tender considers leaving Himchan on the couch, but then rethinks it. Sehun wouldn’t want to go through the hassle of cleaning the couch. Instead, the Tender lays Himchan on the kitchen table.

“He seems to be healing, but it’s only a temporary reaction.” The Tender waves a hand over Himchan’s injuries. In a shimmer of light, Sehun sees the drastic infliction on Himchan’s leg and face. It disappears quickly, as if it were a nightmare Sehun saw when he briefly closed his eyes. “He needs blood to heal properly.” The Tender looks up at Sehun. “Pure blood.”

“Nobody has touched my blood in years.”

“He’ll be hungry, Sehun. If we don’t give him pure blood, he’ll go on a rampage. Many humans will be hurt.”

“How does that concern me?” Sehun answers. “Those humans can’t be turned by a half-blood anyway. Let him be. When he wakes up, he can feed as much as he likes.”

“You know the dangers of that. I can’t risk our world colliding with theirs.”

Sehun glares at the Tender. “Since when were you associated with my world?”

Attempting to be patient, the Tender bows his head. “I know I have no right to ask for a favor from you, but I will. I’m asking not as a Binder. I’m asking as your friend.”

Friend. Sehun doesn’t remember having one of those. He has acquaintances, and many, many enemies, but never friends. The man at the bar had referred to the Tender as Sehun’s friend, as well. If Sehun continues to make these friends, his existence will contain too many attachments. He hates attachments; they come with responsibility.

“Just this once.”

“Thank you,” the Tender sighs. “He’ll awaken soon. He’s going to bite the first person he sees. Stay by his side until that time.”

“And afterwards?”

“We’ll take him home. You’ll help me find where he lives, I hope?”

Sehun laughs lightly. “I already know where he lives.”

“You do? How?”

Sehun shrugs, and then sits in the chair closest to Himchan’s head. “This foolish half-blood is my neighbor.”

Himchan opens his eyes. It’s as if his head is in a funnel. His vision is narrow and skewed, and he ponders that if he were an insect, this is how he would have to live his life - in a repetitive hexagon of blurred lines and mixed colors - and he doesn’t like that, not one bit, so Himchan raises his head only to see that he is on a table, he is hungry, and there is a man beside him with pale skin and red veins.

In a weak moan, he reaches for the man and dives his teeth into his neck.

Sehun flinches as the half-blood plunges his underdeveloped fangs through his skin. He hates being fed on. He hates the feeling of his blood rushing out of him in thick, sticky gulps. That sort of thing repulses him. He hates doing it for himself, even, although when his appetite is large, he never notices those trivial things. What is important is the satisfaction that comes with the consumption of another’s blood, and the wholesomeness one feels by the end of it.

He is reminded of how long it has been since he last fed. He sees his pills on the counter. The temporary diversion they give him is nothing compared to the glee this half-blood must be feeling.

Sehun begins to feel empty and faint, but he won’t admit it to the Tender, who is closely watching the gory exchange.

“A bit more.”

“I really don’t like you, Tender.”

The Tender smiles sadly. “I know.”

Two minutes pass of ceaseless drinking before Himchan wipes his mouth and falls asleep on the table. Sehun finds a towel in the cupboard and leans over the sink. Cupping water in his hands, he splashes it on his neck until the blood is gone and dries himself with the towel.

“I’ll take him to his room,” the Tender says as he heedfully lifts Himchan off of the table. “Also … that woman. She says she won’t look for you anymore.” The unconscious man’s feet drag across the carpet as the Tender pulls him out of the door. Sehun must be very angry with the mess the Tender has caused, but because apologizing once more would only irritate him, the Tender shuts the door as abruptly as he knocked on it.

Sehun opens the pill bottle and stares at the blunt things. Although they are red in color, its shade does not appeal to him today. He glances at the blood coagulating on the table. If he were to try, to taste, to test, then perhaps –

No. Sehun must remember that the destination he wishes to reach takes time. He must stay in control of his body. He must stay in control of his feelings. If he does not, he would lose the will to die.

And that is a dangerous risk for a man who believes he can manage everything but the motion of time.

She can smell his blood.                       

It’s strong, for a half-blood. Pleasant, too, in a different way. It’s rather hypnotic. Perhaps it is a mixture of both his essence and his presence; regardless, she is drawn toward him. She feels like a puppet choking on its strings. No matter how much she pretends to be the leader of the show, she is merely the image; and Himchan, that beautiful cad, is her puppeteer.

How fearfully peculiar, to be so in love with someone whose facts are the only things she knows.

So she resolves to learn more. Not about what he is, but who he is. He is a business-man. He is a player. He is a half-blood. What more? Is he a man who wishes to be a boy? Is he a boy that lies to be a man? Is he a person who is attempting to hold on to his humanity?

Chaeri taps the door to his apartment with her knuckles. There is no response. She could break in so easily, but that wouldn’t be a positive way to greet him. She rests her forehead against the door and breathes in his scent, but the fragrance has been mixed with an old, familiar, and undeniably nervous smell.

The entire hall reeks of Sehun.

Like the arm of a swinging pendulum, Himchan precisely sits up in his bed, his breath coming out of him in rapid, excessive swoops of air. His head is doing that thing again. That thing when his mind seems to believe that it is navigating a dream about life, and if he were to wake up, everything he had and everyone he knew would be lost like debris drifting in space – diminutive, unreachable, and forgettable.

He notices the dried blood on his shirt and pants. A baffled panic presses upon his body. He runs to the bathroom to observe his reflection in the mirror. He touches his chest, his arms, his legs, his face. Blood, everywhere. But not a part of him feels broken.

He tries to remember how he could be in such a predicament. His memory is floating around him like a veil of autumn leaves. It’s all too fragile. As soon as he captures a scrap of a moment, it crumbles in his hands. He remembers some things, like driving in the street and buying groceries. But why is there so much blood on his clothes? Is it his own? Is it someone else’s?

Then it hits him like that car he crashed into. He had caused an accident. People were helping him and calling for help. He must have been extremely hurt. A man had been there. Someone else had taken him away.

And here he is, wearing dirty clothes and an unstable mind.

He searches for his phone, but it isn’t in his pocket. He opens the drawers in his desk until he finds his laptop. Turning it on, he waits for the defining numbers.

Sat 7:53 PM

He could have sworn it was Wednesday. If the clock says Saturday, then he was unconscious for three days.

How is it that a man who was injured in an accident was able to disappear from the world with nothing more than red spots on his clothes?

Then a pang of hunger awakens his stomach, answering the question he should not have asked.

Sehun wraps his neck with a tightly knit cable scarf. The two scabs on his neck still haven’t healed completely. When bitten, it’s natural for a creature like himself to take a longer time to treat a discrepancy. As a result, he has to be careful. His blood is going to be easier to sense.

With his journal resting inside the large pockets of his tweed coat, he strolls toward the park. He chooses a bench, opens his journal, and begins to finish his poem.

Sehun likes ripping his poems from the journal and spreading them throughout the park. Over the years, Sehun has written plenty of poems only to disjoint them by stanza. It was a hobby of his before he was turned, and even now, when the poem’s messages have changed and he no longer writes about love, he continues to communicate his letters to whoever is willing to read them.

He used to think he was a romantic. He was the type of boy who wasn’t very good at flirting, and when he tried, the girl would laugh and fall for him anyway. He was a bumbling, inexperienced, boyish human. He liked the idea that there was always a possibility for strangers to read his discarded works and understand them in a different way than he did.

He doesn’t think that way anymore. These days, he doesn’t tear the pages because he hopes someone will find them. He tears them because, with every poem he throws away, a secret is freed.

The secret that, in the darkest parts of his static heart, he has a craving to be alive.

After purchasing a cup of hot coffee, Nana takes a walk around the city. Life certainly has becoming interesting since the death of her boyfriend. Before, she was a feeble thing. She was receptive. People came to her for everything. They took, they told, they blamed. But they never gave.

Yet in announcing their selfishness, she brands herself as worse.

Nana tries to be a kind girl. She tries to be someone who never gets in trouble. She never drank, until she met her boyfriend. She never went to parties, except for that one time. She never kept herself in situations that would bring her danger, until she met that man with eyes like a tempest.

Nana looks down. Her foot had stepped on a wrinkled white ball. Picking it up, she unfolds the creased paper to identify a thick scrawl she knows she has seen before. She searches the ground around her. There is paper near a trashcan, and by a lamppost, and by a bench.

Being an inquisitive person, Nana collects the papers until she connects them sequentially. When she is certain she has found them all, she sits on the bench with her cup of coffee beside her and flattens the papers onto her lap.

'Life is'

'Dull'

He thought.

Of all the ways that he could

Describe a thing so exalted

So fleeting

Of all the words he could choose

He decided that life

Is dull.

Perhaps it was only his own

That he was judging.

Perhaps if he lived as someone else

He could say

A different thing.

But he is not someone else

He so tediously reminded himself.

He is a man born through hate

A man decided by fate

To fall into darkness

To fall into the same hate

That bore

Him.        

He didn’t know it before

But he discovered now

That the kiss of death

Was so hauntingly

Beautiful.

And that the grey smoke

That went into his lungs

And out of his mouth

Was a foolish medicine

That he could not stop taking.

He wondered if he

Could ever change

Himself.

Or if he would always

Aimlessly walk

The entire crevice of his existence

Alone.

He doubted that anyone saw

A speckle of dirt

Like him

Because he was only a man

With a desire to begin

The inevitable.

So still did he breathe

So long did he walk

That people began to whisper

And their whispers burned his ears

And ate his heart

Until blood

Was an imagination

Of the future.

So he smelled the smoke

And breathed angry perfume

That clouded his mind

Until the gloom came back

To take his life.

And this time

He did not

Survive.

     - Oh Sehun

Sehun returns to his apartment with a table that reminds him that he has yet to clean the disgusting thing. Instead of having to tempt himself by washing it, Sehun hauls the table toward the balcony and shoves it over the railing. The splintering sound of wood cracking against asphalt is belated but comforting. He will have to contact the Tender later to take it away.

After filling a glass with wine and taking his pill bottle, Sehun leans over the railing. He snaps the cap off with his teeth and drops two pills onto his tongue. He swallows it and empties the glass. He endures the pain for now, but he waits for the day when those pills will become useless.

On that day, he will be as free as his poetry.