Chan Yeol's head snapped to the left, the direction the wind had come from. He followed the scent with an animal-like instinct until he stood in front of two graves buried side-by-side, a male and female who looked to have been husband and wife. A paper cup filled with alcohol had been placed in front of each as an offer to them. However, that strangely intoxicating smell wasn't coming from the fermented liquid in the cups.

Chan Yeol knelt down and reached for a shard of green glass from a broken soju bottle in the grass. A drop of dried blood stained the edge, and its aroma made his fangs protract.  This inexplicable hunger was of a magnitude comparable to the one he felt when he first turned. However, since then, he had learned to control it, even in the face of humans with open wounds. So why was this person's blood enticing him like this?

He dropped the piece of glass back onto the ground and stepped away with a horrified look. He glanced at the headstones again. According to the their death dates, yesterday was their death anniversary, so Chan Yeol guessed that whoever was here came the day prior, and from the looks of it, they had accidentally broken the soju bottle they served the alcohol from and then cut themselves trying to clean up the mess.

Chan Yeol's cell phone rang in his pocket and he absentmindedly picked it up as his eyes returned to the shard of glass that continued to taunt him. "Hello?"

"When are you coming back?" Kai asked on the other end. "You promised we'd go out and celebrate."

"I'm on my way back now. I'll see you in twenty," Chan Yeol answered and hung up.

The mystery of the blood's owner prickled at his brain; he wanted to know who could possess this power to bring out his inner demon, but he convinced himself it was probably best that he never meet this person in real life. He wasn't confident he could control his thirst in their presence, and breaking that vow to his mother was the biggest sin he could commit.

No, it was best for future reference that he not ever visit his mother's grave around this time again, lest he should run into this mystery person who could potentially break down his more than eighty-year-old resolve.

***

Chan Yeol arrived back at Kai's penthouse via taxi and the two walked to a nearby upscale bar for drinks where they shared stories on what they had been doing since they had last seen each other. While vampires didn't gain anything from consuming human food, alcohol was a different story. It could have the same effect on vampires as it did on humans (intoxicating, tranquilizing, energizing, etc.) though it took greater amounts for them to achieve those effects (for it is said that even the gods are not immune to the power of spirits).

The hour was already nearing two in the morning when Chan Yeol suggested they call it a night.

"We can leave soon, just let me take care of something," Kai responded as he downed the amber liquid in his glass in one shot. "They say it's not good to drink on an empty stomach," he said while looking elsewhere.

Chan Yeol followed Kai's gaze to a young woman sitting three stools down from him. She looked lonely, upset, and in need of comfort.

"I think I should get some nourishment in me." Kai stood up and took a seat next to the young woman.

Chan Yeol watched as Kai easily sweet-talked the young woman and then helped her up and led her to a back door. Kai glanced back at Chan Yeol with violet eyes and a sly smile showing a fang and then left with the young woman. Chan Yeol shook his head and continued to drink on his own. Kai returned fifteen minutes later, alone.

"What happened to the girl you were with? Did you leave her alone in the back?" Chan Yeol asked in an accusing tone.

"I do have some etiquette," Kai scoffed defensively. "I called her a cab and made sure she would get home safely."

"Very gentlemanly of you," Chan Yeol sarcastically replied. "You preyed on a girl when she was vulnerable."

"Hey, I did her a favor. I compelled her to think she was better off without the guy who broke her heart. I mean, it was the least I could do when she provided me with such sweet-tasting blood," Kai said as he his bottom lip.

Chan Yeol and Kai left the bar to walk back to the penthouse through the busy nightlife street filled with drunkards, smokers, couples, large groups of friends, and sketchy men waiting to prey on intoxicated girls leaving a nearby club.

"You know, I still don't understand your philosophy against human blood," Kai said. "As long as you practice control, no harm comes to them and we get the energy we need, not that fake, half-power stuff from animals."

"And what happens when you lose control?" Chan Yeol threw back. "We become responsible for a death that will follow us for the rest of our immortal lives."

"That's why you have a reliable friend to keep you in check." Kai threw his arm around Chan Yeol's neck and grinned. "What do you say? Try sinking your teeth into real human flesh for once," he egged on.

Chan Yeol took hold of Kai's dangling arm around him and pulled it off. He opened his mouth to reject the offer when amidst the smells of greasy foods, cigarette smoke, and alcohol-infused air, the scent of human entered his nostrils, the same scent from earlier at the gravesite. His head jerked in its direction, his mouth feeling dry, his body tense, and his eyes violet.

Kai noticed this sudden change and turned Chan Yeol's body to face him, away from the passing people. "Hey, I'm all up for you drinking human blood, but you can't just show your thirst like that in front of so many people," he warned with a shifty look around them.

Chan Yeol closed his eyes and focused on controlling his hunger. When he reopened them, his eyes were back to their normal brown, but there was terror etched into them. "Don't you smell that?" he loudly whispered.

"What?"

"Blood, human blood," he croaked.

Kai chuckled and gestured around them at the passerby. "Of course I smell blood."

Chan Yeol shook his head and stared in the direction of the smell. "No, this one is different," he claimed and then started following the scent's trail with Kai, who was still confused about what was going on, right behind him.

The two found themselves in a sketchy neighborhood with winding, unlit, garbage-littered streets and run down houses. While Kai scrunched his nose from the strong odor of the trash, Chan Yeol remained focused on the enticing aroma that masked all the others, until he found where it came from.

A few yards in front of them, a girl walked alone. He couldn't see her face, but he could tell she was trying to remain unnoticed from the way she gripped the lid of the hat on her head so that it sat low on her forehead and the way she hunched her shoulders towards her body, trying to make herself smaller and more discreet. She was the source of his resurfacing craving?

Kai also spotted the mysterious girl that held Chan Yeol's undivided attention and smiled mischievously. "Ah, so you've found your first target. She's perfect; she's all alone in a dark alley. No one will see." He put a reassuring hand on Chan Yeol's shoulder. "And don't worry; I'll be with you to make sure you stop in time."

Chan Yeol had almost resigned to give in to the temptation. Kai was right, what was the harm as long as he controlled himself? In addition, with Kai next to him, surely he'd be able to do that. However, the sentiment was fleeting. As he had trained himself to do whenever his thirst arose, he recalled his mother's dying wish and instantly, he was able to resist the urge for human blood. Except this time, it was requiring more willpower on his part than usual.

"Let's just go back." Chan Yeol turned around and walked the other way.

"What?" Kai jogged after him. "Why? You came all this way -”

A muffled scream interrupted him and made them both turn around to witness the sight of the girl being molested by a man in a trench coat. He had one hand clamped on and the other around her arms and stomach so that her back was pressed close to his front.

Chan Yeol and Kai stepped forward, ready to help her, but stopped when they saw their aid was unnecessary. The mystery girl jabbed the man with her elbow, making him release her, and then turned around to kick him in the crotch. He fell to the ground, shouting in pain and holding his groin area with both hands. She used this chance to make a run for it.

Once out of sight, Kai and Chan Yeol approached the fallen man who had now passed out. Kai knelt down on one knee, tsked at the pathetic sight before him and then laughed. "I've got to hand it to her, that girl has spunk."

Meanwhile Chan Yeol's attention was on a woman's wallet that lay on the ground. He opened it to find the mystery girl's ID. From her picture, he could see she had soft brown eyes, a stubby nose, and chubby cheeks, giving her an overall baby face for her age of 21. And then he read her name, Jeon Jung Ah, and thought back to the names on the pair of gravestones earlier that day. One, the man's, had the same surname Jeon. Was she the deceased couple's daughter?

"So, maybe not the best-looking for your first time, but how about sinking your fangs into him?" Kai asked with his eyes still on the trench-coated man. "I don't think you have to worry about losing control. You'd be doing the world a favor by getting rid of trash like him," he said with spite.

"I'm not going to drink human blood," Chan Yeol replied, both as an answer to Kai's question and as a reminder to himself for what he was about to do next. "I'm going to return this to her, deal with him however you want."

Chan Yeol left Kai in the middle of the street and walked in the direction the girl had run. Her scent still lingered in the air as he made his way through the maze-like neighborhood until he pinpointed her place, where her smell was overwhelming to the point that he didn't dare take a step closer from where he stood a few houses down. Her home was as dilapidated and broken down as the rest in the neighborhood and Chan Yeol wondered what her situation was that she resided in such an unfitting place for a young woman on her own.

Knowing that if he came face to face with her, he would probably do something he'd regret, Chan Yeol placed the wallet in front of her door, knocked, and then left, all in the blink of an eye, to watch safely from the corner of the street.

"Who is it?" he heard her voice shout from inside.

She repeated the question when no one answered and after some pause, there was a loud screech of a rusty lock being undone before the door creaked open slightly. She cautiously poked her head out to glance left and right until her gaze fell on the floor. Jung Ah picked up her wallet and again looked around to see who could've returned it. With no luck, she went back inside, locking the door with a loud clank behind her.

With his enhanced vision, Chan Yeol had noticed a Band-Aid on her right forefinger and was positive now, that this was the same person who had visited the graveyard, and it was her blood on the broken bottle. He returned to where he had left Kai, who was now alone, no trench coated man in sight. "What did you do with him?" he asked.

Kai sighed regretfully. "You know I only like to put my teeth into pretty girls, so I let him off easy. I compelled him to never prey on the vulnerable again and start looking for a real job. Lucky bastard didn't deserve a second chance, but what can I do when I'm a softy at heart," he magnanimously explained. "Did you return her wallet?"

Chan Yeol nodded with a grave look.

"What's wrong? Was she hurt?"

"I think I need to leave Seoul sooner than I thought," Chan Yeol replied.

"What? Why?" Kai prodded with a crestfallen look.

Chan Yeol turned his head in the direction of Jung Ah's home and didn't answer for a while. His vampire instinct told him to give in to his base desires and drink from her, but his head told him otherwise. What had she done that she be subjected to his monstrosity? Even if he stopped himself in time to not kill her, what made him any better than the ert who had tried to her, to forcefully take her body, when he wanted to forcefully take her blood?

"Eighty-two years," he finally said, "Eight-two years of training myself not to crave human blood. Eighty-two years denying myself of the only thing that will truly satisfy me. Eighty-two years of discipline...threatened by one human girl."

"What does that mean?" Kai questioned with a frown.

Chan Yeol desolately stared at Kai. "For the first time in eighty-two years, I'm truly scared. Even compared to the moment I turned, when my blood thirst was at its height, I've never been tempted like this by human blood before. And knowing that someone like her exists, someone who possesses such a power to make me give up on my eighty-two years of self-control…what if there are more like her?" Chan Yeol shook his head. "I can't risk it; I have to get away from her as soon as possible, before I do something I can never undo."

All this while, Kai listened silently, the lines between his eyebrows growing deeper in worry. And when Chan Yeol was done, he started pacing around, muttering things like "It can't be", "I thought it was a myth", and "There's no possible way it's real".

Chan Yeol watched in confusion, waiting for an explanation.

Kai stopped pacing, abruptly turned to Chan Yeol, and seriously demanded, "You're positive that this only happens around that girl? That it wasn't just because you haven't fed recently or that you're thinking about finally giving up on your vegetarian diet?"

"Yes. I fed before coming to Korea and you've seen me act normally around every other human I've been around. It's just her, I'm positive. It happened earlier today too, and I know for a fact it was her that I smelled then too."

Kai whirled around again and ran a hand through his hair in distress. He sighed and returned to Chan Yeol with a worried, unsteadiness in his eyes. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but maybe it wasn’t just a story."

"What are you talking about?" Chan Yeol demanded, snapping with Kai's strange behavior.

"If that girl is who I think she is," Kai finally answered, "then involving yourself with her can either cause your death…or your rebirth."

"Rebirth?" Chan Yeol pressed on.

Kai nodded. "Yes, as a human."

January 6, 2014, 7:00 PM