the taunt feels like a slap and it’s worse that sungyeol flings it out carelessly at him like it doesn’t matter that it makes him hurt worse, and myungsoo struggles to his feet in a show of defiance. he’s too new at this; only four kills under his belt so far, and he knows he’s supposed to be able to do this on his own - he’d begged his watcher just that night to let him go out alone this time - but he’s beginning to think it’s very likely that the next slayer is going to be called any minute now. the thought sends leaden chills down his back, forcing air into his lungs. not yet. not yet. 

there are tears in his eyes from the snakelike hit he’d just received, but he blinks them away furiously.

"how old are you, even?" sungyeol asks, arms hanging lazily at his sides like he doesn’t even need to be ready for myungsoo’s next attack. truth be told, he doesn’t - he’s faster and stronger, though myungsoo isn’t exactly slow or weak by a long shot. "i haven’t seen you around here before. the previous slayer - she was good. i wonder who got her."

sungyeol’s tone is light, contemplating. myungsoo tries to hate him for it, but sungyeol doesn’t even seem to be making light of jinah’s death on purpose. he’s heard of sungyeol - they all have - and myungsoo wonders what he’s doing trying to fight a vamp nearly three hundred years old on his first week out. three hundred years old. what does death mean to someone that old? or, for that matter, life?

myungsoo tries for another lunge, and while he gets in a good kick to sungyeol’s stomach it merely slows the vampire down a fraction. sungyeol grabs him, the icy touch of his hands a shock, and when sungyeol throws him bodily into a nearby lamppost almost like an afterthought - might as well, sungyeol seemed to think - myungsoo feels it in every bone in his body.

"you didn’t answer me. i asked how old you were."

myungsoo tries to clear his head but he hears sungyeol through a daze. when his vision settles sungyeol is sitting crosslegged near him on the ground, watching him with the air of someone already bored with the night’s entertainment.

"stop fighting me. there’s no point. you’re not ready," sungyeol says dismissively once he sees myungsoo focus on him. "i think you’re about 23. you can’t be any older than 25. am i right or wrong?"

the tears rise in myungsoo’s throat with an intensity that scares him, and they’re not tears of fear, myungsoo realises - he’s frustrated, and angry, and humiliated. none of his training could have prepared him for something like this - slumped on the ground in an impasse with a curious vampire who seemed for the moment not intent on killing or eating him, the weight of his inadequacy pressing down on his chest too heavy to allow him to raise his head. the way sungyeol isn’t intimidated by him in the least absolutely crushes him. ‘there’s no point’, indeed.

he dashes the tears away with the back of his hand, heart still thudding in his chest. it’s absurd. the whole situation is absurd.

sungyeol moves with the speed and silence only vampires could muster, and lifts myungsoo’s head insistently with cold hands cradling his jaw. myungsoo jerks instinctively, hands coming up to grab sungyeol’s wrists, but sungyeol only shakes his head and doesn’t let go. he thumbs away the tears on myungsoo’s cheeks, and myungsoo looks straight into the empty black irises of the vampire kneeling in front of him. 

"train. get better. get older. then if you want to redo this, we will."

"this isn’t how this is supposed to go," myungsoo mutters, acutely aware of the fine bones in the wrists underneath his own fingers. 

sungyeol appears to think it over. “i could snap your neck, if you’re that unhappy with the situation. that’s how this usually goes, with me.”

the raw honesty isn’t something myungsoo can deny. “why don’t you? if you let me go i’ll only kill other vampires.”

"as if i care what happens to other vampires," sungyeol scoffs, almost laughing outright. "the less of us there are the more food there is for me. i could eat you, i guess, but i already ate on the way here before you jumped out at me. what if i brought you back home to act as my own personal self-renewing blood restaurant?”

"i don’t think so," myungsoo retorts, finally managing to pull sungyeol’s hands away from his face; fully aware that it is only because sungyeol’s allowing him to do so. the innocent intimacy of the gesture has thrown him, more badly than he wants to admit.

"so like i said," sungyeol agrees easily. "train. find me when you’re older, when you have more scars. if it’s death you want then, i’ll give it you. or maybe you’ll finally be the one to give me mine."

that gives myungsoo pause, and he tries to find some semblance of emotion in the smooth impassive mask of sungyeol’s young face. he has the skin and eyes of a teenager, bright and smooth, but the words that come out of his mouth and the way he moves speak of bone-deep age. “how old are you?”

"asking me my own question without answering first? rude."

"i’m 23."

"ah! i was right. i have a feel for such things. i’m 274. though i’d think i’m famous enough in the area for you to already know that."

"no, i mean - when you died. how old were you, i mean?”

sungyeol doesn’t answer straight away, the satisfied look melting off his face, and it could have seemed like he was having to think about something he hasn’t thought about for a long time. somehow myungsoo feels otherwise - there is too much steadiness in the way sungyeol holds myungsoo’s gaze.

"it wasn’t long after i’d turned 23. technically, we’re the same age."

"but two centuries apart," myungsoo murmurs, sungyeol’s midnight-black eyes unnerving him. 

"you should call me hyung, then," sungyeol says, and the electric undercurrent of threatening and teasing abruptly brings myungsoo back to himself. he’s hyperaware now of everything - the grass underneath him, the cold night air, the hard steel of the lamp post at his back, the total stillness of the vampire crouching before him. 

"we’ll see each other again," sungyeol says before he gets to his feet and turns to leave, myungsoo’s new tension triggering his movement. "maybe next year. maybe next month. don’t forget."