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If anyone is to blame, it’s Yuna.
It was Yuna who told her to put herself out there. Yuna who said spending every weekend watching video essays on Youtube isn’t normal or a universal example of fun or a good way to spend your twenties so Ryujin stopped. Sort of stopped. It was Yuna who dragged her out of her bed and to Donghyuck’s Halloween party, kicking and screaming.
And look what good it’s done her!
“Do you think I’m your little pet?”
“Please. Don’t be so dramatic,” Chaeryeong rolls her eyes, arms crossed over her chest, her stance defensive. She’s wearing fuzzy Sanrio pajamas so she looks more ridiculous than anything but the look she sends her feels oppressive. The longer Ryujin stays in this apartment with her, the more it feels like she’s offending Chaeryeong just by existing. She supposes she is in a way.
“You said your gums were hurting, I found a solution.”
Cause and effect. A must make B. Chaeryeong thinks so transparently in black and white some days, it’s like living with a robot.
“Is this a kink? Is that what this is?”
The teething toys that were tossed on the coffee table range from food-shaped rubber ones for babies to actual squeaky toys. She must be joking or clinically fucking insane.
Chaeryeong scowls at her, balling her hands at her side. Ryujin thinks that if she had a little more blood in her, her ears would be pink in the way she’s seen them before—from frustration or anger or another thing entirely, she’s not sure. But it’s something she finds herself wanting to see again. It’s familiar and human.
She hugs her knees from where she sits on Chaeryeong’s couch. “No, seriously. Was there no Orajel or pain killer or—”
“Ryujin,” she says through her teeth.
“—did you just have to pick the most demeaning way, is that it?”
The rest of the argument dies on Ryujin’s tongue as a light bursts overhead, the pieces shattering on the floor in front of her.
“Ryujin,” Chaeryeong repeats, no less strained than the first time. She looks genuinely pissed now, jaw all tense and nostrils flared. “I’m just telling you what I know works. If you don’t want to listen to me, go right ahead. Die again for all I care.”
And then, like the century-old vampire she is, she marches into her room and slams the door so loud Ryujin feels it in her already throbbing head for the next hour.
“Yeah, well whose fault is that?” Ryujin mutters too late, the shock of the light exploding still wearing off. She sinks further into the couch, defeated.
The answer is Yuna. This is definitely Yuna’s fault.
💌
If someone were to ask Ryujin how it started, she’d honestly say with a really dumb question.
“And what are you supposed to be?”
She wasn’t drunk, because she and liquor have never mixed well, so it should have been obvious what she was. If the gothic-styled dress and fake blood dried on her neck and chest didn’t give it away, then the short glimpse Ryujin caught of her really impressive fangs had. There was also a tiara on top of her head, which made the whole costume a little less knowable, but still, it wasn’t hard to glean what she might've been.
Ryujin remembers thinking it was a good costume, like suspiciously good. She told Donghyuck about it when he’d passed by complaining about the lack of participants in the costume contest. He called it unoriginal in his pretentious little art major voice and walked away, but she still thought it was cool.
The question was only an excuse anyway. She came to the party with only one thing in mind and it wasn’t who won the fucking costume party.
The girl stared back at her, unimpressed. Ryujin swallowed nervously. A hot mean girl, she thought, just my type. “A vampire princess…”
“Oh, wow, that’s a really good costume. I can totally see that,” Ryujin said, stumbling over her words under those eyes—hazel, almost golden in a certain light. “It’s really good,” she said again for some reason, maybe because the girl was smiling at her now, amused by her awkwardness, or maybe because she hadn’t held a conversation with someone outside of her friend group in, like, eight months at this point and it was showing. “Your fangs look so real too, where’d you, uh, find those?”
The girl smiled, like she found Ryujin more funny than weird, and took a step closer to her. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
“A little bit,” she breathed out, lamely, feeling herself leaning into the girl.
“Are you here all by yourself?” From this close Ryujin could see every beauty mark on her face—three in a diagonal cutting across her nose and one on her lip, which feels unfair on just one face. One very pretty face. She couldn’t think straight—there was something hypnotizing about looking at her and being looked at by her. And she was looking at Ryujin, intensely, like a snake before the kill. Predator looking at prey.
“Yeah. Well, no?” Ryujin stammered. “My friend made me come but I haven’t seen her since they started flip cup. So yeah, I’m alone now.”
“‘Alone?’ Am I not good company?” She frowned, head tilted coquettishly.
Ryujin noticed her hair, long and slicked back, fell over her bloody collarbone and without thinking, pushed the lock back behind her shoulder. Getting fake blood out of your hair sucks, she would know. Halloween 2019 was a nightmare that Jisu never lets her forget. Even with just a brief touch, she could feel how cold the girl was. But before she could think to say something, Ryujin realized she had just touched someone she didn’t even know without permission and yanked her hand back.
“Um. Sorry. I, uh.”
“It’s okay,” the vampire princess girl, as Ryujin had dubbed her in her head, reassured her with a charming smile. “What are you even supposed to be?”
She struck a pose, the glowstick bracelets slid down her arms as she did so. “Alice! From Bodies Bodies Bodies.”
It was a pretty last-minute costume. Yuna had tossed out the idea when she’d accosted Ryujin in her own bedroom earlier that night and the idea stuck with her. She saw the movie no less than three times in theaters and she had all the right things to be Alice on short notice.
“Of course you are.” The girl laughed brightly, eyes looking deeper somehow than a moment ago and her fangs on full display. She was the prettiest girl at the party and Ryujin was positively transfixed.
“I-I can do her whole monologue in the third act.” She didn’t know if this was impressing her, but Ryujin couldn’t stop herself from blurting it out.
“Of course you can.” The vampire princess curled her finger around one of the glow stick necklaces and tugged until Ryujin craned her neck toward her, their noses nearly touching. “I’m going to kiss you now, okay?”
All Ryujin could do was nod.
An alternative start would be there, with Ryujin’s back against Donghyuck’s wood-paneled walls and Chaeryeong’s hands in her hair, spilling her name from her red lips onto Ryujin’s tongue. It could’ve started in the cab where Ryujin refused to detach her hand from the inside of the other girl’s thigh or her mouth from her jaw, her heart beating triple-time in her chest.
More than likely though, it started back at Chaeryeong’s apartment, with the taller girl holding Ryujin’s hands up above her head on the exposed-brick walls as she nipped a mosaic of bruises down her neck. Ryujin remembers feeling unusually warm and having difficulty catching her breath under the other, but she would’ve rather died than stop and she had a feeling Chaeryeong knew.
“You smell so good,” she mouthed into her skin, making Ryujin blush. Sure, it was a weird thing to say but also kind of super hot at the time. Especially when Chaeryeong blinked at Ryujin through her eyelashes right after, all pretty and irresistible, and asked, “do you mind if I bite, love?”
This part—every time Ryujin goes over it in her head, turning it over and over in the early mornings until it’s smooth and round and incomprehensible, she feels like she could throw up. It only took a few words, mere seconds, a heartbeat or two for her to lose it all.
“Please,” she begged, voice nothing more than a whisper and the girl of her dreams grinned wildly at her in return.
When Chaeryeong’s fangs—very real, by the way—sunk into her skin, Ryujin froze.
And then instinct kicked in. She sobbed and thrashed and tried to push her away, but Chaeryeong wouldn’t budge. It hurt more than anything she’d ever felt before; more than when she slammed her thumb in the car door and the nail fell off or that time she sprained her ankle at Sports Day in middle school. Ryujin felt like she couldn’t scream or even breathe for a few brief moments.
She squeezed her eyes shut as a cold hand stroked down Ryujin’s back in comforting motions, trying to hone into that feeling despite the panic clawing at her throat. Chaeryeong made a humming sound in the back of her throat that Ryujin felt on her own skin and then something warm ran down her neck without end, but she couldn’t crane her head enough to see it.
“Chaeryeong,” she groaned, hands weakly gripping the other’s hips in an attempt to push her off.
Finally, Chaeryeong let up a little. Her eyes were glazed over and a piercing tawny color that made Ryujin dizzy, wet blood dribbling over her lips and down her chin— Ryujin’s fucking blood. Her knees gave out from under her at the sight, but Chaeryeong kept her pinned with one hand.
“Relax. It’s okay, I’ve got you,” she whispered gently, eyes crawling over every bit of Ryujin’s face carefully. Her voice cut clear through the pain and dread, the words wrapping around her body like a blanket until she felt herself get a little less scared.
Chaeryeong’s other hand brushed Ryujin’s long hair from her face before fixing itself on her jaw. She kissed her slowly, kitten licking into her mouth until Ryujin could taste the strong coppery flavor of her own blood, and she found herself falling into it easily. Her lips kissed her sweet and pliant until she was just putty in her hands, any trace of fear forced from her body. “I’ve got you, okay?”
Ryujin nodded, voice coming out hoarse. “Okay.”
And then her lips were back on Ryujin’s neck, piercing the flesh there for a second time, but it didn’t hurt as much that time.
All of the pain trickled out of her within a second until Ryujin felt nothing but white-hot bliss in every corner of her body. Her hands tightened at Chaeryeong’s shoulders, both pulling her closer and pushing her away. Ryujin found herself stuck somewhere between nauseously overwhelmed and desperately needing more, hips writhing in its hold. Chaeryeong held her through all of it, icy hands cooling down the heated surface of Ryujin’s skin, yet stoking the fire in her belly. She was coming apart at the seams and then she was sinking, sinking, sinking.
And when Ryujin resurfaced, she was dead.
💌
They don’t talk about their arguments. If they talked about them all, there would be no more time left in the day to do important things like eat or watch tv and such. So they let them all hang in the air until the breeze from the window takes them away.
Chaeryeong comes out of her room around seven at night, just as the sun begins to set and the breeze is high.
There’s an electric blue teething toy pressed between Ryujin’s teeth. After about an hour of letting her gums ache and staring hatefully at the pile on the coffee table, Ryujin said fuck it. Might as well try. There are six other toys that she tore through in the garbage. She’s only a little bit embarrassed about it, but Chaeryeong has enough good grace not to say I told you so when she spots it.
“Does your head still hurt?” she asks instead, sitting beside Ryujin on the couch.
Her cute pajamas from earlier have been switched out for a sleek black dress with pink bows tied at the shoulders. A matching bow sits in her hair, holding back the top half while the rest falls at her shoulders. Ryujin thinks she looks like a painting, not that these are words she would willingly tell her right now, and briefly wonders what she’s dressed up for. In contrast, Ryujin hasn’t changed out of her sweatsuit in two days maybe.
She locks her phone as Chaeryeong nears, having just sent Yuna a very lengthy and strongly worded text.
“A little,” she lies through the toy in her mouth, keeping her eyes trained on the TV in front of her.
Luckily, Chaeryeong already had YouTube installed and she was able to find an interesting video essay on the reality of Star Wars planets, which has been bringing her comfort for the past half-hour. It’s playing on the lowest volume and she’s toggled the settings so the TV is at its dimmest, but even that annoys her.
Truth be told, everything hurts right now. Her eyes, her gums, parts of her body just ache for no discernible reason. The worst is her head though. There’s this couple in the complex across the street that argue constantly, seriously Ryujin is one more disagreement away from divorcing them herself, and the sound is only magnified in her head, along with the buzzing of electricity in the apartment, conversations happening just outside, and a million asynchronous beating hearts.
Chaeryeong frowns. “You shouldn’t lie to me about things like that. I can help.”
“How do you know I’m lying?” What she almost says is haven’t you helped enough, you demon but it feels mean and unfair. She knows deep down that Chaeryeong is helping her in her own twisted way. Still. “Can you read minds now, too?”
“Maybe.”
Ryujin blinks. Chaeryeong lolls her head from looking at the TV to shoot her a half smile.
“Kidding.”
“Not funny.”
The Chaeryeong she met that first night—flirty, outgoing, intense in the best way—has yet to fully resurface. There’s been a shell of her moping around this apartment, hiding in her bedroom and reading literature from across the room (read: far from Ryujin) and only leaving to feed. Only speaking out of necessity, only touching out of necessity. Most times it feels like she can’t stand to be near her and at others like she’s afraid to take her eyes off of her.
It is undeniably Ryujin’s worst hookup to date.
But now she takes hold of Ryujin’s hand with one of hers, larger and paler but also inhumanely soft, and places it on her chest.
“Don’t you feel it?”
“I’m feeling something.”
“Ryujin—” she sighs, eyebrows furrowing in annoyance. It’s not cute. Chaeryeong is terrible and she hates her. “Just listen. Focus and you’ll hear it.”
What she hears is the steady flow of cars on their way home from work and street cats tearing into the garbage on the sidewalk and dust settling on the top of the bookcases that line Chaeryeong’s mauve walls. What she hears is—
Oh.
Underneath all of the other noises abusing Ryujin’s eardrums, there’s a drumming, strong and loud, and it feels so familiar. She can hear Chaeryeong’s heart. It’s so distinct, she doesn’t know how she didn’t pick it up before. It’s like a second heart beating just beside her own.
“I…” Her throat feels so dry and her head is pounding, but the sound of Chaeryeong’s heart in her ears doesn’t heighten the pain. It dulls it. “You can hear me too?”
Chaeryeong nods, dropping Ryujin’s hand since she’s made her point. “It picks up when you lie. It’s fastest when you’re scared. Stutters when you’re flustered.”
The way she lists them off like facts makes Ryujin skin crawl. Has she been listening to her heart this whole time? Using it to figure out what she’s thinking or feeling without ever having to actually talk to her?
Chaeryeong stops mid-sentence, probably noticing a change in Ryujin’s face or heart or whatever. She studies her before she continues.
“I’ve never done this before,” she admits, twisting her hands in her lap. “Turned someone.”
Ryujin flinches and then whips her head to stare right back at Chaeryeong, her hands white-knuckling a throw pillow. “Oh. So you don’t masquerade as a college student to kill cool, funny girls like me all the time? I’m just special?”
“I didn’t realize I killed a cool and funny girl. What a prize.”
Ryujin’s frown deepens. This doesn’t feel like a laughing matter. Ryujin is dead. Ryujin has been both dead and alive for five days. And she can deal with that with some therapy maybe, but what she cannot deal with is Chaeryeong acting like this isn’t her fault. Was she supposed to find comfort in the fact that she’s the prototype for her to fuck up on at will? Or that she didn’t mean to?
“What I mean is–” she corrects after a sideways glance at Ryujin, who is just one comment short of smoke shooting out her ears. “You’re the only person I’ve ever sired so you’re the only one I can hear even if I don’t want to, even when I shut everything else out. It’ll be the same when you learn how to control it. I’ll teach you.”
She pauses, looking back at the TV for a brief moment. Her mouth screws up in thought, a pretty soft pink. “And about earlier. I didn’t mean to offend you…”
“Well, you did.” Ryujin realizes the toy currently locked between her teeth makes her point moot but it doesn’t stop Chaeryeong from looking thoroughly chastised.
“Hey, I don’t know what else you want me to say,” she says, standing up from the couch and crossing the room. She grabs a broom from a closet Ryujin has yet to peek in and rounds on the shattered glass left on the floor from the light.
“You could say sorry. That’s one way you haven’t tried yet,” Ryujin suggests, watching how the fabric of her dress moves with her. Seeing her do everyday house chores in the prettiest outfit Ryujin has ever laid eyes on is disorienting in a way Chaeryeong has yet to stop being.
In the past few days, Ryujin’s world has dwindled down from her five friends, give or take, and school to just these four lofty walls and Chaeryeong. So the things she’s noticed about her have been completely against her will. Knowing that her go-to author when it rains is Banana Yoshimoto and that she walks around with an air of self-importance, back straight and chin held high, was jammed into her head by a genuine lack of options. It’s either watch Chaeryeong or take the pumpkin-scented candle the vampire keeps on the dining room table and set herself aflame.
Every step Chaeryeong takes usually feels practiced and every word thoroughly considered before spoken, which drives Ryujin insane, but now she’s speaking without pause. It makes her wonder if this is the first time she’s ever had to apologize for something. If so, she’s doing a shit job.
“Haven’t I said that already?”
“No. You always say things that vaguely sound like sorry without ever actually saying it.”
“Strange.”
Chaeryeong dumps the remains in the garbage and then busies herself with looking for something in the kitchen cupboards, with her back to Ryujin. And what a nice back that is, Ryujin thinks to herself. Her eyes trail a spattering of moles and freckles at Chaeryeong’s shoulder blades and down the delicate line of her spine. A pang makes itself known in her gums and she drops her head into the throw pillow she’s still holding.
Her body confuses her more now than when she was going through puberty. She needs so much, namely Chaeryeong, and she hates it. There’s this incessant ache in her bones whenever she’s gone too long and just looking at her makes her feel hungry sometimes. Her wires are all crossed about what’s lust, what’s hunger, and what’s just plain old co-dependency. All she knows for certain is that she needs Chaeryeong, and it fucking sucks because Ryujin doesn’t want to want her anymore.
“How was I supposed to know that you hadn’t eaten?” Chaeryeong mutters, her rustling getting loud and the throb in Ryujin’s brain grows. Ryujin is going to break her fingers. “Everyone eats before going to a party.”
It feels like she’s talking to herself, but Ryujin replies anyway. “I don’t drink.”
Yuna had promised to buy her food after the party so all she managed to get in her stomach was a banana before leaving. It didn’t seem to matter at the time. Hindsight is indeed 20/20.
“Just my luck—the one college student in all of America that doesn’t fucking drink.” Chaeryeong curses under her breath but it’s not in English. Her search halts for a moment as she pinches the bridge of her nose, exasperated. Oh god, Ryujin’s never seen her like this before, all chicken without her head. It’s kind of the highlight of her week.
“Look,” Chaeryeong starts even though Ryujin is already looking. She’s always looking if Chaeryeong is in the room. “I’m probably gonna mess up like a lot and be terrible and a little mean but I don’t want you to die,” she says, turning back around just in time for Ryujin to catch her wince. Her shuffling comes to an end as she pulls out a pink thermos and places it on the counter in front of her. It has Usahana on it. Chaeryeong actually has a disturbing amount of Sanrio memorabilia around the apartment, the bright packaging sticking out like a sore thumb between all of the subtle tones of the space. “Again.”
Chaeryeong’s eyebrows are drawn in tight like she’s trying to put thought into everything she says but is having a hard time of it, yet when their eyes meet she softens. Guilt plagues her face and it’s a shame it does nothing to dull how gorgeous she is.
“I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Yeah,” Ryujin murmurs, petulant to the end, even though Chaeryeong’s words fill her with a warm feeling she’s been missing for days. She watches Chaeryeong’s shoulders deflate with a tongue in her cheek. Oh, she’s so fun to tease. “That really hurt my feelings.”
“Christ, how many times do you want me to say it? I’m really sorry, okay?” Ryujin can’t hold it back anymore, her face breaks into a wild grin at the apology.
“Oh. You’re fucking with me.” Chaeryeong’s face shifts from kicked puppy to deadpan in a flash as Ryujin lets herself laugh. “That’s real cute.”
With the thermos in hand, she heads for the coat closet without sparing her another glance, pulling out a peacoat. Chaeryeong has a myriad of closets, all full of stuff, though she tells Ryujin not to look. Out of respect she doesn’t…when Chaeryeong is around.
The sun has set completely now, darkness blanketing the streets outside. Chaeryeong’s hand is on the doorknob when she seems to remember something. “Do you want me to top you off before I go?”
The words make heat seep into Ryujin’s belly like warm honey.
See the thing is, Ryujin’s fangs haven’t fully broken through yet, making the whole puncturing skin part of eating kind of impossible—hence the thermos. Chaeryeong takes it with her when she goes out to feed, bringing back enough to keep Ryujin sated for at least a day or two. But sometimes when the hunger starts to gnaw viciously at her insides or her body starts to ache and cramp unbearably like now, Chaeryeong will tear open her wrist and let her syrupy blood fall on Ryujin’s tongue to take the edge off.
Just thinking about her lips on cold, porcelain skin makes her mouth water. When she’s that close to Chaeryeong she starts noticing things about her that she’d rather not, like how her face looks when Ryujin’s tongue presses down on the opening and how gentle her voice is when she’s coaxing Ryujin off, a soft hand in her hair. Chaeryeong is always kindest when they’re like that.
She shifts, placing the throw pillow in her lap. “Oh, um. No, I’m good. I can wait.”
“I thought I told you not to lie to me.” Chaeryeong shakes her head, slipping her arms through her jacket sleeves, a small smile adorning her face. “I’ll be back. Be good.”
The door clicks close behind her and Ryujin exhales. Then she takes the throw pillow and rips it open, letting the cotton fall on Chaeryeong’s carpet. My Melody’s cute embroidered face stares back at her.
“Be good, my ass.”