Chapter Text
Jihyo hoped Nayeon wouldn’t say anything stupid. She was sorely disappointed.
“They leave hair everywhere and they stink like dogs. And plus, Sana is allergic. Isn’t that right, Sana?”
The Japanese vampire sighed. “I mostly regret that if you bite a werewolf, their fur basically fills your entire mouth. No amount of dental hygiene can fix that for weeks.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t bite them,” Mina said slowly. “There’s literally a medical reason why you shouldn’t.”
“I was hungry. It was the sixteenth century. For an alpaca he looked quite yummy.”
Mina narrowed her eyes. “You ate a Were-Alpaca?”
“Tried to. They have quite dense fur. Also Were-Alpacas were quite the rage back then,” Sana said.
“They were never the rage at all,” Tzuyu said from the other side.
“I wish I wasn't living with you,” Jihyo mumbled.
“We already had that conversation in seventeen fourty two,” Mina said. “I think it’s a bit late for that.”
Unfortunately, Nayeon wasn’t done talking.
Nayeon motioned dramatically towards Sana, with both arms extended. “See? See? It’s a bad idea. Plus, why our mansion? We have to buy at least three cleaning robots per person for when they are shedding! The electricity bill is already through the roof and the robots won’t be helping.”
“Well, technically, our electricity bill is so high because of our jacuzzi and your insistence on using it every evening,” Tzuyu said from the other end of the couch.
Nayeon waved her into silence. “Potato, potahto. No, no, no.” She faced the desk at the end of the office again and shook her head. “I refuse. We all refuse. Werewolf roommates are a bad idea. For health reasons.”
(“Mostly for mental health reasons,” Tzuyu mumbled.
“Shh!” Sana whispered.)
The figure behind the desk glared at them with the glory of the centuries. Shadows surrounded her like an unholy halo, licked at her bright white skin and her unnatural, overwhelming beauty. When she rose, the eternity whispered behind her.
Next to her, her secretary slash assistant, Wendy, took notes on a notepad. Her expression was one of extreme neutrality, which made Nayeon doubt the neutrality in the first place.
Her superior directed her piercing, golden eyes at Nayeon.
“Im Nayeon sshi,” Irene Bae, the grand vampire of the global coven of vampires said. Her voice was sweet enough to drive men into insanity and had launched a thousand ships into battle.
Irene Bae waved a newspaper at Nayeon. “If you can’t take were-people’s scent, then just offer them a bath in your jacuzzi and some shampoo.”
“It will clog the drainage!”
“I will clog something else in your mansion if you continue like this!” Irene seethed. She leaned forward. The shadows behind her moved like black, moldy jello. One came a bit close to Tzuyu. Tzuyu swatted at it. The shadow whined and drifted back. For something faceless, it projected a pout pretty well.
“I know you don’t like werewolves. I know they are loud. I know they shed their fur on the lawn. I know they are stinky and I know we tend to be allergic to them, but Nayeon sshi. Someone broke into their home, disinfected their entire kitchen, cleaned the bedroom and stole their smoothie machine!”
“Stole two smoothie machines,” Sana whispered.
Jihyo elbowed her.
“Or so I’ve heard,” Sana added.
“You can’t break into other people’s houses and clean!” Irene said. “Especially since tensions between the Vampire Council and the Global Howlery of Werewolves are tense to begin with!”
“I didn’t break into anyone’s house to clean there. What do you take me for? Do you really think I would clean in other people’s homes?” Nayeon was the picture of appalled, her hand on her clavicle, her eyes wide.
Irene eyed her, unimpressed. “Did you hypnotize your neighbors and made them clean?”
The shadows whispered in agreement but retreated when Tzuyu cast them a dark glance.
“I heard one of them likes to clean,” Sana said, trying to be helpful.
Jihyo elbowed her.
“Anyway.” Irene folded her hands carefully atop of the newspaper. “I have had a conversation with the coven and with the Howlery and we have decided upon a pilot project to ease the tension between vampirekind and the were-people.”
Jihyo threw her arms. “And your solution to this is … were-roommates? Really ?”
“A joint housing project ,” Irene said, pointedly. “To prove that there can be peace between our people and that nobody is going to eat another person, because that’s what we are. Persons. Who are civilized .”
“Unnie,” Jihyo started. “You can’t just make us suddenly room with people that we don’t know. Plus, why us?”
“Because your mansion is big enough to house them and because I can’t have Nayeon have strangers break into other people’s houses to clean. We have to have peace between our factions,” Irene said. “And because I agree with you that it won’t do to have complete strangers move in -”
“Thank you,” Jihyo sighed.
“I have scheduled an icebreaker dinner on,” she picked up her iPhone. “Thursday.”
“You can’t do this!”
“6pm,” Irene added. She looked up. “Try to behave. That is all.”
*
The group of vampires trudged towards the bus stop.
“One of us should try getting a driver’s license again,” Nayeon said.
“Tech stuff breaks around us, it’s like a curse,” Jihyo said. She eyed Nayeon. “Did you really have to go there and clean?”
“The wind carried the fur over. God, would it kill them to use a proper brush and some deshedding tools?” She shook her head. “I watched some dog grooming videos.”
“What?” Sana blinked. “How did you watch dog grooming videos?”
“I met a dog owner at the park. The dog was really cute, the owner not so much.” Nayeon wrinkled her nose. “Anyway. There is now shampoo, combs, shedding tools and even vacuum cleaners just for dogs. Would it kill them to adhere to some personal hygiene?”
Jihyo blinked again. “Did you bite the dog?”
“What? No! The dog was cute! Why would I bite the dog!”
Jihyo blinked again. “Did you bite the owner?”
Nayeon eyed her, her face blank. “I have some standards, you know?”
The bus arrived and the group trudged in. They took a seat in the far back, where all five of them fit together, cramped, Sana’s hair in Nayeon’s face who swatted it away.
They looked at the people sitting in front of them, most of them engrossed with the screen of a cellphone.
“That one smells good,” Sana pointed at a young man, who watched crocheting videos on his screen. “I can tell he does sports, no alcohol, no drugs, no soda pop, mostly organic food.”
Nayeon next to her grimaced. “He could shower a bit more often though.”
“He showers more often than you,” Tzuyu pointed out.
Mina next to them hid a smile behind her hand.
Nayeon spluttered. “I shower just enough,” she said. She had her voice raised just enough for Mister Organic to look up. He was tall and handsome and had a fun smile.
Jihyo groaned. “Congrats, unnie. He’s coming over.”
They watched as he struggled with himself, then got to his feet, eyed the group of women in the back and made his way to the back of the bus. He plopped down in row in front of them. “‘sup.”
Sana zeroed in on him immediately. Her skin seemed to glow and her eyes turned a color of molten gold. And her smile - it turned just a little bit too wide, her teeth white and bright and gleaming. “Hello,” she purred.
“Hurry up,” Nayeon said. “We only have two bus stops left.”
“What’s your name?” Sana asked.
“Matt … Matthew,” the man said. He stared at Sana with a mixture of fear and utter, complete devotion.
“And where are you going, Matthew?” Sana asked, her smile dazzling, as she leaned in, her elbow on her knee, her chin in her hand.
Matthew gulped heavily. “An AA meeting,” he said.
Sana hesitated, and the smile dimmed a bit. “Really?”
Matthew nodded helplessly.
“Well done,” Sana said. “Self-improvement deserves respect. Why don’t you go and buy all your friends at the AA meeting some ice cream, hm?”
“O-okay,” Matthew said. He looked at Sana confused, then got up. Hesitated again. “It was nice meeting you. You have pretty teeth.”
“Thank you.” Sana’s smile brightened the vicinity of the bus. “Likewise.”
Matthew was still confused, but then he got off the bus. He waved at them when the bus passed them. Sana, Jihyo, Mina and Tzuyu waved back. Nayeon yawned, baring her fangs.
She listened with half an ear as they discussed how to clean the rooms their new guests would stay in and what a werewolf diet entailed and if they had to buy cattle, when Nayeon felt a sudden punch in all of her senses.
The advantages of being a vampire were being extremely pretty and having superhuman reflexes. Nayeon usually bragged with both and in this very moment, the superhuman reflexes came more in handy than the prettiness.
The bus driver cursed and stepped on the brakes heavily - and everything that wasn’t attached safely and wasn’t a vampire, started to fly through the bus and this included the human passengers.
Nobody would find any kind of surveillance footage later on, because Mina would stare at it very intently and as with most technical devices around them, the electronic machinery would just give up.
Thus nobody was surprised, when Nayeon, in a single moment seemed to disappear next to the busdriver, while Tzuyu, Jihyo and Mina caught, not in this order:
Two elderly ladies, one school boy, a salaryman, a female teacher and the bus driver himself.
It happened out of concern for the humans, because they were what Nayeon used to be and she did experience a certain kind of fondness towards them. It also happened because if one of them would start to bleed, it would tear at the vampire’s self-control almost immediately.
And vampires in bloodrage were known to wipe out villages at the sight of freshly spilled blood.
Plus, Irene would kill them.
Sana smiled a dazzling smile at the salary man, who was about to panic, when his body was flung through the aisle of the bus, but then he decided to sink into a Sana-induced happy daze and she carefully made him sit next to the teacher and said:
“Tell her about what you had for lunch - or something,” and under the glaring light of her terribly beautiful smile, they had no chance but to chat happily.
Nayeon in the front caught three people and the wheel and the bus came to a halt.
She looked out for what the man had stopped for, but what she saw confused her more than anything else.
There was, down the road, a … human-looking creature. Its limbs were long and thin and gray skin stretched over every single vertebrae on his back. It stood by two cars that had crashed in the road in front of them.
Nayeon felt it made eye contact with her out of hollow, black eyes that gleamed like a polished beetle, then it hurried down the street and into a construction site.
But then something more extraordinary happened:
Someone had been standing so close to the front of the bus that Nayeon hadn’t seen her. She suddenly appeared on the road in front of them, by stepping back and looking up at her and the bus driver Nayeon was still holding.
A red hoodie and blonde hair was what Nayeon could make out. And then she ran down the road after the creature.
Nayeon eyed the bus driver, smelling the blood coursing at an insane speed through his body. “Are you okay?”
He nodded shakily.
“Good.” Nayeon reached over him and opened the door, then jumped out.
At the front of the bus was the print of a hand, firmly embedded into the metal.
“What the hell?” Nayeon mumbled.
Then she followed the creature and the stranger in a red hoodie down the road. It started to rain and the water masked all scent; before there had been a whiff of something … potent, but she couldn’t place it well. When she arrived at the construction site, it was already raining.
Only the skeletal beams and concrete walls of the building were standing already. Like gray, long fingers, pillars reached into an equally gray sky. She heard noises in the distance, like something metallic had fallen over.
She stepped into the maze, into the dryness. Steps echoing somewhere. A loud thud.
A punch?
She couldn’t be sure. Somewhere someone screeched. Or something.
Instinctively she knew she should be waiting for the others. Nayeon was good when it came to dealing with humans. After all, once upon a time, they had been a vampire's natural food source. If something else is hiding in this concrete palace, it could get dangerous, even for a vampire, even for one as strong and fast as Nayeon.
She turned at the steps. The scent hit her for a fraction of a second. Someone very alive with lots of blood was in here, but she suspected that the strange creature thing she had seen lurked here somewhere as well.
She went through a few bare rooms, slowly, carefully and then heard a quick flurry of steps on the cold concrete, coming closer still.
She turned - and then something cold and heavily hit her right in the face. It threw her once across the room against a wall, where she slid down to a heap on the floor.
She couldn’t bleed, of course she could, but she would have, had she still been human. But she was able to hurt - and hurting she did, because damn. Did that thing break her nose?
Her perspective was completely tilted, and she saw … two pairs of legs. One pair was thin, gray and inhuman, the other pair clad in black pants. They moved quickly, and when the high, screeching sound in her ears disappeared, she could hear distinct sounds of fighting.
She tried to move, but something in her back cracked and she could tell it was a broken bone. She cursed under her breath and tried to crawl away, but couldn’t.
Weakness had crept into her body, and God, so much pain.
Someone leaned over her and turned her on her back. A face, pretty, with a lopsided grin, framed by short, blonde hair. A red hoodie.
The scent that came off her was mouthwatering. She smelled so alive, so strong and fast and potent, Nayeon had to squeeze her eyes shut to avoid it. Yet, the scent also felt familiar.
“I’ll get you to safety, it’s okay,” a voice said and she could feel how she was picked up.
“Hmhmgrbl,” Nayeon managed and struggled against the woman.
“God, you are heavy.”
“HMHMGRBL!” Nayeon said. Her jaw was broken, but she could also feel how it started to reassemble itself. Superhumanity had its perks after all.
But god, the smell. The woman had to get away from her, it was becoming too much. A part of her was grateful that she couldn’t move too much, because this was …
… this was bad.
She managed to stand - and then felt a sharp “click” movement, as her jaw fixed itself and moved into place. Nayeon pushed her aside.
“Yah, watch your hands!”
The woman held them up, palms towards Nayeon. “It’s okay! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean - you were hurt and it was just that!”
Nayeon eyed her. The scent was so - familiar. She couldn’t place it at all.
“What was that?” Nayeon asked.
“Undead,” the woman said. “No idea where it came from.”
“Like … necromancy undead? Like summoned from beyond the veil undead?”
“I guess so … my experience with the undead is limited,” the woman said.
Mine isn’t, Nayeon wanted to say, because technically she was undead. Or ‘Formerly Living’, as Irene tried to push for, because it was more politically correct and also distinguished them from zombies, who were merely animated corpses with no will of their own.
She scratched the back of her head. “It’s really strange that it showed up in the middle of the city.”
“And attacked a bus,” Nayeon said.
“It attacked a car and ran on the street,” the woman corrected her.
“And you saved the bus,” Nayeon said.
The woman shrugged and blushed a bit. “I was just at the right spot at the right time.”
Nayeon eyed her. She was cute. Her clothing was a bit more sporty than Nayeon would have chosen for herself, but it suited her. Her blonde hair suited her. And she had a pretty smile and kind eyes and floppy hair.
“You might have saved a lot of people,” Nayeon pointed out.
The woman’s cheeks turned a lovely, lovely shade of red. Nayeon tried not to think about it. But the scent and … she seemed to be nice as well.
“Anyone would have done the same,” she replied, still shy.
Nayeon knew that that was not true. A lot of people didn’t care. “That’s not true.”
They eyed each other for a moment, then the woman said: “Do you live in Seoul? Want to hang out sometime?”
No, no, no.
No liking humans. No liking huma -
There was a quick movement in the corner of Nayeon’s eyes and this time, she was faster. She pushed the woman aside and pushed her fist forward.
Superhuman speed. Superhuman strength.
The creature was thrown across the room and Nayeon didn’t give it a chance to escape. She followed her and picked up a large slab of concrete on the way that was meant either for a wall or a ceiling or a floor.
Not a zombie. Not enough rotten flesh for a zombie, movements too fast, too hissy for a zombie as well. Nayeon swung the large piece of concrete like a fly swatter. The crunchy sound of bones followed.
She clapped her hand to get rid of the dust. “So that’s that.”
When she turned around, the woman was gone.
*
The Anonymous Alcoholic Meeting was the closest thing Bae Irene had to an Anonymous Bloodsucker Meeting.
It wasn’t the easiest thing to attend, but Irene considered it as a good exercise for her self-control. It also helped that most folks who attended didn’t smell particularly appetizing. Being a vampire meant she could smell what they had eaten the previous few days, if they had had sex with someone, if they had taken drugs, both of the legal and illegal kind, and, of course, personal hygiene.
Irene had already had problems eating regular people, when there hadn’t been the opportunity to turn vegetarian. She was one of the first vampires to wholeheartedly embrace the Blood Fruit as a replacement for human food, because there were very few humans she found appetizing.
With a Blood Fruit, you could make sure that it was organic and it didn’t taste half bad as a smoothie. Furthermore, you could carry it around in a tumbler and it didn’t have to be stored in a fridge.
A variety of different tastes would have been nice, though.
She picked her usual chair and sat down, back ramrod straight. The meeting took place in a gym of a High School - and she could still smell remnants of sweat and teenage hormones. Crinkling her nose, she tried hard not to grimace.
The ventilation system was malfunctioning again.
Next to her, a six feet something man lounged in his chair, his legs wide apart, eying her lazily. “Sup,” he drawled. He was a strange guy, Irene found. Today he brought ice cream for every attending member.
The first twenty “Sup”s or so, Irene had assumed he was hitting on her - and she had had some very sharp words with him.
Their conversation had not developed as expected.
“Matthew,” she nodded at him.
“My dude,” Matthew said. “Want to hear the newest gossip?”
“No,” Irene said.
“Someone new joined,” Matthew continued. “Like, I’ve seen her.” He sat up. It did nothing to improve his posture. His voice dropped to a conspiratorial ante. “She’s super pretty, but when Wonho hit on her, she made him cry.”
They both looked over at Wonho, whose chair was almost too small for him, his lap full of tissues, with Minhyuk and Kihyun left and right to him, patting his shoulder. All three were holding pink ice cream cones.
“And Wonho is basically a Golden Retriever,” Big Matt said. He sounded concerned, licking his chocolate chip ice cream cone.
The door on the other side of the gym opened and Eunji, their therapist, emerged, clipboard in place, followed by a tall woman whose face Irene couldn’t see.
They all watched her approach and when Eunji stepped aside to sit on her chair, Irene froze when her gaze fell onto the newcomer.
She was blindingly beautiful (of course), tall, with gleaming skin, lips that were just a tint too red and eyes that had a strange, pink hue surrounding them, untypical for humans.
She walked behind the backs of those who were already sitting before choosing a spot opposite of Irene. They already locked eyes when she sat down, the woman a dark red, like conjugulated blood.
She was a vampire.
And not only that. Irene had a general idea where most vampires were located and she certainly knew about all vampires in Seoul. Mostly because she met some of them regularly for dinner parties (no humans involved; or their blood), and once a year on Christmas they all met to celebrate.
She knew everyone’s face.
She didn’t know that woman’s face. Which meant she was a rogue vampire. Which in turn meant nothing good.
Rogue vampires were known to not adhere to the modern vampire lifestyle. But then again, this was an AA meeting, wasn’t it?
The woman watched her back, lazily eying her and leaned back, not particularly impressed by Irene’s presence. Irene took an immediate dislike in her.
“She’s intimidating, right?” Matthew whispered on her left.
“No,” Irene said.
“She’s like twice your size. And she looks like a model,” Matthew said. “I’m super intimidated by her.”
“I look like a model as well.” Irene didn’t look away from the woman, but said, lowly, so only Big Matt could hear: “Then just hide behind me.”
And even though she couldn’t see it, she felt Matt try to hide a laughter behind his hand, until Eunji cleared her throat.
They shared their usual stories about not giving to alcohol and when Matt finished his (“Like a cocktail! I totally miss a Sex on the Beach . Or a White Russian !”) it was the woman’s turn.
She cleared her throat. “Hello everyone, my name is Joy,” she said.
Joy. So the enemy had a name.
“Hello, Joy,” everyone echoed.
Joy continued. “I’ve been sober now for two years,” she said, as she met Irene’s eyes in a challenge. “And since I plan on staying sober in a new city as well, I joined.”
Irene narrowed her eyes on her.
“I’m glad you are not giving up,” Eunji said, eying Joy over the rim of her glasses. “Do you want to share with us when it’s most difficult for you to abstain?”
Joy rolled her eyes. “It’s just that … alcohol … is everywhere. It’s like, you wake up, you go into the streets, and it’s there. It’s like it’s walking around. It’s in food everywhere, there’s huge advertisements of it, and it’s just so easy to get. You just … snatch it.” She smiled and her teeth gleamed a bit too brightly. “It’s so, so easy.”
Everyone around her nodded. Irene’s stare became harder and Joy just answered it with a lazy smile.
Eunji made some notes and nodded. “All the more impressive that you are able to avoid it, Joy-sshi.”
Joy shrugged and kept looking at Irene.
Irene only listened with half an ear, how Wonho talked about beer, about beer in sixty different varieties, how much he missed some obscure version of it that was only brewed in some monastery in Germany and how his friends left and right of him nodded, all of them missing the beer. Irene also noted out of the corner of her eye how Eunji tried to mask a yawn.
The meeting ended and Joy got up first. She caught Irene’s eye and winked at her, then started to aim for the exit. Irene wanted to go after her, but Matthew stopped her, unfortunately.
“I saw you checking her out,” Matt said.
“I was not checking her out -”
“Just be careful, okay? Don’t get hurt,” Matthew said. He scratched the back of his head. “Today is a weird day,” he added, some general confusion evident in his face. His lips were covered with ice cream.
Irene nodded a quick goodbye at Eunji and then hurried after Joy. She met her outside, in the parking lot. It was raining, but one of the perks of being an elder vampire was that the rain evaded her naturally - or rather, Irene just didn’t get wet.
Wendy had not arrived yet and only a few cars and even fewer humans were around.
“Joy sshi!” she called out.
Joy, tall, statuesque and under an umbrella, turned towards her. Between them, a piece of tumblewood made of plastic, packaging of Maru chicken and some plastic bags rolled through.
“Irene Bae,” Joy said. Her smirk was evident. “I guess it was only a matter of time when the two of us would meet.”
“You are new in the city,” Irene said. “Or very young. We have never met before.”
“We haven’t,” Joy said. She tilted her head. “I would have wished for it to stay this way. I’ll only be here for a very limited period of time. Let’s just try to be good neighbors during that time.”
“You reek of human and were-person,” Irene said. “You know it is forbidden to cohabitate with the other species, according to the Treaty of Amsterdam.”
“My landlord is a were-bear,” Joy said, her voice curt. “It has nothing to do with cohabitation.”
Irene eyed her. It was not unheard of and there were some werekind in Seoul who didn’t care who they rented out to. And Irene had to admit that it more often than not improved already tense relations between their species. Yet, the danger persisted.
“Peace has stayed in South Korea since centuries. If some rogue, covenless vampire …”
Joy tilted her head to the side and narrowed her eyes. “How’s the Bae Clan these days?” she asked. “How many members are left?”
Irene was able to catch her composure at the very last moment, but the audacity of that … that … youngling made anger and rage claw at her composure. Nobody had dared to mention her family since their unfortunate demise, three hundred years ago, yet Joy …
“How dare you. How dare you to …”
“Sooyoung?” a new voice rang over the parking lot.
Irene turned, ready to tear the stranger apart with words and teeth, if necessary. She registered her smell first, of course. Hot, potent, strong, strangely alluring, and yet unmistakable in its nature. It was a werekind.
Then the woman came into view - and all strength left Irene. All anger.
The woman smiled. Her eyes disappeared in crescents in a beautiful face. She was packed up in a bright yellow raincoat. “Oh, hello. I didn’t expect Sooyoung to have already made a friend first day.”
Joy … Sooyoung? snorted. “This is Irene Bae, elder vampire of the Korean Coven of vampires. Irene-sshi, meet my … landlord. Seulgi.”
Seulgi’s smile stayed on as she bowed. “Hello.”
Irene heard herself say something. It might have been hello. It might have been a cupcake recipe in ancient Etruscan.
It got worse.
A car parked next to them and Irene could already tell by the sound of the engine that it was her Maibach. It was Wendy. Wendy got out, with an umbrella and immediately did what she did best.
She was being nice. “Oh, hello.” She eyed Seulgi and Sooyoung. “How are you? Are you friends of unnie’s from the meeting?”
“Sooyoung is, but I’m not,” Seulgi said. She bowed with a happy smile to Wendy. “Hello. My name is Seulgi.”
“I’m Wendy, nice meeting you. Sooyoung sshi. Seulgi sshi.” She bowed to each of them.
Irene was still wrestling for her composure. She managed to regain some of it. “I was just inviting Sooyoung-sshi and Seulgi-sshi to the soirée on Thursday. They are new to the city and don’t have many … acquaintances yet.”
“You were?” Seulgi asked happily.
“You were?” Wendy narrowed her eyes suspiciously.
“You were?” Sooyoung asked, as if she had been insulted three generations back and counting.
Irene ran with it. “Yes. You always tell me I should be more … sociable,” she told Wendy. She gave Sooyoung and Seulgi a sharp nod. “Here I am. Being sociable.” She eyed the newcomers and pulled out a business card.
It was printed on bone-colored paper, with a blood-colored typeface called “Silian Rail”. Seulgi took it with both hands and some confusion. “Thank you.”
“6 o’clock. Sharp. I will be expecting you,” Irene said. She had to go. She felt her grace and sanity slip in both Sooyoung’s and Seulgi’s presence, even though for entirely different reasons. She gave them a sharp nod once more, then turned to Wendy, who looked at her as if she had lost her mind.
“Let’s go. I’m late for my massage,” she said. “It was nice meeting you.”
She got into the car first, Wendy following her. Their driver drove them away.
“Unnie,” Wendy said. “Are you okay?”
Irene very quickly pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, took a deep breath and then moved her hands away. Her face was impassive and perfect afterwards. Darkness around her fluttered. Her eyes gleamed. She was the queen of vampires once again. “I - I’m fine,” she said. “Fine. Just fine. Perfectly fine.”
“If you say so, unnie,” Wendy said, eying her.
In her head, Irene cursed the f-word, several times. The entire way back to her apartment, inside the elevator, under the shower and later on in her bed.
She woke up thinking about it and then asked Wendy over breakfast - Blood Fruit, like the last three hundred years - to find out everything she could about Joy and Seulgi.
(end 1/?)