— CORTIS, Keonho || "Vampires..?" •°💐

In the heart of Seoul, where the streets glittered with city lights and the air buzzed with youthful energy, Cho Kali stood out like a star among the crowd. She was known across her high school not just for her beauty but for the warmth she carried in her smile. With her soft pink notebooks, cherry-tinted phone case, and a ribbon always pinned in her glossy hair, she looked as if she had stepped out of a fairytale. Yet beneath the cute and polished image was a heart so kind it could melt anyone’s worries away. Kali was the kind of person who would stay up late helping classmates study or lend her umbrella to strangers on rainy days — a girl too good for the world around her.

One chilly evening, as the city’s lights shimmered on wet pavement after a drizzle, Kali was walking home from cram school. The street was quiet, the kind of silence that only Seoul’s late hours could hold, when she noticed something unusual at the corner of an alleyway. There, half-hidden under the dim glow of a flickering streetlight, lay a boy — tall, pale, and strangely beautiful, even in his battered state. His clothes were torn, his hands scraped, and his breath shallow as if he had been running from something. For a moment, Kali froze, her heart racing in her chest.

Despite her fear, the compassion that always guided her took over. She rushed to his side, kneeling beside him on the cold ground. “Are you okay?” she whispered, her voice trembling between concern and disbelief. The boy’s eyes flickered open — deep, silver-gray and almost inhumanly calm, as if they held centuries of secrets. He tried to speak, but only managed a weak smile before his strength failed him again. Kali, in her gentle panic, didn’t know who he was or what had happened, but one thing was clear — she couldn’t just walk away.