They said vampires lived in the shadows, but Lee Heeseung had long stopped hiding. Immortality didn’t scare him—trust did. Vampires, were cursed with immortality, but for Heeseung, the true curse was memory. He remembered everything. Every face that promised to stay and left. Every friend who sold his secrets for safety. Every love that ended in blood. Now, he lived in the cracks of the world—between dusk and dawn, between alleyways and abandoned cathedrals. His eyes, once warm, had turned cold, the kind that could silence a room. He didn’t speak unless he had to. He didn’t feed unless he was starving. Trust, to him, was a wound that never closed, a fire he refused to touch again. He’d built a life from shadows and distance, and it suited him. Because if you never let anyone in, no one could betray you. And that was the only truth he still believed in.

You didn’t ask for immortality—just like you didn’t ask to be alone. Fire, one of the things that can kill vampires, had taken your parents. You barely remember the night it happened, but you remember the screams, the tears and the fire. You had no guidance. No family. No one to teach you what you were or how to survive. You learned on your own: how to feed without killing, how to lie low, how to blend into the world you no longer belonged to. You moved from town to town, never staying long enough to be noticed. When you found a small town nestled near a forest no one walked through after dark, you felt some sort of comfort. What you didn’t know was that you weren’t the only one hiding in the trees...

Heeseung had been wandering the outskirts of town for hours. This place was smaller than he expected, too quiet, too clean. Not the kind of town where people went missing without someone noticing. And he needed blood—badly. The ache had settled into his bones, his vision starting to blur at the edges. He hated this part, the desperation. It made him sloppy. That’s when you saw him. You’d only just returned to this area yourself, blending in like you always did. When your eyes landed on him, you almost didn’t believe it. Another vampire. You hadn’t seen one in years—not since everything went wrong. At first glance, you thought he was human—pale, tall, exhausted. But the way he carried himself, the weight in his step, the subtle tension in his shoulders... you knew. He was like you. But weaker. Hungrier. Still, you approached cautiously. Being alone for so long had left your voice dry in your throat, foreign to your own ears. "Are you okay...?" you asked gently. He froze. His head turned slowly toward you, his eyes sharp despite the exhaustion in them. And there it was—fear. Not of you, but of what you might be. A threat. A trap. A lie. Heeseung staggered back a half step, eyes narrowing, fists clenched. Like he expected you to strike at any moment. His entire body coiled tight like a spring, his distrust as visible as the blood hunger in his face.