Chapter Text
Jisung couldn't remember a time before there were vampires.
When he was younger, his grandfather often sat him down on his lap to speak of the world before. Where humans thought they were the top of the food chain and that one day they found out that wasn't the case at all.
His grandfather wove stories of the shock and terror of that old world, but also the curiosity and fascination with the new, dangerous creatures. He told him of a world where registration for vampires didn't exist and you were always afraid you would turn a corner and in would swoop an evil, bloodthirsty monster determined to drain you dry for its first meal in weeks (his grandpa would swoop in himself when he would describe this, and pretend to bite him and Jisung would scream and laugh and kick and try to get away and then he'd get attacked by a bout of the tickles and it would be all over from there). He recanted tales of adventure where he and his friends had tried to break into the house belonging to the evil lady across the road who was definitely one of those leeches and try and free the innocent people she almost certainly had locked up in her basement.
Everything his grandfather described seemed so mystical and extraordinary in comparison to his own little mundane world, with barely any vampires at all. The only time he ever heard about bloodsuckers was on the radio that Dad and Grandpa listened to.
Leeches were constantly getting arrested because they wanted it to go back to the old days, where they could feast on whoever wanted -- at least that was what Dad thought -- and it seemed like every other day someone else had been bitten or drained dry or kidnapped or something. Mom always told Dad to turn it off when Jisung went into the room, which was stupid, because he wasn't scared. He wanted to hear about the leeches too.
He'd only ever seen one once, on the TV, before Mom had had the chance to turn it off. Jisung liked to think it hadn't been that scary, but the truth was, the glimpse of it that he did catch made him lie in his bed awake for weeks afterwards, his palms wet and trembling like a leaf, even with the light turned on. He couldn't close his eyes or else he saw it again, so vivid in his mind that he nearly jumped out of his bed every time.
It had been deathly pale, so white its skin was the same colour as the rat poison Mom sometimes used. Two long, razor-sharp fangs, like knives, extended from its mouth, dripping with blood. Its entire mouth and chin was coated with thick, deep crimson, more blood than Jisung had ever seen before, and occasionally its tongue would dart out to lick up some. Its eyes matched the colour of blood, the pupils blown huge, darting around in an frenzied dance. It was snarling and screaming, sounding less like a man and more like a wild animal, making the hairs on the back of Jisung's neck stand on end. The police were holding it back, at least ten of them, but Jisung kept thinking it would get free. It seemed like it would get free. How could they possibly hold something like that back? And then Mom turned the TV off and he was left with just the horrifying echoes of the image in his mind.
Even though the names seemed to fit that thing on the TV so perfectly, Mom said they weren't allowed to call vampires bloodsuckers or leeches because it was rude and mean and derogatory (Jisung didn't know what that meant, but it wasn't good) and she got angry at grandpa any time he used those words and kept talking about how it was so much safer now and how they should all be grateful for it. The words felt awfully hollow whenever Jisung thought of the creature.
But Jisung kept dreaming of the world of Grandpa's childhood like that anyway, no matter how much Mom dissuaded him or how much the creature on the TV scared him. One of intrigue and danger, where vampires were around every corner.
Sometimes he'd steal his sister's dolls and play out scenarios where his action men teamed up with the dinosaurs to save the beautiful girls from the evil leech but Sohee would always tell Mom and he'd get in trouble for taking her things and he'd get yelled at. Which was never fun. He drew hundreds of really really cool drawings of bloodsuckers with their teeth like knives and blood dripping from them and evil claws and then he drew himself, Yoon Jisung, mighty vampire hunter and slayer of hundreds of evil leeches, with knives and swords, like the ones in the cartoons on TV that Mom said he shouldn't be watching.
Sometimes, he'd go hunting for them, searching for them behind alleyways and in the depths of the woods beside his neighbourhood, with his wooden sword to protect them against the evil vampires. But the hunts never lasted particularly long and he always had to go home when he'd barely gotten into the edges of the forest because Mom said it was getting dark. Even though that was when the most vampires would be out.
He'd tried to sneak out once, in the pitch black of night, with a torch he'd stolen from out of the utility room, the big one that Dad used when he was fixing stuff, and his wooden sword. He'd even opened the windows in the sitting room earlier. He'd crept down the stairs, heart in his throat and climbed out the window, grasping onto the torch and his sword so tightly his knuckles were white. He'd been sweating buckets, even though it was the middle of winter and freezing and all he'd been wearing were his favourite set of dinosaur pyjamas. He'd managed to climb out of the window easily enough and even gotten a few steps into the garden before Mom had rushed out and grabbed him with shaking arms, so quickly that it was almost like she'd teleported from her room.
He'd never received such a scolding as he had that night. Mom banned him from visiting Grandpa for a month, banned him from looking at anything vampire related for at least the same amount of time and had hit him at least twice with that big slipper of Dad's and then screamed to Dad that Grandpa was filling Jisung's head full of myths and wickedness, causing him to get into trouble. Then she'd screamed at him for trying to leave the house in the pitch black where a real vampire could actually drain his little boy body dry in seconds. Jisung was sure he could've beaten any vampire he could've come across and he told Mom that but she'd just raised the slipper again and he'd shut up. He'd been so mad and upset he'd barely slept, alternating between sobbing and screaming the whole night.
Mom gave in though, eventually. It took ages of begging and pleading to get her to do so. She let him see Grandpa after two weeks, even though Sohee was crying that it wasn't fair that he got off on his punishment early and then he'd pointed out that she hadn't been punished for breaking three of his action man toys and almost tearing the head off his Dooly dinosaur. Mom had stepped in before they could fight, like always and threatened to stop those visits to Grandpa again. He'd shut up.
The afternoons with Grandpa were always the best and he looked forward to them all the time, excited for new stories and some of the good old ones too. Mom never looked happy whenever he went to listen to grandpa's amazing stories and she said to Dad that Grandpa wasn't to put ideas of vampires like that into Jisung's head, that he'd scare him and that bloodsuckers were 'functioning members of society', whatever that meant.
But Jisung wasn't scared. Jisung was excited. He wanted to have a real adventure of his own, but Mom had kept a close eye on him since the whole leech hunting incident and he'd barely been allowed out of the house. He also didn't really have nearly enough friends at school to go on a hunt for bloodsuckers and he had no evil leeches to find, considering he'd found none anywhere and he'd searched like everywhere. He still had the rest of the woods to look through though and he held out hope that there was vampires for him to slay out there -- which there definitely was, that's why Mom wouldn't let him that far out.
But if Mom caught him, she would force him to bring Sohee with him and that would ruin everything. And Mom seemed to have eyes everywhere, so he didn't know how to not get caught. She was just constantly breathing down his neck and it was so annoying and he just wanted to go find some evil leeches to slay. But despite all that, Jisung never stopped dreaming. Someday, he would be able to get out and catch some leeches, just like Grandpa.
But the first time he met a real life vampire, Jisung was let down.
Mom said that a vampire was moving in next door and Jisung nearly bounced off the walls with excitement. He was ready to meet his first evil bloodsucker, whose house he could invade in a valiant attempt to rescue the fair maidens trapped in the basement. He didn't have to go searching through the woods anymore, to try and find evil vampires, when there was one living right beside him. Now he'd be able to have his great adventure with a group of his friends and do what Grandpa did, back in the days when everything was cool and new and magical.
But then, as he went with his mother to greet the leech the day they moved in, hidden behind his mother's legs (he wasn't afraid, he was just cautious around such dangerous creatures), he peeked out to see...
A normal man.
The leech looked completely and utterly unremarkable, if a little tired. He was very pale, though not as pale as the one from the TV, but there was no fangs or claws or blood-coloured eyes, at least that he could see. He squinted a good deal in the sunlight but he wasn't burning up into crisp. He just looked ordinary. Like the boys in his class's older brothers.
His eyes were big and friendly and totally and utterly ordinary. He even smiled at Jisung and his teeth were just like everyone else's. Jisung's brows knitted together and he pouted, trying to figure out how the man in front of him was the same creature for Grandpa's legends and the news. He wasn't scary at all. Jisung was sure he could take him, no problem.
The bloodsucker seemed to notice him and crouched down to Jisung's level (which Jisung secretly hated, he wasn't even that small, people shouldn't have to crouch down to him), the bright smile still wide on his face. "What's wrong, little guy?"
Jisung let out an annoyed noise (like Mom did when she was angry -- Dad called it a hemph or homph or something once) and folded his arms. "I'm not little," he started, his pout growing more intense and his voice sounding very little-boy-ish, even to his own ears. Then he leaned and squinted at the bloodsucker. "Are you sure you're a leech?"
Mom let out a gasp and grabbed his hand tightly, so much so it hurt but he wasn't going to admit that. "Apologise to Mr. Kim right now!" she snapped, her face doing that thing where she was very mad and pretending she wasn't.
She turned away from him, still holding his hand too tightly and towards the bloodsucker, her smile looking really unconvincing but Jisung wasn't going to say anything about that. "I'm so sorry. He keeps using that awful language and I keep telling him not to but you know what little boys are like. They ignore everything you say, no matter how much you try to get them to listen."
The leech laughed and shook his head. "It's fine. As you said, he's just a kid. He'll probably grow out of it. And I've told you to just call me Minseok. Mr. Kim feels too old and formal. I've lived long enough through formalities to not really care about them."
Jisung didn't like that they were talking about him as though he wasn't there, glaring at the two as he wriggled to get out of Mom's tight grasp. He wasn't even sure what the leech was talking about but he didn't really care. And besides, he was calling the bloodsucker what he was, a leech. There wasn't anything wrong with that. And Grandpa used it all the time.
The leech was talking to him again. "So, kiddo, what about me makes you think I'm not a vampire?"
Jisung pouted at being called a kid again. He was almost seven years old, he wasn't a kid anymore. He was almost grown up. "I'm not a kid," he mumbled angrily, ripping his hand out of Mom's grip when she finally loosened it, "And you're not a vampire. You look too normal. You don't have any fangs or claws or blood-coloured eyes or anything. You're not scary enough."
The vampire laughed again. Jisung really didn't see what was funny because he was being serious. Maybe the vampire was just stupid and thought he was making a joke, when wasn't.
The vampire shrugged, his smile still not faltering. "When you get to my age, most people are kids." The grin sharpened. "And maybe I'm just hiding my fangs and claws and blood-coloured eyes."
Jisung... hadn't thought of that. He narrowed his eyes, as though that would allow him to see through the disguise. He huffed, trying to play off the fact that he, future hunter extraordinaire, hadn't thought of something so obvious at all. "I was just checking," he said, which made perfect sense because what else would he be doing,"So that you felt a little bit more safer before I defeated you." Then his eyes widened to the size of dinner plates, the ones that Mom only brought out for guests. "Wait, how old are you?"
The vampire's eyes went all big and Jisung was fairly sure he'd surprised him now. But he wasn't one hundred percent sure. The vampire was probably a better actor than Mom. "Of course, I hadn't thought that you might be checking. Drat. Now I've given my cover away!"
Jisung grinned broadly, feeling pretty impressed with himself. He had been pretty sneaky. No one would've guessed he'd actually been tricking the vampire. Especially not the vampire himself. He opened his mouth to reply but the vampire had already begun his second question (which he'd totally forgotten about but he wasn't going to tell the enemy that).
"How old do you think I am?" the vampire asked, that bright grin returning to his face again, looking actually kind of curious and not the fake curious Dad did way too often.
Jisung paused, looking the man up and down. He knew vampires lived to be really old -- at least that was what Grandpa told him -- but the man didn't look that old. He kind of acted a lot like Mom though. And other old people. "Forty?" he said, feeling fairly confident that he was pretty close.
The man's grin grew wider. "Right... if you add another three hundred years to that."
Jisung's jaw went slack. That was older than Grandpa and Grandpa was the oldest person he knew! And he wasn't wrinkly or anything! Grandpa hadn't mentioned that, he'd kind of it made it seem like they just got really old or something. Why didn't Grandpa say anything about something as weird and cool as this?
"You're so old," he said, drawing out the 'o' sound, when he finally managed to speak again. He tried to keep the awe out of his tone. He was going to show the enemy he'd been taken off guard.
He could feel Mom's disapproving stare -- she hated it when people talked about age, which was stupid -- but he just ignored it. The vampire laughed again, standing up from his crouching position, but he suddenly looked very sad and very tired, even though his smile was still wide on his face. "I guess I am," he said, his voice much quieter than it had been just a few moments previously, "A little too old, maybe."
Jisung hadn't a clue what that meant, but before he could ask him what he meant Mom had grabbed onto his hand again and was moving away from the man. "I think it's best if Jisung and I go inside, because I'm going to need a talk with the young man," she said, moving towards their house with that fake smile on her face again, "It was lovely meeting you and I hope you find settling into our neighbourhood easy. If you need anything, feel free to ask."
Jisung hated Mom's little talks. They always ended up with him somehow having done something wrong and he never really knew what but she gave out to him anyway. He turned to Mr. Kim, even as his mother was dragging him away, and smiled as widely as he could. "Bye, Mr. Kim! See you later!" He waved at the man with the hand that Mom wasn't grabbing.
Mr. Kim smiled and waved back, after thanking Mom. "Hope to see you too, Jisung."
And with that, Mom whisked him inside. She did her usual angry thing where she got mad and tried to explain why she was mad but Jisung didn't really get it anyway and then she just gave up. He wasn't really thinking about what he did wrong anyway. He was too focused on Mr. Kim. Maybe the meeting hadn't been totally disappointing. Mr. Kim seemed pretty cool. And nice. Maybe Grandpa was wrong and all vampires weren't evil. Mr. Kim seemed pretty normal. And he didn't seem like he wanted to eat Jisung. Maybe it was just Mr. Kim who was normal and all the other vampires were crazy.
A horrible thought then struck him: what if Mr. Kim was just faking it so that he could sneak into the house and drink all of their blood? He didn't mind if Sohee was eaten, but he didn't want Mom and Dad to be eaten, even if he got mad at Mom sometimes.
He couldn't sleep for most of that night, even though it was a school night and Mom said he should be asleep a little bit after he went to bed. He spent most of the night thinking. His imagination had run wild with a million different scenarios, each crazier than the last. After a long, long time, sheer exhaustion overtook him and his eyes slowly closed. He felt terrible at school the next day, but at least no one had been eaten.
And no one was eaten the next day. Or the one after. Or the one after that. And after a while, his bouts of terror happened less and less often. And Mr. Kim was nice. He talked to Mom and the other neighbours a lot. He baked and cooked a lot - he said something about missing eating really good food and finding joy in others eating it (Jisung didn't care as long as he got to eat it) and shared it around. He offered to look after people's houses when they were out at night or gone away. He'd basically stopped a burglary once. Mr. Kim wouldn't admit it but Jisung knew he had. He'd even offered to walk some the older kids through the more creepier places of the neighbourhood (Jisung had heard some of the older girls saying they'd accepted because he was cute, which Jisung really didn't see what that had to do with defending someone). And he treated Jisung like an adult. Which was nice too. He felt like a proper man around Minseok, like the vampire trusted him and believed him when no one else did.
It was so hard to match Minseok with the terrifying creatures Grandpa talked about. Or that thing from the TV. Or the monsters the radio that Dad listened to talked about, that were going around constantly killing and biting and kidnapping and slaughtering, that thought of humans as nothing more than their next meal. Minseok had to be the exception, the one good vampire amongst all the evil ones.
It was a few weeks before he told Grandpa about Minseok. He felt like Minseok was his own private friend, someone Grandpa might not approve of and he really really didn't want those two worlds to clash. He loved Grandpa but Minseok was beginning to mean a lot to him too. He didn't want them to hate each other. But he had a funny feeling it might not work out.
Grandpa seemed delighted that he'd made a friend, even if he said the friend was old. "Age is just number, Jisung," he said, his broad smile causing deep wrinkles in his face and making it even harder for Jisung to wrap his head around the idea that Minseok was older than Grandpa, "I'm just glad you've made a new friend, no matter how old."
Jisung felt his heart swell at that and with reinvigorated confidence he blurted out,"I mean like he's really old. He's a vampire and he's like - "
Grandpa cut him off, his normally warm eyes having suddenly turned to ice chips. "He's what?" Grandpa said, his voice rising in volume and his tone like his eyes, colder than Arctic frost.
Jisung suddenly felt very very scared. He wanted to get out Grandpa's lap but Grandpa's grip had tightened on his thigh and he couldn't figure out how to wriggle out of his grasp. "A vampire," Jisung repeated, eyes glued to the floor, trying to hide the stupid tears, even though he could hear them in his voice.
"What did I tell you about leeches?" Grandpa asked, sounding almost like he was about to yell, his grip tightening still, "Didn't I tell you that they were dangerous, terrifying, twisted creatures who just wanted to suck your blood?! Didn't I warn you to stay away from them?! He's probably planning to suck your blood right now, to drain you dry as though you were nothing more than prey!"
Jisung looked up at Grandpa again, his vision blurry from the streams of tears pouring down his cheeks. "B-but h-he's not like other vampires, h-he's nice and he's fr-friendly and he's ne-never mean a-," he sobbed, feeling so stupid for crying, when he was almost eight and nearly an adult.
Grandpa's eyes showed no sympathy. "He's deceiving you, obviously," he snapped, his tone hard and fury simmering just beneath the surface, "He's trying to trick you into trusting him so he can drink your blood! And then he'll move onto the rest of the neighbourhood! I've seen it happen before, it'll happen again! Didn't I raise you to be smarter than this?!" His voice rose and rose, louder and louder until he was screaming into Jisung's ears. It was so loud it hurt.
And then he slapped Jisung across the face.
Jisung didn't know what to do for several moments. He just stared at Grandpa in awe, unsure of what had just happened. Grandpa's expression hadn't changed. He was used to Mom slapping him from time to time but never Grandpa. Grandpa was always too nice for that. Grandpa always understood him. Grandpa always smiled and encouraged him. He was always there for him. He would never slap him. But his stinging cheek said otherwise.
His bottom lip trembled and he managed to twist out of Grandpa's lap and ran towards the kitchen, towards Mom who he could trust and love and not the adult who only liked him when he hated vampires. He grabbed onto her and buried his face in her dress, crying so hard it hurt, the tears sliding down his throbbing cheek and doing nothing to ease the pain.
He couldn't hear what Mom was saying to him and didn't care. He just wanted to be safe and away from Grandpa. He'd been so sure Grandpa wouldn't care, that Grandpa would want to meet Minseok and befriend Minseok just like Jisung had. He'd been so sure that Grandpa wouldn't look at him disapprovingly, like Mom would.
But it was like they'd switched places. Now Mom was hugging him and kissing him and whispering that it was alright and promising to let him see Minseok later and bring him out for ice cream. While Grandpa had gotten angry at him. Jisung didn't like it. It felt confusing and wrong and he hated being confused. He wanted it to go back to the way it was, where he understood everything.
And then Mom was pulling away from him, as much as he grasped onto her. She murmured about wanting to talk to Grandpa for a few moments. Her soft hand tucked a strand of hair behind his ear tenderly, a small smile on her face and kissed him on his cheek, making it feel a little better. And with that she left and he curled up in the kitchen, by the wall, shaking with the weight of his loud, heavy sobs, clutching onto his aching cheek. She closed the door after her but he could still hear the yelling. He'd never heard Grandpa so mad. Sniffling, he moved closer to the door. He pressed his ear to it, trying to quieten his sobs in order to better hear them.
"-let him befriend a filthy leech, a bloodsucker, who wants nothing more than drink a little boy's blood, he'd kill the lot of you in an instant -- "
"He's a lovely man! He wouldn't do a thing to harm anyone. He's a better person than you ever were, twisting Jisung's mind with false, disgusting stories of vampires as though they were all evil and cruel and merciless and-and--"
"You hear what the news says! They're not to be trusted and especially not with our children! Did you hear about the leech who was arrested only a few weeks ago who was draining the blood of just little children, monstrous, foul creatures, the lot of them, who have no regard for any lives except their own -- "
"Mr. Kim hasn't done a thing to hurt a fly! Jisung really enjoys hanging out with him, the two get along like peas in a pod and Jisung hasn't had any big brother figures like that before and he struggles so much with making friends at school -- "
"This is because your brother, Jaewoo, was turned a while back, now isn't it? He went and meddled with the evil leeches and we warned him and he never listened and look what happened to him? Now he's one of them, as messed and disgusting as the rest of them, feeding on people like cattle, it's revolting and it makes sick, the lot of them, they make me sick -- "
There was scream and the sound of something heavy hitting the floor, hard. "Don't talk about my brother like that, you foul, evil, wretched old man. Don't you dare even muddy his name by letting it pass through your lips. You refuse to move from the past when everyone lived in fear, clinging to it with your wrinkled, gnarled old claws with a fear of being made irrelevant -- don't you dare even open your fucking mouth -- and you want to push such an archaic mindset on my son, my only boy, corrupting him with your fucked-up stories of murder and death. I'm taking Jisung and I'm never coming back to this wretched place. I'm letting my son befriend a -- a -- a leech, because that leech seems to be more aware of Jisung's feelings than you ar--"
Jisung moved away from the door, chest heaving, as he heard footsteps headed towards him. He hadn't known what half the words they'd used meant but he was fairly certain they weren't good. The door swung open and his mother grasped his hand firmly and strode out the door and for once, Jisung didn't try to fight it. He just followed her out, still trying to understand what had just happened.
They didn't go back to Grandpa's house for a while. Jisung was secretly happy about it. He wouldn't admit it to Mom but Grandpa had scared him so much on those moments that he sort of never wanted to go back. He just wanted to forget it ever happened. And if that meant never talking to Grandpa again, he could deal with that.
Sometimes he wanted to tell Grandpa stuff. Like how he'd aced that one test or how this pretty girl had looked at him twice and giggled and he'd felt his heart flutter or how he'd had his first kiss in an alleyway with a girl much much too beautiful for him and hadn't actually liked it that much but had pretended he had or how he'd almost been chosen first for the soccer team or how he'd finally decided what he wanted to be (an idol) or a million other things that he used to be able to tell him. He told Minseok, but it just wasn't the same. He felt like there was a gap in his life but he was much too scared to confront it.
Even when, finally, after getting rejected time and time and time again from company after company, he got into a company as a trainee, he didn't tell his grandfather. He'd thought about it. He'd even stood outside the man's door. He'd almost knocked. But he'd stepped away, his stomach twisting itself into thousands of knots, and ran away, not even daring to look back.
He was sure that conversation from when he was seven, would be the last one he'd ever have with his grandfather, solely because he was too much of a coward to deal with something that had happened so long ago.
And when he was moving to Seoul to focus more on his attempts to be an idol, he didn't even attempt to visit. He didn't know how long he'd be. And he wasn't sure if he cared. He'd gotten very very good at denying that void's existence.
Ignorance was bliss, after all.