Eternal Love

Persona

August 25th, 2021

"Are you sure you're okay? You've been out of it all morning" comes his voice, deep and soothing as it pulls her from her thoughts.

Nodding, she gives him an exasperated smile "I'm fine Joon, just tired".

He doesn't look convinced, jaw clenching in that way it does when he's skeptical of something, before sighing in resignation.

"Fine, I'll let it go this time" he smiles defeated.

"I'll be alright, just need to finish restocking these books and we can grab lunch".

He nods, hesitating as he's about to walk away. Turning back around he leans forward, brushing his lips against her cheek softly in a quick kiss and it never fails to make her heart flutter.

Watching his retreating figure until he turns the corner and disappears as he heads back to the front of the shop she sighs. Glancing down at the remaining books she had left to restock, she scoffs in disbelief.

How ironic, she thinks examining the book cover, it's a worn, thick, paperback edition of one of those sappy, brooding vampire novels that all the teenagers were into these days.

A vampire restocking shelves for books about vampires.

She vaguely wonders, what people wrote about vampires these days. After centuries of painstaking, never-ending existence, she has just about seen all there was to the supposed myth of these blood-sucking creatures a term she recently picked up on. And by recent, she means as recent as it can be for someone whose yesterday's are filled with memories of the renaissance and that one meeting she had with the famed artist Michelangelo who in her opinion was a stuck-up twat.

It wasn't easy, she thinks, looking back at her life up until this point, it was hard adjusting to the constant change of society around her. It was especially difficult being so ... alone.

Wandering like a lost soul chained to the past never to be set free.

Regardless of it, she thinks as she shoves the last book into the shelf and hops off the ladder, she managed to push through. She witnessed plenty of people she had grown attached to die, live their lives happily, and pass on just as blissfully only a little bitter each time she was once again left alone. 

But eventually, it all worked out and after bumping into Namjoon one spring day, three years ago, causing all his books to clutter to the ground in a mess of unorganized papers and confusion.

One look at his dimpled smile as their eyes met.

A strange sense of tranquility had overcome her, she had fallen for this clumsy, sweet human whose soul had touched her deeply.

She was reluctant at first, heavily against the idea of ever meeting him again, knowing full well that while his time would eventually come to an end one day, hers would never and she couldn't subject herself to that kind of pain. An eternity of longing and heartbreak.

Or at least that was her mindset in the beginning and now here she was three years later deeply in love with someone whom she was willing to lose to mortality. How did that quote go again?

It is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.

She remembers this as she looks into his soft eyes, heart fluttering the way they brightened when they land on her. She reminds herself of this as their fingers intertwine and they walk out into the street and walk towards their unknown future and she repeats it in her head when he kisses her so full of love, so much bliss.

He makes her forget, makes her feel human again albeit he had yet to find out what she truly is and although it fills her with immense guilt to have to hide who she is from her one and only beloved, she believed it was safer this way. What he didn't know couldn't hurt him.

Right?

It was difficult at first, juggling her personal life while hiding blood bags she stole from the hospital every month. While it was nothing like the taste of fresh human blood, it did the trick and she'd rather this path over drinking from humans any day.

And even as time went on and the past was nothing more than a relic, she still remembered them. Every one of their faces, their looks of horror as life was quite literally drained from them. She wouldn't allow herself to forget.

It was her punishment in a sense, a reminder that she shouldn't get too carried away believing that she deserved happiness.

Not after what she had done, not after what he had made her do.

But beings, human or not, carried within them that innate need to be selfish, to want what they knew was no good for them regardless of the consequences and even if it were for a little while, she wanted to be selfish. If it meant seeing his smile for a few more mornings and listening to his heartbeat as she lay upon his chest on cool summer days, then she would allow herself to be selfish.

"Ye Rin?"

She looks up and Namjoon is smiling down at her, and her heart flutters again.

Time would never have meaning to her, but for the time being, whilst he was around, she would treasure it deeply.