A SEALED FATE: Ruby Encrusted Cages (BTS)

You

When you had been a child, you had dreamed of becoming an esteemed doctor.

You had wanted to become so good at your profession, that you would be sought out by both humans and vampires. You wanted to become so good, that the Elder's would eventually come out of hiding simply to add you to their very important ranks.

It would make you the very first human, that stayed human, to become a member in all of history. You daydreamed for hours every day to become such an important name that you barely ever paid attention to the real world around you.

When you were a child, you wanted to be viewed highly by high society vampires. You wanted their respect and their platonic love for you.

As you grew older, though, you began to understand the romantic side of things.

When you looked at old pictures of the Elders and their Lower Court, you found yourself blushing. You didn't want to be their doctor. You didn't want to simply be a part of their staff.

You wanted to be one of them. You wanted to be idolized by the high ranking vampires that you learned about every day. You craved attention from them, and you simply wanted to be a rich vampires bride.

Part of it was from the craving of wanting to be loved. While your adopted parents did a damn good job of giving you as much as they could, it would never compare to the love of someone who was romantically interested in you.

Another part of it was the greedy need to be better than others. Kids in middle and high school hadn't been the kindest, and they had picked up on your juvenile crush on the seven missing Vampires.

They most certainly hadn't shied away from embarrassing you and making fun of you for it at every turn and corner.

For years, up until your 18th birthday, all you could think about was the sense of satisfaction that you knew you would feel over your former classmates when they saw you with one of the Elders.

You had been taught in school all about them. You were told the story of their origins countless times, and had clung to the parts about their soulmate each time.

The want for it was so intense that at one point, you even wished on seemingly every star in the sky that you would be their missing soulmate. You wanted it so bad.

You always told yourself, there was one hundred percent the possibility that you could be. After all, there were no paintings of their original soulmate. There was no evidence indicating what she really looked like.

It could be you.

But then, like a light being switched off, your delusions evaporated into thin air. It was like your brain had finally decided to grow up and rip you from your pointless daydreams.

You woke from your lovesick haze and tried to bury your past obsessions away. You took down the prints of the Elder's original portraits and put them in a box along with your cringe-worthy love letters and homemade jewelry. Then, you stored it away in your parents attic.

You decided to go to school for Vampire politics instead of something as hard as medical science, and you eventually let yourself forget about your embarrassing past as you formed new friendships and began to enter the dating world.

Two years after high school, and you were doing pretty great if you did say so yourself.

Were you in a steady relationship? No. But had your sex game gotten exponentially better since your first month at Seoul University? Absolutely.

You had two great friends, and you were at the top of your class. You were the most confident with yourself that you had been ever, and you were happy.

Your parents were paying for your education and for your apartment near campus. They kept your credit card paid off and never lectured you on your behavior, and holidays were always filled with great gifts.

Your friends called you spoiled, and you never really denied it. You were spoiled. Your adoptive mother always told you that a life full of fortune and happiness was consolation for a past life which was spent in poverty and sadness. Your adoptive father always agreed and told you to enjoy it, as it wasn't likely to happen again in the next life.

But while you were spoiled and a bit lazy, you also knew when to be generous. You shared the good fortune with others, mainly your friends.

Your need to share always ended up bringing you to the college bar near campus on Friday nights with Aera and Sungho, your credit card racking up quite the bill as you bought them drink after drink.

Part of you wondered if they only ever really stuck around because they knew you had money. They had come from less fortunate households after all, and they were paying for everything themselves.

But you always managed to push that doubt away when they consistently showed you that they were capable of looking past your higher income in order to keep things normal.

The only thing they ever truly harped on you to pay for was drinks and cheap street food. And honestly, why shouldn't you? Your trio was everything that you had ever wanted in high school.

Just three of you in your own little world with your own inside jokes, a safe haven to gossip, and a friendship that never really seemed to crack. It was only ever really you three, everywhere you went.

Of course, one Friday evening was a bit different.

It wasn't just your trio going out for drinks. No, Aera invited along the new transfer student, and he was extremely hot. Apparently he was an early present for you.

You couldn't remember his name, honestly. It started with an H or something, maybe ended in an O. Either way, he was highly attractive and you spent the entire night flirting with him.

It worked. At the very end, you drunkenly made your way back to your apartment and spent a night lazily fucking and drinking more from your home stash of liquors.

His sex game was mediocre, but the drunken haze that clouded your mind made you a bit more lenient on him.

The next morning as he was stumbling out of the door, you pretended to remember the phone number that he spoke to you and promised to call him, while your fingers were crossed behind your back.

You didn't know it, but that night would start a chain of events that would leave you regretting everything.