a heavenly way to die (a time to be alive)

3rd

No, please...

Help!

Run, Hyunjung!

The dreams started a long time ago. When her mother was killed, her sweet singing voice faded into an empty silence. The gentle stories she told Hyunjung before she went to sleep twisted into dark fairytales, of pale faces and sharp teeth, and there were no happy endings. It eased slightly when she was taken under the wing of Kim Taeyeon, and taught not only to defend herself, but to bring justice when vampires like her mother's killer turned towards evil.

Still, there were nights when they were relentless. They switched from dreams about dying at a vampire's hand to... something else.

Blood under her fingernails. Matted into her hair. Stained on her cheeks. There was an open wound in her victim's neck, and it wouldn't stop bleeding.

Hyunjung was no longer the victim. She was the perpetrator. The bloodsucker. The monster. In her nightmares, it was her who sank her teeth into warm flesh, and she usually woke up gasping. It was always comforting when she realised the ordered, ritualised world around her hadn't actually sunk into madness overnight.

I don't want this.

But it was not easy to realize your reality when you were dreaming. Hyunjung twisted and turned now in her sleep, muttering quietly, so desperate compared to her usual self. In the morning, she would think that it must be the overworking, or the lack of sleep, or the stress of Kim Jiyeon that had disturbed her sleep once again. Now all she could think about was the fear and power mingling within her as the nightmare flashed behind her eyes.

There were comforting places in Hyunjung's mind. Places with books, silence, and a hot cup of coffee. Then there were the darker places that had given her scars on the inside and outside. She had hunted many vampires, some peacefully and some, if they resisted too much, violently. She had been to hell and back, and it was no surprise that the fear she suppressed every day came back to her when the moon rose.

Yet just as the sun always surfaces again, the nightmares eventually fade away into waking.

Hyunjung woke. She rubbed her eyes and tried to calm her shaking heart. She froze when she realized she could sense a shadow in the darkness. It bothered her, but she suspected it was all in her head, the lingering traces of a never-ending nightmare. 

"Who's there?" She called out weakly. Her throat was hoarse. The moonlight streamed through the window, but through that dim light she could find nothing. She reached silently for the stake underneath her pillow.

There was a flutter of wings, and then Jiyeon was sitting by her bedside.

Again? Hyunjung thought wearily. She was too tired to jump from the bed and attack her. Why wouldn't she leave me be? She was slipping into all of Hyunjung's private places.

Jiyeon was just a shadow in the darkness, sitting beside her. But Hyunjung could feel when she smiled, amused, and the feeling of being taunted pierced her. Her skin was usually so much thicker, but the nightmare had worn her down, and Hyunjung hadn't had time to rebuild her walls yet. Jiyeon could easily hurt her now.

"How did you sleep?" Jiyeon asked, and Hyunjung swallowed the hard lump in her throat. Pain was weak, and so was this fear that wouldn't dislodge itself, but there was nothing she could do about it right now. Not in the darkness. She was suddenly at Jiyeon's mercy.