Bittersweet - ENHYPEN

The Ice Prince {-} Part Three

"And if you don't listen to me, you will die."

Ah! Okay! Sounds peachy.

"Okay," Jay manages, a scoffed and apathetic tone, head spun so far he couldn't feel it anymore, hardly a functioning thought able to get past the freezing chill in his bones. "Why?"

Ah, yes Jay, what a flawless question to ask the vampire in front of you.

Said vampire doesn't seem particularly phased, which Jay feels is a problem, and only blinks once, softly, with the minute shake of his head, and opts to simply grab Jay's wrist and start walking. Great.

"Why—I—what—"

"It's not safe here," he says, plainly, eyes aimed strictly forward, and it felt like he was peering far beyond just the dark of the forest, something stricken and untouchable alight in the piercing blue of his eyes. Jay almost wonders if he was actually experiencing this, or if he was caught in a terribly realistic fever dream, the only thing convincing him otherwise being the lasting constriction in his lungs. This kind of cold couldn't be made up. It wasn't real enough to be otherwise perceived.

"But my—" Jay huffs what was supposed to be 'backpack', having been jerked to the side a half second before impaling his eye on a branch he couldn't see, his wrist now the slightest bit sore due to it, and he blinks away his confusion. "Heeseung."

"Your partner?" The vampire asks, tone almost accusing, as he spares a momentary glance backwards to fully dig that remark through Jay's eyes, turning back to his path not a full second later, still miraculously keeping Jay from stabbing himself through a fallen tree limb. "The hunter?"

Jay feels a wary tug somewhere in the pit of his heart, and he makes a more concise effort to walk at the same pace as this vampire—which was extremely difficult, considering he walked as if weightless, and Jay was capable of tripping on air—and schools his voice into something with weight. Conviction. "Yes, the hunter."

"Terrible job of that," he says, jarringly. It seemed like it was just getting darker as they went on. "He's still in the cave."

"I'm not leaving him," Jay says, taking a quick moment to snatch his wrist from his grasp, and halts in place. "I'm not leaving without my stuff, either."

The vampire turns, regal and elegant, and it does nothing but make Jay feel extremely out of place. His question resided only in his tone. "You're going back?"

"Yes," Jay says, vision stuck on his eyes. As if frozen. He shivers. "I'm going back." On second thought, there was no way this wasn't a fever dream. A bizarre and terribly realistic one, but still, just a dream. For no reason in particular, maybe just his need to convince himself he was still in control, he adds, "and you can't stop me."

With a calculated, almost cruelly slow tilt of his chin, the vampire raises a brow, with slightly parted lips, and simply stares with a single sound of question. "Ah?"

Jay swallows his insecurities, clouded judgement muffled insidiously by the shadows of the forest around them, and maybe Jay doesn't actually know what the hell he's doing after all. "Don't try," he breathes. "I can still kill you."

At once, any trace of emotion leaves the vampire's face, as though a window pane had just cracked, and was suddenly impossible to see through. His voice was flat, and his eyes were as bright as Jay imagines the moon overhead had been, before the thick of the forest decided to hide it away. He challenges, blankly, without lifting a finger.

"Then why haven't you?"

Jay blinks, an answer severely insufficient for the lifeless foe he faced, and his next breath is all but stolen by the hand suddenly pressed over his heart. His palm aches, his startle having pulled at the edges of the wound trying pointlessly to heal, and a single drop of blood trails pathetically down his longest finger, falling to the forestry below with an inaudible flicker.