Scholar in love

The life of a scholar and meeting her

Kim Joonmyeon has spent his whole life, or should I say many different lives, searching for the reincarnation of just one particular person. He has spent countless years, even decades, trying to find a girl named Meili Lu, the only person he can remember among the millions of people he meets in his long lifetime as a secret vampire. A long time ago, two masked men burst into the Kim family home and killed all the men and women in the household, except him, for a reason that the young heir would come to know in due time. Following the breaking and entering, Joonmyeon was summoned in front of who he would always automatically recognise as Gwi, the vampire ruling the palace. Sadly, he was but one of the young men to be eliminated for the purpose of wiping out any opponents, or as he was, to be enslaved by the vampire race.
Life is a blur for the twenty something scholar of the new palace, controlled and twisted to fit what the elder underground would do if he possesed the ability to tolerate any sort of light, and for the last one hundred years, he has watched citizens come and go. Occasionally, he has flashbacks of what he fondly calls 'The human years', which consist of family and the girl, Meili Lu, these dreams are treasured. Passers by have told him many helpful hints as to where she is, or more accurately, was residing in Joseon.
There is no other evidence that Meili Lu ever lived, except a small patch beside the cherry tree in the graveyard where there was a black marbled slab covered in dried flowers. Joonmyeon's sensitive hearing picks up the sound of his own tears splashing on the polished surface, as he clears the mess of cracked rose stems in order to read the carved mandarin characters. Indeed, that silk seller was correct, she had been another hushed up victim of important sacrificial need. How Korea had been so easily shaped around the underground elders requirements was something to do with the fear of losing loved ones, among other terrifying rumours of he who lives beneath the palace.
Jinyoung (Female version of Jin ), Donghyun and the chinese hunter Mingli didn't know what exactly occured to bring about the absurd depression of their master, but they thought it must have been something pretty awful. A desolate and lonely aura cast itself between the household, courtesy of the mysterious day.
Eventually, Jinyoung persuaded the head of the house to accompany her to the market and back, enough to pick up some new gossip and hopefully snap Joonmyeon out of his solem trance. He dressed in a tasteful combination of black silk embroided Hanbok with red flowers, matched to Jin's beautiful scarlet cheongsam, gifted to his cook by a certain Chinese bookseller who had a slight crush on her. "Joonmyeon, do you want navy or teal silk for your next Hanbok? Master...", she trailed off nervously. Her master was standing right in the sun, watching someone intently. The said someone was a young woman, hair lose down to the bottom of her back and clothed in simple cotton, and he was frozen like a statue in the middle of the busy market, a disaster waiting to happen frankly. Before Jinyoung could gather her items and pull him away, he had already approached the lady with a gentleman's glint in his gentle eyes. " Good evening my lady, may I complement you on how amazing you look in that plain cotton dress. Such a mesmerising figure, I will be honoured to know your name, if you would tell me?", he said calmly. The cook did not know what to do, this was so good because her master looked happy but then he was openly flirting! The woman blushed, "Kamsamnida oppa, my name, is Areum.", she stuttered. His eyes flickered more, "Ah, Areum, what a beautiful name for a beautiful woman. It would make you even more dazzling if you had clothes of silk I think, why don't we take a walk down to the silk shop and then the tailors?", he suggested. Areum nodded gratefully, and Jinyoung let out a low sigh.