NIGHT AMNESIA ⋮ markhyuck

𝕿𝖜𝖔

Mark was very energetic the next day. He went outside, fearing no burning under the sun as he was a modern vampire who liked the sun if he wasn't hungry. When he was, however, he was just like his ancestors and Mark disliked the thought of shamefully dying in the middle of the street.

The first thing he did was visit a meat store to make sure he would have a snack once a similar situation happened again. There he bought some big meat lumps with blood. Later on, he put them in bowls so that the blood would drip down, poured it into bags, and saved it for the bad days. Leaving the store, Mark felt like those humans in quite comedic commercials–happy for everything and looking like idiots. He was in a great mood and if he wanted, he could travel across the world. That was how powerful a vampire felt after drinking humans' blood.

When he got home, he feasted on the pizza, which was okay but wasn't as energy-giving as sucking the delivery boy's blood. Speaking of the latter, Mark knew everything must have been fine with him. He knew that after people wake up from hypnosis, they don't remember a thing and therefore have memory loss. That meant Donghyuck would never recollect he had been at Mark's house. However, his number was seen by the woman in the pizza place and was left there in the records. Because of this, Donghyuck might find out who gave him double and connect the dots if he saw his neck. But that sounded so unrealistic that Mark didn't even bother thinking about it.

Since the day was calm and Mark was energetic, he could work again. Going to his office upstairs, Mark sighed and started writing another article. It was kind of fun to write about people who don't remember what happened last night. Especially when Mark knew what actually caused it. But just because the humans had no clue about it, the catchy titles always worked on them and Mark's work was always acknowledged. People read his writings even when they led nowhere–Mark just reported what happened during the night, and what doctors said about it and quoted several people on social media. He never wrote anything about solutions. Not that the humans knew how to find it.

✩ ✩ ✩

Sitting alone in his house, Mark quite often remembered his family. All of them were pretty young, growing and maturing exactly like humans. It is thought that human blood was there to blame. Just because little vampires usually drank blood from humans of the same age and mainly because they were easier to manipulate and less dangerous, through the blood, they naturally adapted to human maturity levels. So, a teenage vampire hits puberty just like a human. Yes, vampires also went under puberty which, again, was something that separated them from their ancestors–vampires who could look like children but be much older.

Their ancestor was an old in appearance and aged man, Sooman. Mark knew that this man was about a thousand years old, so he didn't really think it was his great great great great grandfather. He wanted to find his actual old family members, but all of them were scattered all around the world and hard to find. Not to mention they probably already had other kids and forgotten about Mark's existence.

Mark and his brothers were different. They all lived in one city but in different places. If something happened, the older brother, Taeyong, wouldn't hesitate to turn into a bat and fly all the way to talk with Mark. Sometimes, he brought his friend, who was used to being human but turned into a vampire (thanks to Taeyong). Doyoung was very sweet to Mark, almost as if he was still a human, despite drinking blood like any other vampire.

The youngest brother was the softest one. Jeno was the one who taught them not to hurt humans and to live peacefully. This might be the reason why he always chose to use one human as a food resource, not several, for minor harm. Mark heard that he had been feeding on a guy next door since the latter always had his window open. Because of that neighbor and several others, Mark started writing articles about short amnesia after the night, also known as Night Amnesia, as it happened to that human every time Jeno fed on him. It grew common in this town, it was always talked about in the news, and doctors tried to help their patients even though no one knew what was going on.

Mark thought that out of his brothers and Doyoung, he must be the only one who was suffering from hunger. Taeyong and Doyoung were living together so they scheduled when to get blood, meanwhile, Jeno got a tasty neighbor. Mark didn't have time for planning stuff as he was busy working. That's why sometimes he ran out of spare blood in the freezer and had to think of something if he still wanted to live.

Yeah, modern-day vampires can die if they don't get blood. Just last year one vampire (who was supposed to be Mark's cousin, but he had no clue who the person was, because, you know, the family tree is bigger than any human dynasty) got run over by a car because he was starving and looking for dinner. He made a mess in the vampire world. They had to hypnotize the driver and other humans around and clean their dead buddy if they didn't want people performing an autopsy on their brother. When vampires are starving, they turn miserable.

Mark didn't want to die so stupidly. He wanted to write books and become popular. That's why when he had free time, he looked for ways to get blood. But thanks to the delivery boy, Mark was energetic for at least 27 hours and never ran out of words to write.

✩ ✩ ✩

Mark was a vampire who loved literature. He liked classic books as they pictured life he hadn't lived yet. He didn't mind reading about humans, their love, and lives as some things were pretty similar to his. But when his eyes caught the books with the main characters as vampires... Mark despised that. He found it uncomfortable how people created fairytales about vampires, making them just how they would want the vampires to be, but knowing nothing about the actual vampires. Quite often humans messed up.

The love stories were the most awkward. Mark didn't really think that humans could love vampires. Sure, some of them could, but a human will have to become a vampire sooner or later too. And then it's the love between two vampires, right? One is a pureblood, and another one is a secondary vampire, but both of them are vampires!

Finding nothing interesting to pick, Mark walked to another section–history. History was his passion too. Reading history books, he could find more about the past than in classic literature. He especially liked those books, where the authors analyzed folklore and legends because quite often, they wrote about vampires and there, unlike in novels, they told pretty accurate stories.

"Oh, God! I didn't drink! I'm just saying that I fell asleep because I was tired!"

Mark whipped his head to the person beside him. His nose picked up the smell first, but then his eyes landed on the pizza delivery boy. The latter, however, looked different as he wasn't wearing the pizza place uniform. He was still the same delicious human, though.

The vampire ran his eyes from the human to another male he was talking to. Both of them were arguing in the same section. Donghyuck had a lot of books in his arms which indicated that he was around Mark's age. But unlike the vampire, he seemed to be a student.

Standing there still, fearing moving as if he'd got unwanted attention, the vampire kept smelling the blood resource. Once again, he wondered if Donghyuck's blood was high class or if it tasted so good because of severe hunger. If it was the first scenario, Mark felt a little excited to find a place the delivery boy went to. Although the library was public, with a little more effort, he could easily take Donghyuck outside or lead in between the shelves of less popular books and have a feast.

The vampire thought he was secretive, but for one second their eyes met. Donghyuck stared at Mark, but then paid more attention to his friend.

"People are looking," he said. "So, don't shout."

Yeah, people.

Just people.

Because Donghyuck didn't remember who Mark was and he had no idea he was a vampire.