Living with Vampires [TWICExOC/READER]

Chapter 09

"Then let me tell you a story. Our story. The story of our kind."
Momo turned the TV off and Dahyun repositioned herself.
"Please let me finish first before you ask any questions." I nodded and my heart suddenly started to speed up.

What am I going to hear? What if I don't want to stay here anymore? What if I learn something I can't live with?

Despite those thoughts, never in my life was I so excited. I felt Sana cuddle up to my side and contrary to what I'd expected, it calmed me down a bit.
"First of all, like I said before, we are humans. Just a bit different. Somewhere down the line some humans developed differently from others. No one knows when or why exactly, but you can say that the DNA of these humans probably mutated. It morphed and over time developed special characteristics. The most outstanding ones are slower disintegration of the cells or faster rebuild of it, the need or craving for blood, better senses, stronger developed muscles and the ability to inject a venom or virus, which turns the bitten human...or kills it." She made a short pause and took a breath. I was completely focused on her.

"But bear in mind that most of these things aren't scientifically proven. At least to our knowledge. It's hard to test vampires' DNA without anyone noticing. So, we age slower and our wounds heal faster. We need blood, respectively it's substances to live. We need it like other humans need water. Over time we learned that we can drink animal blood, too. Especially pig blood. It's really similar to human blood and scientists are working on a procedure to use pig blood in blood transfusions; it's called Xenotransfusion. Knowing that helped us out a lot. But human blood is the nonplusultra. Do you like whiskey?" That question caught me off guard.

Why is she asking me that?

"Uhm, yeah, I guess so. Whiskey-cola is fine."
"Okay, think about this: animal blood is like the 10 Dollar bottle from the supermarket. If you only want to get drunk it's fine. You get what you want. But if you want to really enjoy it, if you want to savour the taste of whiskey, you need to drink one that mellowed for multiple years. Not that cheap liquid that was made in a factory. You want whiskey mellowed in real barrels. And that's the difference between human and animal blood for us." I exclaimed an 'O' sound and understood the metaphor.
"That makes sense." But it sparked a question and I wasn't sure if I wanted to know the answer. "Do you...perhaps...treat yourself...on special occasions maybe...to some...you know...20 year old scotch?" To my relief Dahyun laughed.
"No. We learnt to live without drinking human blood. It's hard to get something without stealing it..." Her expression turned serious. "...or murdering people."
I distorted my face to an expression of not knowing how to think of that information and being quite happy about it. "I guess that's good to hear." Dahyun hummed to that.
"Okay, where was I? Oh right! Our eyes are special. I don't want to take my contacts out now, but they are completely black with just a thin coloured circle around the pupil. So before the invention of contacts it was very easy to identify us as strange people." It sounded so unbelievable but I saw Jihyo's teeth extend earlier. That has to be enough proof.

"We hear, see, taste, smell, feel better and overall are our physical attributes more developed. We are stronger, faster and have more stamina than the average human. So basically everyone of us is an outstanding athlete by default. And last but not least, we can inject through our fangs something that turns humans into vampires. I'll just call us vampires from now on for better understanding." I nodded.

"That's the basics. Now onto the history part. The most known vampire is Dracula. You probably heard of him." I nodded again. Of course I did. Everyone heard of him.
"That's the, I call it the comic figure Dracula. A fictional character based loosely on the tales of Vlad Dracula. He was the first one to get popular, which is by the way the worst thing a vampire can do. Getting popular and exposing his true form to many people. He was from Transylvania, Romania and ruled for approximately six years from 1456 until 1462. His nickname was Vlad The Impaler. His favorite way to kill people was by impaling them on a wooden stake. Legends say that he dined next to his dying victims, dipping his bread in their blood or drinking it, while his soldiers and servants watched him." A short pause of Dahyun. "So far so good?"
I couldn't do anything but nod slowly, totally captivated by her.