Extricate | Seongjoong

★。／｜＼。★

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He was only ten when the first Harvest occurred, the one that turned his people, the night Mingi had to save the children from the fire in the school. The fire that spread rampant, acting as a distraction from the real threat. Mingi was the advisor to the King, strong, confident, so courageous he risked his life for the fifty he saved that night.

One of them had Yunho. Between their teeth, shifting their jaws so that the fabric of the sweater slowly snapped, one thread at a time. He was calling for Hongjoong who watched him slip down their throat, out of his reach. Hoongjoong cried, for his people, for Yunho, for Mingi to find them, so he might rescue the one he considered an older brother.

"Yunho!" He was cold, only a boy, and no one was around him. Mingi had told him to stay put, but he couldn't just let Yunho die. He climbed up one of the oozing, blood stained legs of the creature who had Yunho, tearing at its skin with his hands, punching it, and wasting much needed energy to hit it until he was peeled off.

"Hongjoong! Go!" Mingi was back, eyes holding compassion, telling him not to worry. Hongjoong dashed off with Seoho that night, watching the last of the scene. The creature slashed through Mingi's neck down to his chest, but Mingi saved Yunho, stabbing the creature through with so much hatred that Hongjoong could only cry out as he was carried off.

He relived that night more than once each night, waking up in a cold sweat, often to San rubbing soothing circles into his chest, but some nights utterly alone and helpless remembering how he was taken from his people that night.

Oh how they all changed.

And that next month when Hongjoong was allowed to step back into the city where he was born and raised, he did not recognize it. Blood painted the cobblestone streets, and the gorgeous buildings had chunks taken like someone took large bites into them. Bodies piled into the streets, and carts were overturned, wheels removed. He was riding on top of Mingi's shoulders that day, crying while Mingi tried to point out the positives, but it did not ease the ache in Hongjoong's heart.

They  turned his people.

He was set down from Mingi's shoulders, and sent into his home, to hopefully find his servants alive and well, eager to see him again. Instead, he found their bodies, twitching on the floor. They were responsive when he spoke to them, they rose with twisted and broken limbs, but they were not the same people. They all woke up and stood, wobbling where their feet planted.

"Wooyoung!" He reached out to touch his advisor, who, with glowing green eyes, snatched at Hongjoong's wrist, bringing it up to his mouth. He bore his teeth, all of them jagged and uneven, sharp and digging out of his gums with copious amounts of blood. He dangled from Wooyoung's grasp, and Mingi shoved him back, grabbing Hongjoong and backing up into the wall.

"Hongjoong, they didn't make it. That's not Wooyoung!" Mingi gruffly pulled him flush to his chest, and Hongjoong watched his beloved advisor writhe in pain.

"Wooyoungie!" He screamed out, and the rest of the guards who had accompanied them carried him out, back to where they had been hiding for the whole month before.

He had not visited his people until four years later when they had securely built the protective circle and the large gates. Things had changed. The abandoned people had become civilized, acted normally most days of the year. They were like what Hongjoong read about vampires, but much more brutal and unsophisticated. light did not bother them, they did not require blood to survive, but thought of it as a delicacy. They scared Hongjoong. Though, as years drew on, they became more and more structured, jobs were made, they had a king, and Hongjoong was no longer a necessity.