Chapter 7

Autumn in Luncani was a season of golden mist.

A season where thick fog draped over the fallen leaves mounded along every roadside, tinting a landscape that ought to have been pale into shades of gold. Seemingly dry yet damp, chilling yet cozy, it was a thoroughly aesthetic landscape.

Yet the winter arrived at through that beautiful season was terribly severe. Temperatures plunging day after day froze the river by year’s end, and snow that seemed closer to pouring than falling was not only heavy in volume but relentless in frequency.

My small dwelling, situated on the border between forest and village, was completely isolated whenever it snowed. Like an island forgotten by the world.

The period when the villagers’ suspicion and vigilance—taut for two full seasons—softened as though it had never existed was also that winter when the cabin was isolated.

Was it because trekking back and forth to keep watch had become cumbersome in the snow? Or was it because nothing had happened in the months since I entered the village, and nothing befell Ilie who frequented my house daily?

The reason was unknowable, but at any rate, they seemed finally relieved.

It was precisely when everyone had grown at ease with me that Ilie—who had long been at ease—became tense around me, as if refusing to join the majority.

That day, too, heavy snow was pouring down.

The spark first kindled in Ilie, who trusted me more solidly than anyone in that village, was sparked by something utterly trivial. Something absurdly trivial.

To be precise, it was ‘something trivial to me, but far from trivial to a mortal.’

The catalyst that brought about that situation was my hunger. That cursed sensation I could never shake off for all eternity. Hunger, thirst—the energy source that maintained the reason and moved the physical body of a ‘something’ whose own true identity even I did not know.

Blood.

I needed blood.

When the forest froze and snow piled high into a white hell, the thirst I had barely sated with wild beasts just enough to keep from falling into slumber rose rapidly, and my strength drained away faster still.

My body, differing from a human’s, does not maintain body heat as theirs does. A sluggishly beating heart cannot pump blood as swiftly as theirs, and muscles that know only how to return to their remembered form no matter how torn or mangled cannot generate stable warmth like theirs.

When mortals feel cold, their muscles contract and relax, generating heat by shivering, but my body does not.

Even when the cold seeped past skin and muscle to dull my very bones until moving became an agonizing labor, my flesh never learned to shiver. Shivering was a struggle unique to living protein fighting for survival—a convulsion denied to a creature like me, fixed forever in a state neither truly alive nor dead.

Thus, whenever winter descended, I had to consciously elevate my body temperature to prevent myself from freezing into total immobility. Because my baseline temperature was inherently low, I could endure a fair degree of bitter cold, but once the mercury dropped past that threshold, I had no choice but to generate heat unless I chose to sleep.

Which meant that back then, it was because of that very thing. The severe climate of that region had plunged far below what I could sustain, draining an immense amount of my vitality.

I needed energy to maintain my physical form. I had to wander the woods in search of any winter beast that had neither hibernated nor migrated. From the dead of night, I dragged my sluggish body into the depths of the forest, and because I had ventured farther than intended, I was only able to return in the early hours of the morning.

And there, in front of the cottage I had barely managed to reach after appeasing my hunger, stood Ilie. Having braved the bitter cold to come here, his cheeks and ears were frozen a vivid, biting red.

“Do you go for walks even in weather like this?”

Spotting me emerging from the woods, his face registered a brief flash of surprise before he gently rubbed the red, frozen tip of his nose and asked the question.

Without thinking, I brought a hand up to wipe across my mouth. A quick glance at my thumb confirmed there was no trace of blood. Foolishly, in that moment, I believed that was the only thing I needed to mind.

“Does the weather matter when it comes to taking a walk?”

“The weather is one thing, but going into the forest is another entirely. Don’t you know how dangerous it is to wander around in snowdrifts like these?”

“So long as one is confident in not losing their way, it is safer than a summer forest.”

And so, as I approached Ilie—who had turned to look at me, frozen mid-motion as though he had just arrived and halted before opening the door—I completely forgot every other facet of my ‘human imitation.’

“How could a winter forest possibly be safe? Just because the bears are hibernating doesn’t make it safe. You could miss a ravine hidden under the snow and fall in, or slip and break a bone, and above all, there are wolves.”

I admit it. I had let my guard down. I had slaked my thirst, replenished enough nourishment to generate several days’ worth of body heat, and he was standing right before my eyes.

“Honestly, Sir, the more I see of you, the clumsier you seem. You act like the most fastidious person in the world, yet deep down you’re so careless about everything… Huh?”

That must have been why I thought nothing of it, even as I looked at his frost-rimmed eyelashes and the icy blooms left behind by the white plumes of breath puffing relentlessly from his lips.

When I pushed through the snowdrifts and reached him, I failed to notice anything amiss, even when he abruptly cut off with that startled ‘Huh?’ What he had noticed, or why he simply stared at me without adding another word—I truly had no idea.

“…Sir.”

At the time, the only thought drifting vaguely through my head was that we needed to hurry inside and light the stove.

“Save the rest of your nagging for inside. You’ll freeze to death out here.”

It was right after that. He pointed out the ‘trivial detail’ I had not even registered.

“Your breath…”

It happened just as I forced my eyes away from his frosted white lashes—which looked as though they might shatter with a touch—and pushed the door open.

“…Why isn’t any breath coming out?”

Before the cottage, where the heavy snow that had fallen through the night swallowed all sound into absolute stillness, that voice—ordinarily as pleasant as the crisp crunch of snow underfoot—suddenly plummeted into me like a falling icicle.

Creeeak.

Behind the frozen groan of the wooden door I had just pushed open, a silence heavy enough to paralyze all thought settled over us.

For several seconds—no, perhaps several dozen seconds—I stared blankly straight ahead before belatedly turning my head toward him.

When I looked, his face held an expression I could not decipher—whether born of terror or sheer bewilderment. His trembling blue pupils met my emotionless gaze. His frame shuddered far more violently than before, as if the physical cold had curdled into raw fear.

I saw it clearly. Yet I had no inkling of what I was supposed to do about it.

In those few seconds of silence where our eyes remained locked, I swear I could not conjure a single thought.

I did not think to inhale, warm the air in my lungs, and exhale to produce vapor, nor did I think to devise a plausible excuse capable of deceiving his sharp intellect. Absolutely nothing came to mind.

“R-Right now, quickly… do it.”

My mind, frozen solid just like his frightened body, only began to turn again when he—tenaciously awaiting an answer even while gripped by dread—could no longer bear the silence and parted his lips once more.

“Breathe, I said.”

Only then did my stalled thoughts begin to flow again.

“Before someone sees, hurry…”

Only after witnessing how he, who had trusted me more than anyone in that village, instinctively moved to protect me even in the very instant that trust shattered.

The moment my frozen mind started moving, I drew in a breath like a living man and exhaled warm vapor like a living man. And immediately after, I realized that he had finally set foot upon my most vulnerable ground.

The moment a clear footprint was at last stamped into the thick dust accumulated in my chest, heavy as the blizzard of Luncani.

Incredibly, an actual thud resonated in my ears.

Inside the cottage, he did not utter a single word for quite some time. Neither did I.

I quietly approached the stove and shoved in the stacked firewood, while he walked slowly toward his seat by the window, his gaze piercing into me like arrows.

Afterward, it was—on the surface, at least—a time just like any other day.

He took out the book tucked in his coat—his pretext for coming to see me—and forced his eyes to stay fixed upon it, while I, having no desire to offer explanations, picked up the book resting face down on the table and stared blankly at the page.

Ilie, having maintained his silence the entire time, only opened his mouth when he prepared to leave a good two or three hours earlier than usual.

Watching him rewrap the muffler he had loosened and slip his hands into his thick woolen gloves, I felt an unpleasant prickle, as though a stretch of time that rightfully belonged to me had been stolen away.

“…Come to church.”

Having finished bundling up, he turned toward the door and spoke out of nowhere.

“Every single day, come to the morning service. Pray before everyone.”

His voice trembled faintly. I had thought the shock had worn off somewhat during the hours we spent reading together, but it had not. No matter how one listened, it was a voice burdened by emotions he had been desperately suppressing all along.

“Come and… sincerely repent.”

In the instant I heard those words, anger flared within me like an instinct. I thought the thing he was telling to repent was my very existence—my life itself, born as an entity that ought not to be.

Yet that was not it.

“For deceiving me, deceiving my father, and deceiving my mother. For planting false faith in the villagers. For tricking everyone in Luncani.”

Hearing what followed, the sharp edge of defiance that had bristled inside me curled up like a dead spider once more.

“…You must come, and you must reflect on what you’ve done.”

Because he stood facing the door with his back turned to me, I could not see what expression he wore as he said those words.

His firmly set lips parted briefly as if hounded, but that was all. Having finished speaking, he walked straight out the door, and in place of breath, I swallowed the sound of his receding footsteps.

That night, I spent a long time pondering the urgency underlying his voice. I contemplated why summoning me to church and compelling me to reflect was such a desperate matter for him.

Compared to now, I was preposterously ignorant of human emotion, and it was only after turning it over in my mind through an entire night that I finally grasped the answer.

Those words urging me to come without fail and repent were neither an expression of betrayal nor a command issued to soothe his anger. They were a plea. A plea to prove myself human before the others, to set his heart at ease.

I should have realized it far sooner, when his first words upon noticing the anomaly were neither an interrogation of my identity nor a demand that I unveil myself and take responsibility for the situation. I should have known from that very first sentence that he was asking me to lighten his guilt, promising to bear my secret to the very end.

Had I understood then, a terrified sob would not have bled through the sound of his receding footsteps.

Foolishly, I realized this only after dawn broke and the first morning service had already begun.

Even knowing the bells had tolled long ago, I left the house.

Arriving late before the church, I brushed the thick mounds of snow from the hem of my trousers and imagined the scene beyond the doors. The backs of the villagers standing or kneeling with their backs to the entrance, the wide-open Royal Doors and lit candles, the frankincense smoke crawling through the air.

Holding the door handle, I strained my ears; the interior was quiet. It was the stillness immediately following the hymn that had been audible as I entered the village. It would be impolite, but it was the perfect moment to step inside.

I quietly drew in a breath, pulling the mask of humanity over myself. My chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm, preparing the vapor to exhale the instant the door opened. Then, I pushed the door.

Creeeak.

The hinges of the heavy oak door groaned, prying a gap in the silence.

The scene revealed through the opening was identical to what I had envisioned moments before. Countless candles, thick frankincense haze, and the backs of dozens of villagers densely packed within.

Since the liturgy was already well underway, no one turned their heads around to look. Yet the winter wind slipping through the threshold and the presence at the door seemed enough for everyone to sense a newcomer.

Only a few in the very back row tilted their heads slightly to see me, their eyes widening in soundless surprise. The priest standing in the sanctuary directly opposite the entrance spotted me immediately; he met my gaze for the briefest fraction of a second before quickly lowering his eyes.

The stench of human flesh and incense packed into that narrow space was so nauseating that I wanted nothing more than to cease breathing, but I steadily kept my chest rising and falling as I took up a position in the shadows beside a pillar in the rearmost row.

I had no interest in prayer, yet I clasped my hands; I had no intention of repenting, yet I raised my head to search for Ilie.

Ilie stood angled toward the congregation before the sanctuary, his head bowed.

He was likely praying just like the other believers, but to my eyes, he looked devastated by my absence—as though crushed that I had not appeared by the start of the service.

Cloaked in an aura of quiet sorrow as he prayed, he only gave a start and lifted his head after the draft trailing behind me swept through the worshippers and flickered the candle nearest him.

Over the bowed heads of the faithful, our eyes met.

The moment he saw me, an inexplicable tremor stirred across his dull, lifeless blue eyes. His tightly closed lips parted, and his shoulders sank as his heart dropped.

Even across the distance of the packed congregation, I could clearly see an indescribable flood of emotion surge through him.

Just as my entire focus gravitated toward his faintly trembling lips, he pressed them shut again—drawing them in and biting down hard. When my gaze darted back up, the eyes that had been watching me were already hidden beneath his lids once more.

I stared at his face, forgetting even to breathe.

Only upon witnessing that precarious expression—looking as though he might burst into tears at any second, poised on the verge of collapse under feelings of either relief or guilt—did I understand. Only when I felt the urge to wear that very same expression simply by looking at his face did I realize.

How abominable my attitude had been, coming here with neither the desire to pray nor the intent to repent, merely seeking to appease him.

Exhaling the breath I had briefly forgotten, I slowly pulled my gaze away. The icons, imbued with a sickly golden vitality under the candlelight around me, seemed to glare at me in condemnation.

I crossed myself—a gesture I had deliberately avoided despite knowing it—and properly clasped the hands I had loosely folded. For the first time since that distant day when I cursed my life and begged for death, I prayed to God.

To grant me every ounce of pain and sin he bore. That your living mistake here would not blame you, so please do not weigh down that short life, but cast it all away into my endless existence instead.

Perhaps I prayed with far more sincerity than even Ilie had hoped for.

It was on that day, in that very moment.

That I finally gave a name to the nameless emotion that had blossomed within me without my knowledge.

After that day, Ilie no longer visited the cottage. He did not speak to me or meet my eyes as he once had. Yet I went to church every single morning. Taking my place in the rearmost row, beside the darkest pillar, I made the sign of the cross and clasped my hands.

I did not offer the heartfelt repentance he had desired. I did not pray for forgiveness for deceiving him, deceiving his parents, or duping the villagers. I was not reflecting on my sins.

For I was a creature doomed to remain that way for all eternity. And he had only spoken those words to soothe his own anxiety; deep down, he could not have been ignorant of that truth.

I merely prayed for the foolish, fragile human who had left the first footprint upon me. I, who believed in neither God nor an afterlife nor a soul, prayed to God not to wound his soul.

It was during this time that I began to understand the inefficient, irrational emotions unique to humanity—things I had previously considered their greatest weakness.

With each passing day, feelings increasingly beyond my comprehension bloomed within me, shaking me as though they had been biding their time for centuries. They kicked up dust storms and rattled cobwebs.

I was genuinely confounded and distressed. So much so that I clung to religious rites, the very practice I had considered the most pathetic waste of time my entire life.

To me back then, prayer was precisely that kind of time: an inability to either swallow or spit out the unfamiliar emotion born after centuries of ignorance, endlessly chewing over it in silence.

It was a suffocating time.

Yet what kept me from stopping that foolish daily routine was the brief contact with those blue eyes whenever I lifted my head, feeling pathetic.

The eyes of a man looking upon the demon he had summoned before the cross; the eyes of a man who, by telling me to repent for my deception, effectively ordered me to deceive them once again; the blue eyes of a man who chose to shoulder immense guilt and utter such contradictions out of a desperate desire to protect me to the very end—it was all so terribly pitiful, even in the eyes of a monster.

During the month or so that he did not come to my cottage, we stood facing each other in the same space, suffering through separate hells.

He returned to me on a day early in the new year, when consecutive blizzards ushered in the year and prevented even the church from opening its doors.

After four days trapped indoors by snow barring the doorway, I prepared to enter dormancy to prevent unnecessary loss of vitality.

It was a decision made with the certainty that no one would disturb me.

If the snow had piled high enough to keep even me from venturing out carelessly, ordinary humans would certainly be unable to step outside, and even if they pooled their strength to clear the village streets, they would have no reason to clear a path all the way to my remote cottage.

In an environment where prey and firewood were scarce, sleep was the best way to survive the remainder of the winter. Halting unnecessary energy drain would preserve my body, and though I would suffer agonizing hunger upon waking, hunting would be simple enough once the weather broke.

Snow of that depth would hardly melt in a week or two, but just in case, I planned for a week and closed my eyes.

Yet of all times, that was precisely when Ilie returned to me.

Pushing through snow that reached my waist—meaning it reached his chest—with white frost clinging to his eyelashes and bangs, and his cheeks, ears, and nose frozen a burning crimson.

“…Sir! Sir! P-Please wake up, please!”

Though I remember every facet of him, the face he wore in that moment—weeping in terror as he tried to wake me—remains etched into my memory as though preserved in stone.

“Why… why are you like this? Wake up! Please, Sir. Open your eyes. I still… there are still so many things I want to ask you…”

When my consciousness surfaced from the distant depths of sleep, the first sense to awaken was hearing.

“Get up! How can a demon die! You don’t even have a stake through your heart, so why, why are you dying! You’re a monster! You said you live forever!”

Touch followed. Over my frozen, stiff body, an unreal warmth covered me completely. I felt him burying his face against my breathless chest, sobbing sorrowfully as his body heaved.

“Is it because of the church? Was it actually… was it actually unbearable for you? And you still came every day? Did this happen because of me? It’s… it’s all my fault. I won’t do it again. So please…”

Only after my stiffened body thawed somewhat beneath that warmth did my sense of smell return, drawing in his scent along with the air, and the moment I recognized that the person crying in my arms was Ilie, my vision finally opened last.

Exhaling the stale breath that had lingered in my lungs, I slowly opened my eyes and looked down at him buried against my chest. Feeling my chest rise and fall, Ilie jerked his head up in astonishment mid-sob.

Our eyes met.

Time, which always seemed to race frantically whenever I was with him, froze motionless in that very moment, as if understanding my unspoken yearning.

“…Ilie.”

The moment I parted my lips and called his name, his face—streaked with tears and a runny nose, yet still so impossibly clear—crumbled as though overwhelmed by a surge of relief.

I reached out slowly and stroked his tear-drenched cheek. Even I did not understand why I moved with such gentle care toward a human, a creature that had been nothing more than prey for hundreds of years.

“You’re right. I am a monster that cannot die. So there is no need to cry.”

I had spoken those words to soothe him, yet for some reason, he burst into an even more sorrowful weep and embraced me tightly.

“Why is there no need? If you’re a monster, are you not even allowed to be worried over? You have feelings, Sir. You are alive.”

Eyes clearer and more piercing than the winter frost that had frozen the world enveloped me—an entity abandoned by God—as though I were more precious than God Himself.

“Can’t… can’t at least one person… wish for you not to die?”

The emotion I felt at that moment remains impossible to explain clearly, even today.

His body heat was simply unbearable in its warmth, and my heart, usually so dormant, pounded with a force so violent it bordered on agony.

The very first emotion born within me, the one I had named for the first time that winter—that calamitous emotion that made my existence far more agonizing than anything else, a feeling I would have been better off never knowing—had finally crushed me beneath its weight.

Burying his face in my embrace, Ilie wept uncontrollably until his eyes were completely swollen. It seemed he had been far more frightened than I had imagined; even after his tears ceased, he could not easily compose himself, his chest heaving for a long while.

Barely catching his breath, he struggled to his feet and went to the stove. He tossed in the firewood he had brought, lit the flame, and after rubbing the raw red skin beneath his nose, crept back to the bed and quietly sat down beside me.

From that moment until the fire he had kindled dwindled to small embers, we spoke without pause.

Whether our steps through our respective hells had halted side by side, or whether we had laid down the burdens we carried, we spoke of my existence with astonishing calm and composure.

He asked if this was my true form, and I replied that it was.
He asked if I could feel emotions like a human, and I replied that I could not feel them all.
He asked if I had been born of a creature like myself, and I replied that I did not know.
He asked if I was a demon, and I replied that I was not.
He asked what I was, and I replied that I was a something.
He asked for my name, and I replied that I had none.

Having stepped into me with quiet, careful strides and leaving footprints along the way, he halted abruptly at that point. A flicker of pain, as though stabbed unexpectedly with a blade, crossed the blue eyes meeting mine.

After a long silence, he reached out quietly and clasped my hand resting on the bed, covering it with his own. Then, as if sharing what warmth he had, he slowly stroked the back of my hand where pale veins stood out.

Lastly, he asked if I was lonely. I could not answer.

For I could not bring myself to complain to him about the emotion he had awakened, nor about the remaining eternity that would become so agonizingly lonely because of it.

From that day on, I ceased going to church, and Ilie began visiting the cottage every day once more. He carried firewood donated by villagers under his arm, along with a few snacks for himself and a book.

The revelation of my true nature did not alter the framework of our relationship. He still addressed me as Sir, and I never shed the guise of the scholar from Vienna.

Yet within that relationship, the way we regarded each other underwent a profound change. Both for me and for Ilie.

Marked by that day of deep, protracted conversation, the atmosphere inside the cottage shifted in countless indefinable ways.

Up to the point where he opened the door without knocking, threw firewood into the dwindling hearth, thawed his frozen cheeks and hands while muttering complaints about the cold to himself, and walked over to sit by the window—everything appeared identical.

Yet from that moment on, everything was different.

Instead of opening his book and rolling his eyes aimlessly while sneaking glances at me, he set his book upon the table and looked straight into my eyes.

“So, what about that rumor?”

Nor did I skim through printed lines while secretly eavesdropping on his presence; instead, I looked directly into the blue eyes gazing back at me, seeing, hearing, and scenting everything about him.

“Did you really rise from a grave and drink people’s blood? Or are there many other ‘things’ out there… different from you?”

Such conversations passed between us in those days. It was the first time since realizing the nature of what I was that I spoke of myself directly to a human being.

“The legend of the vampir is an ancient folk tale. Whether the source of the rumor is me or not, and whether more creatures like me exist in this world, I do not know. …Though I suspect the cause of this recent disturbance might indeed be me.”

“Why? Did you… flee here because you were discovered in Serbia?”

“A human found me while I was asleep and buried me. Naturally, when I awoke some time later, I dug my way out of the dirt, and to replenish the vitality depleted by restoring my physical body, I entered a nearby village and fed on several residents. The rumors spread afterward, so in a sense, one could say I was discovered.”

Upon hearing this, Ilie fell speechless for a moment. Even the gaze that had remained fixed on me wavered visibly, dropping toward his lap as if fleeing.

“Fed on them… exactly what kind of…”

Yet in the end, he did not run away. Swallowing his fear and biting down on his revulsion, he stubbornly forced his lips to open once more. He sought to know me with desperate, tenacious persistence.

“Just as the rumors say—drinking blood. I took only enough so they would not die, but who can say? Given the hysteria at the time, those victims may well have been put on trial and executed.”

“…Do you ever feel guilt?”

“No.”

At that point too, Ilie wore an expression as if he could not fathom hearing such words from the mouth of the ‘scholar’ and ‘teacher’ he was accustomed to seeing. It was a fleeting look, but I caught it clearly.

“Even if innocent people were executed because of what you did, you feel no remorse?”

“To me, humans are prey. Just as animals are to humans, you are an ‘alien species’ and a ‘lesser species’ to me. If anything, I would ask why I ought to feel guilt over what takes place within your human society.”

Thus, whenever such exchanges took place, I could not stop myself from understanding, even if I had no desire to know.

“…Hearing you speak like this, you are impossibly arrogant.”

“Is that because I referred to humans as a lesser species?”

“It’s more that you speak as though humans would do the same. If an animal is cast out of its pack or killed because of human actions, people feel guilty. Even if they consider animals an alien or lesser species, they still feel pity.”

Those conversations during that period were times when Ilie, having stepped deep into my interior without even realizing it, brushed aside dust and parted cobwebs as if desperately trying to drag me into the realm of humanity.

“Then let me correct myself. I am likely closer to a beast. Under no circumstances do I feel remorse for the death of my prey.”

And for me, it was a time spent continuously drawing lines between us, fully aware of what he was attempting.

That defense mechanism of mine was neither because I disliked his attitude, nor because I refused to rise into the realm of humans.

“…I wasn’t calling you a beast.”

“I know.”

“I’m just… trying to understand.”

“I know that as well.”

It was simply an unending warning. It was also a plea, torn from me like a retch as I suffered under an unfamiliar emotion I had never experienced before.

A plea for him to understand that no matter what I did, I could never become human; that no matter how much he tried to classify me as a ‘living creature with emotions,’ I was a something that could never rest within his pure, tender definition.

“Then… if that’s true… even if I were killed for the crime of hiding you, Sir, you wouldn’t feel a thing.”

Yet the moment I heard those words, it became impossible for me to continue drawing that line of I am different from you.

“You are different.”

Astonishingly, from that exact moment, my defense mechanism turned in an entirely different direction, bypassing my conscious mind altogether.

“To me, you are different.”

Starting with that single phrase uttered purely by my subconscious, the shape of every warning and plea I had offered until then shifted completely.

“So do not make such assumptions.”

It was a change I had not even properly recognized myself.

Only a long time after did I realize that it was a plea for him to know: To me, you and humanity belong to entirely separate categories.

“Why… what makes me different, and how? In the end, I’m just a human too, and to you, Sir, I’m merely prey.”

“I do not see you as prey.”

“…Why?”

“Because you are the human who accepted my existence as it is.”

Even to my own ears, it was a strained argument. He seemed to feel the same, narrowing his eyes into a glare while fiddling with his ears, which had flushed red without him realizing it, as if trying to hide them.

Hesitating as though holding back the words that immediately sprang to mind, his lips twitched once or twice before he finally averted his gaze and grumbled under his breath.

“If my father learned what you were and hid you too, would my father become a ‘different’ person to you as well?”

Only then did I understand the reason behind his sidelong glare. I parted my lips on reflex, inhaled half a breath of thin air, and shut them again.

Looking at his crimson-flushed ears, at the blue eyes darting between his thighs and my face, at his pale fingers fidgeting atop the book he had brought for no purpose…

“…Let me correct myself.”

In the end, I lowered my eyes toward the book I was holding just as pointlessly, answering softly as if talking to myself.

“You are different because you are the human who awakened the first emotion within me.”

Immediately, Ilie’s darting gaze snapped up to hold me square in his sight. Completely oblivious to how crimson his face had turned or how vivid an expectation was etched around his eyes.

“What… kind of emotion is that?”

I did not answer. Pretending I had heard nothing, I kept my eyes stubbornly cast down upon the pages. It was simply a sudden bout of obstinacy. A childish, pathetic, thoroughly human stubbornness.

Looking back now, I suspect I avoided it instinctively, knowing that once I gave voice to that emotion, there would be no turning back. The sensation of being helplessly dragged along and swayed was so overwhelming that I think I was trying to hold my ground in my own small way.

Whatever the petty reason, that day I offered no answer, even as I secretly relished the sound of his racing heart filling the cottage alongside the crackle of firewood in the hearth.

In the end, the answer to that question was spoken by his own lips as our shared hours drew to a close and he prepared to leave the cottage.

“…I’ve already crossed the line. As a priest’s son, I’m doing something unthinkable, something shameful before the Lord, even at this very moment. Do you have any idea how much resolve it takes for me to come here every single day? It’s a sin. Every moment I spend here is a sin.”

For an outburst meant to scold and blame, his voice trembled pathetically and his face was red to the point of absurdity.

“So why is it that you, Sir—a man who claims not to feel guilt even when people die because of you—keep hesitating? You don’t believe in God, nor do you feel guilt. …Not a demon? You’re a demon through and through. Toying with a person’s heart like this.”

Slam!

Beyond the wooden door slammed shut on that final remark, I could hear his heart pounding as though ready to burst, accompanied by frantic, hurried footsteps.

I’ve lost my mind. How am I supposed to face him tomorrow? Ah, why did I say that? I must be insane. His muttered self-reproach drifted back to me, sounding far more flustered than I was after being scolded.

Did he know how sweetly, how sharply that voice—drifting through the crisp crunch of snow under his hurried feet—stung my solitary night?

He was truly an exasperatingly endearing man.

The next day, Ilie did not show up at the cottage even as the sun began to sink.

Having spent the night lost in thought, I found myself waiting endlessly for him, once again gripped by the feeling that time rightfully mine had been stolen. When he failed to appear even as dusk bled into the sky, a sudden pang of anxiety spurred me out the door.

By the time I reached the crossroads separating the forest from the village, heavy snowflakes began falling overhead. Only when something colder than my cooled flesh brushed my skin did I belatedly draw in a breath. The memory of Ilie’s panicked, trembling eyes flashed across my mind, and like a newly acquired habit, I inhaled and puffed out a cloud of white vapor.

Looking down from the low hill, Luncani was turning white beneath the reddish glow of the sunset. Red and white, white and red—the sight somehow brought Ilie’s flushed face to mind, holding me still as I watched it.

Dong, dong.

The church bells tolled.

My eyes, taking in the panoramic view of the village, were instinctively pulled in one direction as my focus narrowed.

Sure enough, there he was. Snowflakes continued to fall thick and fast, and I had not consciously tracked a specific movement, yet the trace was almost purely instinctual.

Stepping out of the church with cautious movements, Ilie hurried his pace, arms folded tight around himself as if embracing his own body. As though he had somewhere he had to reach before the snow piled too high, he ducked his chin against the chill and walked briskly along the path with bowed head.

He didn’t come to me, so where is he going at this hour?

Watching him with narrowed eyes, I noticed the direction he was heading was the very path leading toward me. Only then did my expression soften, and I took my first step down toward him.

Ilie, who had been trotting forward while staring fixedly at the snow before his boots, only lifted his head upon reaching the gentle slope leaving the village.

“…Sir?”

Seeing me standing there as though I had come out to meet him, a visible jolt of surprise crossed his face before shifting into an unreadable expression as he drew his lower lip between his teeth.

“Why are you out here?”

It was an expression so layered that I could scarcely decipher it at the time, yet piecing together every telltale sign blooming around him allowed me to guess.

The furtive glance looking up at me as he drifted closer to my side. The sound of his heartbeat, thundering loud enough to shake the world the moment he spotted me. Cheeks flushed with a warmth entirely distinct from the cold. A voice vibrating with subtle exhilaration.

“I was on my way to see you.”

Had it been before I learned the single emotion all these signs shouted in unison, they were words I would never have spoken.

“Because I missed you.”

If I had not grown certain of that emotion—the one he had awakened within me, the one he had taught me—they were words I never would have uttered for the rest of my unending life.

“Out in the st-street, out of nowhere… wh-what are you talking about?”

Yet to him, it must have arrived entirely without warning; his shyly darting eyes widened in an instant, and his face, which had been softly flushed from the cold and anticipation, ignited into a fiery crimson.

“Just like last time, why do you keep springing things on me out of nowhere… I-It’s like you’re testing me…”

His reply was blunt enough to sting, yet I felt no disappointment. Instead, a deeply satisfying, sweet tickle stirred in my chest. It was a truly bizarre sensation.

As we walked back to the cottage along a path where accumulating snow slowed our pace with every step, neither of us uttered a single word.

I tilted my head down, keeping my eyes fixed solely on Ilie’s profile as he walked beside me, while Ilie stared desperately ahead, doing his utmost to ignore my gaze.

Our lips, sealed tight through the entire trek along the secluded trail, only parted after we stepped into the cottage, softly illuminated solely by the hearth fire I had stoked before leaving.

“I only came today to pick up the book I left behind.”

Stepping inside behind him as he hurried in—whether fleeing the cold or fleeing from me, I could not tell—I caught his arm and pulled him into my embrace before the door behind me had even fully latched.

“I’m leaving right a—”

Ilie’s voice, chattering nervously in a late bid to break the awkward silence, cut off abruptly, and into my cold arms settled a warmth far smaller and more delicate than my own.

His parted lips snapped shut once more. When I first drew him in, he reflexively tried to push me away in surprise at the sudden contact, but as I tightened my arms around him, he seemed at a total loss before gently burying his face against me.

That small surrender—slowly letting the tension drain from his body and hiding his face against my chest—and that timid gesture of permission, trembling with fright yet clutching the fabric of my coat at my waist as though refusing to flee, awakened yet another first-ever sensation within me.

An unprecedented gratification surged upward from the small bundle of warmth held in my arms.

“I thought about it all night.”

I slowly brought a hand up to cup the back of his head. I stroked his hair, then trailed my fingertips down the nape of his neck, flushed red beneath his muffler.

“The more I turned it over, the more I realized you weren’t wrong.”

As the muffler wrapped tightly around his pale throat parted, the sweet scent of skin trapped within wafted up against my nose, sharply stoking my predatory appetite.

“You were right, Ilie.”

The sound of his heart—which had beaten violently enough to shatter the world the entire walk here—thrashed wild as a caged beast in a confined space. At the same time, a familiar urge flared within me, throbbing in my gums and tightening the back of my throat.

“I, who can never become human; I, who do not believe in God; I, who evade even death—what could I possibly know of sin?”

That overwhelming rhythm, transmitted directly through our pressed bodies, fiercely stoked my desire, which even in that moment was intoxicated by yet another newfound sensation.

I shifted the fingertips caressing his neck up to trace the line of his slender jaw. His pale, soft skin was unimaginably warm. It felt as though the fingertips tracing him were melting away like ice pressed against skin.

“Even if you are the son of a priest, even if you are a man like me, even if to me you seem no different than a fragile child…”

Tracing his jawline, I cupped his cheek. His face, which had been buried as if clinging to my embrace was the only thing he knew how to do while all thought ceased, slowly revealed itself.

The moment our eyes met, every thought and confusion that had gripped me until yesterday scattered helplessly along with the fake breath I exhaled just in time.

“To a beast such as myself… what could ever be a sin?”

Drawing the hand cupping his cheek closer, I lowered my head.

Looking up at me with trembling eyes, Ilie uttered not a single word until the mouth of his natural predator, concealing its fangs, engulfed his lips like a swallow.

He simply gripped the fabric of my coat even tighter and shut his eyes.

Holding a human in my embrace was nothing new.

Across the centuries I had lived, I had bedded many women, and since nothing could kill me, I had tasted every pleasure this world had to offer. I had lived as a scoundrel, and I had lived as a god.

Yet all those experiences and memories were washed away like a sandcastle swept by the tide after a single night with the very first man in my life—and the clumsiest.

Before that day, copulating with a human was akin to feeding. In truth, because it had always doubled as a meal, the sensation was even closer to drinking blood. Thrusting myself into the intimate depths of a warm, soft life, feeling the living heat and pulse of that creature, fulfilling myself through it.

For a being whose first reaction to a naked human body was appetite rather than lust, it was an entirely natural perception.

Yet that day was different.

Of course, before Ilie’s flesh, I fell into a similar state. My gums throbbed, the sweet scent of skin constantly assaulting my nose made it agonizing to maintain my reason, and as I tasted every part of his body, I burned with an unquenchable thirst.

When I licked his skin, my body secreted saliva and pushed forward my fangs as though preparing for a meal. From the tips of those bared fangs flowed the fluid that made giving up one’s bodily essence feel like pure ecstasy, and when I buried my nose into the soft flesh and tender warmth that I lacked, a pulse resembling the thrill of the hunt resonated within me.

And yet—despite all of that—it was different.

I wanted to put something other than teeth into Ilie’s body. Not puncturing his skin to drain his blood, but simply extracting bodily fluids from him just as he was.

Even when, unable to contain my arousal, I inadvertently bit into his flesh and left teeth marks, I felt no regret over failing to pierce his skin. Simply by endlessly driving myself into an orifice that already existed, he poured out a fluid far sweeter than blood without end.

“Ah… ah…”

Whenever moans he could not suppress escaped—even after biting his lip, stifling his mouth with the back of his hand, or burying his face in the pillowcase—it felt as though my cold body was turning to liquid, dissolving into a stream.

Whenever I seized that slender waist—so fragile it felt as though it would snap with a sharp crack under just a little too much pressure—and brutally rammed into him from below, he convulsed like prey bitten in a vital spot and groaned like a dying beast.

It hurts, it feels strange, no, I’m scared, it’s too deep, slower, please. He tumbled out such words without pause, as if pleading.

That night, I heard every single fragment of the sounds he made without missing a thing. But that was all. I took it in with my ears alone; I granted nothing of what he pleaded for.

I swear it was not intentional. I simply could not stop. Even knowing full well that I was taking a body far too delicate compared to mine, I could not halt myself from boring into that passage, which clamped tightly around me as if trying to melt me down.

Inside my wildly tangled head, there was only boiling arousal and curiosity. I wanted to know everything about him as he experienced me.

Where and how he had been driven senseless because of me, where and how he wanted to be touched. And what it felt like to swallow me whole with those small hips and narrow pelvis, when even full-figured women had found me overwhelming.

Just as I wondered what he was feeling, I wondered what I was feeling as well. That sensation, like water welling up and spilling over from deep within my chest, that overpowering surge of gratification—there was no way to put it into words.

Everything was hazy yet everything was so intensely vivid; while I knew completely what and how much I was feeling, at the same time I understood none of it.

It felt as though I had been cast into a blazing brazier. Melting, freezing anew, melting again, flowing down only to freeze solid once more.

My heart pounded wildly of its own accord, and my breath burst out uncontrolled. A foreign sensation I had never experienced in all my existence continually sent tremors through my dead flesh.

Every time my cold skin touched his white flesh flushed with heat, every time I drove the hottest part of my body deep into that soft, tender flesh below, the numb, desolate world I had forged alone over hundreds of years was hacked to pieces by his sobbing moans and ragged gasps.

Clearly it was I who had entered, I who had invaded and violated him, yet—

“I’m scared… I’m so scared.”

“Of what? Of committing a sin? Or of being violated by a living sin?”

“Of myself right now… rejoicing even while knowing it is a sin…”

For some reason, throughout that night, at every single moment, I felt as though I was the one being invaded and brought to surrender.

Even now, as I set down this chronicle, I remember every moment of that night so vividly that I could write it all down without missing a single detail.

The night a monster walking eternity was utterly subjugated by a small, warm human who lived for a mere handful of time. It was the first time either of us had known another man, so we were clumsy and awkward, but for that very reason, it was all the more searing.

A night I could never forget, no matter how much time should pass.

Even while thinking that someone other than him and me might look upon this chronicle one day, the reason I deliberately write down our secret night is that it was a monumental night—the night this unidentified something finally came to utter the word love without hesitation.

Because it is a record of humiliation in which the arrogance of this nameless monster wandering the human world was thoroughly broken, and simultaneously the record of the most radiant resurrection in this eternal life.

✦ ✦ ✦

From that day on, we faced each other not as human and monster, but simply as two men whose hearts were entwined.

The quiet cottage, a space where we had read books listening to each other’s breathing, naturally transformed into a sanctuary of carnal desire.

He, who had always sat at the small tea table by the window, drew closer and closer to me as I sat in the armchair beneath the bed; delighting in his change, I moved the chair, which had been tucked into that cramped space, near the hearth.

From perching on the edge of the bed close to the chair, to being coaxed and soothed over several days until he finally settled atop my lap—with only a slight exaggeration, it felt as though I held the entire world in my arms.

Through those hours, the glances exchanged between us grew increasingly sticky, while in reverse, the mood that had once thickened like mucus whenever I thought of him gradually shifted into something smooth and slick.

Yes, in those days, I was boundlessly slippery. There is no other way to explain that sensation.

Appetite and love, exploitation and devotion—my mind, having embraced two irreconcilable emotions simultaneously as if they were one, felt slick as though filled with oil. There were no impediments to my thoughts, no obstacles to my judgment. As long as he stood as the reason, I could accept anything and swallow anything.

Even if it was something the reason built over hundreds of years rejected as though it were instinct itself, I took it in naturally, like swallowing an oiled oval pill.

There were two representative examples. One was promising that as long as I remained with him, I would never drink human blood nor harm any human; the other was taking a man’s phallus into my starving mouth and caressing it fully.

“Why is it always you, Sir…? I want to do it too. I want to.”

“Your mouth is too small; it will not do.”

“It’s not that my mouth is small, it’s just that you are too… No, anyway. Even if I can’t take it all in like you do, I can still do it. …Stay still.”

Though it was something the instincts of a male born of nature and reared by the laws of nature would resist, and though I had done it because I desired it rather than seeking repayment, he obstinately insisted on returning everything to me.

Thus, whenever we found moments alone together, we cast off every layer and devoted ourselves entirely to coveting each other.

Watching him, who had been clumsy and awkward in everything, grow accustomed to me and come to feel me fully, I felt a sense of conquest and gratification more intense than at any other moment; and as if he knew it, he fell ever deeper into me.

He often blamed himself, saying he felt as though he had become a beast because he became aroused whenever he looked at me, but to me, who knew no concept of sin, it was a time of endless sweetness.

Whenever we walked the forest under the pretext of a stroll or a hunt, we would wordlessly link our fingertips or wrap an arm around a shoulder to share our warmth; and when it was time for him to return, I would walk with him as far as the front of the church, bid his parents good night, and turn back.

Whenever his parents and I crossed paths, Ilie would wear a pained, conflicted look as if he had become some dreadful apostate, but since I had no need to know shame, I could meet their eyes and exchange greetings with them without the slightest hesitation.

Though days passed, though months went by, our fervor showed no sign of cooling.

“Do you not want to have a name?”

The first time he brought up the subject of a ‘name’ was when those sweet days flowed on and on until the season returned to the very same one in which I had first set foot in Luncani.

“I do not.”

“Why?”

“Because it will only be forgotten anyway.”

At that answer, he stared down at his thighs as if lost in thought for a moment, his hands clenching into small fists.

“But a name is identity. It’s proof of existence… Even if everyone else forgets, as long as you remember it, Sir, it exists in the world.”

Then, with a voice laden with resolute strength as if he had reached a decision, he spoke:

“If you live by taking careless names and carelessly throwing them away, you have no identity you want to protect yourself… so you end up continuing to live carelessly.”

Truthfully, to me, it held no meaning whatsoever. A name possesses meaning only when called, and value only when remembered. Even if I made myself known by name to humans who came and went like migratory birds, in the end I would be left alone once more, and their memories would scatter to the winds.

No, putting all that aside, for someone whose very mode of survival was concealing his identity and erasing memories, a name was fundamentally unnecessary in the first place.

“More than anything, I hate hearing you call yourself ‘something.’ I hate that I have no cherished word to call someone who has become so precious to me.”

Yet in that instant, I slipped once again.

“Do you still not want one?”

The moment I met those sparkling blue eyes that seemed to command me to quietly accept since it was his wish, I could not even summon the will to refute or evade, surrendering helplessly.

“If it is a name you bestow upon me, perhaps it will hold value to me as well.”

At the words I offered quietly after a pause, he smiled as if he had heard the answer he desired most in the world—with a face slightly shy, slightly sorrowful, and slightly elated all at once.

“Originally, the person who discovers a plant or animal for the first time is the one who names it. Until then, it was something that didn’t exist, but once it has a name, it begins to exist in the world from that moment on, right? So if I give you a name, Sir, it means I’ve brought you into existence in this world. Isn’t that romantic?”

At that, I melted once more, pulling him—who was already sitting on my lap with his head resting on my shoulder—into an even tighter embrace and burying him deep in my arms.

“…It is.”

Though he was already in my arms, I wanted to have even more of us touching. I wanted to feel that warmth just a little closer.

An unquenchable ember kindled upon a glacier frozen solid for hundreds of years. An eternal flame that endlessly melted me, endlessly softened me.

My first love, my first man, my Ilie was such a being.

✦ ✦ ✦