"Another one?"

"Over break?"

"Isn't it terrifying? It feels like nowhere is safe."

"You're being dramatic."

The girl sighed, elbow propping against the cafeteria table, her head against an open palm, the short pink locks of her hair pooling around the crunched ends of her fingertips as her friend watched her across the way. Their trays of cooling breakfast food, some half eaten and most placed aside, wafting the sweet smells through to the idle chatter venting in the cafeteria. Quiet laughter met their ears, gentle words, fast gossip, exchanged between friends, and glances shot from certain people to others.

The kind of eyes that tore down every bit of who you were, destroying your self, your confidence, your worth. It was hard to trust when those glares were flung underneath kind compliments.

By the lines waiting patiently to taste the freedom from the clutches of hunger via the form of breakfast, voices began to ring louder than those casual conversations. The source? The same people from the day before, and the day before that when the new year started, and the weeks before their temporary break before they were dragged back to this institution parading itself as a school. A familiarity was in one of the boy's laughter, in every pronounced syllable it was louder than the drudging mood of the shifty glares.

"Those boys are always loud," The girl with the short pink hair shot a pointed glare their way, "Can't the teachers tell them to quiet down?"

Her friend hummed a wordless response as she directed her line of sight to lock on to the people, once again those cheerful tones lifting the overall down mood of those surrounding them. As if they exist in two entire worlds; One forced to meet a realistic fright eye to eye, and the other allowed to dream of an idealistic fragility known only to a carefree nature. No matter how faked that carefree nature was and it's potency when laced with a unrefined brutal instinct, one that was uncontrollable when not kept in check. That was obvious. To anyone who chose to look at them, it was easy to tell, and a breeze to identify.

Her friend rolled her eyes at them, hands idly twisting the ponytail her hair slung into as she address the others sitting politely, "You really think the teachers would step in? Those three...

"They're vampires."

The pink haired girl scoffed. Waving it off, she snatched one of the complimentary juice boxes provided with their meal, slurping lightly on the chewed straw as she validated, "Half the school's population is made up of them, you figure the faculty would be used to it by now."

"Of course they aren't. They'll kill you if you get on their bad sides."

"That's a stereotype, they've been peaceful for a long time now."

"I don't mind most of them, the majority is nice," The last girl sitting at the table, another addition to their group of friends minus two who never showed to the cafeteria, peeped her head up from the fabric confines of her backpack as she told them. Her notebooks and condemning textbooks were strewn across the tabletop, the seat next o her, the floor, as she continued to dig in the compartments, her hands devoured by the wonderland of that black hole existing within the eternal void inside the book bag. She brushed her blonde hair to the side, carefully tucking it behind an ear as she continued to pack and unpack, pack and unpack, her bag for the hundredth time in the past few minutes, "The Hwang boy is a little weird, but he's kind."

Seemingly brushing off the comment and the aforementioned conversation topic, their friend with the ponytail scanned her over a few times before asking, "What are you looking for?"

"My class schedule, and dorm arrangement," The blonde responded, a heavy groan leaving her lips as her palms thumped mercilessly against the temples of her head. These hits were strong enough to rock the table they sat at, strong enough to rock the ground, to send earthquakes to the other side of their world with each disappointed and furious hit. Frantically, she pursued the expedition to find the designated paper among the mess crested by her own hand. Her voice cracked as the starting of what looked to be tears pooled in the inner corners of her eyes, "What am I going to do? I haven't memorized it yet and classes are starting on Monday. Should I go talk to the office?"

"We'll help you look for it when we finish eating," The girl with the ponytail reassured. Delicately, she reached across the table and size her friends hand, the comforting gesture only earning enough time for a quiet 'thank you' and for the blonde to continue rummaging in her bag as they went back to their breakfast.

Steadily, as if nothing had changed, they fell back into their comfortable rhyme. The two tried to finish off the remainder of their provided breakfast while their friend perilously rummaged in every known pocket of this universe to find where that dreaded slip of paper containing the future happened to run off to. It might have been hidden under her sweatinf palm, inside the book bag beside a forgotten textbook, in her next door neighbor's house where their dog Scruffy annihilated it thinking the paper was a toy, in the rural mountainside of the country where only the freshest snow would dare traverse, half way across the world buried in another timeline, and somehow those spots would make perfect sense.

It would be nice to dream of that world. It would be nice to live in that world, another dimension, another reality, somewhere parallel to here but never exactly the same. It would be safer, a paradise, a hidden villa, a safe haven. It didn't belong here. As beautiful as it sounded, as much as those things truly existed within their universe, there was still an underlying disgust waiting within the walls. They were waiting for the moment it would all collapse, tumbling down, unrecoverable.

A shadow stalked over to their table.

The pink haired girl's eyes shot in the direction of the visitor encroaching on their temporary and private residency at the lunch table. Immediately, the hunched figure caught their gazes as he muttered a quiet, "Excuse me?"

"It's the Hwang boy, Hyunjin," Their friend with the ponytail hissed behind a hand, though somewhere in the back of their minds, they all knew that hidden hand would hardly benefit towards their wanted secrecy. Not with the careful quirks of his face after she spat those words, not with the way his weight shifted. And yet, despite knowing what she said, despite knowing full well that it was strange for a thing, a vampire, to suddenly approach them without much reason, he kept an indifferent appearance about him. It was that same unbothered stare, as if anything they said wasn't hear even if they knew without a single doubt left lingering in their minds that he had indeed heard it. Again, there was no way he couldn't have.

The mentioned, 'Hyunjin', slid a paper over to the blonde without an explanation. The only affirmation given to his sudden appearance and suspicious paper being an awkward smile and a soft, "You dropped this in the lecture hall."

"Oh, thank you," The blonde took it off the smooth surface of the table, the edge of the paper cutting under her nails and protruding into skin that never wished to be bothered. It sounded an awful lot like a certain someone who decided to drop the schedule off. And almost as if he could read the thought, Hyunjin bowed lightly, turned on his heel, and treaded away from their table without much else said. Aside from the necessary dismissal announcing his departure from their company. The blonde girl trained her eyes on his back, commenting quietly as he fiddled with the paper, "He seems... Gentle."

"That's why he's weird. No vampire is 'gentle'," Her friend with the ponytail shook it off. She possessed an edge to her tone, every sharp word pointed for reasons unknown to most but understood by any who heard it. The kind of pointed that harbored a pain behind it. She continued on, justifying the statement with a sigh, "That murderer should be enough clue to that."

The pink haired girl nodded an agreement, "Let's just finish eating and get out of here."

"The 'gentle' vampire," The blonde repeated as she crumbled up the schedule paper, muttering lightly to herself,

"No wonder Seungmin hates him."

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗

Hyunjin trailed back to his friends waiting in line, eyes trained down to the tips of his shoes as he stumbled along the cafeteria's outline, ensuring above all else he didn't happen to crash into an unsuspecting person while he made his trek back to the others. All the while replaying the brief exchange taking place merely moments before, and concentrating on the single fact of how damn awkward that was. He did his best to keep a blank face about him as he cringed inwardly, a vacant gaze to his eyes that spoke of an obliviousness should he find himself in the threat of an argument or physical confrontation. Even if he might have been able to win that confrontation.

By time he arrived back, internals shredded to pieces and mind fried from the sheer embarrassment of having to confront anyone, paired with the fact he was being shot curiously sleazy smiles from his friends. Before they could even ask or get any words running through their deranged minds from their vocal chords to the unsuspecting surroundings, Hyunjin defended his honor with a disappointed testament, "She forgot her paper. That's all."

"Look at you," Jeongin mocked him, arms acting as stabilizers as he leaned against the shoulders of another friend, Chan. Cooing, he raked his eyes up and down his friend's form, "So righteous. So chivalrous."

Hyunjin reiterated, "I wanted to return it."

"Yeah, it doesn't sound like him to do something for a date," Minho nodded along with him, the hums of a quintessential acknowledgement radiating from his voice. The youngest of them sent him a sharp glare, one that spoke volumes of the disbelief he contained in his body, hip cocking out to the side as he glared both of them down. The only reason Chan was safe from the state of dubiety was due to the fact only the back of his head would be receiving that look of knives. Before Hyunjin could mentally thank him for the added defense, or tell Jeongin to back off on asking anything farther, or to stop making assumptions that were wildly distant from the reality of the matter, Minho clicked his tongue. He shifted to Hyunjin, hand coming pat his friend's shoulder with a dignified contempt, "He doesn't have the guts to flirt with someone anyway."

I want to rip his head off, Hyunjin bit back a scowl with a neutral face as his friends entertained the idea between themselves. When they didn't seem to notice how displeasure, or didn't seem to care, he chose to bite back with the simple and harmless comment of, "They did say they wanted you three to be more quiet."

"Ooooooh humans think they can tell us what to do," Jeongin mocked. Underneath his elbows, Chan's shoulders bounced, almost unnoticeably, as a light laugh left his chest. The younger of the two continued to tease, a twinge to his voice that said it knew the truth of their realize despite the intimidating jokes for geared provocation of the highest degree. It was sarcasm. Nothing more. A sarcasm, because they knew the reality would chain them back too much.

"Try to be more considerate."

"Fine. Whatever."

Chan sent Jeongin a light kick to his shins with that comment.

"Well, I'm heading back to the dorms. Not exactly down for soggy chicken nuggets and pretending that's a decent breakfast instead of the much preferred waffles, or literally anything else," Minho exhaled heavily ad he watched them. Not entirely a sigh, not entirely a normal breath, something existing in the middle of okay and not, yes and no, correct and wrong. Hyunjin noted the exasperation of it, and beyond that, he noted the strangest hint within his voice. It mimicked a concern but, not entirely there. Before he could ask or think more about it, the older started to step away from them, eventually coming to turn around, stepping backwards as he shouted back to them, "Welcome back to another year of hell!"

When he was gone, his back retreated past the doors of the cafeteria and no hint of him ever eavesdropping on the conversation within, Chan muttered, "Always pleasant having him around."

"Is violence between vampires legal?" Jeongin quirked an eyebrow.

Chan shrugged a tired response, the weight he beared on his shoulders as heavy as the gravity of Jupiter.

With that one comment, Hyunjin was reminded of a violent reality;

We're vampires. We're monsters.

He could feel the eyes in the cafeteria training on their backs. Relenting stares that never left their figures, and the figures of others who were similar to them. Eyes always followed them. No matter where they went, they were always within eyesight, always watched under the shade of eyelashes and battered wills, the blame of every wrongdoing balanced on equilibrium on top of their chests under they broke from it. Those eyes that chased them judged them, weighed their hearts on that scale, for reasons that were understandable. Of course it was understandable. Their eyes were ones full of fear, but they were eyes full of an unadulterated hatred.

If I was a human,

Those eyes never let him rest.

I'm sure I would be scared of me too.

♢♢♢

Vampires, a mass murderer, a prejudice society, what can go wrong?

Enjoy!