Chapter Text
The kitchen was hushed, pierced only by the muted scrape of a spatula and the faint murmur of Minji’s voice from the ipad. The device was propped against a leaning tower of unpaid bills, screen angled just enough to glow against the counter.
The jjajang sauce simmered low as the black bean paste’s scent filled the air. Jimin gave it a lazy stir.
On-screen, a YouTube vlogger hunched toward her mic, one half of her face bleached by a cheap desk lamp, the other lost in shadow. For years Minji was the internet’s favorite punchline, posting “alien proof” as shaky zooms and lens flares. Then out of nowhere, she ditched extraterrestrials entirely.
Her fixation shifted to the undead. The Originals . Supposedly the first two vampires, the source of every bloodsucker since. She swore she knew who they were. Claimed to have evidence.
The “proof” was always grainy, vague shapes, shadows that could’ve been laundry flapping in the wind. And yet, people kept watching. Jimin figured it made sense: humanity has a bottomless appetite for conspiracy. Once vampires turned out to be real, every other madness around it suddenly seemed within reach.
Minji leaned into her webcam now, eyes gleaming.
“Vampires are finished. That’s all anyone knows right now.”
The feed cut to shaky phone footage of a skyscraper buried beneath thick emerald coils. Jimin stirred absentmindedly but her knuckles whitened around the spoon. She tasted the sauce. Too bitter. She reached for the sugar jar.
The vlogger spun her chair, revealing a glass container of withered black vines.
“In this episode of Glass Anatomies: Let's talk about the plant that solved global warming and the vampire problem in one go. Snakesbane. Aetherion Lab’s miracle cure for a dying planet, and the reason the night belongs to us again.”
She tapped the glass, sending a haze of invisible Snakesbane spores swirling.
“Fun fact? These are inside us now. In our blood. We breathe them every day.” She tapped the glass again. Tiny spores drifted lazily in the light, curling like smoke in a breeze. “Harmless to humans. Toxic to vampires. Doesn’t kill them entirely but veins blacken, hypnosis fizzles out, bodies slow down. The smart ones? They volunteer as slaves.”
The feed jumped to grainy footage through a cracked window: a pale figure limping, breath ragged, as spores floated like dust motes in the light.
“Jesus!” Jimin fumbled the noodles, sending a splash of boiling water onto the stove. “Warn a bitch next time, alright…” She wiped her hands on her jeans, glare fixed on the screen.
“But even weak predators are useful,” Minji went on. “Haul cargo at night, scrub factory floors until their hands bleed. And they get paid with what?”
It flashed to a security feed showing a gaunt vampire crouched behind a shipping container, its fingers trembling around a dented aluminum bowl filled with a thin, greasy brown liquid.
“Ah yes,” she narrated dryly, “The famous payment system. Rat blood diluted with water and industrial thickener. One bowl per eight-hour shift. Just enough to keep them functioning.”
The footage zoomed in as the creature lapped at the viscous slurry, its throat convulsing with each forced swallow. Streaks of blackened gunk clung to its cracked lips.
Jimin gagged, turning from her own cooking, nose wrinkling in disgust. “You can actually see the... is that fucking sediment?!”
On screen, the vampire's tongue scraped desperately at the bowl's rim, catching the last brackish drops. Jimin made a strangled noise in her throat. “I just lost my appetite for a week.” She glared at her own meal, the rich black sauce suddenly seeming too dark, too thick. “Fuck. Now I'm imagining the mouthfeel.”
Minji smirked. “And to think, these vampires used to feast on kings.”
The sauce bubbled again. She turned down the heat.
“From gods to property. Specialized gangs called FangBangs harvest vampire fangs for beauty serums; others hunt them for sport. Vampires can’t hide; the spores are everywhere.”
Jimin stirred the sauce one last time, wondering if this strange girl ever attended school or had interests beyond cryptids and conspiracy theories.
“Stop watching that lunatic,” Aeri announced, sweeping into the kitchen. She claimed Jimin’s plate of food without hesitation.
“That’s mine,” She replied evenly, reclaiming noodles and chopsticks “And she’s not a nutjob. Did you know that when vampires feed from humans nowadays, they shatter like porcelain? Explains all the glittering debris we stepped over last month.”
“Interesting.” Aeri perched on the kitchen island, watching her sister.
“What’s even more interesting,” she continued, “Minji says there are two ancients. She calls them The Originals. Immune to Snakesbane. Just waiting for the time to strike. She’s teasing it for the next episode.”
Aeri gave a slow blink. “Great. I hope one of them kills me quickly, preferably before our landlord does.”
“Don’t worry, I have a new job.”
“Fascinating deja vu, you said the very same thing last week.” Aeri gestured toward the ipad. “If only you applied that scholarly devotion to actual employment instead of vampire gossip, we might pay rent on time. We could be dining on something better than discount noodles by now. We need mom–”
“We’ll get by, okay? Just… trust me.” Jimin sighed, then added, “Besides, you’ll find something to complain about even if we were eating steak.”
“We’re one notice away from eviction. We need to call Mom.”
“Stepmother,” Jimin corrected.
“An unimportant distinction. She remains the only one with money.”
“I don’t like her.”
“You’ve forfeited the right to dislike anyone. We are broke and,” her gaze flicked to Jimin’s bowl, “remarkably unemployable.” Aeri leaned across the counter. Her sweater looked soft. Cashmere. Jimin reached out, tugging at the sleeve.
“This from Ning again?”
“She’s my girlfriend. She enjoys buying me things.”
“Yes. Sweaters. Not rent.”
“Point is,” Aeri pressed on, ignoring her, “We can’t even kill vampires for a living anymore. They’re so pathetic no one wants them dead. FangBangs are farming the poor bastards. You wouldn’t spot one wandering, and even if you did… it’s off-limits. Tagged property. Honestly, this world has lost its spine!”
Jimin made a face and slurped her noodles. “I liked you better when you used fewer words.”
They both work for an agency called MAMBA (Metropolitan Agency for Monitoring & Banishment of Aberrations), a vampire-hunting bureau with a 24-hour hotline. Once upon a time, the line rang incessantly: panicked voices reporting shadowy figures at bedroom windows, neighbors drained in alleyways, blood trails on back staircases. Now the phone sat mute. Two months of silence.
Memories of them leaving home halfway through high school crawled back after their mother died. Cause of death: exsanguination. Secondary cause: vampire. Their father remarried soon after, only to be murdered by the same kind of predators. So the creatures became their singular focus.Years of state-mandated taekwondo and those absurd after-school seminars (“How To Kill A Vampire: Proper Stake Grip: 3pm, Room 207”) had, against all odds, become useful. MAMBA honed their skills further.
“For Mom,” they’d whisper after each kill, as if the words could fill the hollow space she left behind.
“If I ever catch a bloodsucker outside and unchaperoned, I’m putting it down,” Jimin said flatly.
Her sister arched a brow. “Do. And watch FangBangs reduce you to paste before dawn. Remember Jihyo? Jeju’s golden vampire hunter? MAMBA said she vanished last week for killing a single stray.”
Trapped by debt, by bureaucracy, by predators that no longer even qualified as predators, Jimin exhaled. “I’m picking up shifts as a waitress. At that pojangmacha across from the new ice cream shop. I start tomorrow.”
“You are the most catastrophically graceless creature I’ve ever met. I’ll give you twenty minutes. Thirty if the gods are merciful, before you immolate the place in soy sauce.” Aeri rose smoothly. “Eat. I’ll see if Ning can be persuaded to lend us more money.”
“Tell your patron saint of cashmere we need rent, not knitwear.”
Her sister smoothed the cuff of her sweater with something close to smugness. “One ought always to look as though one summers abroad.”
“You remain impoverished,” Jimin mocked, voice muffled by noodles. “See? I can do Austen too. ‘Tis the truth universally acknowledged that you’re still broke.”
“At least I’m broke in Prada.”
“Prada doesn’t keep out the cold.”
“Neither does poverty, but at least I look better freezing.”
“Not when you’re blue.”
Aeri gave her a look. “Call me when you set your new job on fire.”
Jimin flicked a solitary strand of noodle across the counter.
Her sister recoiled, “Hey! That represented approximately three won of our collective net worth! Kindly refrain from wasting our very little food!”
↭
The vinyl flaps of the pojangmacha shivered as Jimin pushed inside. The scent hit her first: frying oil and the faintly sour tang of cheap soju, clinging stubbornly to everything. There was something metallic, something probably not supposed to be part of the menu. Steam curled thickly, clinging to her lungs. She adjusted her tray and began weaving between low tables, half expecting the world to resume some sense of normalcy. It didn’t.
Her phone buzzed violently with messages from Aeri before she even started her shift: Did you spill something yet? Are the noodles on fire? Let’s just call mom, please? Tell me if you die, okay?
She wove between the low tables, tray clutched to her chest when a burst of laughter from the nearest group caught her off guard. A small knot of women in office blouses, their cheeks flushed from drinks.
“I’m telling you,” one woman declared, glass aloft, “Eternaderm is a revelation. Vampire fangs, ground fine, stirred into your drink. Look, wrinkle-free.” She smoothed a cheek with tipsy triumph. “At least the bloodsuckers are finally good for something.”
The table erupted with another laughter. Jimin didn’t linger but their words lodged somewhere sharp in her ribs. Vampires reduced to cocktail party anecdotes. Fascinating. The absurdity of it would almost be amusing if it weren't so grotesque.
“Careful,” one woman murmured, her smirk crooked above the rim of her glass. “Wait until the Originals come and kill us all. They’re not affected by Snakesbane. Then we’ll see who’s laughing.”
A pause, then a scoff from across the table. “Oh, please. You’ve been glued to Minji’s channel again, haven’t you? Ancient or not, Snakesbane eats through anything without a pulse. Every last one of them. Go watch the Aetherion Labs documentary.”
The waitress didn’t look their way. She simply set a basket of skewers on their table and moved on. She was threading her way toward another when it happened.
The air pressure shifted. Not like a draft from the tent flap, but a sudden, localized vacuum. The bottles behind the counter clinked once, sharply, then toppled in a clean cascade. A cold current of air, not a gust, but a single, focused ribbon of wind cut through the humid tent. It brushed past Jimin’s cheek with an unnatural chill, leaving the hairs on her arm standing on end.
Her stomach dropped. This wasn't weather. This was a presence .
“What the fuck was that?!” someone shouted but no one answered.
Another surge hit the far end of the tent. The invisible force was moving. A table shuddered, shoved several inches across the floor as it passed. Too fast to see but strong enough, intelligent in its path.
Jimin’s tray trembled. Her stomach knotted in recognition, her mind screaming the old alarm. Predator .
Breaking away, she slipped past the tent flap. The night air hit. Behind her, the tent buzzed with panic. Raised voices, shuffling feet, the kind of confusion that made prey easy pickings. Her gaze tracked the path of destruction: a knocked-over bench and tree branches swaying violently as if parted by a hand, past the Snakesbane vines to the glowing ice cream shop sign. The unnatural wind vanished there.
She knew .
“This can’t be…” Her pulse thumped in her ears. The vines claimed this quarter of the city with roots curling through soil, spores clinging to every surface. Nothing that ran on vampire blood could move that fast here.
Unless.
This was something else entirely. An Original, if the myths were true.
The waitress clenched her jaw and finished her shift. Every muscle ached but the promise of cash at day's end kept her moving. When the last dish was cleared, she slumped onto the bench outside the tent bar. A massive white oak tree loomed beside her, its trunk choked with Snakesbane vines. No stake in her pocket. If an original vampire lurked here now, she was just another potential victim.
But that was the thing, it didn't feel like the undead’s work.
At full strength, they left carnage in their wake: unconscious bodies strewn like discarded dolls, twin punctures at the throat or wrist. Blood smeared on walls where they fed carelessly. Yet here, nothing. Just the hum of the city, the occasional rattle of a distant train.
Then a sound.
A low, shuddering whine. Sniffling.
The noise came from behind the oak's thick trunk. She stood slowly, pulse quickening and cautiously approached.
A girl perched on the thick roots of the tree, back facing Jimin, shoulders trembling in uneven bursts. Small. Brunette. Short-haired. Fragile-looking. Muffled sobs rattled from her while hands clutched the rough bark.
Jimin hesitated, then moved closer, instincts honed from years of hunting still on alert. "Hey. Are you okay?"
The girl’s breath hitched. “I don’t… I don’t want this,” she choked out. “I just wanna go to college!”
“Right… um…” The waitress faltered, eyebrows knitting. Probably just one of those drunk college kids. They usually ended up dissolving soju in dessert at the ice cream shop across the street. “Shall I call you a cab, miss?”
“You shouldn’t be talking to strangers, ma’am.” The girl’s voice snapped. Jimin blinked, momentarily taken aback, but pushed on. Years of vampire hunting made her adept at coaxing shaken humans, though this one looked like she just polished off a dozen bottles of soju.
"You look like you need help." She reached out, gently turning the girl over and immediately jerked back.
Fangs.
Not the blunt, yellowed fangs of a starving modern vampire. These were needle-sharp, glistening like obsidian shards. The girl's eyes were wrong too. The pupils swallow the irises into bottomless pits.
A memory slammed into her: coppery blood, her mother’s silent room, two brutal punctures in a pale throat. Jimin’s body tensed. Instinctively, her hand went to where her stake should have been except she hasn’t carried it anywhere in months.
The tiny vampire waved her hands frantically. “Please don’t be scared! I’m… basically vegan!” Her eyes went wide. “Wait, that sounded worse out loud, didn’t it? What I mean is… I'm on a strictly rat-blood diet. It's super gross, I promise." She wrinkled her nose. "The aftertaste is like… rusty pennies. I also, um, keep crashing into things because I can’t steer yet. I’m a two day old vampire, ma’am."
Her hands were streaked with faint marks, the wounds sealing before they should. “Everything heals too fast… but it still hurts. Like getting paper cuts again and again.”
The vampire continued to wipe her tears with trembling hands.“I don’t… I don’t know how to stop it. The hunger just comes and I… I really, really don’t wanna… snack on anybody that walks on two legs, y’know?”
The waitress stared, confused. What the hell even is this?
The little vampire pouted with glossy eyes. “I… I accidentally bit my own tongue yesterday. Twice.” She tugged her sleeve up over her mouth, muffling a tiny whimper. “I keep forgetting I have fangs now… and it really hurt.”
It should have been a trick. Jimin knew that. Vampires played fragile right before lunging for the jugular.
But this one.
Tear tracks glistened under the streetlights. A reddened nose. A trembling lower lip. The vampire girl really was small, barely reaching Jimin’s shoulder if she probably stood up. Her frame was swallowed by an oversized hoodie. She looked less like a predator and more like a drowned kitten left out in the rain.
“Someone turned me yesterday but I didn’t ask for it, I swear!” the bloodsucker just went on. Her eyelashes were sticking together as she blinked too fast, like a kid trying not to cry. Every human-turned-vampire carried an instinct: a compulsion to hunt and drain but here she was, apologetic, fragile, terrified.
“You see, I studied for two months for my college entrance exams. Flash cards, caffeine, a color-coded planner. I want a job in an office, with a neat little uniform. Help feed my family’s goats in Busan. Not…” She gestured helplessly, bark scraping under her nails as the wounds sealed mid-gesture. “…this.”
Jimin stared, wrong-footed. Usually, this was the part where she staked them, watched the creature turn to ashes, and maybe grab tteokbokki on the way home. Instead, she stood there like she stumbled into a midnight counseling session with the world’s most pathetic predator. The creature stayed perched on the branch, picking at the bark with her nails while having a breakdown. She wouldn’t stop talking long enough for Jimin to even get a word in.
The vampire hiccupped, cheeks blotchy, eyes wide. “I can’t go near people anymore. They all smell like blood. I might… y’know… chomp.” She winced at her own word choice. “So you should probably stay away, ma’am. And don’t talk to strangers!”
Funny advice, coming from someone who hasn't let another soul speak since she opened her mouth, the waitress thought.
Another hiccup-sharp sob shook the tiny creature. Then, with mortifying courtesy, she managed through her tears, “I’m… sorry for disturbing you, ma’am. I’ll get out of your way!”
“Wait… what’s—”
But the words barely left Jimin’s mouth before the creature was moving. She shifted too fast. Skin sealed over, injuries gone. Air snapped like a rubber band. She was gone, leaving only the scent of wet earth and claw marks on the tree.
Jimin stared at the vacant space. A vampire. Crying. About goats and college exams.
Her fingers twitched toward where her stake should've been. But even if she brought one, could she really drive it through something that cried about homework and smelled like wet hay?
On the ground, something pale caught the streetlight. A folded, scuffed piece of paper. Jimin bent to pick it up.
KIM MINJEONG
Busan Science High School: Senior
Subject: College Entrance Exam - Agricultural Biotechnology
Seoul National University: Provisional Admission Granted
A farm girl turned vampire. Not a shadow-lurker, but the kind that cried under trees, bit her own tongue, and gave stranger-danger advice. What kind of monster did that?