A Changed Friend (3)
The burning thirst made me mumble.
“Water...”
Not long after, a soft touch brought cool relief to my lips. I drank it down without thinking.
Each swallow sent a refreshing jolt through me that snapped my mind awake. Once I had drunk enough of the water someone was patiently feeding me, I slowly opened my eyes.
The first thing I saw was a pair of brilliant crimson eyes. Zeta.
“...Zeta?”
“Yeah, Hyunwoo. It’s me.”
She asked if I wanted more. I shook my head. It felt like I had been lost in a deep sleep for ages, and I needed time to sort through the chaos in my head.
With unfocused eyes, I carefully scanned my surroundings.
The bloodstains that hadn’t been fully wiped away, the bandages wrapped around my arm, sunlight pouring through the windows, the faint metallic scent of blood still lingering. And the student council room that had been our shelter since yesterday.
I had no choice but to accept that the nightmare I’d had wasn’t a nightmare at all. It was reality.
“...It wasn’t a dream.”
“Hyunwoo, if you’re hurting, you can sleep more. You pushed yourself hard yesterday. You still look exhausted.”
“......”
I stared at Zeta in silence. She must have been busy while I slept. New items sat on the table that hadn’t been there before.
Proper bandages—not torn scraps of cloth—were wrapped neatly around my arm.
Noticing my gaze, Zeta studied my face and explained.
“While I was cleaning up the zombies yesterday, I spotted a vending machine at the end of the hallway. The water came from there. I found the bandages in another office. I didn’t go far. I promise.”
“...Zombies.”
The word slipped out, and last night’s events surged back to the surface. The zombies that had followed the trail of my blood, the ones that had broken into the building and smashed everything inside—they had all been slaughtered by Zeta after she drank my blood.
“You don’t need to worry about them right now. I took care of everything. Well, everything inside this building, at least. I haven’t checked the second or third floors yet, but I doubt there are any left. I didn’t catch the smell of rotting blood.”
“......”
Yeah. That made sense.
I had no idea what to say. There were too many questions swirling in my mind.
How she could stay calm after the sky itself had shattered.
How she could kill zombies so easily.
How she could control blood.
How.
Just how.
Once the doubts started, they chained together endlessly.
There’s a mark left.
When I unconsciously touched my neck, my fingers found the spot where Zeta’s fangs had pierced me. The mark remained like a brand, and the tangible proof helped ground me back in reality.
I set every question aside for the moment, reached out, and pulled the hesitant girl in front of me into my arms.
“What could you possibly have done wrong that you’re watching me like that?”
“I...”
“It’s okay. You’re going to tell me everything anyway. So for now, just stay like this. Or rather… stay with me like this.”
“...Okay.”
Zeta adjusted her height to match mine and nestled against my chest. The familiar softness slowly eased the frantic beating of my heart.
In a world where everything had become alien, Zeta was the only thing that could still bring me peace.
Even if she herself now carried a hint of unfamiliarity, that was fine.
As the surge of emotion faded, I became aware of what I was doing and released her with an embarrassed expression.
Zeta, on the other hand, stepped back with clear reluctance. Her gaze seemed to linger strangely on my neck for a second, but she quickly looked away. I told myself it was just my imagination.
“Zeta, I have so many questions.”
“I know. I would too.”
“But I don’t even know where to start.”
“That’s fine. There’s no rush. We’re safe right now.”
Her voice was reassuring. Even if it was only temporary, she sounded confident, so there was nothing to worry about. I dragged the half-remembered fragments from my hazy consciousness into the open.
“Are you really a vampire? Or… how do I even phrase this? How can a vampire exist? Zombies don’t make sense either, but at least they only just appeared. You’ve been with me since way before all this, Zeta…”
“Hmm… First, I’m still the Zeta you know. No one swapped places with me. I’ve been a vampire since the day I was born.”
To prove it, Zeta floated a few droplets of blood above her fingertips. It wasn’t a trick or sleight of hand. The droplets simply hovered there. Part of me accepted it, but plenty of questions still remained.
“...For real— No, never mind. Let’s assume you really are a vampire.”
“It’s not an assumption. I really am a vampire…”
“Zeta, please…”
“Okay, okay. No more jokes. Keep going.”
“You’ve never drunk blood before.”
It was the most basic trait of every vampire in stories and movies. They drank blood. That was literally in the name.
A sudden, horrifying thought struck me and I kept talking.
“Or have you been drinking other people’s blood while I was asleep—”
“No! Yesterday was my first time! Do you have any idea how important a vampire’s first blood is? How could you even suggest something like that…”
“Ah… Sorry.”
I apologized immediately. Zeta looked genuinely hurt, like someone wrongly accused of cheating.
“When I was little, out of pure curiosity! I got some pig blood once and tried just a tiny bit, but you’re the first human I’ve ever…!”
“...Pig blood?”
“Yeah… The internet said pigs are the closest to humans, so I tried it once. No, really, just one drop. I threw up right away.”
She said the taste had been more disgusting than she could have imagined. She’d cried while vomiting everything she’d eaten that day. The way she spilled every detail left my head spinning.
Her face paled as the memory resurfaced, which only made it worse. I’d learned something I never wanted to know. I quickly changed the subject.
“Okay, calm down. If you actually throw up here, I’m going to pass out immediately.”
“Ugh… Sorry… I’ll hold it in…”
“Sigh… Pig blood aside, you’re saying I was your first human. So vampires can survive without drinking blood? And while you never really liked sunlight, it was never actually dangerous for you. It was just a mood thing.”
“For ordinary vampires, that wouldn’t be true. I’m a special case.”
Zeta explained that vampires who needed blood were lower ranks with thin blood purity. She had quite high purity, so she could draw energy from other sources instead.
The prime example was tomato juice—red like blood. Wine worked too, but the alcohol made it difficult.
“So that’s why you always carried tomato juice with you.”
“Exactly. Since I don’t drink blood, I drank juice instead. I can technically eat anything, but there’s a psychological satisfaction to it.”
“Does that explain why you eat so much?”
“Yes. Using anything other than blood to replenish energy is inefficient. That’s why I had to eat so much.”
Now that I thought about it, Zeta wasn’t snacking on anything today. It must have been the effect of drinking my blood yesterday.
I suddenly remembered how she used to stay with me until late at night and only leave at dawn. I had always found it strange.
What kind of friend did that? At first I was just happy to have her around so long, but once I got older I realized how unusual it was.
“And the way you always waited until I fell asleep before leaving?”
“That’s right. Watching you eat gave me a sort of vicarious satisfaction… Like I said, it was that psychological fulfillment. Something like that.”
“......”
The unexpected reason left me speechless. She had been using me sleeping as a side dish to her meals. That was how she had eased her bloodlust.
It was like those dried fish hung from the ceiling to watch over the table.
When she saw the shock on my face, Zeta hurried to explain that she couldn’t help it when the hunger hit, that she hadn’t wanted to reveal she was a vampire this way. I barely heard any of it.
“......So you’ve been looking at me as emergency rations this whole time? I genuinely thought we were friends…”
The betrayal in my eyes made her panic even more. She rushed to defend herself.
“No! Okay, part of it is true, but it’s not like that! Please believe me!”
She asked me to believe her, so I did. But the way she still occasionally stared at the bite mark on my neck made it hard to fully trust her.
I decided to keep asking questions. There were more important things I needed to know, but this was a necessary step.
It was the middle ground I needed before I could believe that this Zeta was still the Zeta I knew.