We Became Friends
"Red...?"
"Huh? What's red?"
"N-nothing."
"Don't tell me you're seeing ghosts."
"I said I'm not."
Eighth grade—the age when your imagination runs wild. It wasn't that I'd come down with some illness.
I was just... a little more special than other people.
"Wow, that doesn't bother her? She walks around with that hood up every single day."
"...Yeah."
"I heard it's some kind of allergy."
"An allergy to your face?"
"Im Daeho, grumbling first thing in the morning. You skip breakfast?"
"Ate twice. I just don't wanna turn into some scrawny four-eyes."
"If you're gonna fight, take it outside."
"......"
The farthest corner of the classroom. A seat pressed flush to the wall, where sunlight never reached and only shadow pooled. That was her assigned seat. Not that it meant much. The semester had barely started.
"Her face is crazy pale, though. Hair too... she mixed?"
"Minseok. You try talking to her?"
"Yeah, but she doesn't talk."
"With a face like yours, what did you expect..."
"No, I'm serious, she doesn't talk. She completely blanked me."
"Right, so our Minseok's already lived long enough to see his grandkids..."
"What the hell kind of nonsense..."
"......"
My friends bickered right beside me, and slipping quietly through their voices came someone's small whisper.
I'm hungry. I want a blood pack...
This is boring. I wanna go home...
Some people would call it mental illness. Some would call it a shaman's spirit descending. Some would call it eighth-grade syndrome. All of them would be wrong. I was perfectly sane, and the words I was hearing now were no hallucination.
Chestnut-burr hair. He's so short...
Stop staring. You're embarrassing me...
Not a voice leaving a mouth, but an unconscious whisper from inside the heart. I'd only started hearing them recently. To be precise, ever since I first met her.
Chalk tapped across the board.
Two indifferent syllables on the green chalkboard. With that, her self-introduction was over.
"......"
"Hmm. Anything you want to say?"
"......"
At the homeroom teacher's question, she gave a tiny shake of her head. He sent her back to her seat without another word.
"All right, everyone. Seol has her reasons for not speaking. So if any of you pick on her... you get a meeting with me. Okay?"
"Okaaay~"
The class let it slide like it was nothing. I didn't know the details, but apparently she'd already been famous since last year. Never said a word, and always went around alone. She really was a strange kid.
But the truly strange one was me.
A burst of static hissed from somewhere I couldn't place. Every time I heard it, my stomach turned and the room swam, so I spent a long while glancing around—and once again, I couldn't find the source.
"Haa... haa..."
"Hm? Lee Hyunwoo, you sick?"
"I-I'm fine..."
"If you're sick, say so~ Don't go making extra work for me~"
"...Yes."
It happened sometimes. The doctor said it wasn't an illness—stress, or something like it. Maybe that was why a few deep breaths usually chased the headache off. Today, though, it lingered.
The static crackled again, and I groaned—and mixed into that groan was a voice.
I hate introductions...
"...Huh?"
School's no fun...
I looked around again, wondering if someone had spoken to me.
"Well, as you know, the name's Do Yoojin. I teach math. Even if you get curious about something, don't come looking for me. I hate that sort of thi—"
Nobody was talking to me. Even so, a faint whisper kept drifting in from somewhere, tickling the inside of my chest.
Does something... hurt?
No mistake. The voice was coming from the right, so I didn't even need to look at the others one by one. Anyone could tell who it belonged to.
He looks so out of it...
A shadowed corner. A thick hood pulled low. And a red haze rising around her like heat off summer pavement. Baek Seol was speaking to me.
"A-a dream...?"
I yanked hard on my cheek, and tears sprang to my eyes. The pain was real. So was the blank look she had fixed on me.
Is he having a nightmare...?
I jerked my gaze away before I knew it, and the incomprehensible voice stopped. Another one took its place.
"Hyun... Hyunwoo... Lee Hyunwoo!!!"
"?!!"
"A flood in your mouth. An absolute flood."
"I... I wasn't aslee—"
"Wipe your mouth, kid. Don't go dirtying the desk."
I dragged the back of my hand across my chin and felt something slick. Yeah. This wasn't a dream. My cheek still hurt.
"Ow, ow... that hurts..."
"Sleeping from first period. Look at you, doing great."
"Teacheeer~ Hyunwoo got demoted to Bronze yesterday~"
"What? Daeho. You don't play jokes on me, kid. How is a person supposed to survive in Bronze? A person!"
The boys started snickering the moment he roared. It wasn't like anybody wanted to be Bronze. Yesterday I'd just been a little off. Just... off...
Is he bad at games...?
"I-I'm good at games, you know?!"
"Know?"
"...sir."
The crime of talking back to the homeroom teacher: a smack across the back, and a five-minute exile to the hall. I didn't even have to hold my hands up high. Slack off a little and nobody noticed anyway. I was short.
"Haaa. What even is this? Some kind of... ability?"
I checked both ends of the corridor. Luckily no one was passing through, and I had the hall to myself. Inside, the homeroom teacher was diligently holding class. So, under my breath—
"Status window!!"
"...Huh?"
The back door opened at the exact moment I shouted. She stood there perfectly still, hood pulled low, watching me without a word.
No conversation. No reaction. Just silence. That didn't make it any less humiliating. The longer she stayed quiet, the hotter my face burned, so I scrambled to say something—anything—before it burst.
"D-did you hear that...?"
Silence again. And slipping gently into the gap, one line from her.
A status window...?
Today I'd added another entry to my blacklist of memories. The kind I could kick my blanket over all day and still not live down. Maybe that was why I blurted out whatever came to mind, just to hide how badly I wanted to disappear.
"Y-you going to the bathroom...?"
"......"
"Ah... never mind."
"......"
Her sharp eyes and ruby irises pinned me. I tried to glare back, refusing to lose, and turned my head almost at once. Snow-white hair showed through the hood in glimpses, and her face looked like it had stepped out of a fairy tale. Every time I met her eyes, breathing got difficult. She was a little scary, too.
No. I have to hold it...
Hurry. I need a blood pack...
She ignored me and walked off down the opposite hall. I finally let out the breath I'd been holding.
"Haaaa... so embarrassing..."
It had already been two weeks since we ended up in the same class, and I still hadn't so much as said hello, let alone held a conversation. Something told me I shouldn't. Without meaning to, I avoided her every time.
"She's pretty, too..."
"Who? Me?"
"......"
Once she was gone, the homeroom teacher came out the back door. He stroked his scruffy beard.
"I am kinda pretty, you know~"
"...What?"
"Hey, Hyunwoo. That deadpan face is a little harsh, don't you think?"
He'd told us he was a confirmed bachelor. Today, I think I figured out why. With an attitude like that, of course he didn't have a girlfri—
"Quit daydreaming and go to the teachers' office."
"What? Me?"
"Yes, you."
"F-for what?"
"There's a stack of handouts on my desk. Bring them. I'll pass them out early."
"...Yes, sir."
And so I headed for the teachers' office on an errand. Our class was on the second floor and the office was on the fourth, so it was only two flights. If I got back too fast, though, I'd have to sit through math, so I deliberately took the long way—leaving the west stairs right in front of me and heading for the east stairwell instead.
"Huh? Was there a place like this...?"
Right beside the stairs. Not a classroom, not a hallway—just a narrow space with cabinets lined up on both sides. A window waited at the far end, but no sunlight came through it. Maybe that was why the place felt so dark and dingy.
Something rustled deeper inside. Like plastic being handled, or liquid sloshing. An alien little sound, the kind you wouldn't normally hear at school. A small curiosity rose in my chest, because in the empty gap right beside the window, someone's shadow was moving.
"...Red?"
I tipped my head, and the inside of that gap came into view. A wavering red haze, and one snow-white indoor shoe peeking out.
"Uh... uh...?"
Something red dropped beside the shoe with a soft tap. No matter how I looked at it, it was blood. I stepped back on instinct. The wet sound kept coming—thud, thud—and blood was spattering in every direction. Whatever was happening in front of me wasn't something I could handle alone. Running was the only right answer.
...But.
What if I'm too late...?
What if she was in danger while I went for a teacher? No—this was already an emergency. If some attacker had stabbed her, every second counted. One wrong move and she might di—
I couldn't even finish the thought. A far greater spray of blood burst into the air than before, and I ran before I knew what I was doing. No thought for what lay ahead or behind. Just dumb, blind running.
"S-stop!!!"
"......"
"...Huh?"
"......"
Literally everything stopped. The space, the time, me and her—like a photograph instead of the real world. We had simply frozen.
The silence stretched. I didn't know how to react, and neither did she. We only stared. She was crouched in the corner with a blood pack clutched in both hands. I had one hand braced on a cabinet and, in the other, a stick I'd picked up somewhere along the way. We just looked at each other, without a single word.
"...You... okay?"
"......Mm."
"You're not... hurt...?"
"......Mm."
Bright red blood ran down her snow-white fingers, and both our gazes dropped to the floor. That was easier. Easier to talk that way.
"Th-that's new at the school store, right? That thing...?"
"......"
"L-looks tasty... haha..."
"......"
A clumsy lie. Anyone could tell I was just trying to change the subject, but I didn't have the room to pick better words. What she held in both hands was a blood pack with an AB label stuck to it. And with sharp fangs, she'd punched a hole in it and was drinking.
"You... saw?"
"...Yeah."
"All... of it?"
"...Yeah."
This time it was the other way around. She spoke through her lips, and I answered—in that same voice that had always tickled the inside of my chest.
"You... could talk this whole time...?"
"...Ah."
Her mouth opened a little, and the blood pack slipped from her hands. In an instant the floor was soaked, enough that our white indoor shoes were slowly staining red.
"Wh-what do we... do...?"
"S-sorry... I'll go get something to wipe it—"
"...Don't."
When I tried to leave, she caught my wrist and shook her head. A little urgently.
"...Secret."
"S... secret?"
"......Mm."
Everything around us was dark, but her red eyes shone so brightly it was hard to look at them, like a pair of jewels. I turned my head in a hurry.
"Don't. Report."
"...Report?"
"......Mm."
The red haze circling her had looked like heat shimmer at first. Now it had taken the shape of thorns and closed around me, poised to stab if I tried anything stupid or said the wrong thing.
"I-I won't!! Bl-blood? People eat that sometimes, right... yeah... ox-blood hangover soup... I-I like that stuff too..."
"......"
I raised both hands in surrender, and the thorns slowly drew back. They'd only gotten smaller. They still had me ringed in.
Can I trust him...?
But if I don't...
Her unheard voice sank into my heart, and still I couldn't answer. My heart didn't know how to speak.
"...Me. Special body."
"...Huh?"
As she spoke, she gently pulled the thick hood back. White hair spilled down to her waist, swaying like the first snow of deep winter.
"Iron. Not enough. So. Eat blood."
This is so embarrassing...
"Not talking. Fangs. Complex."
I can't tell him. I'm a vampire...
"Sunlight. Allerg— ...no."
How did he end up here...?
Things I couldn't make sense of kept jumping out between the overlapping voices, so I couldn't believe any of it yet. I didn't even know where the truth ended.
"S-some rare disease? Something like that...?"
"......Mm."
"...Treatment?"
"......Can't."
Little by little, the scattered puzzle pieces fitted together, clumsily. Only a few of them. A rare disease, and a complex. Those two were enough.
She's special. More than an ordinary person.
That was the conclusion I wrung out of what little IQ I had. She didn't seem to see it that way.
I'm anxious...
I should keep an eye on him...
She rose slowly and reached a hand toward me.
"...Friends."
"...Huh?"
"...Let's."
A thin hand, glowing white even in the dark. Beneath it, deep red blood rippled like a mirror meant to hold the two of us.
"...Don't want to?"
"N-no..."
"...Then?"
Sharp eyes. A blank face. Honestly, she was scary. Even more so now that I knew her secret.
"Y-yeah..."
"...My name. Know it?"
"I... of course I know..."
"...What?"
Baek Seol.
And, in parentheses—vampire.