Cursed Blood | Chaelisa

Chapter 12.

"Chaeng, are you there?" Jisoo suddenly called me back to earth, "Why are you so quiet, today?"

"Oh, I'm just thinking," I replied.

"About?"

"Nothing."

"Something, I know," she said.

"Well, just some weird stuff," I said before I could stop myself.

"I like weird stuff," Joy insisted with her curious eyes looking at me. I shouldn't have blurted it in front of them, because what has drilled into every genius's head is a curiosity that could kill a cat. But maybe I could take my chances with them.

"Well, do you believe that there are... other humanoid creatures besides humans?" I tried to make my question sound as normal as I could manage.

"Oh, you mean alien forms?" Jisoo asked.

"No!" I said, "I'm talking about the creatures living in the same planet like us."

"Oh, like the elves and dwarfs?" Joy prompted. At that point, I had to keep myself from falling off of the bench. I guess I would rather talk to a tree instead of these two genius girls.

"That's fictional characters, Joy," I said.

"So you tell us then," she said.

"Well, there's something bugging me about other species besides humans, you know. In Charles Darwin's theory, the individuals who achieve mutation produce more offspring and are likely to survive better than those who don't. The Natural Selection made humans adapt to their environment faster. Humans are capable of surviving and producing more population. So for that reason, humans are considered as the fittest compared to the other kinds."

"That sounds pretty cool to me," Jisoo said, looking pleased with her human pride.

"Yeah, and other than that, there are predators and preys living in the same world together, and those predators survive by killing their prey for food, like lions preying on dears, birds, and maggots, or baleen whales and microscopic plankton, so the species that are best suited and having more advantages over others could become predators. Humans also have to consume other organisms for food though we're no longer hunting mammoths or tigers like in prehistoric time."

"So?" Joy asked and tossed a piece of ham sandwich into her mouth casually.

"So based on this theory, I think humans are predators..."

"Chaeyoung!" Joy snapped at me, "Just because you're a vegetarian doesn't mean you can call us predators."

"No no...Joy, I'm not finished," I said and groaned to myself. "All I'm trying to say is, what if evolution didn't just help only humans to survive but also some other unknown species? What if humans might not be the only superior ones? Who knows we might be the food to another species, you know, predators of the predators...the kind that preys on us?"

"What on earth could be our predators?" Jisoo asked skeptically.

"I think I know what they are," Joy said in a solemn tone, making my head snap right up to her. Jisoo also leaned forward, waiting to hear something productive, but Joy just kept on chewing and chewing until she was sure that our attention completely fell on her.

She swallowed and said in a theatrical voice, "They are a pack of hungry Orcs!"

Jisoo slammed her half-eaten chicken breast on her plate, an offended looked written all over her face. I got my feelings crushed by that too. Joy started laughing hysterically. If what she said was true, Joy would be the first food I would hand over to the Orcs.

"Joy, that's not funny," I finally said.

"Then why did you bring up such a ridiculous thing, anyway?" she asked, still stiffing from laughter.

"I'm just- curious," I said.

"Of what?" She explored.

"Forget it."

"Chaeyoung," Joy spoke in an absolute tone of voice. She does it all the time when she won't take no as an answer, and I certainly didn't want to risk having her Karate chops in self-defense either.

"Okay, fine," I exhaled. "I'm just thinking that...maybe those predators are some kind of creatures like...vampires?" I suggested, and both of them looked at each other as if they were figuring out whether I had a serious brain damage.

"Chaeng, there's no such thing as vampires," Joy came to say after a lengthy silence. I turned to Jisoo.

"I don't know," Jisoo shrugged helplessly. "Nobody has ever proved that they exist, and no one has proved that they don't either." Jisoo's got a scientist mind, so she wouldn't believe or disbelieve anything without a proof. Again, if only they had any ideas of whom they were sitting with.

"All right, never mind," I said, giving up. But as I started to eat again, something came into my mind. "Oh, by the way, Joy, do you know what the word 'Dhampire' means and where it comes from?" I asked.

"Dhampire? Oh, it's not a word, it's a name, referring to the children who are born from a vampire and a human. It's retrieved from the Balkan language. If the child is a boy, they call it 'Dhampire', if it's a girl, 'Dhampiresa'. Based on their folklore, a dhampire is said to be extremely filthy, he or she has either a snub nose, like a bat or worse, no nose at all," Joy paused for a break and took a sip of her fruit drink then she continued.

"And in the Bulgarian legends, folklore has it that a dhampire must also feed on human blood to sustain its existence. In Serbian tales, the dhampire has an oversized head and a small body with no shadow. Other myths say that those dhampires have slippery and jelly-like bodies with no bones, no fingernails and also a deep mark on their backs as though they are missing a tail."

Then Joy shuddered in disgust. Jisoo also grimaced along.

I looked at both of my best friends, trying to keep a straight face. But I still felt like bursting into tears. This was the most insulting thing I had ever heard in my entire life. I know I don't look as beautiful as Joy or as preppy as Jisoo, but I'm sure, I do not find myself fit into any of these stupid legends.

"I thought you said you don't believe in this stuff," I pointed out.

"You don't have to believe everything you know, girl," she replied.

"How did you know all these legends?" Jisoo asked.

"There are some ancient books in the library. I found them while I was learning Slavic," she shrugged again.

I made a mental note right away: Find those books and read them for myself, but only if they were translated, and if not, that's still fine. I had Joy as a backup. She was my human Wikipedia. I just had to know more about myself.

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