splatters of blood ; minsung

first came the threat

Amélie died on the first of october. 

The cut just above her collarbone wasn't very big, yet she bled out in a matter of minutes. When the police found her three days after being reported missing, lying under a tree in the forest, she was pale and her skin wrapped around her bones like a wrinkled piece of cloth. 

She used to be beautiful, but when Jisung saw her picture in the local newspaper, he gagged and flipped the page immediately. It was too gross to even look at, let alone read the article. He had his father explain the incident to him after dinner.

He couldn't sleep that night.

Rackstead wasn't a big town, with weird people all over the place. In other words, Jisung could have encountered Amélie's murderer multiple times already, clueless.  They could be friends, even! Or worse, enemies.

Jisung had a couple of those. He wasn't someone who talked a lot, but when he did, it was mostly shit about people he didn't like. Which were a lot. Next thing he knew, he would be lying next to a river, bleeding out. The thought itself made him shiver.

Amélie's murder made him paranoid. Extremely paranoid. Whenever he went to school, he made sure to have pepper spray and a pocket knife in the front pocket of his uniform. He even tried to convince his parents to move sixteen days after the incident, but they only sighed and told him to stop worrying.

"There's a fucking murderer in our town!", he had yelled at them, but all they said was: "It was probably personal." Still murder, but he stayed quiet.

On the eighteenth of october, his class got a new student. 

When he entered the classroom with the teacher, Jisung was doodling in his notebook. His friend Changbin kept trying to see what he was drawing, but Jisung didn't let him. At some point Changbin stopped trying, but the younger of the two didn't bother checking why.

The teacher cleared her throat. "We have a new student joining us today."

Some kid named Seungmin two rows behind Jisung said: "In the middle of the school year?"

"It literally started a month ago", an unfamiliar voice replied coldly, which got Jisung two finally put his pencil away. Only to regret it.

The boy looked like a god next to the sorry silhouette of the old lady that was his teacher. His face seemed sculptured by the world's greatest artist, his porcelain skin was perfectly even, his cheeks tinted rose. Piercing brown eyes wandered over the heads of the class, only briefly meeting Jisung's. This beautiful face of his was framed by soft, brunette locks, falling almost down to his shoulders. He carried the same leather bag as all the other students, wore the same old uniform as everyone, yet he seemed a lot more presentable than anyone else in the room.

The boy caught Jisung staring at him wide-eyed, and his tinted lips formed into a slight smile. It sent shivers down Jisung's spine, but he wasn't sure if that was because his gut sensed trouble, or because it was such a gorgeous smile.

He quickly lowered his head. 

"This is Lee Minho", the teacher started introducing the new student. "He came a long way here, all the way from the coast. He's repeating this year, be nice to him."

Jisung looked at the free seat beside him and prayed that there was some other place for Lee Minho to sit, but of course that wasn't the case. His head collided with the table with a thud, getting a chuckle out of the new boy and an "Ouch" out of Changbin, who was seated on his other side.

When the bell finally rang, Jisung threw his stuff into his bag and sprinted out of the classroom to hide in the library. Changbin called after him in confusion, but Jisung pretended not to hear him. He grabbed the first book he could get and sunk his nose into it, desperate to hide his face from anyone and everyone.

He wasn't even sure why he was this embarrassed. This Minho guy just caught him staring and smiled, there was no need to run. Or was it something other than embarrassment that made him flee?

Changbin found him twenty minutes later, with their friend Chan by his side. "Why are you hiding behind that book?", the latter said.

"More like why did you run away like that?", Changbin mumbled, clearly salty over the fact he was just abandoned like that. "Also what the fuck are you reading? 'Vampires – Myth or Reality'? The fuck?"

Jisung removed the book from his face and looked at the opened page. 

...consider it a myth. A very old one, however, as researchers have found drawings of these mysterious creatures in caves. These illustrations are dated all the way back to...

Yeah, no. Boring.

"It's- I'm sorry for running away like that, Bin", Jisung said, getting up from the cold floor and putting the book back into the shelf. "I'm not sure why I did that."

"Were you scared of Minho or something?", Changbin laughed, receiving a curious glance from Chan. "That guy's giving me the creeps too. But, I don't know, in a charming way, kinda."

Jisung nodded silently. That was how he felt too.

"Who's this Minho?", Chan asked, clueless, as he was a year above the two. 

"He's a new student in our class", Changbin started explaining. "Probably your age, he's apparently repeating this year."

Meanwhile, Jisung's gaze was glued to the floor. He felt watched.

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