Invasion

Chapter 3: Ditched

    It came. The pain and the hate and the what the fuck? I just didn't understand how it could be so easy for him to turn me into something that I didn't even recognize. Why was it happening? Why wouldn't he just leave me alone? Why couldn't I just maintain a little strength and self-respect and tell him no? Really tell him no. Not tell him no and then start kissing him.
    Tears were springing to my eyes and I brushed them quickly away with my sleeves. I didn't want to do this. I couldn't break down now. There was still an afternoon full of classes and an evening of work to get through. I had to force myself up, to keep moving through my day.
    As if on cue the alarm on my phone went off. I'd missed my nap and been drained of more blood. The rest of the day would be harder than I'd expected. At that moment it felt as if everything would be harder than expected for a very long time.

~*~*~

    "Soooooo, Jo DaBin, I heard you did it with Choi ByungWook last night," a girl's voice trilled behind me.
    I frowned down at my notes and tried to block the voice out. It was eighth period and we'd been told to self-study but as usual the majority of the class was just talking and fucking around. Normally, I wouldn't have any trouble ignoring the idle chatter and commotion, but I was tired and my defenses were weak.
    "I did," Cho DaBin answered. It was definitely her. She had a very high-pitched voice and a Busan accent.
    "How did you manage it?" another voice asked. "I heard he prefers older women and never does it with students."
    "We're working on this project together for the broadcasting club. The other members of our group left and it was just the two of us working on our part. We were alone and he said he was hungry and one thing led to another..." DaBin explained with a giggly sort of pride.
    My ears perked up. I couldn't help it. I'd spent all of my freshman and sophomore years ignoring these conversations. The cackling and the squealing and the bragging about being fucked and fed on by a vampire. But now it was different. Now I wanted...to learn something? To figure out if my experience was normal?
    Except I knew that it wasn't. These girls and even the guys in class would eagerly let a vampire fuck and feed. It was a way to get attention from the school celebrities and to gain status among the other students. It was talked about like students talked about getting drunk or high, a fun way to party, only they didn't have to bother lowering their voices so that adults wouldn't overhear them. Feeding the vampires and keeping them happy was completely acceptable.
    I was the oddball. The weird one who just couldn't accept it and move on. I was beating myself up with guilt and shame for something that everyone else would consider a stroke of luck or a win.
    "He was really good," DaBin was continuing to share the details of her hookup. "I mean, it's always different with a pure blood instead of a mixed blood, but he was like...so forceful. He knew exactly what he wanted and he just took it. It was super hot."
    My stomach turned. It felt as if those girls and I were looking at the same painting and seeing an entirely different picture. They were thrilled and I was horrified.
    "I kinda prefer diluted mixed bloods," another voice chimes in. "It's great to be all overwhelmed, but it's also nice to be a little more aware or something."
    "I dated this mixed blood in middle school and he was only an eighth vampire. His power was really diluted. It was just like a buzz from half a beer or something. And it hurt like fuck when he fed on me and the wounds didn't heal right. See this scar?"
    "Jesus. You can't get plastic surgery or something to fix that?"
    "My fuckhead father said that 'we'll see what your ranking is when you graduate' ."
    "Kim NamJoon left scars on one of my tits. One of his buddies came while he was feeding and he just stopped and went off to play basketball or something."
    "Kim NamJoon? But he's so nice," this girl's voice was dreamy and a little embarrassed. "He did me freshman year. He said that my nipples were really pretty."
    "Stupid. He says that sort of thing to everyone. It's part of his procedure. He likes how it makes your blood taste when he compliments you."
    "That's Kim NamJoon for sure. Compliment, compliment, fuck, ditch ."
    The girls laughed and I wanted to slam my head into my desk. It wasn't that I'd been taking any of NamJoon's compliments to heart. Well, not exactly, they had done some sort of repair work on my psyche that I had still not gotten used to. But for some reason it was painful to hear that my experience was just like the slutty girls in my class. I didn't think I was special to Kim NamJoon and I certainly didn't want to be special to him, but I didn't want to be on the same level as everyone else either.
    It didn't make any sense. I couldn't wrap my mind around it and make it comprehensible. It made my stomach hurt. It made me feel like spitting. I just wanted it all to end. I wanted it to be over. I never wanted to think about it again. I didn't want to have anything in common with the gossiping girls in my class and I didn't want to even hear Kim NamJoon's name ever again.

~*~*~

    "Min YoonGi. Hey, you don't look so good. Are you still feeling sick?"
    My manager, Park ChanHee, was shelving books when I walked into the bookstore. She put down the box she was holding and walked over to greet me with concern in her eyes.
    I sighed wearily. I was not in the mood for a conversation. "Yeah."
    "Did you go to the doctor?" she asked. "Is it the flu?"
    "Something like that," I answered, my walls going up, draining me of more energy that I really couldn't spare.
    "Maybe you should have taken another day off..." she said, frowning.
    "I can't," I said firmly, trying to put an end to the conversation. "I already missed too many days."
    She nodded, her eyes running over me as if she could find more clues to the state of my health. "I'll give you easy work today. There's that big box of invoices that need to be sorted and filed in the back and a countertop display that I saved for you to set up. How does that sound?"
    "That sounds good. Thanks," I said, forcing a smile to my lips. ChanHee was a mother hen, always trying to care for me, and I was my usual self, putting up walls and pushing people away.      I shut people out, even the few who were nice to me and tried to get closer. I never let anyone in so that they wouldn't see how fucked up I was. I guarded my solitude, told myself that it made me stronger even though I knew that it was built on weakness.
    Now that I was weak and totally wrecked and instinctively craving someone to lean on, someone to advise me, someone to comfort me, there was no one to fill the empty space. Park ChanHee was the only one in Seoul who had even tried to be friendly with me, but I'd already taught her time and time again that if she pushed forward even the slightest bit, I would bite.
    Relationships needed to be built in fair weather so that they could withstand a storm. I could see that now, but the knowledge was meaningless. There was nothing to help me now and I knew myself well enough to know that I wouldn't be reaching out to people once I felt better. I'd remain alone, caught up in my own struggle, just like always.
    "I made lemon bars," ChanHee offered hesitantly. "I'm not sure if you feel well enough to eat anything but they're in the breakroom. And... I know your pay won't be what it normally is because you missed a couple of days. If you need any help, I'd be happy to...help."
    I was already shaking my head, averting my eyes. "I'd like a lemon bar, thanks, but I don't need any help. I have some money saved."
    She nodded, looking miserable. She'd made it clear more than once that she thought the owner of the bookstore was a terrible person because he paid me such a low wage. Legally, he could get away with it since I was hired through a work study program, but there wasn't anything stopping him from paying me more. It was generous of her, but there was no way I'd take her up on the offer of a loan. I'd eat through my entire savings, sell my belongings and stop eating to avoid any kind of a debt.

~*~*~

    I stopped on the way back to my dorm room after work, a bag of leftover lemon bars hanging from my hand, staring into the small park that I passed when I walked to and from work. I'd stopped a hundred times on the way back to the dorm and sat on a bench in the park, playing with rhymes, humming bars, and tapping beats out on benches or pieces of playground equipment.
    Standing on the sidewalk, I was full and I was utterly empty. Full of negative emotions, anger and fear and hate and guilt and doubt and confusion. The list seemed to go on forever. When I chased one demon away, another reared its vicious head. As if I could not be left alone. As if I could not be granted peace. Pain chased its way through me night and day, bigger and sharper than I'd ever known it to be, relentless. All that I could do was hold my breath, close my eyes, hug myself into a ball and take it, pray for it to do its work and leave. But it couldn't go if I just kept fucking up and adding more fuel to the fire.
    I was so full, but so painfully empty. My heart was a wasteland, my mind blank, my muscles limp. I had no words. No rhymes. No beats. No music. They were the only things that were important to me besides my family and they had abandoned me. I couldn't find them. They were so much a part of me that I was afraid that Kim NamJoon had truly killed me. Destroyed my soul and left me an empty shell, a wraith, destined to walk through life half alive.
    I'd been struggling to figure out who I was. Trying to find myself, to know myself. But even with all of those years of turmoil, I'd never doubted that a large part of me was music. It was beat and rhythm and rhyme and now those things had deserted me.
    Left me for dead.
    Taken all hope with them.