“What I’m about to tell you next might involve things you’ve never been exposed to before, but everything I’m saying is true and extremely important.”
“You must remember it well. If you happen to feel scared…”
“And then?”
Talon suddenly grew a bit awkward, raising his arm and mumbling vaguely, “If you are scared, you can hold my hand, hugging works too.”
Cen Jin hadn’t expected Talon to be so pure and affectionate in private; it seemed that Weixin and Mann might have deliberately smeared him when talking about him earlier.
“It’s fine.”
Smiling, Cen Jin pressed Talon’s arm down. “Go ahead.”
Touching the spot where Cen Jin had just brushed against him, Talon continued, “Actually, in this world, there are sentient beings other than humans. On the surface, they look no different from humans, yet they are extremely dangerous.”
“Aliens?” Cen Jin asked.
“Not quite. Even scarier than aliens.”
Pondering this, Cen Jin figured that compared to aliens, actual aliens probably still sounded scarier.
“What are they, then?”
“Vampires!”
Staring blankly at Talon, Cen Jin gave a somewhat dazed nod.
Talon had intended to deliberately frighten Cen Jin, but Cen Jin’s reaction was remarkably lackluster.
Then again, there was hardly any need to explain Cen Jin had already tasted his blood at noon.
Talon suddenly felt like an absolute fool.
How embarrassing.
“Does that mean I’m…?” Cen Jin asked tentatively, “a vampire?”
“Mn.”
Sensing the topic carried a heavy weight, Talon was nonetheless relieved by Cen Jin’s relative dullness.
“But I don’t feel any particularly noticeable changes,” Cen Jin said after a moment of thought with a smile, “except that blood has started tasting exceptionally good.”
“Then do you think my blood tastes better, or someone else’s?”
The conversation abruptly veered off track.
“I don’t know, I’ve only ever tasted yours.”
A sudden wave of elation washed over Talon. “I was your first.”
“With the existence of vampires, there naturally exist organizations dedicated to hunting them down.”
Realizing Cen Jin might grow frightened, Talon quickly backpedaled. “Oh, no, not hunting.”
“The Hunter Guild only captures vampires who harm humans. They only catch the bad ones.”
“So if I bit you, would I get caught too?” Cen Jin asked.
“Certainly not. If anyone gets caught, it’d be the bad vampire who bit you in the first place.”
Talon kept his own identity as a hunter strictly under wraps.
“Therefore, you can’t let anyone know you’ve turned into a vampire, not even your family. Except for me, of course.”
“Especially Weixin, you must never let him discover your identity. His family was murdered by vampires, so avoid bringing up anything related to vampires in front of him.”
“If you run into anything you don’t understand, you can come find me. Also, whenever you need to drink blood, come find me as well.”
Nodding heavily, Cen Jin committed every word of Talon’s advice to memory.
“Let’s exchange contact info, then.” Talon had already drawn out his phone.
The conversation shifted rather abruptly.
Dazed for a single beat, Cen Jin managed an “Oh” and reached out to retrieve his phone.
Overwhelmed by excess worry, however, Talon mistook Cen Jin’s momentary sluggishness for a sign of hunger.
“Why don’t you bite me again right now?” Talon pulled down the collar of his shirt and squatted down.
Santiago Academy let out at four in the afternoon. With only two classes held in the afternoon, everything past four o’clock was dedicated to various club and organization activities.
Gathering his belongings, Cen Jin prepared to head home.
Just as he hoisted his schoolbag and stepped toward the back door of the classroom, he noticed a crowd gathered near the entrance, whispering and discussing something among themselves.
After throwing a few disinterested glances at the chattering group, Cen Jin paid them no mind.
At that moment, several classmates suddenly stood up and called out to him.
“Cen Jin!”
“The snacks on your desk…”
Expecting them to complain they didn’t want them, Cen Jin instead heard:
“Did you bring these for us?”
“Thanks a lot!”
“How did you guys know?” Caught off guard by the public expressions of gratitude, Cen Jin felt a bit sheepish; he had originally planned to distribute them quietly without anyone noticing.
“So it really was you!”
“That’s so nice of you.”
“Someone saw you were the first one to arrive in the classroom this morning.”
“Did you buy all these specially? Weren’t your arms killing you carrying so much stuff?”
“Thank you! The snacks are genuinely delicious!”
Exchanging a few more polite pleasantries with his classmates, Cen Jin finally extricated himself from the enthusiastic atmosphere.
He let out a quiet breath of relief. Stepping just outside the doorway, he felt his schoolbag suddenly yanked from behind, dragging his advancing stride right back across the threshold.
Cen Jin nearly tumbled backward, but a hand shot out in time to steady his back.
Looking back, Cen Jin realized he didn’t recognize this person at all.
The tall man wore the exact same school uniform as Cen Jin, indicating he was also a university division student, but the aura he exuded bore no resemblance to that of an ordinary student. Cen Jin immediately questioned his identity.
“Is there something you need?” Cen Jin asked.
“How did you know I was looking for you?”
“Then why did you grab my schoolbag?”
“Looks like you’re not entirely foolish after all.”
The man sported a head of jet-black hair contrasted by striking green eyes.
As he closed the distance, Cen Jin caught a whiff of a sweet, fragrant scent radiating from him.
It smelled remarkably like the fragrance he had encountered on the stairwell of the rooftop earlier.
The man remarked, “We’ve met on the rooftop before.”
It really was him.
“Oh,” Cen Jin nodded, completely baffled as to why this person was tracking him down.
Without warning, the man leaned forward, bringing his face dangerously close to Cen Jin’s forehead.
Looking up at him with utter bewilderment, Cen Jin stammered, “You—”
His words cut off mid-sentence as he glanced down and saw the man sliding a hand directly into his trouser pocket.
Ah right, the blood bag that annoying younger cousin stuffed into his pocket this morning was still in there!
Panicking, Cen Jin clamped a hand over his pocket, but he was already too late; the man’s fingers had already brushed against the bulging pouch and were attempting to fish it out.
With large hands and long fingers, the man couldn’t slip his entire palm into Cen Jin’s pocket, leaving his pinky finger hooked awkwardly outside the rim of the shorts pocket.
Refusing to let him pull the blood bag out, Cen Jin pressed down with all his might.
“Let go.”
“With you pressing my hand like this, how am I supposed to let go?”
Bending his knees slightly, the man kept his other hand resting casually on Cen Jin’s shoulder, a posture that appeared relaxed yet exerted firm pressure.
It was a clear attempt to keep Cen Jin from fleeing.
Cen Jin knew that the moment he loosened his grip, the blood bag hidden inside his pocket would be extracted.
In an instant, Cen Jin found himself backed into a completely passive corner.
“Who on earth are you?”
Why on earth did this guy know there was something inside his pocket? The sheer precision of his target made it seem as though he was fully aware of Cen Jin’s identity and knew the item inside was a blood bag.
Could he be of the same kind?
“You don’t recognize me?”
“Should I?”
Cen Jin found this man profoundly bizarre. If they actually knew each other, would he even need to ask?
The man continued with a smirk, “I figured someone of your tastes would like my type.”
Cen Jin: “…” Talk about overconfident.
The man kept a permanent, teasing smile plastered across his face, his eyes half-closed in a lazy squint. With single-lidded eyes, elongated features, and a high, straight bridge of the nose, he possessed a sharp, razor-thin visage. Even while smiling, his aggressive aura remained intense.
The natural downward slant of his lips meant that unless he deliberately manufactured a smile, he looked genuinely vicious.
Not the sort of face one wanted to linger on.
Noticing Cen Jin actually studying his features, the man asked, “Well? What do you think?”
After careful observation, Cen Jin gave a serious shake of his head.
“Not much.”
Taken aback, the man clearly hadn’t anticipated such blunt honesty from Cen Jin.
Instead of getting angry, he burst out laughing and renewed his efforts to extract the blood bag.
“Hey!”
Startled, Cen Jin tried to recoil backward, but the man’s hand pinned him firmly in place. Even as he managed to step one foot back, his upper body remained completely at the mercy of the man’s grip.
“Huh? Hasn’t Cen Jin left yet?”
“I thought I heard Cen Jin’s voice.”
Attracted by the commotion, a few students stepped out of the classroom to peer down the corridor, though they failed to spot Cen Jin anywhere.
“Must have misheard…”
Cen Jin had no idea where he had been dragged to, but he knew for certain that he was still somewhere within Santiago Academy.
The wind howled fiercely around them, occasionally carrying the distant, elevated chatter of passing students.
With his eyes covered by a pair of ice-cold palms and his back pressed tightly against the stranger’s torso, he didn’t dare make a single movement.
Though the hands over his eyes loosened slightly, Cen Jin felt no sense of relief; instead, he panicked further, shuffling back a tiny half-step.
The man let out a few chuckles, clearly amused by Cen Jin’s jittery reaction.
Cen Jin couldn’t muster any humor, he strongly suspected this guy had hauled him all the way up to the roof again.
Without warning, the man shoved Cen Jin’s back. Cen Jin lurched violently, his body tipping forward out of control. The hands covering his eyes fell away entirely, leaving him tumbling toward the edge while the ferocious rooftop gale whipped at his face so hard he couldn’t keep his eyes open.
Unsure of where he actually was, Cen Jin flailed backward, managing to graze the edge of a fluttering hemline, but the thin fabric slipped right through his fingertips.
His heart hammered so loudly it drowned out everything else in his ears; convinced he was about to plunge to his death, he squeezed his eyes shut—only for a sudden, jarring impact against solid ground to abruptly shatter his racing thoughts.
Ah…
As Cen Jin’s knees and palms slammed into the rough ground, a sharp wave of pain shot through them the skin had likely scraped raw.
Enduring the sting, he forced his eyes open. Beneath him lay a pavement of brick-red flagstones, the sharp, uneven ridges of the stones stained with faint smudges of crimson.
Cen Jin’s own blood.
It hurts so much.
Still reeling from shock, Cen Jin felt a brief surge of relief upon realizing he hadn’t been thrown off the roof.
Biting his lip, he pushed himself up using his injured palms. His knees ached intensely, particularly where tiny fragments of gravel had embedded themselves directly into the flesh, sending sharp stings deeper into his tissue every time he applied weight.
An arm wrapped securely around Cen Jin’s waist, hauling him straight up off the ground.
Cen Jin knew instantly who it was the eccentric weirdo who had pushed him down.
Still hyper-aware of the terrifying sensation of weightlessness from moments before, his calves continued to tremble uncontrollably, refusing to support his weight.
Lifting him effortlessly into the air, the man left Cen Jin standing mutely with tightly pressed lips.
Gazing downward at his own scraped palms weeping tiny droplets of blood, Cen Jin used his cleaner fingers to gently brush away the grit embedded in the torn skin.
“Cat got your tongue?”
The man’s voice curled upward at the end, dripping with a frivolous, devil-may-care amusement.