Areum could not help but watch as his fangs sank into her arm, held at an awkward angle. His teeth, disappeared without a trace into her flesh, were sharp and pointed even at a glance. Undoubtedly, they were the teeth of a vampire, specialized at tearing into flesh. Where his fangs had punctured her there were two holes, out of which blood came spurting. The same blood reached the vampire’s tongue at that very moment.

“Blech!”

The man began to retch.

He tossed aside Areum’s arm and continued to shout “blech” as he spit out the blood that had filled his mouth onto the floor. Once Areum had clasped her bleeding forearm with her right hand, she watched the man. He was reacting the same way she had when she had once taken a sip of milk that had sat out in the sun for a few days. His gestures were so dramatic that to any bystander it would seem as if instead of blood pumping through her veins, she had sewer water.

Just narrowly after finishing his retching, the man continued to spit residue onto the floor, with a vigorousness of trying to eradicate any saliva still left in his mouth. Areum, who had been watching perplexedly, ended up feeling insulted as this process went on. Inadvertently, she tasted some of the blood that had remained on her right hand. It tasted like any ordinary blood.

“Solenn!”

The man shouted. Immediately, the doors flew open and in came a maid. The man stood and approached Solenn. He looked like he didn’t have the time to let her enter. In a single stroke, he grabbed her collar and forcefully exposed the nape of her neck, and then sank his teeth there. Once he had dug into her neck, he sucked out her blood for quite a while.

The sounds of the man drinking blood and Solenn’s stifled moans resonated quietly in the stone chamber. Solenn’s brow was furrowed, and she was biting down hard on her lips. Her expression made Areum recall the sensation of the man’s fangs being driven into her forearm, making her shudder. Not only was it horrifying, but it made her regain the pain in her arm that she had forgotten about. Then her sticky right hand and her still bleeding left arm came into view.

The moment that Areum looked up, checking her bleeding by applying pressure to her wound with her skirt, she met eyes with Solenn’s. Areum was shocked to see that Solenn’s face had grown red. If her eyes weren’t deceiving her, it seemed to be blushing. Solenn closed her eyes tightly. Areum absentmindedly thought to herself that the theory of vampires releasing some sort of aphrodisiac into their victims’ bloodstreams while they suck blood seemed to be true.

Time seemed to go on forever. The man stepped away from Solenn, who managed to only wobble for a second, but not collapse.

“Leave.”

The man’s voice rang out softly, and Solenn bowed once before taking her leave. Once again, the two of them were alone together. Even at a glance, the man’s expression looked wildly tumultuous. His languid disposition had vanished without a trace. “Ah, I’ve really screwed up trying to win his favor,” Areum moaned to herself.

She had heard tales that vampires favored certain blood over other. The common conceptions like how vampires seek out young and healthy virgins and avoided the blood of old or sickly people. Areum was a healthy young girl of 19. Whether or not she was pretty wasn’t up to her to decide, but at the very least, she was normal weight and free of illness. Objectively speaking, she was an adequate specimen for a vampire, but it didn’t seem fit the tastes of the vampire she had just met.

Areum was afraid. If not even the taste of her blood, the standard by which vampires measured humans, was not up to par, how could she stay alive? Would he keep her alive? Would he try to kill her in a fit of rage? Areum’s fears then turned into reality. The man stomped on Areum’s arm, which had just stopped its bleeding.

“Ouch!”

Her scream slipped right out of her mouth. It was as painful as when she had been captured by the slave dealer and hit on the back of the head. She tried strenuously to pull her arm out from under him, but it only grew more painful and amounted to nothing but squirming. If he kept his foot there any longer, he might even break her bone. She wished she could at least faint out of such natural terror. Never since the day she was born had she been subject to such violence. In the end, Areum only cried.

“How is it that you can have such blood?”

The man paid her no mind and spoke while softly pressing on her with his foot.

"Far from human, it’s on par with that of a corpse.”

Seeing Areum’s blood stuck to his shoe, he wiped it on the rug as if it were mud. He grabbed her roughly by her hair and stood her up, beseeching her despite her eyes not even being fully open.

“What on earth are you? Has some senile old man made an assassin of you by swapping your blood for poison? Or are you truly a corpse? Truth be told, if vampires exist, why couldn’t there be walking corpses?”

The man spoke like he was chewing his words and spitting them out. Half out of it due to fear and pain, Areum didn’t even think to reply. The man’s face grew red and he pressed her again, this time slapping Areum, a mess of tears and snot, on the cheeks.

“I’m asking you something. What are you?”

Areum sobbed. Sniffling, she cleared her throat.

“I’m a human.”

Though there were no indication that what she said, shaking all the while, was a lie, the man did not seem to believe it. Areum spoke again.

“I’m really just an ordinary human.”

“A human? The blood of an old hag dying of the plague, or the blood of a murderer locked up in prison would taste sweeter than yours. Never in my life have I ever tasted such foul blood. I couldn’t even bring myself to swallow it. If I had, it would have burned right through my stomach. Were you a nun or something?”

“I’m sorry?”

Areum didn’t understand him and so asked, but as soon as she did, his grip on her hair grew stronger.

“Ow! No! I don’t have any religion! I’m religion-less!”

Areum raised her hand and grabbed the man’s rough arm while she spoke. She did so out of a hope that his hand would loosen its grip, even slightly. Her wish came true. The man pulled his hand away as if Areum’s hands would soil him.

Clasping her head in her hands, Areum strained to stop her crying. Though she had had a resolute will to live within the cell of the slave market and while her hands and feet were bound in the carriage, all of that had disappeared where she now was. All she felt was pain and despair.

Win this man’s favor? He feeds two or three times, so there’s no reason for me to die right away? There’s no way any human has survived an encounter with this crazy monster.

Repeating the same curses and foul words to herself in a stupor, Areum tried desperately to rid herself of the memory of her family that popped up in a corner of her mind. She wasn’t even to be with them in spirit. She took some comfort in the fact that her family wouldn’t be able to see her now. She thought that if her family had seen her as miserable and helpless as this, she would have killed herself on the spot. If they had seen the fool she was, only whimpering when her bleeding arm was stepped on and her hair pulled, not knowing what else to do, she would have longed for death.

“What am I going to do with you?”

The man crouched down in front of her and whispered. Anger was still palpable in his voice.

"You’re no vampire, and much less, not even a human worth feeding on. Then I should at least have some fun with you. Which would you prefer, having your arms and legs ripped off while you’re still alive or being put in a cage with a bear?”

Knowing that no matter what she chose, it would all end the same. Areum tried her hardest to sympathize with the man’s rage. She couldn’t possibly bring herself to understand such overwhelming violence, and that kept her from thinking of ways out of this.

Was bad-tasting blood something to get this upset about? No matter how much she might dislike it, if a dish was put in front of her, she would think of the sincerity of the person who made it and bite the bullet and eat it. This was far too harsh of treatment for something he considered a mere “thing to eat.”

However, Areum was the type of person who couldn’t move on if she didn’t understand the basics, and she did her best to see things from the man’s perspective in order to make heads or tails of this bewildering situation.

Maybe when he tasted her blood, it would have been similar to someone shoving rotten food festering with flies down his throat. Or maybe it was as painful as making a person who can’t tolerate spice eat hot chicken ramen with ghost peppers added in.

Areum did her best to understand his position while continuing these facile imaginings. They were a last-ditch effort to understand, in her own way, a situation which she wouldn't be able to come to terms with in her right mind. In order to not quiver in front of the monstrous vampire before her, she had to try to make him seem amusing. It was closer to avoiding reality than trying to understand it, but she couldn’t deny the fact that doing so helped keep her heart from pounding.

Once she had overwritten the man’s face, its red eyes wide open in front of her, with the image of him having eaten something too spicy and hacking and spitting it out, she regained a sense of calm. Areum licked her lips, which tasted of blood from having bitten down on them so hard, then responded.

“Neither of them.”

She straightened out her sprawled body and tidied up her skirt. She rubbed her hands together, and the dried blood came off in powder. She knew that the man was staring at her with bewilderment, but she only glanced into his eyes once before looking away and speaking again.

“I don’t want to be pulled apart limb by limb or be put into a cage with a bear.”

To be honest, Areum wasn’t sure what she was saying would work. The man could easily pluck her eyes out just for meeting his gaze or feed her to the rug for running her mouth off. Among the simulations playing out in her head, there were none that didn’t end with her dead. Whether she groveled or talked back to him, either way she would die.

If she were going to die no matter what, shouldn’t she at least beg and plead? Shouldn’t she exhaust all Hail Marys in order to survive? Areum’s utmost desire was to survive this encounter, so even if it meant begging like a coward, she had no choice but to try. There was nothing she could do if he killed her after she tried her best, but she didn’t want to die when there could still be a way for her to survive.

Areum frantically thought of what cards she should show and which she should fold. The only option she had was talking her way out of this with her silver tongue. She was weaker than the man, so she wouldn’t be able to best him with force, and her blood was apparently abhorrent to him, so that was useless as an option. Her best bet was to appeal to him with her strengths. She barely managed to hold in a bucketful of tears she wanted to spill and spoke.

“I… I’m the eldest of one son and two daughters. Maybe because of that, I’m very responsible.”

Areum couldn’t bear to meet the man’s eyes, and so she ended up lowering her gaze to her own forearms. She gained courage from the fact that the man had at least not told her to shut up, and continued to speak up.

“I maintained a rank of 3 or higher in my grade for midterms, finals, and prep tests as well. And once I start something, I always give my very best effort and never give up.”

Ah, these were such cliché things to say. Areum was crying inside, but she couldn’t stop now. She was ready to list off everything she thought was her strength for as long as she could. It was no problem if it were incoherent gibberish. She was merely grateful to be moving her lips at all.

“My hobby is reading, and since I enjoy reading all sorts of things regardless of genre, I have good reading comprehension. And once I plan, I always follow through and put it into action. During self-study, once I decided what page I would work through in my workbook, I would always work all the way to that page, no matter what. I’m good with my hands, so I always finish tasks well, and—oh yeah, I took care of almost all of the cleaning in my house. I dusted all the nooks and crannies in the house, and when I folded the laundry, I was very good at keeping the creases tidy. Although one of my weaknesses is that I am not that strong, physically, if I keep at something, I think I’ll grow accustomed to it. And another thing…”

“Look.”

Areum, startled by his call, looked toward him. She was startled once again, for the distance between them was closer than she had thought it to be. She looked up and his face was smack dab in front of her. Asking why he was so close, Areum tried to pull her tearful face together and force herself to smile. It was an urge bordering on a compulsion to make a pleasing face. Fortunately, the vampire’s previous agitated expression had softened.

“What is it you’re trying to say?”

It worked. These were the words that Areum wanted to hear. Even if it were pathetic, she needed a chance to tell him what she wanted rather than choosing one of the two ways to die.

Forcing herself to swallow the bitter pill of submission, Areum spoke.

“Master, I will serve you diligently.”