Archive of Our Own ^beta

I.

The autumn rain fell upon the cobblestones of Seoul with the persistence of a funeral dirge, each drop a small death against the ancient stones. Bang Chan, though he had worn many names across the centuries, found himself drawn to the warm glow emanating from a modest establishment tucked between the shadows of larger, more imposing buildings.

Lee's Coffee House, proclaimed the hand-painted sign, adorned with the silhouette of a black cat whose eyes seemed to follow him even through the deluge. How peculiar, Chan thought, that after two hundred years of walking this earth, a simple painted creature could still command his attention.

The bell above the door sang a melancholy note as he entered, and Chan was struck immediately by the warmth, not merely of temperature, but of something he had thought long dead within himself. The establishment was small, intimate, filled with the rich perfume of roasted beans and something else, something indefinable that made his ancient blood stir in ways he had not experienced since the reign of kings whose names were now dust.

"You appear as one who has wandered far through the tempest," came a voice, cultured and sharp with intelligence.

Chan raised his gaze to behold the proprietor. Lee Minho stood behind the counter with the bearing of one who had known both elegance and hardship, his features were striking in that particular way that certain mortals possessed, as though God had taken extra care in their crafting. His eyes held a knowing quality that unsettled Chan profoundly. In two centuries, few mortals had looked at him and truly seen.

"The rain shows no mercy this evening," Chan replied, allowing water to drip from his coat onto the worn floorboards. "I sought refuge."

"Then you have found it, though I wonder..." Minho tilted his head, studying Chan with an intensity that would have been improper in other circumstances, "...if it is the storm without or within that drives a gentleman such as yourself to seek shelter in such a humble establishment."

Chan felt the corner of his mouth lift despite himself. "You are perceptive, Mr. Lee."

"Merely observant. One learns much about the human condition when one serves them their daily stimulants." Minho moved with a dancer's grace toward the brass and copper machine that dominated his counter. "Tell me, do you trust in fate, or do you prefer to maintain the illusion of control?"

"An unusual question for a coffee merchant."

"I am an unusual merchant." Minho's smile was enigmatic. "Well? Shall I choose for you, or will you cling to your certainties?"

Something in Chan, something that had grown cold and calcified over decades of careful existence, sparked to life. "I place myself in your capable hands."

Minho worked in silence, and Chan found himself mesmerized by the ritual of it. Each movement was precise, practiced, yet imbued with an artistry that spoke of devotion. This was no mere tradesman going through mechanical motions; this was a craftsman at prayer.

When Minho placed the cup before him, Chan observed that the foam had been shaped into a leaping cat, detailed with such care that individual whiskers were visible.

"Lavender and honey," Minho announced, "with coffee strong enough to resurrect the dead."

Chan's hand froze halfway to the cup. His eyes snapped to Minho's face, searching for any sign of knowing, of recognition, of danger. But Minho's expression remained innocent, expectant.

"A bold claim," Chan said carefully, his voice barely above a whisper.

"Taste it and tell me if I lie."

Chan did. The flavor burst upon his tongue like a revelation, complex, layered, perfect. Though such mortal sustenance could not nourish his cursed form, he had not lost the capacity to appreciate beauty in all its forms. And this was beautiful.

"It is exceptional," Chan admitted.

"I know." Minho leaned against the counter, propping his chin upon his hand in a gesture that was both informal and oddly intimate. "Now tell me, what manner of gentleman appears at my door dressed in the fashion of wealth yet bearing the countenance of one who has witnessed the ending of worlds?"

Chan's breath caught, unnecessary as breathing was for him. "You see much, Mr. Lee."

"I see what others overlook. It is both a gift and a curse." Minho's eyes held Chan's with uncomfortable intensity. "You are running from something. Or perhaps toward it. I cannot yet discern which."

"And if I told you I myself do not know?"

"Then I would say you are lying, though beautifully so."

Chan smiled despite the danger, despite every instinct screaming at him to leave this place and never return. "You are quite unlike anyone I have encountered."

"Good," Minho replied, his own smile widening. "I should hate to be ordinary. Ordinary men live ordinary lives and die ordinary deaths, and where is the poetry in that?"

Chan told himself he would not return. 

He told himself that Minho's perceptiveness was dangerous, that the attachment forming in his chest was foolish, that two centuries of careful solitude should not be abandoned for the sake of clever conversation and skillful hands.

Yet he did return.

Again and again, as autumn surrendered to winter and the streets grew white with snow. Each night he would arrive as the final patrons departed, and each night Minho would greet him with that knowing smile and a new creation, drinks that seemed to divine Chan's very mood, each one a small masterwork.

They spoke of everything and nothing. Minho told tales of his youth, of dreams of dancing upon grand stages, of the precise moment he realized his art lay not in movement of body but in the alchemy of flavor and warmth. Chan shared carefully edited stories of his own past, true in emotion though fraudulent in chronology.

"You speak of these events as though you witnessed them firsthand," Minho observed one evening, his eyes sharp over the rim of his own cup. "Yet you cannot be more than twenty seven years of age."

"I have always been drawn to history," Chan deflected. "Perhaps I have read too many accounts, until the past feels more real than the present."

"Or perhaps," Minho said softly, dangerously, "you are far older than you appear."

The words hung between them like a blade suspended by thread.

"That would be quite impossible," Chan said, his voice steady despite the alarm coursing through him.

"Yes," Minho agreed, though his tone suggested he believed no such thing. "Quite impossible. And yet, you never eat. You never drink anything but the coffee I prepare. You arrive only after darkness has fallen and depart before the sun's first light. Your skin is cold to the touch, yes, I have noticed when our fingers brush, and you move with a stillness that suggests you do not breathe out of necessity but out of habit."

Chan rose abruptly, the chair scraping against the floor with a sound like a scream. "I should leave."

"Stay." Minho stood as well, circling the counter with deliberate slowness. "Please. I do not speak of these observations as accusation, but as... recognition."

"Recognition of what?" Chan's voice emerged rougher than intended, betraying the emotion he fought to contain.

"Of one who exists apart from the world. As I do." Minho stopped an arm's length away, close enough that Chan could hear the steady rhythm of his heartbeat, that traitorous, tempting drum. "I have spent my entire life feeling as though I were performing in a play whose script I had never been given. As though I spoke a language none could understand and understood one none could speak. Until you."

"Minho..." Chan breathed the name like a prayer, like a curse. "You do not know what you are saying."

"Then enlighten me." Minho stepped closer still, until Chan could count every eyelash, could see the pulse jumping in his throat. "Tell me why you haunt my establishment like a ghost. Tell me why your presence feels both dangerous and necessary. Tell me—"

Chan kissed him.

It was foolish, reckless, entirely against every principle of self-preservation Chan had cultivated over two centuries. But Minho's words had carved open something in his chest that he had thought long dead, and he found himself unable to resist the pull any longer.

Minho tasted of peppermint and possibility. His lips were warm against Chan's cold mouth, his body radiating the heat of mortal life. When they parted, both were breathing hard, Chan from emotion rather than need, Minho from the shock of it.

"Your lips are cold as death," Minho whispered, wonder and fear and desire warring in his voice. His fingers traced Chan's lower lip with trembling reverence.

"Yes," Chan admitted, catching Minho's wrist and pressing a kiss to the pulse point there, feeling the blood surge beneath the skin, fighting every instinct that screamed at him to bite down. "And you are so warm. So impossibly, devastatingly warm."

Minho's hand rose to cup Chan's face, thumb brushing across his cheekbone with devastating gentleness. "What are you?"

Chan closed his eyes against the question, against the inevitable loss that would follow this revelation, against the want that made his fangs ache behind his lips. "A monster.”"

"No." Minho's voice was firm, his other hand joining the first to frame Chan's face, forcing him to meet his eyes. "I have known monsters, and whatever else you may be, you are not that. Cold, yes. Otherworldly, certainly. Dangerous, perhaps. But not monstrous."

"You do not know what I am capable of." Chan's hands found Minho's waist, gripping perhaps too tightly, unable to stop touching now that he had started. "What I want to do to you. The ways I want to consume you."

"Then show me." Minho's eyes darkened with desire that matched Chan's own. "Come upstairs. Tell me your truth. Let me decide for myself whether to fear you or—" He pulled Chan closer, until their bodies pressed together from chest to hip, until Chan could feel every rapid beat of Minho's heart. "—invite you into my bed."

Every instinct screamed at Chan to refuse, to flee, to protect both of them from the inevitable tragedy. But he had been alone for so long, and Minho looked at him as though he were not a creature of nightmare but simply a man worth knowing.

"If I tell you," Chan said slowly, "there will be no unknowing it. Your life will be forever altered."

"My life was altered the moment you walked through that door." Minho smiled, sad and knowing. "I suspect I have been waiting for you for longer than either of us realizes. So come. Bring your truth and your darkness, and let us see what survives the telling."

II.

Minho's chambers above the coffee house were a study in controlled chaos, plants upon every surface, books stacked in teetering towers, and five cats who regarded Chan with varying degrees of suspicion and interest. The space smelled of earth and growing things, of life in all its messy abundance.

"They are my companions," Minho explained, gesturing to the felines. "Rescued from the streets, each one. I find their company more honest than most humans provide."

A large orange cat approached Chan without fear, pressing against his legs with surprising affection. Chan reached down automatically, running his fingers through the soft fur.

"Soonie approves of you," Minho observed. "He is typically quite discriminating. Animals can sense things about people that we cannot. Their instincts are rarely wrong."

If only you knew how wrong, Chan thought, but said nothing. Instead, he allowed Minho to guide him to a worn sofa by the window, where they sat as cats distributed themselves across laps and cushions.

For a long moment, neither spoke. Outside, snow began to fall, coating the world in silence.

"I was born in the year 1714," Chan said finally, the words emerging like stones dragged from deep water. "In a village that no longer exists, in a Korea that has been remade so many times I scarcely recognize it."

Minho's expression did not change, though Chan felt him tense beside him.

"I was the eldest son of a minor noble family. We were not wealthy, but we were respectable. I was to marry, to produce heirs, to live a predictable life of duty and obligation." Chan's voice grew distant, lost in memory. "Instead, I was visited by a creature from nightmare. A vampire, though I did not know the word then. We called them blood demons or night walkers, and we feared them with the terror reserved for beings that should not exist."

"Did it hurt?" Minho asked softly. "The transformation?"

"Like dying." Chan's hands clenched unconsciously. "Because that is what it was. I died that night, and something else, something hungry and cold and inhuman, took residence in my corpse. The creature who made me did not stay to guide me. I woke alone, ravenous, with no understanding of what I had become."

"And the hunger?" Minho's voice held no judgment, only curiosity. "Do you..."

"Kill?" Chan finished. "Not in many decades. I learned control, though it took years of monstrous mistakes. Now I feed from those who will not remember, taking only what I need, leaving them alive and well. But the hunger is always there, Minho. Always waiting. It would take so little to lose myself to it."

Minho absorbed this in silence. Then, with movements careful and deliberate, he turned to face Chan fully. "Look at me."

Chan did, expecting to see horror, revulsion, fear. Instead, he saw only thoughtfulness.

"Two hundred years," Minho mused. "You have walked this earth for two centuries, watching empires rise and fall, watching everyone you loved grow old and die. The loneliness must be..." He trailed off, unable to find adequate words.

"Infinite," Chan supplied. "I have had companions, others of my kind. But mortal connections I have learned to avoid. The pain of loss is too great, and the temptation..." He gestured vaguely between them. "This is foolish. What we are beginning here. You will age and I will not. You will die and I will endure. It is an equation that ends only in suffering."

"Perhaps," Minho agreed. "Or perhaps suffering is the price we pay for beauty, and beauty is worth any cost." He reached out, taking Chan's cold hand in his warm one. "I do not fear death.  I have never been one to hoard my days like a miser counts coins. If I am to love you. and I find that I wish to, desperately. then I will love you completely, for however long my mortal span allows. And when I am gone, you will carry something of me forward into whatever centuries remain to you."

"That is not fair to you," Chan protested, even as his fingers tightened around Minho's.

"Fair? What is fair?" Minho laughed, though the sound held little humor. "None of us choose the circumstances of our birth, the length of our days, the form our hearts decide to take. You say you are a monster, but I see only a man who has suffered greatly and somehow retained his capacity for gentleness. That is not monstrous. That is miraculous."

Chan felt something break open in his chest, some dam that had held back two centuries of loneliness and longing. "I could hurt you. If I lost control—"

"You could hurt me even if you were human. All intimacy carries risk." Minho shifted closer, until his body pressed against Chan's side, warm and solid and real. "I choose this. I choose you, with full knowledge of what you are. Is that not enough?"

"It should not be."

"And yet?"

"And yet I find myself unable to let you go."

Minho smiled, sad and victorious at once. "Then do not. For tonight, for this moment, for whatever time we are granted, do not let go."

So Chan didn't. He pulled Minho close and held him as the snow fell outside and the cats purred around them and the night stretched long and forgiving. He memorized the warmth of Minho's body, the steady drum of his heart, the way his breathing slowed as he drifted toward sleep.

And Chan, who had not prayed in two hundred years, found himself whispering desperate appeals to any god who might still listen: Let me keep this. Let me have this one thing. I will ask for nothing else. Just this. Just him. Just a little while longer.

But the gods, as always, did not answer.

III.

Winter deepened into its cruelest months, and their attachment grew alongside it. Chan became a fixture in Minho's life, helping to close the coffee house each evening, climbing the stairs to the apartment where cats waited and conversations stretched until dawn forced Chan's departure.

They did not speak again of Chan's nature, as though by mutual agreement they had decided that some truths were best left unexamined. Instead, they built a small world of their own making, precarious and precious as spun glass.

Minho taught Chan the art of coffee preparation, laughing at his clumsy attempts to recreate the elegant foam designs. "You have had two centuries to learn new skills, and yet you cannot master a simple rosetta?"

"I have been somewhat preoccupied with not eating people, my love." Chan replied dryly.

"A fair excuse, I suppose."

They attended the theater together, careful always to choose evening performances. They walked through snow-silent streets, Minho bundled in layers while Chan moved easily through the cold. They spoke of literature and philosophy, of the changing world and whether progress was always synonymous with improvement.

"Sometimes I think we are rushing toward some precipice," Minho said one night, his breath forming clouds in the winter air. "This modern age with its machines and its certainties. We have lost something essential in our haste."

"Every age believes it is rushing toward catastrophe," Chan replied. "I have heard such predictions in every century. Humanity endures."

"But do we merely endure, or do we live? There is a difference."

Chan had no answer to that. He, more than most, understood the vast gulf between endurance and existence.

It was in late February, on a night when the temperature had plummeted and the streets lay deserted, that Minho first broached the subject that had been hovering unspoken between them.

They were in his apartment, surrounded by the usual menagerie of cats and the warm glow of oil lamps. Chan sat at the small table near the window, pretending to read while actually watching Minho move through his evening routine with the contentment of the hopelessly besotted.

"Love of mine," Minho said, his voice unusually hesitant. He stood in the center of the room, hands clasped before him like a schoolboy preparing to recite. "I wish to ask you something, though I fear the answer."

Chan set aside his book, dread pooling cold in his stomach. "Tell me."

"Could you... that is..." Minho took a breath, steadying himself. "Could you make me as you are?"

The words landed like blows. Chan was on his feet before conscious thought, crossing the room to grasp Minho's shoulders. "No. Absolutely not. Do not ask me this."

"Why not?" Minho's eyes blazed with desperate hope. "You say our time is limited by my mortality. Very well, remove that limitation. Make me immortal. We could have centuries together instead of mere decades."

"You do not understand what you are asking." Chan's grip tightened, though he was careful not to bruise. "The transformation is agony, my beloved. Worse than any death. It is described by those who survive it as being flayed alive from the inside, every nerve screaming, every cell rupturing and reforming. And not all survive. Some die in the process. Some go mad from the pain and never return to themselves."

"I would risk it—"

"And if you survived," Chan continued relentlessly, "you would wake to an existence of endless hunger. Every human you encountered would become potential prey. You would smell their blood, hear their hearts beating, and the beast inside you would howl for their destruction. The coffee you love would turn to ash on your tongue. The morning sun you greet each day would become your enemy. Everything that brings you joy, your plants, your cats, your craft, all of it would transform into torment."

Minho pulled away, wrapping his arms around himself. "Yet you endure it. You find meaning somehow."

"I endure because I must. Because the alternative is true death, and I am too cowardly to choose that path. But I would not condemn you to this half-life, this shadow existence." Chan's voice cracked. "I love you too much to make you into what I am."

"You cannot make that choice for me!" Minho spun around, tears streaming down his face. "It is my life, my death, my decision! You speak of love, but love does not cage. Love does not dictate. If you truly loved me—"

"I love you enough to protect you from your own desperation." Chan felt something inside himself shatter. "Even if it means losing you."

They stared at one another across the small room, the distance between them suddenly vast as oceans. One of the cats, Star, the smallest, mewed plaintively, sensing the distress.

"Then what do you want from me?" Minho whispered, his voice broken.

Chan wanted to say everything. He wanted to be selfish, to take and take until nothing remained. But he had lived too long, seen too much suffering born of immortal greed.

"I want..." Chan's voice emerged barely above a whisper. "I want to love you as you are, for as long as you are. I want to treasure every moment, knowing they are finite and therefore infinitely precious. And when your time comes, as it must for all mortals, I want you to go gently into whatever awaits beyond, unburned by this curse I carry."

Minho's face crumpled. He turned away, shoulders shaking with silent sobs. Chan ached to go to him, to offer comfort, but knew his touch would be unwelcome now.

After a small eternity, Minho spoke, his voice muffled. "Leave, please. I need... I need to be alone."

Chan wanted to protest, to stay and fight for this fragile thing between them. But he had learned over centuries that sometimes love meant granting space for wounds to breathe.

"I am sorry," he said softly. "For being what I am. For wanting you despite knowing better. For all of it."

He left, descending the stairs and emerging into the brutal cold of the winter night. Behind him, he heard the sound of Minho's weeping, and knew that no physical torture of his immortal existence had ever hurt quite so much as this.

Days passed without a word. 

Chan did not visit the coffee house, could not bear to see rejection in Minho's eyes. Instead, he wandered the night streets of Seoul, watching the world continue its indifferent rotation.

His companion vampires noticed his torment. Jisung, the youngest of their clan, found him one evening standing in the snow, staring at nothing.

"You are in love," Jisung observed. It was not a question.

"I am a fool."

"Those statements are not mutually exclusive." Jisung stood beside him, looking up at the star-scattered sky. "Love is always foolish. For our kind especially. We live too long to love wisely."

"He asked me to transform him."

"Ah." Jisung absorbed this. "And you refused."

"Of course I refused. How could I not? He does not understand—"

"Perhaps he understands better than you credit him." Jisung's voice was gentle. "Perhaps he sees what you cannot: that a short life lived intensely is not necessarily preferable to a long one lived fully. You assume your existence is inherently inferior to mortal life, but that is your wound speaking, not truth."

"It is torture, Jisung. I would not wish it upon my worst enemy, let alone the man I love."

"Then you are at an impasse." Jisung turned to face him fully. "You cannot transform him without betraying your principles. You cannot keep him without watching him age and die. And you cannot leave him without destroying you both. So what will you do?"

Chan had no answer.

It was Minho who broke the silence.

A week after their terrible conversation, Chan received a note delivered by a street urchin. The handwriting was Minho's, elegant and precise.

Come tonight. Please. I have something to say.

Chan arrived at the coffee house after closing, his dead heart hammering with anxiety. Minho let him in wordlessly, locking the door behind them.

They stood in the dimly lit establishment, surrounded by the ghost-scent of the day's coffee, neither speaking. Finally, Minho moved toward the stairs.

"Come up."

In the apartment, the cats greeted Chan as though he had never left. Dori immediately claimed his lap the moment he sat, purring with determined affection.

Minho settled across from him, hands wrapped around a cup of tea he did not drink. His eyes were red-rimmed, exhausted.

"I have been thinking," he began, his voice hoarse. "About what you said. About the torture of transformation, the horror of the hunger, all of it. And I have been angry, so angry at your presumption in deciding my fate. But..."

He paused, collecting himself.

"But I have also been thinking about what I would be giving up. My morning rituals. The taste of my own creations. The warmth of sunlight. The simple pleasure of human sensation." Minho's eyes met Chan's, swimming with unshed tears. "You were right. Those are not small things."

Relief and despair warred in Chan's chest.

"So I am not going to ask you again," Minho continued. "I will not beg for transformation. But Chan..." His voice broke. "I am going to ask you for something much more difficult."

"Anything."

"Love me." Minho leaned forward, intensity burning in every line of his body. "Love me completely, without holding back in anticipation of loss. Love me through my youth and into my old age. Love me when my hands shake too much to create art and my memory begins to fail. Love me as I diminish, as I fade, as I eventually leave you."

Tears tracked down his face now, unheeded.

"I know it is selfish. I know it will hurt you terribly when I am gone. But I am asking you to hurt for me. To choose pain over emptiness. To let me matter enough that my loss devastates you." His voice dropped to a whisper. "And then, when I am gone, I ask that you continue. That you will not let my death be the end of your capacity for love. Promise me you will open yourself to others, that you will let someone else in, even knowing they too will die."

Chan could barely see through his own tears. "You ask me to endure losing you and then do it again? That is cruel, Minho."

"Yes," Minho agreed. "But it is also love. True love, the kind that costs everything and gives anyway." He reached across the space between them, taking Chan's cold hands in his warm ones. "So will you? Will you give me your undivided devotion for however long I draw breath, knowing that every moment of joy will be paid for in agony later?"

Chan thought of two centuries of careful distance, of refusing attachment, of the cold comfort of safety. He thought of Minho's warmth, his laughter, the way he looked at Chan as though he were not a monster but simply a man worth loving.

He thought of the alternative: walking away now, protecting his heart, remaining forever frozen in self-imposed isolation.

It was not really a choice at all.

"Yes," Chan whispered. "Yes, I will love you. Devotedly, completely, foolishly. I will give you every scrap of affection this dead heart can still muster. And when you leave me, as you must, I will grieve you with all the passion I loved you. And then..." His voice strengthened. "Then I will do as you ask. I will continue. I will let others in. I will honor your memory by not allowing it to become a tomb."

Minho's smile was brilliant despite his tears. "Then we have a deal, you and I. A covenant of love and loss."

"Sealed with what?" Chan asked. "Blood?"

Minho laughed, broken and beautiful. "With this."

He leaned forward and kissed Chan, soft and salt-sweet with tears. It tasted of beginning and ending, of joy and inevitable sorrow. It tasted like everything Chan had denied himself for two hundred years.

When they parted, Minho pressed his forehead to Chan's, breathing in sync.

"However long we have," Minho whispered. "Make it count."

"I will," Chan promised. "Every moment. I swear it."

And for that night at least, it was enough.

IV.

And so they loved.

Through the spring of 1914, as the world rushed unknowing toward catastrophe, Chan and Minho carved out their small paradise. Chan became utterly devoted, some might say obsessed. His clan noticed the change immediately.

"You are losing yourself in him," Hyunjin warned one evening, watching Chan prepare to leave for Minho's apartment yet again.

"I found myself in him," Chan corrected, adjusting his collar with hands that trembled slightly at the thought of seeing Minho again. "Everything before was merely existing."

He could not stay away. Each night he arrived at the coffee house before closing, and each night Minho would lock the door behind the last customer and turn to Chan with eyes that held both affection and hunger. They would ascend the stairs to the apartment, and Chan would worship at the altar of Minho's body with a devotion that bordered on religious fervor.

"You treat me like I am something precious," Minho said one night, lying tangled in sheets with Chan's cold body pressed against his warmth.

"You are precious," Chan replied, his lips against Minho's shoulder, his hands mapping the familiar terrain of his lover's body for the thousandth time and finding it new again. "You are everything. My light. My anchor. My reason for continuing through these endless years."

"That is too much weight for one person to carry."

"Then I will carry it for you." Chan raised himself on one elbow, looking down at Minho with an intensity that made his beloved shiver. "I will carry every burden. I will shoulder every fear. I will devote every moment of my existence to ensuring your happiness, my love. Just let me. Just allow me to worship you as you deserve."

Minho pulled him down into a kiss that tasted of forever, even though both knew forever was not theirs to claim.

Chan taught Minho about history, the real history, witnessed firsthand rather than read in books. But more often, they simply existed together in heated silence, learning each other's bodies with the thoroughness of scholars and the passion of the devout. Chan discovered every place that made Minho gasp, every touch that made him arch and plead. He memorized the sounds Minho made in the throes of pleasure, the way his pulse raced afterward, the soft sighs as he drifted toward sleep.

"I cannot get enough of you," Chan confessed one night, his hands roaming possessively over Minho's bare skin. "I have had lovers across two centuries, and none have consumed me as you do. You are an addiction, my beloved. A beautiful madness I have no desire to cure."

"Then do not cure it," Minho breathed, pulling Chan closer, wrapping his legs around him in clear invitation. "Love me again. Touch me again. Make me forget there is a world beyond these walls."

And Chan did, with the devotion of a supplicant at prayer.

"Everything dies," Minho said one evening, tending to his plants while Chan watched. "These flowers will bloom and fade. My cats will eventually pass. I will grow old and join them. Even stars die, given enough time. Why should this be cause for despair rather than appreciation?"

"Because I will remember," Chan replied. "Long after you are gone, I will carry the weight of you. It will be both treasure and torment."

"Good." Minho turned to him, soil on his hands, smile gentle. "Then I will never truly die, will I? As long as you remember, I persist."

They attended concerts and exhibitions. They read poetry aloud by lamplight. They argued philosophy and laughed at trivial nonsense. They made love with the desperate tenderness of those who understand time's cruel economy.

And Chan learned what he had forgotten over two centuries: that it was possible to be happy.

But the world, as always, had other plans.

War came in August.

Even in Korea, colonized by Japan, far from the European theaters, the reverberations were felt. Young men were conscripted. Resources were diverted. Fear settled over the city like ash.

Chan watched it unfold with the exhausted recognition of one who had seen it all before. Humanity's capacity for destruction was as infinite as its capacity for creation. He had witnessed countless wars, watched empires burn and rise from their own ashes. This one would be no different.

But Minho, mortal and therefore vulnerable, did not have Chan's perspective.

"They say it will be over by Christmas," Minho said one night, his voice hollow. "They always say that."

"Sometimes they are even correct," Chan offered, though his tone held little conviction.

"I could be called up. If Japan decides they need more soldiers..." Minho trailed off.

Chan felt ice close around his heart. "You will not go."

"I may not have a choice."

"Then we will leave. Go somewhere remote, somewhere they will not find you."

"Run away? Chan, I cannot simply abandon my life—"

"Your life means nothing if you are dead!" Chan's control slipped, centuries of careful composure cracking under the weight of new fear. "I will not lose you to mortal stupidity and political machinations. I will not watch you march off to die for causes invented by men who will never face the consequences of their decisions."

Minho was quiet for a long moment. Then, softly: "You cannot protect me from everything. Death will find me eventually, whether in war or in my bed as an old man. This is the bargain we made."

"I know." Chan's voice emerged broken. "But not yet. Please, not yet. We have had it for less than a year. It is not enough. It will never be enough, but this is so desperately insufficient."

Minho crossed to him, taking Chan's face in his hands. "Then let us make the most of what we have. However much or little time remains, let us fill it so completely that when you remember me, in ten years or a hundred, you will smile before you weep."

So they did.

As 1914 bled into 1915, they existed in a strange liminal space, aware of the world's chaos but determined to forge their own peace within it. Minho's coffee house became a sanctuary not just for them but for others seeking respite from fear.

Chan used his resources, accumulated over two centuries, to help where he could. Food when it grew scarce. Medicine. Safe passage for those fleeing conscription. He could not stop the war, but he could ease small sufferings.

"You are not the monster you believe yourself to be," Minho told him, watching as Chan distributed supplies to struggling families.

"I am simply a monster with means."

"No." Minho's hand found Chan's. "You are a man who has survived unimaginable time and somehow retained his capacity for compassion. That is not monstrous. That is heroic."

Chan did not feel heroic. He felt helpless, watching history repeat its cycles of violence while the one person he loved remained fragile as spun glass in the midst of it all.

But they endured. Through 1915 and into 1916. Through food shortages and fear. Through rumors of unimaginable casualties in distant Europe. Through the small daily acts of resistance that consisted simply of continuing to live, to love, to find joy in devastated times.

Minho's hair began to show the first hints of silver at his temples. Not much—he was still young by any measure, but enough that Chan noticed. Enough that the reality of mortal time pressed close.

"You are thinking about age again," Minho accused one night, catching Chan staring.

"You are greying."

"I am twenty-nine years old. It happens." Minho's tone was light, but his eyes held understanding. "Does it disturb you?"

"No." Chan reached out, touching the silver strands with something approaching reverence. "No, it is... beautiful. Proof of time passing. Of life being lived."

"I will grow old, Chan. Bent and slow and forgetful. Will you still love me then?"

"I will love you until your last breath and long after," Chan promised. "I will love you when your hands shake and your eyes dim. I will love you when you can no longer remember my name. And when you are gone, I will love your memory until time itself ends."

Minho smiled through tears. "That is both the most romantic and most devastating thing anyone has ever said to me."

"It is only truth."

They made love that night with particular intensity, as though by the fervor of their devotion they could stave off time itself. As though passion could substitute for permanence.

It could not, of course. But for those hours, they could pretend.

V.

The request came on a winter evening in 1925, as the war ground toward its exhausted conclusion.

They were in Minho's apartment, Chan reading aloud from a volume of poetry while Minho tended to his plants. The cats, older now, moving with the careful deliberation of aged creatures, dozed in their customary places. It was a scene of such domestic tranquility that Chan had almost allowed himself to believe it could last forever.

"Bang Chan,” Minho said, setting down his watering can with unusual care. "I need to speak with you about something."

The tone sent alarm through Chan's ancient veins. He set aside the book, giving Minho his complete attention.

Minho did not sit. Instead, he stood by the window, silhouetted against the night, his profile sharp with determination and sorrow.

"I have been ill," he said simply.

The words landed like cannon fire. Chan was across the room in an instant, vampire speed betraying his panic. He grasped Minho's arms, searching his face with wild eyes. "What? Since when? Why did you not tell me? I will find the best physicians, I will procure any medicine, I will, "

"My beloved," Minho's hands covered Chan's, stilling their frantic movement. "Stop. Listen to me."

"No." Chan pulled Minho against him with crushing force, burying his face in his beloved's neck. "No, I will not lose you. I refuse. Do you hear me? I refuse to accept this."

"My love—"

"Do not." Chan's voice emerged as a snarl. "Do not speak to me of acceptance or fate or any other platitude. You are mine. I have worshipped you, devoted myself to you, made you the center of my existence. You cannot leave me. I will not allow it."

His grip tightened dangerously, and Minho made a small sound of pain that immediately brought Chan back to himself. He released Minho as though burned, stumbling backward.

"Forgive me," Chan gasped. "Forgive me, beloved. I did not mean—I would never harm you—"

"I know." Minho approached him slowly, as one might approach a wounded animal. "I know you would not. But you must listen. I have been to three physicians. They all say the same. Something in my lungs. Something that cannot be cured."

"Then I will transform you." The words escaped before thought, raw and desperate. "Right now. Tonight. I will not watch you die from disease. I will make you like me, and you will have centuries, and we will never have to speak of this again—"

"No." Minho's voice was firm despite the tears streaming down his face. "We discussed this already."

Chan felt something fracture inside him. He sank to his knees before Minho, grasping his hands and pressing them to his cold forehead in supplication. "Please. Please, my love. My heart. My entire world. Do not ask me to watch you die. Do not condemn me to eternity without you. I am begging you, on my knees before you as I have always longed to be, please let me save you."

"You cannot save me from being human." Minho's hands trembled in Chan's grip. "And I do not want to be saved from it. You will never forgive yourself for doing this to someone.

"You do not understand what you are saying." Chan pulled away, pacing like a caged animal. "You speak of death so calmly, as though it were nothing. But I have watched centuries of people die, Minho. I have seen what disease does to the body. It will not be peaceful. It will not be quick. You will suffocate slowly, drowning in your own fluid, each breath agony, until—"

"Stop." Minho's voice cut through the hysteria. "You think I do not know? I have watched others die of this same affliction. I understand what awaits me."

"Then how can you refuse? How can you choose that over—"

"Over becoming like you?" Minho's eyes blazed. "Love, you have given me almost ten years of love such as I never dreamed possible. You have shared yourself, your history, your pain, your impossible existence. And in doing so, you have shown me precisely why I must refuse."

He moved closer, taking Chan's face in his hands with that familiar tenderness.

Chan pulled Minho against him, holding tight as though he could physically prevent his lover from slipping away. "I cannot bear this. I cannot watch you die."

"You can," Minho whispered against his shoulder. "You can because you must. Because I need you to. Because I am asking you to bear witness to my ending the way you have borne witness to my living."

They stood entwined as the world continued its rotation outside, as the war ground toward its conclusion, as Minho's mortal span counted down with the cruel precision of a clock measuring out remaining moments.

"What do you want from me?" Chan finally asked, his voice breaking on every word, still kneeling before his beloved like a penitent before a saint.

Minho sank down to join him on the floor, taking Chan's devastated face in his gentle hands. "Love me," he said. "Until my time runs out, love me completely. I know I am not your first love, and I know I will not be your last. But while I am here, while I draw breath, make me feel as though I am the only one who has ever mattered."

Chan's cold fingers trembled as he placed them against Minho's face, thumb tracing the curve of his cheekbone with worshipful tenderness. "You foolish, beautiful man. You speak as though you are merely a chapter in the vastness of my existence." His voice was fierce now, passionate. "But Minho, you are not a chapter. You are the entire story. Everything before you was just waiting, empty years of existing without purpose. And everything after you will be nothing but the long, terrible work of remembering. You are not one love among many. You are the love. The only one that has ever truly mattered."

Minho's breath hitched, tears spilling freely now. "I know it is selfish to ask this of you. To demand that you love me knowing I am going to die, that you will have to watch me deteriorate, that I will leave you alone again with all your impossible years stretching ahead."

His voice broke completely, and Chan gathered him close, pressing desperate kisses to his face, his throat, anywhere he could reach.

"But I am going to die loving you, Bang Chan. And as long as I live, however long that may be, I will love you so fiercely, so devotedly, so completely that every touch will be branded into your memory. So that in a hundred years or a thousand, when you have forgotten the faces of everyone else you have known, you will still remember mine. You will still remember how I looked at you. How I touched you. How I worshipped you in return."

"Do not dare think you are merely a fragment." Chan's voice was raw with emotion, his arms tightening around Minho possessively. "The years without you, past and future, are the fragments. Empty, meaningless fragments. This, here, now, with you? This is the only thing that has been real in two hundred years. You are my religion, Minho. My faith. My god."

He pressed his lips to Minho's neck, that fragile place where pulse beat steady and true, tasting salt-sweat and fear and the bitter knowledge of impending loss. How often had he dreamed of biting there, of marking Minho as his in the most primal way possible? And how unbearable to know he never would, that even now—especially now—he must maintain control.

"The years I lived without you are nothing compared to the joy of loving you now," Chan continued, each word a vow, a prayer, a desperate plea to any god who might listen. "And the years I will live after you are gone will be unspeakable. Torture beyond any I have endured. But I will endure them. I will love you through every one. I will carry you forward until time itself ends, my beloved."

They held each other on the floor as the world continued its indifferent spinning outside, as the disease worked silently in Minho's lungs, as the countdown to separation ticked relentlessly forward.

Minho collapsed against him, no longer trying to contain his weeping. Chan held him as night deepened outside, as the cats stirred and resettled, as the world continued its indifferent spinning.

"You better keep your word," Minho finally said, voice muffled against Chan's chest, "because in my next life I will be a black cat. So you must find me and take care of me."

Despite everything, Chan smiled. Trust Minho to find humor even now. "A black cat?"

"Yes. I have always felt a kinship with them. Elegant and independent, unfairly maligned by superstition." Minho pulled back, attempting a watery smile of his own. "Promise me you will find me. Promise me you will not spend the next century alone in your grief."

"I promise," Chan said. "I will find you, and you will spend all your seven lives with me."

"Nine lives," Minho corrected.

"Seven," Chan insisted gently. "Cats have seven lives in Korean tradition."

"Then I shall be a Korean cat." Minho laughed, broken and beautiful. "Seven lives with you. It still will not be enough, but it is something."

They stood together as the night deepened, holding each other against the inevitable, loving each other despite it.

The year that followed was both the most beautiful and most terrible of Chan's long existence.

He devoted himself entirely to Minho's comfort. He procured medicines that eased the pain if not the disease. He hired physicians, the best that money could acquire, though they all confirmed what the first had said: there was no cure, only time.

Chan closed the coffee house when Minho grew too weak to manage it. The cats, sensing their master's decline, rarely left his side. Soonie, the orange tom who had first approved of Chan, became particularly devoted, sleeping on Minho's chest and purring with determined constancy.

"He thinks he can heal me with purring," Minho said one afternoon, his voice hoarse. "Cats believe their purrs have medicinal properties, you know."

"Perhaps they do," Chan replied, sitting beside the bed. "If love could cure, you would be immortal."

"If love could cure, you would be mortal."

Chan had no response to that truth.

As spring arrived and the war finally, mercifully ended, Minho's condition worsened. He slept more, ate less. His breath grew labored, each inhale requiring visible effort. Yet his mind remained sharp, his spirit undimmed.

"Tell me about the future," Minho requested one evening. "What do you think the world will look like in a hundred years?"

Chan considered. "Flying machines, perhaps. Horseless carriages becoming common. Electric lights everywhere. The world growing smaller as distances become easier to traverse."

"Will there be more wars?"

"Yes," Chan admitted. "Humanity has not learned that lesson yet. Perhaps it never will."

"And you?" Minho's hand found Chan's. "What will you be doing in a hundred years?"

"Missing you." Chan's voice was steady despite the pain. "Remembering this. Keeping my promise to continue, though every moment will be colored by your absence."

"Good." Minho smiled. "I do not wish to be forgotten."

"You could not be forgotten if I tried. And I will not try."

They were quiet for a time, listening to Minho's labored breathing and the cats' gentle purring.

“My beloved?" Minho's voice was growing weaker now, each word requiring effort. "I am frightened."

Chan gathered him close, carefully mindful of his fragility. "I know, my love. I know."

"What if there is nothing after? What if I simply... cease?"

"Then you will finally have peace." Chan pressed his lips to Minho's forehead. "But I do not believe that. I have lived too long, seen too much, to believe consciousness simply ends. You will go somewhere. Somewhere I cannot follow, not yet. But you will go somewhere."

"Promise me you will find me there eventually. When your impossible existence finally ends, when you have lived every year you are meant to live—find me."

"I promise," Chan whispered. "In this life or the next or the one after. I will find you. I will always find you."

VI.

Minho died on a Tuesday in late May, as spring bloomed indifferent outside his window.

Chan had been reading to him, poetry, Minho's favorite,  when he felt the change. The rhythm of Minho's breathing altered, becoming shallow and irregular. His eyes opened, focusing on Chan's face with surprising clarity.

"There you are," Minho whispered, smiling. "My beautiful monster."

"I am here." Chan set aside the book, taking Minho's hand. It was so cold now, the warmth that had defined him fading like the day. "I am here, my love."

"It does not hurt anymore." Wonder colored Minho's voice. "I thought it would hurt, but it does not."

"Good. That is good."

"Chan.." Minho's grip tightened with surprising strength. "Thank you. For everything. For loving me. For letting me love you. For making my brief time matter."

"Your time mattered," Chan said fiercely. "You mattered. You were everything."

"Everything," Minho repeated, smile widening. "What a beautiful word."

His eyes drifted closed, then opened again with effort. "The cats. You will take care of them?"

"I will. I promise."

"And you will find someone else. Someone to love. You will not build walls again."

"I will try."

"Not try. Do." Minho's voice held a shadow of its old command. "Live, love. Not just endure. Truly live. For me."

"For you," Chan agreed, though the words emerged broken.

His breath released in a long, slow exhalation.

And did not resume.

Chan sat frozen, still holding Minho's hand, waiting for another breath that would never come. Outside, birds sang their evening songs. Inside, the cats began to yowl, a keening sound of loss that matched the howl building in Chan's chest.

He had watched countless people die over two centuries. He had held lovers and friends and strangers as they passed. But nothing, nothing, had prepared him for this particular agony.

"No," he whispered. "No, please. Not yet. We need more time. Just a little more—"

But time, indifferent as always, continued its forward march.

Chan pressed his forehead to Minho's, breathing in his scent one last time, coffee and earth and growing things, overlaid now with the sharp copper of approaching decay. He kissed cold lips that would never smile again. He traced familiar features that would soon be nothing but memory.

"I love you," he said to the empty shell. "I love you, and I will love you forever. Through every century remaining to me, through every moment of my impossible existence."

The tears came then, centuries of them, all the grief he had suppressed for all the losses he had endured finally breaking through. He wept for Minho, for their abbreviated time, for the injustice of a world that gave such brilliant souls such brief spans. He wept for himself, for the eternity stretching ahead without the one person who had made it bearable.

He wept until sunrise forced him to seek shelter, leaving Minho's body to be tended by others.

He wept until his clan found him and forcibly made him drink blood he had no appetite for.

He wept until weeping became simply another form of endurance.

The funeral was small. Minho had outlived his family, and his friends were few. Chan attended despite the daylight, draped in heavy fabrics, suffering through the sun's assault to bear witness.

They cremated Minho's body according to his wishes. Chan kept the ashes in an urn on his mantle, unable to scatter them as Minho had requested. Not yet. Not when they were all he had left.

The cats came to live with Chan and his clan. Dori attached himself particularly to Chan, following him through the house, sleeping on his chest, purring with that same determined constancy. The others said the cat was trying to heal him.

Chan knew better. Dori was grieving too.

Weeks passed. Months. The world celebrated the war's end while Chan moved through his existence like a ghost haunting his own life. He fed because he must. He existed because stopping was not an option. 

"You made him a promise," Changbin reminded him one evening, six months after Minho's death. "You said you would continue. That you would not let his death close you off again."

"I know what I promised," Chan replied, voice hollow.

"Then honor it." Changbin's tone was sharp with frustrated affection. "Minho loved you enough to let you go, to die rather than trap you in eternal devotion to his memory. The least you can do is respect that sacrifice."

Chan knew Changbin was right. But knowing and doing were vastly different things.

It was Doongie who finally forced the change.

One year after Minho's death, the cat fell ill. Old age, the veterinarian said. His organs were failing. He had perhaps days remaining.

Chan sat with Doongie through his final night, stroking soft orange fur, remembering Minho's hands doing the same. The cat purred weakly, eyes fixed on Chan's face with eerie intelligence.

"You miss him too," Chan said softly. "You understand."

Doongie's purr intensified briefly, then faded.

As dawn approached, the cat's breathing slowed. His eyes drifted closed. And Chan, holding this small creature who had been Minho's constant companion, felt something shift in his chest.

Loss was inevitable. Everything ended. Everyone died. But while they lived, whether for years or centuries or the brief span of a cat's life, they mattered. They left marks upon the world and upon each other that time could not fully erase.

Minho had marked him. Had changed him. Had reminded him that love, despite its inevitable pain, was worth the cost.

And Chan had promised to honor that by continuing.

When Doongie passed as the sun rose, Chan wept again. But this time, the tears felt different. Less like drowning, more like release.

He buried the cat in the garden behind the house, planting flowers over the grave. Then he went inside, took Minho's urn from the mantle, and finally did what Minho had asked.

He scattered the ashes in the garden where the first black cat was buried, mixing them with the earth, letting Minho return to the growing things he had loved.

"I am trying," Chan said to the morning air. "I am trying to live, not just endure. It is hard. It is so desperately hard. But I will keep trying. For you."

The wind stirred the new flowers. Somewhere, a bird sang. And Chan felt, for the first time in a year, the possibility of something other than grief.

EPILOGUE.

First Life - 1925

Chan found the kitten in an alley seven years after Minho's death. Black as midnight, with eyes that seemed to hold ancient wisdom. It mewed pitifully, huddled against the cold.

Chan picked it up without thinking. It nestled immediately into his coat, purring.

"Are you him?" Chan whispered. "Did you come back?"

The kitten looked at him with knowing eyes and purred louder.

Chan named him Minho. Because of course he did.

Second Life - 1943

The second black cat appeared during the war, a different war, though no less terrible than the first. Chan was helping to smuggle refugees across borders when he found it: a sleek black cat with a white spot on its chest, sitting calmly amid the chaos.

It followed him home. It was imperious and demanding and absolutely refused to eat anything but the finest food. It reminded Chan so much of Minho's particular standards that he laughed for the first time in years.

Third Life - 1967

This one was a stray in a Seoul that Minho would not have recognized, rebuilt, modernized, transformed. The cat was missing an ear and had a crooked tail, but it walked up to Chan as though it had been searching for him specifically.

Chan took it home. By this point, his clan had accepted that Chan would always have a black cat. They stopped questioning it.

Fourth Life - 1989

A tiny kitten appeared on his doorstep on the anniversary of Minho's death. Black as shadow, with one white whisker. It mewed insistently until Chan opened the door, then waltzed inside as though it owned the place.

It slept on Chan's chest every night, purring with that same determined constancy Dori once had.

Fifth Life - 2003

Chan was in a shelter, volunteering, when he saw it: a black cat scheduled for euthanasia due to overcrowding. Something in its eyes, something familiar, made him adopt it without hesitation.

This cat loved coffee. Would sit beside Chan while he brewed his morning cup, inhaling the scent with evident pleasure. It could not drink it, of course, but it seemed to find comfort in the ritual.

Chan understood completely.

Sixth Life - 2019

The technological age. Chan had adapted, learned to navigate social media and smartphones and a world connected in ways Minho could never have imagined. He was at a café, not Minho's, that was long gone, when a black cat wandered in.

The owner tried to shoo it out. Chan asked to adopt it instead.

This cat was playful, energetic, impossibly young in spirit. It reminded Chan that life was meant to be lived with joy, not just endured with dignity.

Seventh Life - 2025

Chan found the final cat on a winter evening, rain falling just as it had the night he met Minho. The cat was old, scarred, walking with a limp. It should have been feral, untouchable.

Instead, it walked directly to Chan and pressed against his legs.

Chan picked it up carefully. It purred, that same deep, resonant purr he remembered from over a century ago.

"Hello, my love," Chan whispered. "Welcome home."

He took the cat to his apartment. The other six were gone now, each lived and mourned. This one would be the last of the seven lives. The completion of the cycle.

The cat settled into Chan's life as though it had always been there. It slept on his chest at night. It sat with him while he read poetry. It seemed to understand when Chan spoke of Minho, of loss, of the weight of centuries.

One evening, as they sat by the window watching snow fall, Chan spoke aloud.

"I kept my promise," he said. "I found you in every life. I loved you through all seven. And I learned to live again, not just endure. It took time, so much time, but I did it. For you."

The cat turned its ancient eyes to him and placed one paw on his hand.

"I will not have you much longer," Chan continued, voice tight. "This is your last life, and you are already old. Soon I will be alone again, truly alone, with only memories of you in both your forms."

The cat meowed softly, then returned to purring.

"But I will continue," Chan promised, just as he had promised over a century ago. "I will keep living. I will let others in. I will honor what you taught me about the beauty of impermanence and the importance of loving fiercely despite inevitable loss."

Outside, the snow continued falling. Inside, a vampire and a cat kept vigil together, connected across lives and deaths and the impossible span of years.

"Thank you," Chan whispered. "For coming back. For finding me. For reminding me, again and again, that love persists even when everything else fades."

The cat purred louder, closing its eyes contentedly.

And Chan, for the first time in over a century, felt something approaching peace.