Chapter 2: The Weight of Humanity

The year is 1300 Anno Domini. The city of GenSan wakes each morning of church bells, market noises, barking dogs, children's laughter and working animals on the crops fields. Yet, I pass among them with a polite detachment, their eyes slipping from mine as though by instinct.

They whisper when I pass. Too tall. Too pale. Too strange to be born looking like a woman. I catch the words without effort. Their voices always carry farther when they try to lower them.

Silver hair, blue eyes, skin without color—this is all they see. To them I am less man than myth, the shape of a story told around a fire to frighten children into obedience. 

If they guessed what I was, their prayers would turn to screams. But they do not know—and I do not say. 

My dwelling lies not far—fifteen minutes’ walk into the forest, past the foothills where the air turns colder and birds do not sing. They offer polite nods, quick smiles, then let me walk on alone. 

That is distance enough. Most don’t bother with more than a nod, and that’s fine. That’s enough. 

The ones who do usually keep their distance. Except her.

“Havir!” the old woman called, waving from the road. She comes by sometimes, buying what others won’t. “If you’re cutting watermelons today, save me some sweet ones, will you?”

I gave her a smile. It always feels strange on my face, like it doesn’t quite belong. “Of course, Madam. How many shall I put aside?”

“Five, if you can,” she said, coming closer. “Big ones—the kind only you grow.”

I nodded. “Very well. Should I bring them to your house, or will your grandson fetch them?”

“My grandson. You are already carrying too much as it is.” She patted my arm, gentle as kin, then slipped coins into my hand before I could argue. Soon she was gone down the road, her back bent but steady.

The smile slipped away.

When I turned back, the children were there. They always find me, no matter how quiet I try to stay. Dirt on their hands, eyes shining like they’d stumbled into treasure.

“Uncle Havir!” one shouted. “Tell us the story again—the one about the sad vampire boy!”

I stood still. That story. Why do they love it so much? It was never meant for them. It was mine, wrapped in shadow, spoken aloud only so I wouldn’t choke on it.

I sighed, pretending to argue. “Work before play, remember? Let me finish here, and then I’ll tell it once more. Only once.”

They cheered like they’d already won, then scattered off with a rope to fight over.

I went back to the melons, stacking them into the wagon, careful with each one as though a bruise on their skin might show as a flaw on mine. Their weight pressed firm against my palms, still damp with morning dew, their rough rinds scraping lightly at my fingers. I shifted them slowly, listening to the hollow thud when one knocked against another, arranging them so they would not roll in transit.

At the bottom, half-hidden beneath a piece of cloth, lay something I had not meant to see. A folded custom linen hood, pale in color, its seams worn but still neatly stitched. My hand froze above it, the melon sagging heavy in my grip.

My wife’s gift.

The cloth still carried the faintest scent of dried lavender, though the years had thinned it to almost nothing. She had sewn it herself, every stitch even, precise — her hands had always been that way. My chest clenched hard, the ache striking sharp as if no time had passed at all. For a moment I almost let myself sink into it — the memory of her fingers brushing the hood into place on my shoulders, her voice soft and certain.

But the past does not change.

I forced the ache back where it belonged, down into that hollow place where I keep such things. The hood stayed folded. I would not touch it.

When the wagon was full, the sound of laughter came skipping back across the yard. The children returned, their faces flushed and bright from running, their hair sticking damply to their temples. Dust clung to their legs where they had been chasing one another in the road. Their eyes caught mine, wide and waiting, and all at once their noise pressed against the stillness I had wrapped around myself.

I breathed slowly, heavily, steadying the weight of the moment before meeting their gaze.

“Listen close,” I told them. “This story is never to be repeated. It belongs only to you.”

They nodded, solemn all of a sudden, like they could feel the weight behind my words. Then they dropped to the grass, cross-legged, staring at me with those wide eyes.

“Once,” I began, “there was a boy who grew up in a house full of adults. No other children. Just him. At first, he was happy. Maybe too happy. His parents spoiled him rotten—gave him everything. His father ruffled his hair, his mother kissed his forehead. He thought nothing would ever change.”

My voice went softer. My eyes drifted somewhere they shouldn’t.

“But on his thirteenth birthday, they told him the truth. He wasn’t really their child. His true parents had died when he was just a baby. He’d only ever been adopted.”

Gasps. One freckled boy frowned. “But… why? Why tell him that? Didn’t it hurt him?”

I gave a small smile—thin, tired. “Because sometimes the truth is too heavy for parents to carry alone. And love…” I swallowed. “…love can still be stronger than blood.”

Another child leaned in. “Was he good after that?”

A laugh escaped me, but it had no joy. “No. He was stubborn. Wild. Always breaking rules. He pulled pranks on servants, climbed walls he shouldn’t, vanished into the woods when his parents forbade it. They were rich, he had everything, yet he never played with other children. He was a storm bottled up in a mansion.”

“Why?” a boy frowned.

The older girl pressed closer. “Didn’t his parents punish him?”

I smirked. “Oh, they tried. Locked him in his room for days. But he always found a way out. Once he tied sheets together, climbed from the window, and ran into the night just to chase fireflies.”

The children burst into giggles.

“And the servants?” another boy asked. “They must’ve hated him.”

“Some did,” I admitted, my voice dropping. “But others… they pitied him. Because no matter what chaos he stirred, he was always alone. Always staring out the window at a world he wasn’t allowed to touch.”

The smallest girl whispered, “Why not?”

For a moment, my face hardened. Then I forced it soft again. “…Because his parents were different. They couldn’t let him mix with the world outside. He understood. But he never truly questioned it—until he turned eighteen.”

Tousled-hair boy leaned forward. “Different how? Sick? Cursed?”

My lips curved, faint, almost cruel. “Let’s just say they lived by rules most people wouldn’t understand. Rules of the night.”

“Did he ever run away?” a girl asked, eyes shining.

“Many times,” I said. “But something always pulled him back. No matter how far he went, the thought of his parents waiting in that lonely house dragged him home.”

The freckled boy scowled. “But didn’t he get lonely? With no friends?”

“Lonely, yes. But not empty. He had their love. For a while, that was enough.”

The smallest girl’s voice trembled. “What happened at eighteen?”

My eyes drifted past them, past the fields, past everything. “…That,” I said quietly, “is for another day.”

The tale ends too soon, cut off by the sinking sun. Parents are calling their children home and my wagon’s full of fruit that needs hauling into town.

“That’s enough for today,” I tell them gently. “Go home before your parents worry. We’ll continue another time.”

They groan—the predictable chorus— but they obey. They scatter back toward the village. Their laughter drifts off, thread by thread, until the field is quiet. I’m still clutching the thin veil one young girl left behind. 

For a moment my lips move and the grass catches my whisper.

“If only I could stay this way…,” I say to no one, and the words are swallowed by the dusk. My chest tightens; the silence that follows is heavier than it was before.

But when the echoes of their laughter fade, the silence turns heavy, and something in me begins to shift.

When they’re gone, inside me has darkens. My hands curl as if to hold back what stirs beneath my skin; a small tremor runs along the tendons, eager to become something more. I still it, press my palms together until the urge subsides. 

My face is neutral, careful, pale as unturned earth. I wear only the slightest curve of a mouth, a faint tilt of the head when I pass someone on the road. To them it reads as distant courtesy, a farmer’s quiet habit. 

That is enough. It must be enough. 

If I ever named what I am, no one would believe it. They would laugh, or they would fear, or they would reach for fire.

To them I am only a pale farmer who keeps to his fields. They know me by the sight of my shoulders bent to soil, the rare nod I offer at the market, the low bow I give the blacksmith when he greets me from his doorway. 

They do not know the sound of my voice. I ration it carefully, spoken only when numbers must be traded, weights declared, coins exchanged. I have no warmth to give them, no interest in their gossip. My distance suits them fine—they take me for strange, but harmless.

I walk the fields at dusk, when the light is thin enough to soothe me. My steps are measured, unhurried, the silence stretched between each one like thread across a loom. I listen to the wind moving in the wheat, to the distant dogs, to the hush of my own breath. 

I touch the fence posts as I pass, grounding myself in their roughness, counting them beneath my hand. Each small gesture is deliberate, practiced, the shape of restraint itself.

But beneath all this stillness, the shadow stirs. It coils behind my ribs, presses at my jaw, sharpens my senses until the very air tastes of iron. I keep my eyes lowered, lest they see the hunger that lingers there, constant and patient. 

The beast never sleeps. It waits. It listens. It knows the smell of every vein that walks this village, and though my steps remain slow, my hands folded, the truth of me gnaws like a blade against my throat.

My fingers find the rough wood of the wagon; the grain catches under my nails and roots me to something ordinary. They see a farmer, a neighbor, someone harmless enough to leave their children with—an outline of civility cut against the failing light. 

If only they knew. If only they could read the hunger tucked behind my gaze when their laughter comes too close, bright and easy as a bell. I tilt my head the smallest fraction, the practiced courtesy I have taught myself, and the world accepts the shape without asking questions.

A shiver runs through me though the evening air holds warmth; a tremor not of cold but of appetite. I press my palm flat to the splintered rim until the muscle under my thumb stills. I bury it. I chain it. I train my voice to thinness and let silence do the rest. 

But chains rust, and hunger corrodes what restraint is built of. Small fissures show where I pant under the weight of pretense: a tighter jaw, a glance that lingers too long, a pause before I speak. I catalog them like a ledger—each slip, each almost—because counting is the only thing that keeps the dark at bay.

I wonder how long before the cracks open? How long before patience wears thin and the old instincts climb back like ivy along a ruined wall? 

The thought stays with me, sharpened and patient. It lingers like a blade at my throat—cold, merciless, waiting—while I stand among my harvest and keep my hands empty. The beast never sleeps. It waits. It listens.

For all my careful smiles and the civility I hand out like spare change, the truth sits under my ribs: I am far older than the village thinks. I do not belong to these fields or to their gossiping lanes; I belong to the cold, patient dark that lives in the foothills and remembers things the living forget.

A few miles off, GenSan City hums and brightens— lamps and carts and a thousand ordinary lives sliding past one another. No one there would suspect the thing that watches their roads from the wheat: a pale silhouette that bows at the edge of market days and speaks only in measured numbers. They would not know the nights I keep, nor the voices that sometimes come back to me like weather.

Sometimes, when dusk is quiet, I hear voices I haven’t heard in millenniums. I don’t remember the ruined tribe of Oryang's village. I was only a baby when she found me. But Carmellia told me the story so many times it carved itself into me like memory.

How she took me from cold stones and held me until my frail cry quit.

“You were not born to me,” she would say, always brushing my hair from my brow, “...but you are mine, My Havir. My dear, as much as blood or breath can make you. You are my child.”

Rafael— stern, a shadow who never laughed easily— placed his heavy hand on my shoulder and said, “Live. Whatever comes, live.”

I remember the smell of our house: big iron fence, smoke from the kitchen, the sour-sweet of preserved peaches. I remember how belonging felt— a rough, improbable warmth in the hollow where hunger lives. Love raised me, even as the dark kept its count.

Love left me too. It etched itself into marrow and memory and then receded like a tide. I am still here. I still tend wheat and load fruit into a cracked wagon. I still bow my head and keep my words small.

I’m still here. Still playing at being a silent farmer. 

But I know what I am.

 A vampire.

 Hiding in plain sight.

To be continued…