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Han Chae-Ah decides after the third petty argument she gets into with Park Yoon-Soo in one evening that she can't continue like this. Although they'd called a temporary truce when they'd left Korea, the bastard was driving her up the wall. She knows that the best retaliation would be not to react, but it was difficult not to get riled when looking at that smug face and remembering all the shit he'd put her through up until now.
So Chae-Ah concludes that the only way to counter the irritation that flares up within her in response to Park Yoon-Soo is to either avoid him completely, or to try and come up with a list of things she likes (tolerates is probably a better word) about him that she can focus on next time he tries to start a fight.
The easiest thing to like about Park Yoon-Soo is his money. He clearly prefers the finer things in life, ranging from clothing to furniture to even the premium cuts of meat he buys them although he doesn't necessarily have to eat. And in spite of all of his other horrible habits, Chae-Ah can't call him stingy. Not when she has a full new wardrobe with expensive clothing for every conceivable occasion suspiciously tailored to her size.
Even the place the three of them are staying at is better than any resort Chae-Ah could have ever hoped to afford on her own. Her bathroom is as large as her apartment back in Korea with a full jacuzzi and spa option. And if she ever gets bored of that, there's always the outdoor pool.
Hell, now that she thinks about it, Park Yoon-Soo's money is probably the greatest saving grace of this whole fucked up situation.
"Can I buy this?" she asks him one morning, leaning over the back of the sofa where he's seated and pointing at a diamond watch in one of the random magazines that had been there when they'd moved into the fully furnished living space. She doesn't truly want it--wouldn’t even wear it if she had it--but she's curious to see what he'll say.
He takes the magazine from her hand and half-heartedly studies the watch.
“I can get you a better one than this,” he finally says, tossing the magazine to the side.
”Hah?”
“You have no taste, Han Chae-Ah.”
“Says the guy with a taste for human bloo—“ she cuts herself off, realizing getting into a fight was the opposite outcome of this whole operation. Curling her hand into a fist, she continues: “I don’t want a watch, actually.”
”Oh?” He’s turned to completely look at her, voice aloof but Chae-Ah easily able to read the edge of challenge in his voice.
”A car,” Chae-Ah demands, leaning closer to him and for once looking down at him with the advantage she has while standing. In response, he leans his head back against the sofa so he's looking right back up at her.
”Planning a grand escape?” He counters, voice soft and almost bitter.
“Are you saying I’m a prisoner then?” Park Yoon-Soo, the asshole, lets his gaze flicker away for a brief moment before returning to look at her. Yes, is the unspoken answer between them. Now she's pissed. "Yah, Park Yoon-Soo, do you think I'll let you-"
“What are you two doing?” Both of them jerk apart at Geurim’s voice, closer than Chae-Ah had realized. He’s standing in the doorway, giving them a wary look. "You guys aren't fighting again, are you?"
Shit. That's exactly what they'd ended up doing despite Han Chae-Ah's initial intentions. With one last glare at the blood-sucking thorn in her side, she retreats to her room.
Technically speaking, she'd met Geurim through Park Yoon-Soo, and the bastard acted like they were pseudo-related anyways, so Chae-Ah thinks its appropriate to say that Geurim goes on to the list of things she likes about Park Yoon-Soo. The kid's nice, if a little messed up, but who wouldn't be after living with Park Yoon-Soo for so long? In fact, Chae-Ah's a little surprised Geurim didn't turn out worse after having first-hand experience with Park Yoon-Soo's complete lack of moral regard for others.
What made Geurim even sweeter in her opinion was when he’d ditched Park Yoon-Soo to live with her which had subsequently completely pissed off the bastard. That fact alone was what made her agree to let him stay in her little apartment, and the arrangement turned out to be useful later when her asshole of an ex-boyfriend broke into her home. Of course, around the same time Park Yoon-Soo also decided to lose his fucking mind and move in next door. Looking back, Chae-Ah is sure that was when the turning point in their ill-fated relationship begun.
More importantly, Geurim attaching himself to her probably saved her life.
On a side note, Geurim had also landed her in the present situation living in hiding from Park Yoon-Soo's even more fucked up father, but she could forgive him for it, especially since he always sided with her in arguments with Park Yoon-Soo.
"When is Geurim's birthday?" Chae-Ah asks Park Yoon-Soo while they're out at the pool one evening. He's sitting in the shade, fully dressed and doing something on his laptop. Why he decided to come out here when he knew she was there, she didn't know, but she was too stubborn to leave first.
"Ask Geurim," is his short reply, continuing to type away at whatever he's working on. Chae-Ah rolls her eyes and swims over towards him, leaning her arms on the fancy stone pavement surrounding the pool's perimeter. She flicks water at him, and he looks up at her, unamused. She looks right back at him, one brow raised.
"You're a control freak, Park Yoon-Soo. Don't tell me you don't actually know?" It's better to challenge him when she's looking for an answer than ask him nicely, even if it contradicts her goal to stop getting into fights with him.
"We don't celebrate birthdays," he offers as an excuse, and Chae-Ah does believe that, especially after sparing a moment to think of the absurd image of the vampire in front of her wearing a pointed birthday hat and blowing candles out. She shudders slightly at her own imagination, and Park Yoon-Soo catches the movement.
"Cold?" The question isn't taunting like she thought it would be. Instead, its paired with that odd note of deliberate disinterest that he keeps using the longer they're stuck here together. Chae-Ah narrows her eyes slightly, studying him.
"Do you actually care?" she scoffs, but she's paying careful attention to him. There. His eyes flicker away for a millisecond. Before she can call him out on his strange behavior, he turns his head towards the pool gate.
"There's the little brat now. You can ask him yourself."
Geurim joins her in the pool just as Park Yoon-Soo leaves. She watches him go, arms crossed and mentally going over their interaction to figure out what was off. "Yah, Geurim, you wouldn't happen to know what's wrong with Park Yoon-Soo these days, would you?"
Geurim snorts. "He's not plotting your murder, if that's what you're thinking." She clicks her tongue at him; she'd figured out that much herself.
"Forget it. Tell me when your birthday is instead since the bastard didn't want to share."
All in all, Chae-Ah ends up spending the rest of the afternoon idly chattering away with Geurim, once again reminded why the younger vampire was one of Park Yoon-Soo's few redeeming qualities.
After Park Yoon-Soo's money, Chae-Ah decides that theoretically, his second greatest asset would be his looks. Despite this, his face is not one of the things Han Chae-Ah can add to the list of features she likes (tolerates) about him. Objectively speaking, she can acknowledge that he's handsome. Even her sister had ogled him while in her literal wedding gown when Park Yoon Soo had shown up announcing he was Chae-Ah’s partner. And don't even get her started on the church ahjummas who praised him for being the ideal son-in-law material with his lethal combination of deep pockets and good looks.
But for Chae-Ah, his face is too closely associated in her mind with the cruelty she knows that can twist it into a predatory visage in one moment, and in the next, it can become so inhumanely cold that even Geurim will flinch. It doesn't help that she's seen him gutted on blood (on her own blood), and despite movies showing otherwise, a feasting vampire is a terrifying site rather than a seductive one.
But if she had to pick one part of his physical appearance that wasn't completely associated with awful memories, oddly enough, it was his hands.
They're long and fine-boned, and much larger than her own. It isn't even that she deliberately tries to look at them; her noticing them has more to do with the fact that Park Yoon-Soo had become oddly more touchy as of recently, a complete reversal of the cold and disinterested act he had been putting on when they'd first moved into this new arrangement. The bastard seemed to have reached some revelation overnight (Chae-Ah was almost positive it was the same damn night she'd gotten drunk and made a fool of herself trying to uphold her end of their deal).
But what was more concerning than Park Yoon-Soo's sudden fascination with putting his hands on her was how quickly she gets used to the bastard constantly invading her personal space when it should have instead been alarming given their physical history. And yet, too often Chae-Ah realizes the press of his hand on her shoulder or a thumb brushing against her chin too late--the touches are subtle enough that they pass under her radar of alarm when she's absorbed in arguing with him.
She doesn’t truly grasp how far she’s let the situation slip until the day the three of them are planning to go out to town and she falls sick. While she vaguely remembers shuffling up to Park Yoon-Soo and shoving her head against him in a silent this is somehow your fault so fix it, most of the evening after that is a blur except for one moment of lucidity among the feverish nightmares that had plagued her.
She recalls being coaxed out of a childhood memory, gasping for breath at the feeling of her grandmother's fingers squeezing her throat, to find Park Yoon-Soo's cool fingers slowly pulling through her hair. He'd been staring right at her, but he'd seemed lost in thought, not even realizing she had woken up as his fingers idly continued to card through her hair.
Shock had fleeted through her before heavy exhaustion followed and crushed it; what did it say about her life that after all she'd been through, the only person by her side was this monster? In that moment, she thought that Park Yoon-Soo was the only person in the entire world who knew who Han Chae-Ah was. And with the specter of her grandmother hanging over her, she didn't want him to leave; she would have given anything for him stay there with his fingers rhythmically tugging through her sweaty strands of hair, keeping her company in this one moment of weakness when everyone else had scorned her.
(Later, when Park Yoon-Soo's twisted feelings come spilling out between them like blood, his hands will feel like hot brands against her skin, a conduit for his bewildering desire she can't quite grasp even after all his strange behaviors snap into sudden sharp clarity)
In the end, her short list of reasons doesn't do a damn thing in preventing her from getting into arguments with Park Yoon-Soo. However, it does help her reach a devastating conclusion: Han Chae-Ah, for some inconceivable, absolutely impossible reason, trusts Park Yoon-Soo.
This is a realization she denies vehemently at first, and with good reason. The bastard had tried to kill her more times than he had ever helped her, and she wasn't completely positive he wouldn't still murder her if given a good enough reason. But that's a lie; she knows he won't try to kill her, not anymore, not when she’s able to fall asleep under the same roof as him every night expecting to wake up alive the next morning.
She never thought she would trust another person in her entire life again, and here she was, handing over her trust to Park Yoon-Soo of all people. And why? Because he'd killed Nam Hae-Won for her? Because he knew every last dirty detail about her life and still remained the same consistent asshole? Because despite all of the cruelty he'd dealt her, she'd earned some measure of respect from him that her own blood-relations couldn't give her?
She wants to laugh at herself. Fucking Park Yoon-Soo. He'd tried to blackmail her with murder, and she would have left him for dead in front of his own burning house if not for a guarantee of her own safety.
And now here they were, playing house in a foreign country with the foundation of their relationship slowly twisting into something unrecognizable the longer they stayed together. She almost wished Park Yoon-Soo's crazy dad would find them so they could shatter this bizarre limbo they were coexisting in.
But of course, because Park Yoon-Soo was conceived with the single purpose of ruining Han Chae-Ah's life, he leans over her in a dimly lit corner of a café when they're out in town and tilts her world upside down by asking her, "Do you want to become a vampire?"
Why? She's furious that he would even ask, that the asshole has the fucking audacity to ask her that question after everything. A vampire. Then the son of a bitch whispers "Stay still" and goes on to bite her mouth because he's obviously lost his mind and determined to piss her off to the point of murder.
She manages to shove him off of her, but the odd note of vulnerability in his expression afterwards causes her to hesitate. For a fleeting moment, she thinks it's a manipulation tactic, but her instincts tell her otherwise.
"Park Yoon-Soo," she grits out slowly, disbelief replacing her anger at the crazy realization that was forming in her mind. "Why did you ask me that?"
Her mind clicks together the pattern of his recent behavior too late.
If she had thought coming to trust a monster like Park Yoon-Soo was impossible, then Park Yoon-Soo had accomplished the unthinkable and somehow fallen in love with a human like Han Chae-Ah.
Ah, she thinks, finally recognizing the hunger in his eyes. I'm completely fucked now.