Open Window (OnHo) - Part 3
Notes | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15
16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30
31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45
It made a bit of sense that Minho would want to come to the library. He always liked libraries, and he especially liked this new one he was local to. It was much bigger, but it was still quiet. Libraries, he supposed, weren't the hot spot they used to be. Not to say he was alone in the library - which is why he wondered now why he came here.
He'd thought he'd search for "missing vampire psycho!" articles, and even brush up on his knowledge of vampires in general - maybe he'd missed something where it turned out they were actually possible. His hand reached up absent mindedly to his shoulder, recalling the horrible pain - and how it magically became better an instant later. He'd thought that was impossible, right?
... He was going crazy, right?
Even if he wasn't, he was going to look crazy if anyone saw him googling 'vampire wannabe' or stalking around the dark mythology section.
He sits at a computer, face feeling hot as he clicks simply on a news site. Now that he thought about it, Onew was covered in blood. So, that meant... he was an insane serial killer that had been out biting a bunch of people. Now he was under Minho's bed, in a house with Minho's family.
Minho felt sick with himself, but then got one of those weird feelings that he kept getting lately and knew it was safe.
He seemed so tired, afterall...
Thinking of how tired Onew felt made Minho feel tired, and he rubbed his eyes and focused once again on the news site. Something about.. a missing.. bloody boy was bound to turn up, right?
.. Wrong. No missing anyone, no local murders...
Minho frowned, although it was an odd thing to frown about. He just very much wanted to tie Onew into reality... somehow...
He looked over his shoulder, and then over the other one. He sighed, and turned back to his moniter. He leaned in close, trying to look as casual as possible as he typed 'vampires' into the search.
The more he saw the word "fictional", the more he felt a headache, and the more he convinced himself that he'd had a very realistic nightmare. Each site he visited had more and more conflicting information. Only a few truths seemed remotely consistent, and they were things Minho had a vague idea about already.
"Oh cool!! You're looking up vampires?"
Minho jumped at the voice, swinging his head around to face a grinning Taemin. Surely he can't have said it all that loud, but Minho would have sworn everyone in the library looked in their direction. He was beet red when he looked back at the internet, closing out the website. "What are you doing here?"
"Your mom said you came to study." Taemin sat at the computer next to Minho, smiling at him. "Which I kind of figured wasn't true, but I thought it'd be fun to visit anyway. So, you're studying vampires?" Taemin's smug look said, 'I caught you up to no good...' and Minho felt insanely annoyed that he was practically stalked down, and now had to come up with an excuse for this more than embarrassing situation...
He made a mental note to tell his mom he hated Taemin and didn't want him to ever know where he was. Then he crumpled up the mental note and threw it away, cause his mom was going to feel terribly bad if he said anything even close to that.
"I heard something.." Minho said slowly, "about a guy running around here claiming he was a vampire. I just wanted to know if it was true."
Taemin looked like he wanted to laugh, "Really?"
"Really." Minho sighed, hating being judged by the oddness that was his younger neighbor.
"How come you didn't just use the internet at your house?"
"I needed to get out."
"I know how that is." Taemin smiled softly, and Minho recalled the awfulness that occured the one time he visited Taemin's house. It was 3PM, but his mother was drunk to the point of slurring, and the things she was saying to Minho were anything but appropriate... he shuddered. His family life was nothing like that, and he couldn't relate to the urges Taemin must have to escape. He felt a little bad for being so annoyed by the "stalking".
Taemin turned to the computer in front of him, putting in his library pin that made up his username so he could sign in. Then he clicked on the internet, "This is local, you said?"
"Yeah. A guy named Onew." Minho felt a little awkward, telling Taemin that, but a little better at the same time.
Taemin looked thoughtful, and then typed 'onew' into the search. "Hmm. That's a brand of noodles."
Minho laughed shortly, "Yeah, it looks like it."
Taemin laughed a little too, and then turned his full attention to Minho. "You know, I swear I saw a vampire once."
"Really?" Minho hoped maybe too much that Taemin had a worthwhile story, though he already knew Taemin seemed like the type to make one of those bad 'i'm a vampire' websites that he'd run into in his searching.
Taemin was sweet and acted somewhat normal, but his bleached hair and black clothes didn't tell lies. The first time he met Minho, he'd been excitedly telling him about the amazing goreyness in a ghost flick he'd recently seen. He hadn't forgot too mention that he thought ghosts were probably real, and that he'd like to meet one.
Wait a second - was Taemin any more abnormal than Minho, who was sitting at the library looking up vampires? .... Of course he was. He liked this stuff, Minho thought.
Still, he spoke earnestly, "When I came home from the arcade one night -" considering the time that Minho met Taemin's mother, he wasn't surprised that Taemin was by himself at the arcade one night "- I was waiting at the crosswalk for the light, and there was this guy and girl making out all gross. I cleared my throat, and the guy looked at me. He was all angry looking and pale, and I swear he had fangs."
Any other day, Minho would have shrugged the story off, maybe even rolled his eyes. Instead, he stared attentively at Taemin. "What did you do?"
Taemin frowned, seeming ashamed. "Well, I ran home as soon as the light turned green. He was really really scary looking."
Minho thought back on when Onew first pinned him against the door, bloody teeth bared. Once again, he shuddered.
"Hey, come with me." Taemin said, after ending his session on the computer and standing up.
"Where?" Minho asked.
"I'll show you a good vampire book."
Minho looked around. No one was looking at them. No one was judging. He nodded, and followed Taemin.
Taemin "hmmmm'd" at the bookshelves around them, obviously searching for something particular. Minho should have figured Taemin would be the person to ask about this kind of thing.. suddenly, he felt like he could even tell Taemin about what happened, without being judged. He didn't, though. Something felt very wrong about that. Instead, he waited, hands shoved in his pockets - til Taemin held a book out to him, smiling in a satisfied way. "Here you go."
The book looked old, and had demonic sketches on the front. It's title was, "Demons: Volume 1".
"It's a really cool book."
Minho took it, but felt kind of strange doing so. He knew already this book would have no answers for him, but soon enough he was checking it out, and he and Taemin were on their way back to his house together.
He was glad that the library had bags, so the book would be hidden from his family.
Click here for Part 4