DrinkyL C4

Chapter 4

…Scumbag? Even as his ankle was seized in a large hand and confusion set in, Baek Seolgu turned over what Ban Dayeong had said in his mind. A few days ago, he had clearly said he “wasn’t such a scumbag that he’d swallow down a bloodling that hadn’t even fully grown”… but now, telling him to call him scumbag seemed to mean he intended to start drinking his blood in earnest.

Seolgu’s guess was spot on. Before he knew it, the man’s lips completely covered the wound, and he sucked hard at Seolgu’s injury. Right after, his Adam’s apple moved in a large swallow, as if taking in blood. With that, the quiet meal—or rather, the bloodsucking—continued. Watching the man feed without spilling a single drop, Seolgu drifted into his usual easygoing thoughts: “So vampires really do drink other people’s blood—how fascinating.” The only reason Seolgu could drift like this was that he felt no pain at the wound being sucked. He’d heard vampire saliva has a mild anesthetic effect; apparently, that was true.

I thought I’d never take a single step out of the forest till the day I died, but not only did I leave it, I’ve become a vampire’s blood-donation pack! The saying that an elf’s life can’t be predicted was right on the mark.

“Ah!”

A small moan slipped from Seolgu’s lips as he stared blankly. Perhaps just pressing his lips and sucking wasn’t satisfying enough; the man began to nibble. Thanks to the anesthetic effect, there was the sensation of being bitten, but it didn’t particularly hurt. Still, sheer fear rose from the act of another person biting into his flesh.

Frightened, Seolgu reflexively tried to pull his ankle back, but it was useless. Annoyed by Seolgu’s futile squirming, the man lowered the hand gripping his ankle and clamped down on the sole of Seolgu’s foot. More than the ankle being fed on, it was the foot, turned white from the man’s crushing grip cutting off circulation, that hurt worse.

On top of that, his head slowly began to spin. It didn’t feel like he’d been fed on for that long, did it? Even as he thought it strange, his eyelids were descending at a markedly sluggish pace. To alert the man to his condition, Seolgu opened his mouth, “Um, um…!” but the man, in the middle of his meal, didn’t so much as twitch an eyebrow, as if the voice hadn’t reached him.

I’m really going to pass out at this rate! Not only had he yet to clear up the misunderstanding about wrecking the terrace, he hadn’t explained why he’d been practically naked, nor even managed a proper exchange of names. If he fainted here just from a little blood being drawn, would he wake to find himself back in the elf forest?

Just imagining it sent a cold sweat down his back. Ignorance was one thing, but now that he knew how good it felt to be outside the elf forest, he absolutely did not want to go back there. That was why he called out to the man whose name he didn’t even know, with all his might.

“S-s-scumbag…!!!”

He meant to continue with “Sir, I’m dizzy,” but unfortunately, Seolgu cleanly blacked out before he could get the rest out. Another misunderstanding, neatly piled on top.

Meanwhile, having been sucking Seolgu’s blood with gusto, Ban Dayeong only came to his senses at the shout of “Scumbag!!” that struck his eardrums. He gave a slight shake of his head to dispel the sweetness still lingering in his mouth. Then, turning his gaze, he clicked his tongue softly at the sight of Baek Seolgu, white as a sheet and passed out, looking at once put out.

“Still breathing?”

Ban Dayeong tapped at Seolgu’s pale, slender legs. The way Seolgu let out a hum the instant he was touched, at least, meant he wasn’t dead.

Running his tongue over his lower lip once, he looked at Baek Seolgu, who had cried out “scumbag” so boldly and then promptly shut his eyes. He wasn’t just disappointed that the feast had been cut off before he was full—he was angry.

“Feeble brat. Passing out from a bit of blood being sucked.”

Having already started to classify Baek Seolgu as his food, Ban Dayeong drew a phone from inside his jacket. It was to summon a subordinate who excelled at cleaning up messes.

Assistant Yang, Yang Hyeonsu, who had been sucking on a respectable, if not top-tier, blood pack for lunch, abandoned his meal with tears in his eyes at the sudden call from his boss and headed for the officetel.

“So you’re telling me this naked one is an elf? But his ears aren’t pointed.”

“A mixed-blood with a human, they say.”

“Ah, I see. Then why is he like that?”

Until Assistant Yang arrived, Baek Seolgu had been left passed out on the terrace. Far from bringing the collapsed Baek Seolgu inside, Ban Dayeong hadn’t even bothered with the trivial courtesy of covering him with the clothes hanging over the terrace railing. For him, the minimum compassion owed to a living being was something from another world.

“He fainted from blood loss.”

“Pardon…?”

“He passed out even though I barely drank any. Check if there’s something wrong with him.”

Assistant Yang was quite curious whether what had just come out of Ban Dayeong’s mouth was true. Before lunch, he hadn’t had a gram of interest in the elf that Ban Jinyeong had sent; yet less than thirty minutes later, he’d sucked him to the point of fainting?! What fresh hell—no, whim—was this?

Catching the way Assistant Yang’s eyes narrowed at him, Ban Dayeong lifted one corner of his mouth.

“Are you saying what I said doesn’t sound like words? Secretary Yang Hyeonsu, your feet seem rather slow?”

“N-no, sir!”

At the low voice, Assistant Yang shoved his curiosity far away for now and quickly lifted Baek Seolgu. With the survival instincts honed over years under a dog of a boss, he showed his sense by wrapping Seolgu’s body in sheets.

The Republic of Korea was a land where humans and other species lived at a ratio of roughly seven to three. By absolute numbers, the other species were the minority and at a disadvantage, but with power and abilities beyond humans, they ruled over them instead. Naturally, in every field, strategic industries targeting other species had developed greatly, and profit-driven medical enterprises were no exception.

The place Assistant Yang brought Baek Seolgu to was Bandi Hospital, an affiliate of the VAN Group. It was a hospital specializing in vampires and, as well, a place that legally supplied blood to members of the VAN Group. Accordingly, Baek Seolgu was the hospital’s first elf patient. Strictly speaking, he was a mixed-blood with a human, but for city dwellers, the image of an “elf” was nothing but pure mystique.

However, when Seolgu first arrived at the hospital, the staff who had clamored to see an elf shook their heads at the sight of him—passed out, on top of which he was stark naked, looking like someone who hadn’t even had gruel to eat. So shabby was his state that it shattered their elf fantasy in three seconds flat. After the brief commotion, Baek Seolgu was moved to a VIP room and underwent several tests. They were simple tests, so it didn’t take long for results to come out.

“B-Baek Seolgu’s test results are in.”

The attending physician spoke cautiously, looking at Ban Dayeong, who sat on the room’s sofa with long legs crossed. At a slight nod to continue, the doctor went on.

“There are no major issues on the tests. The wound on the ankle is just a light abrasion. However, his hemoglobin is at 9 g/dL, indicating anemia, and he appears malnourished, with protein and essential vitamin deficiencies. I’ll prescribe iron supplements and a vitamin D injection.”

“Anemia?”

“Yes. Given his low iron stores, it seems to be chronic anemia.”

At the assessment, Ban Dayeong creased his brow in displeasure. If that bastard Ban Jinyeong was going to bring someone, he should’ve gotten a sturdy one, not some flimsy weakling.

Silently cursing him again in his head, Ban Dayeong waved a hand to dismiss the doctor. Reading the gesture like a ghost, the doctor bent nearly in half in a bow and quickly departed.

“What would you like to do? If you’re going to keep him, it seems he’ll be a handful. Shall we send him back to President Ban Jinyeong?”

Assistant Yang expected Ban Dayeong to roll his eyes and say that was obvious. Contrary to expectations, however, his boss said nothing for several tens of seconds. Assistant Yang looked at him with a puzzled expression.

“Huh?”

The sound slipped out before he knew it, because Ban Dayeong looked genuinely pensive. Wait—pensive? Vice President Ban Dayeong? Why?

He couldn’t make sense of it. Assistant Yang’s head filled with ninety percent questions about his boss’s behavior, and ten percent vague unease that something might be about to happen. He quickly contacted his colleague, the junior secretary in the construction company’s president’s office. In Assistant Yang’s judgment, this situation could only be resolved by Ban Jinyeong, who had foisted Baek Seolgu on Ban Dayeong in the first place. In other words, he wanted to get himself as far out of this abnormal situation as possible.

Perhaps his instinctive sense of crisis had reached his colleague too; less than three minutes after he sent the message, a dark blue mist formed in the hospital room. It was Ban Jinyeong’s arrival.

“Boss!! Heard you pulled one off?”

Seemingly oblivious to the fact that this was a room with a passed-out patient, Ban Jinyeong burst into a hearty laugh the moment his feet touched the floor and teased Ban Dayeong. Ban Dayeong answered his teasing with a shrug.

“Shit! Weren’t you the one saying you wouldn’t eat because who knew what trouble it might cause!”

Finding his reaction hilarious for some reason, Ban Jinyeong even stomped his feet. Looking slightly fed up with the man’s tasteless laughter, Ban Dayeong jerked his chin toward Baek Seolgu, sleeping like the dead.

“The problem is that that thing is what got into trouble.”

“Really? The elf village head said the kid was sturdy. Come on! How much did you suck that he passed out? Huh? What, is he that tasty?”

Smacking his lips, Ban Jinyeong shifted his gaze toward the bed where Baek Seolgu lay.

It did seem too much that talk about whether he was tasty or not, in front of a person—no, an elf—who had fainted, was all there was to the conversation, but there was no helping it. They were vampires, and a vampire’s sensibility wasn’t even half of a human’s. The fact that not one of the four vampires present—Ban Dayeong among them—found anything odd about the conversation was proof enough.

Only Baek Seolgu, who was at risk of being fed on again the moment he woke, trembled his eyelids in fear.