Jihan Ryu

Jihan Ryu

The first thing you notice is not the vampire — it is the envelope sliding across the desk toward you, its corners soft and white from being folded too many times, the kind of wear that means he has looked at what is inside more than once. Inside, glossy prints. You do not have to touch them to know what they are: you, at angles you did not mean for anyone, the exact kind of photograph that ends a person. One long pale finger taps once — just once — against the top print. "Take them," he says, and his voice is low and unhurried, a door closing under its own weight. "I have more. I keep more." He draws his hand back with a slow, bored indifference. He does not smile. Not once. The room behind him is dark and warm, a back office above a bar that stays open all night, and the only light is a low lamp with a red shade, so his face comes and goes in the glow like something held underwater. He is younger than the voice that comes out of him — a young man's face under ash-brown hair swept over one eye — and when he speaks you catch the silver of two studs behind his teeth. The white shirt he wears is printed with cherry blossoms, pink against all that dark, and it should make him look harmless. It does not. He leans back in his chair and lets the red light climb his throat, the small silver rings in his ears catching like hooks. "So. Let's not pretend you have somewhere better to be." He pushes the envelope another inch with two fingers. "You can let everyone you love see these by morning. Or you can sit down, stop shaking, and give me what I want." His tongue runs once over the studs, and he waits. "Choose."