Cursed Blood | Chaelisa

Chapter 18.

After that day, everybody at school started giving me curious stares, as if I had inherited a wrong DNA or some rare diseases. Usually, the Ultara girls don't notice anyone other than their obsessive genius-driven world, but now their conversations seemed to be all about me and Lisa.

The good thing was that every time I looked back at them, they would stumble away like a herd of freaked chickens. Maybe that was the only thing I liked about being half-human. You can act all misanthropic as you like.

So I had become a public scorn who bailed on her own best friends. But the worst thing of all, they thought I did that because I wanted to be with the most beautiful and most desired girl in our school. That was absolutely not true! But even it was insulting for me, it was still impossible to shut off all those rumors.

I had to spend most of my time with Lisa at the library as well as in the Lunch Hall. She didn't seem to mind all those silly opinions hanging around us at all.

Joy and Jisoo had stopped waiting for me now. Not that I expected it, but it still gave me a raw feeling. I switched places with the other girls in every class I had with them. And I had also quit Karate, and that was for my own good because if you consider Joy's undefeatable martial art and the aftertaste of our fight, she might probably use me as her favorite punching bag.

As I sat on the library floor this evening, I kept asking Lisa a lot of crazy questions. We were on our quest browsing through dusty old books, but still no sight of the last diary. Instead, I found a few books about vampires, which l guess were the ones Joy had told us about. I just wanted to distract myself from all the madness, so I started skimming through them.

"How could you not be tempted while being around humans?" I asked Lisa, who was leaning her back on the shelf, reading a black leather-covered book. I had noticed she wasn't so touchy with me like before. She seemed to be a bit more... bearable.

"Well, I like to think of myself as an ascetic," she said.

"An ascetic?" I looked up trom my book with a raised eyebrow. "Like those Indian gurus who starve themselves to free their souls?"

"Something like that," she just shrugged.

"Maybe I should be an anorexic vampire then," I murmured to myself. Lisa muffled a laugh.

"We're half-blood," she said, "We don't feed off humans."

"Doesn't come naturally to me," I said. "Didn't you just say I'm quite different?"

"Chaeng, you're a vegetarian," Lisa reminded, then walked up and sat down beside me, "The first time I saw you, even in your human state, you just radiated power and strong attraction. I could only imagine how hard it must be for you to restrain yourself. Considering you're also a vegetarian, I admire you more. I'm only more tolerant of bloodlust because I'm much older than you."

"Oh!" I suddenly became hyper-interested. I still didn't know about Lisa's age. "How old are you?"

I started eyeing her up and down, but no matter how closely I examined her face, Lisa still looked as young as a seventeen-year-old girl to me. Or maybe she just looked young.

"I'm nineteen," she answered at last.

"Only nineteen?"

"I graduated with a Master degree from Italy last year."

"Really? And... and how long have you been nineteen?" I said. She chuckled at me when she saw my disappointed face.

"What do you expect me to be? A hundred and two?" She said.