I rushed toward Aline and helped her sit up as she coughed and moaned. Then I turned and faced "Mother," kneeling on the ground. There was no pride, no defiance, only absolute despair.

  "No! Please!" I begged, the words coming out in sobs. "We're sorry! We won't run away! We won't do it again! Just... just leave her alone! Take me instead, I'm used to it, please, mother!"

  Ikumi completely ignored my words. She approached, grabbed me forcefully by my hair, and lifted my head to face her. There was no anger in her eyes, only a cold disappointment, like the ice of a grave.

  "After everything I've done for you?" she whispered, her voice like the whistle of the wind on a winter night. "I took you in, I fed you, I gave you a name and a purpose... and this is how you repay my grace? By running away? And how dare you... how dare you leave me for this?"

  With the last word, she struck me hard with the back of her hand. My head hit the stone floor. The beating began. It wasn't a whip; it wasn't a ruler. It was just her hands and feet, in a violent and personal punishment.

  "All this... for a vampire who will drain you and leave you?" Strike. "I was going to make you great!" Strike. "But you chose weakness!" Strike.

  When she finished, she pulled me to my feet. She grabbed the semi-conscious Aline by the arm and began to drag her away. Then she threw me into a dark, empty storage room and locked the heavy door behind me, the sound of the bolt echoing in the darkness like the last nail in my coffin.

  I was left alone in the cold and the dark. I wasn't thinking about the pain in my body, but the pain in my soul. It was all over. The dream that had been born barely two days ago was dead.

  The images flooded my mind. Aline laughing on the rooftop. Aline kissing me in the alley. Aline promising me freedom. Then, my desperate mind began to paint pictures of a future that would never happen. A small house far from Chang'an. Children running in a green field, laughing with her same bright laugh. I wished in that dark moment that they wouldn't have my ugly red hair.

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  An unknown amount of time passed. Hours? Maybe a day. The bolt was drawn, and a thin sliver of light entered. It was Ikumi. She placed a tray with a cup of water and a piece of stale bread on the floor.

  She looked at me, curled up in the corner. "Tomorrow," she said in a quiet, deadly voice. "I will root out this disease from your soul. I will make you understand that every hope you find outside my walls is just an illusion that will bring you pain. I am your only true pain... and I am your only salvation."

  The door was closed again. I didn't sleep that night.

  The next day, the door opened. "Get out," she ordered.

  She led me through a corridor I had never seen before and stopped me in front of a closed wooden door. "Stand here. And don't move."

  I stood. And I waited.

  Then it began. A scream. It was Aline's scream. She was screaming my name. "Hong Min! Help me! Please! Hong Min!"

  Adrenaline rushed through my body. I moved to charge at the door, but I froze. My feet wanted to run and break the door down, but they remembered the weight of every previous blow that had made me fall. My hands wanted to pound on the door until they bled, but they remembered how helpless they had been protecting my head from the whip. My body was not my own in that moment; it was a prison that Ikumi had built over the years, and she had just locked its door.

  The screaming continued, and with it, another smell began to seep under the door to my nose. A sharp, pungent smell, like burning medicinal herbs mixed with something metallic. It wasn't the smell of pain, but the smell of... removal. As if they weren't just hurting her, but erasing something from her very being.

  "Stop! Stop!" she was screaming, her voice weakening, turning into a cry, then a whimper, then... silence.

  A sudden, absolute silence, which was louder and more terrifying than all the screaming that had preceded it.

  I remained standing, trembling, not daring to breathe. Every second passed like a year.

  After what felt like an eternity, the door slowly opened. Ikumi stood there, calm, clean, and composed. She looked at my face, twisted with horror, at my body, shaking uncontrollably, at the tears streaming silently from my eyes.

  And when she saw the extent of my complete breakdown, a smile formed on her lips. It was that smile. The same almost-hidden smile, full of twisted satisfaction and pleasure that she would smile when she "loved" me. The smile of absolute victory.