The memory returned like a wound reopening - sudden, silent, and sharp. One moment Suzuka was sitting alone in the theater’s green room, h the letter still folded tightly in her pocket like a secret too loud to burn. The next, she was seventeen again, lungs full of turpentine and hope, fingers stained with graphite, and her heart - foolish, trembling - laid bare before someone who wore affection like a costume. His name still tasted like ash on her tongue. He was the first person who had called her art “divine”, the first person to cradle her sketchbook like it was sculpture - and the first to rip it in half the second she stopped painting him.

She remembered the first day she saw him - a ghost from a past life draped in sunshine and lies. It was the beginning of her final year in high school, and the air had carried that peculiar stillness only found in the moments before something beautiful dies. Then came those eyes - glacial blue, sharp enough to carve through the dull grey of her morning - and they found her with a hunger masquerading as charm.

Tan skin. Dirty blonde waves. That wolfish grin stretched across a too-perfect face.

Jonah Anderson.

The new transfer student, draped in the illusion of allure, who set his gaze on her like a predator admiring the outline of his next poem of destruction. But sweet, unscarred Suzuka had mistaken that gaze for love - the same kind that bloomed soft and stupid in her chest the moment he approached.

“Hey there, pretty lady,” he’d purred, his voice the kind of velvet that hides blades. “My name’s Jonah… but you can call me yours.”

The line was cheap, but her heart - foolish and feral for affection - thudded against her ribs like it was trying to answer him.

She barely whispered her name in response, her voice the echo of a trembling secret.

He had laughed - a soft, honeyed sound that felt like validation - and pressed his lips to the backs of her fingers, sealing her fate with a kiss she didn’t yet know was venom.

Her other hand clutched her sketchbook like a relic of faith, her nails biting into the leather.

Jonah noticed.

“What’s that?” he asked, blue eyes flicking toward the black-bound journal like it was a locked door he intended to break open.

Her first mistake: she handed it to him. No hesitation. No fear.

He flipped through it, page by page, his silence wrapping tighter around her with each turn. Then that smirk. That awful, dazzling smirk.

“There are… wow. You’ve got some real talent.”

“Thanks,” she’d said softly. “But lately I’ve been totally blocked… nothing’s coming to me.”

“Then draw me,” he said, like a king granting her a blessing.

She felt like she’d been struck by divine lightning. A muse had descended from heaven and landed in front of her - or so she thought.

They found a secluded spot nestled among the trees behind the school, where the leaves whispered and the sky bled blue through the canopy. Jonah reclined against a tree, chin tilted toward the clouds like he was posing for a statue. Suzuka looked at him as if he was one. Sacred. Untouchable. Beautiful.

She opened to a fresh page and let the graphite flow, every motion devoted to perfecting the slope of his jaw, the lazy tilt of his gaze, the breathless feeling she couldn’t name.

When she showed him, he looked at it with something like reverence. Then at her - and she felt seen. For the first time, someone didn’t look through her. They looked at her.

It was intoxicating.

And she believed - truly believed - that Jonah cared. Unlike her parents, who called her art childish. Unlike her teachers, who dismissed it as a distraction. Unlike her peers, who branded her a freak. Jonah saw beauty in her chaos. Or so he claimed.

They never declared their relationship. There was no confession, no official beginning - just touches that lingered, whispered words, stolen moments. It felt like love.

But love isn’t possessive. And Jonah… was.

As the months went on, her art evolved. She found new muses - faces in strangers, shadows on buildings, creatures pulled from dreams - and Jonah noticed. He hated it.

She belonged to him, he insisted, and therefore her inspiration should belong to him too. He snarled at sketches that weren’t of his face, scowled at linework not curved by his likeness. The deeper her world grew, the more he tried to confine it to a frame he could control.

Then came the day it all shattered.

She was by the lake, pencil dancing across the page, peace swelling in her chest for the first time in weeks. The water shimmered like liquid glass beneath her sun, and she had captured it - perfectly.

Until Jonah came.

“Suzuka, sweetheart,” he said, voice honeyed but hollow. “What are you drawing now..?”

She smiled - tentative, unsure. “The lake. Isn’t it beautiful?”

His smile didn’t reach his eyes.

“Why am I not in it?” he asked, voice edged with something cold and cruel. “It’s just a stupid lake.”

“It’s not stupid,” she whispered, heart thudding. “It’s… serene. It makes me feel calm.”

He yanked the sketchbook from her hands. Tore the page in two.

The sound echoed across the water like a scream.

Tears filled her eyes, her voice cracking as she choked, “Why would you do that? I worked so hard!”

That grin - twisted, manic - spread across his face like rot.

“You should be drawing me. Only me. You’re mine, remember?”

She snatched the ruined sketchbook from his hands, gathered the pieces of her broken peace, and screamed back, “Not anymore!”

She ran.

And never looked back.

From that day on, she built her sanctuary from logic and isolation. It was safer that way - to observe, to admire, but never attach. Never again.

Jonah was just a name now. Just ash in her mouth.

But the rules she made to survive him? They lingered. And now, faced with Kim - with their softness, their chaos, their unspoken understanding - those ruled began to fray.

Because what if this time was different?

What if Kim Dracula wasn’t a god to be worshipped or a monster to be feared… but a soul just as damaged as hers, trying to build something sacred from the wreckage?