[Tomorrow X Together Yeonjun/ Yeonjun Soobin] Red Nest

[Yeonsup] Red Nest Episode 9

The magical storm that had filled the bedroom subsided, and only a thick silence settled over the floor.

Soobin slowly lifted her eyelids and looked out at the world.

Everything was different now. The path of a single speck of dust drifting through the air, the faint heartbeat of the butler holding his breath outside the door, and even the strange, overwhelming power coursing through her fingertips. Every sense was sharply on edge.

And at the end of that gaze was Yeonjun, holding her tightly and letting out a breath of relief.

"...Yeonjun?"

The voice that came from Soobin’s mouth carried a low, strange resonance.

Yeonjun cupped Soobin’s cheek with trembling hands. Soobin’s reddened eyes were gently wavering with the deep light of pure blood.

"...Can you feel it? Soobin."

Yeonjun asked in a low voice, his face still marked by tears.

Soobin looked down at her own hands. They were the hands her family had always scolded as 'clumsy and foolish.'

But now, with the force of a single slight movement of her fingers, she had such immense magical power surging through her veins that she could control the flow of the air. The injuries she had once borne as a human were gone without a trace.

"So... I've become a vampire?"

"...Yeah. Because you drank my blood. That was the only way to save you."

Yeonjun’s fingertips trembled at the thought that Soobin might resent him.

He had injected into Soobin, who had grown up a hunter all her life, the blood of the predator her family had hated so much.

But Soobin quietly covered Yeonjun’s trembling hand with her own.

Soobin instinctively realized that the fact that Yeonjun’s blood now flowed through her body had bound the two of them into an eternal link deeper and more unbreakable than anything else.

"It’s okay."

Soobin smiled gently.

"Rather than dying as a human from a family that never accepted me even once... I'd much rather stay by your side forever, Yeonjun."

Yeonjun’s eyes shook violently.

Soobin wrapped her arms around Yeonjun’s neck and held him close. Cold body temperature met cold body temperature, but the warmth felt within it was hotter than anything else.

A few days later, the mansion was completely in order.

Soobin’s adaptability after awakening as a vampire was astonishing.

With the pure-blooded blood added to the combat instincts she had honed since her hunter days, Soobin’s physical abilities and control over magic had developed beyond those of any veteran hunter in the family. The label of 'failure' had existed only because she had been trapped within the framework of a hunter.

On a dark night, Yeonjun came up to Soobin’s side on the mansion terrace and draped a heavy coat over her shoulders.

"You look like you’ve got a lot on your mind."

"The family will be bringing people over soon."

Soobin murmured softly, looking out at the forest swallowed by darkness in the distance.

They had driven out the hunters, including her cousin, but the adults who treated the family’s honor like life itself would never leave Soobin alone after she had allied herself with a pure-blood vampire—worse, after she had become one herself.

"Then let them come."

Yeonjun wrapped his arms around Soobin’s waist and rested his chin on her shoulder.

"Whether I blow this mansion to pieces or turn the entire family to ashes... now you’re my perfect other half.

No one can lay a hand on you."

"You don’t need to take the lead, Yeonjun."

Soobin turned and looked straight up at Yeonjun’s red eyes.

Within Soobin’s eyes, a cool and elegant dignity of a ruler that hadn’t been there before was overflowing.

"This will be my own final greeting to the family that abandoned me, and to those who called me a 'failure.'"

Yeonjun let out a low exclamation at the changed look in Soobin’s eyes.

The poor, adorable lost deer had, before he knew it, transformed into the perfect predator of the night, standing shoulder to shoulder with him.

Yeonjun caressed Soobin’s cheek and smiled languidly.

"Good. You set up the board, and I’ll guard your back."

Then, from the outer edge of the mansion’s barrier, they felt a massive tremor of silver magical power surging in—the heads of the hunter family and an elite force bearing down on them. The final all-out war with the family was approaching.