Accursed with heedless infatuation and teenage defiance, a harmless fascination with the forbidden forest blossomed a romance of equal prohibition. It was beneath the dim glow of a moonless night, that seventeen year old yīng zhōu had encountered a vampire, one of those dark beings commonly abhorred in the wizarding world. While well-read on such creatures of the night, the witch knew little of the charm, of the allure this man would possess. Nor did wei, who was never told this wretched story but had to stumble upon it in her journal with bewildered compulsion. Naturally, her pure blood family was seething at the notion. Their daughter running off with such a lowly being, a dark, malignant creature who never would be fit for them and their elite status. At length, they located her and brought her back, threatening to hunt her lover and his family for the remainder of their abominable lives. However, she was several months pregnant by then, her precious love child a living reminder of his father.

it was a responsibility which fell upon his grandparents, to raise him and her, practically as siblings. See, yīng was scarcely befitting her role as a mother. A temperamental child herself, who had neither the maturity nor the disposition to care for herself, let alone another living being. Thus, to compensate for wei's lack of parental presence, his grandparents catered to his every whim. At every chance, he was pampered, overindulged, granted whatever he wished. Anything not to hear one of those temper tantrums which were oh so similar to his mother's. Anything to elude the questions which plagued his mind throughout childhood.

wei was molded into utmost perfection. a gifted painter from early years, a proper zhōu they could flaunt about in social gatherings he hadn't the least interest in. he was a blessing for grandparents, whose own child failed to be of standard. taught in the arts extensively, dead languages and history flooding his brain with information he neither asked for, nor was intruiged by. and while he excelled in most such matters, only in painting did he feel like himself. it was his. entirely his. a deeply personal thing. the first thing nobody forced upon him.

his only medium of expression, in a house where display of emotions blurred the lines of deception. whatever he desired, he needed only cry to get it. feelings were a means to an end, nothing more. a weapon in his boundless arsenal to obtain and achieve and accomplish. they were useless in any other scenario, genuine ones merely poured into art, not to implode out of his guarded heart. 

❝Painting is a metaphor for control. Every choice is mine. The canvas, the colour. As a child I had neither a sense of the world nor my place in it but art taught me that one’s vision can be achieved with sheer force of will. The same is true of life, provided one refuses to let anything stand in one’s way.❞
― Niklaus Mikaelson