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Chapter Text

The Magical Realm was a mess.

Sure, it already hit rock bottom when Han Myungoh was dubbed the Bureau of Magic’s President through sheer nepotism and incompetence alone, and of course, it was idiotic for the Star Stream Academy of Magic’s administration to hire Han Sooyoung to teach Clairvoyance instead of the Defense From Dark Magic profession she was clearly born for. After witnessing such abominations—which included a very vivid drunken rant from said Han Sooyoung about how “Chungmuro House ruins eeeevrything” *hic*—and then some… Yoo Joonghyuk figured they were already heading towards a slow decay. 

But no. The true nail in the coffin for the Magical Realm was the advent of the Demon King after a decade-long hiatus.

Even before Yoo Joonghyuk received the owl letter from the Academy informing him of his younger sister’s grave injury, he knew what happened. Word traveled fast and the Magical Realm’s equivalent of the boogeyman destroying a third of a prestigious magic school in one breath alone made people tremble in fear. He was casually withdrawing from his balance at Minosoft Bank when the goblins nearby abruptly started shaking and whispering, one of them seconds away from passing out. 

“W-what do you mean h-he’s… back?”

“It can’t be, the Demon King was slain by that group of students ten years ago!”

“How can the Academy be destroyed so easily?!”

“Quiet, you mongrels! You’ll scare the patrons...”

The goblins hushed down but they had already piqued Yoo Joonghyuk’s attention, leading him to stab one of them into confessing everything they knew about the incident in a fit of impatience. Yoo Joonghyuk only stabbed as a warning, he reasoned, as he cleaned his sword afterward. 

The ink on the scroll mailed to him the next day only confirmed the worst of the goblins’ hearsay: the creature that haunted his nightmares for the past decade—the one he saw withering and dying under his own wand the day before he graduated—was back. 

The goblins failed to mention one crucial thing, though: This time, it targeted his sweet, delicate younger sister Yoo Mia.

(He ignored the voice at the back of his head reminding him that his sister had the behavioral speech of a gremlin and was hardly sweet or delicate). 

When he stormed onto the grounds of the school with killing intent mere minutes later, he failed to see much of the so-called destruction the Demon King caused, but he figured the more talented of the Academy staff drained all of their magic into reversing the piles of heap and rubble he assumed was left there. (Maybe they even commissioned the powerhouse that was Lee Hyunsung from the Bureau to clean it up. His talents were wasted there, after all). 

Nonetheless, Yoo Joonghyuk quickly whisked away to the Hospital Ward, where he was irritably anxious to see his sister. 

“Joonghyuk-ah, you’re finally here.”

Lee Seolhwa was the resident Healer of the Academy, an undeniably talented and dedicated woman who any self-respecting wizard, even the most selfish and crass of Chungmuro House wizards, would trust with their life. She also happened to be the same romantic partner he had ghosted five years ago, right after winning the Abydos World Cup. Ah… he almost forgot about that part... Yoo Joonghuk hadn’t seen  Lee Seolhwa or apologized since for breaking her heart yet, had he? 

At a loss for what to say to, he simply nodded and walked into the cot that Yoo Mia was situated in. The first thing he noticed was the rhythmic breathing of her chest and an unusually pale complexion plaguing her face. The second thing he noticed was that there were no flowers, cards, or people there for her.

His sister had friends at the Academy, right…? 

(During his time as a student, even he had friends. Granted, the only one he kept up with after graduation was Han Sooyoung, and even then, barely so, but no one had worse social skills than him, much less his talkative and extroverted sister).

“She had major internal bleeding, but luckily, she came here just in time. She should be fine after a week’s worth of rest.” It was Lee Seolhwa again.

As long as they were not brain dead and were on the premises of the school, Lee Seolhwa would be able to treat anyone. Yoo Joonghyuk was never more grateful for that fact as he sighed a breath of relief. 

“No other student was injured, and only your sister was abducted. Before she passed out, she screamed the name of the...” Lee Seolhwa trailed off awkwardly when she realized what the subject of the conversation had turned towards.

“You can say it.”

“Ah, that’s how we know what attacked the school, after all…” Another awkward pause. “After she wakes up, Head Teacher would like to question her about—”

“There will be no questioning,” Yoo Joonghyuk coldly cut her off. “Tell my Master to deal with it herself. I’m pulling Mia out of school.”

And that was the end of that. There was a long pause after that conversation where Yoo Joonghyuk pondered whether he should truly apologize to Lee Seolhwa, but after considering how much time had passed since the Cup, he decided against it, believing that pathetically saying “Sorry” after the damage was already done would have been way too insulting to her.

When Yoo Joonghyuk came back to the Academy a week later to pick up Yoo Mia, he was hounded aggressively by the staff, the most passionately, by far, being Han Sooyoung.

(“You crazy bastard, just cooperate with us!”

“And I heard you’re pulling her out of school now?! What the hell’s wrong with you??? You want her to be stupid and illiterate like you? Is that it?!”

“Come onnn, you know you wanna join us. Being an Academy staff member has many perks~” Of course, among all the verbal abuse, he couldn’t forget the repeat of offers that invited him to be the school’s Flying Instructor. Same old, same old.)

At home, Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t say anything about the incident to Mia. He didn’t pressure her to speak up, other than offering to take her to therapy that one time (the prospect of which she vehemently refused, by the way). During the following weeks of summer, the sibling pair simply pretended as if nothing had happened and truly, nothing had. Star Stream Academy was repaired, no one died, and the sole injured student was already nursed back to normal. The only difference was a mark in attitude among all the wizards, most of whom feared for their lives, knowing the true power of the ever-daunting Demon King from over a decade ago. (When Han Sooyoung wrote the according issue for The Weekly Apostle , she simply described the incident as “a warning” and a “test of its power.” Yoo Joonghyuk scoffed at her headline).

So yes, they went the entire summer in ignorant bliss, failing to ever talk about it. It would’ve continued that way, too, but with the start of Yoo Mia’s second year inching up closer and closer, she couldn’t help but remark her anticipation for shopping at Murim Market again in preparation for the new school year.  

“Oppa! Did you hear? They just released the new Lamarck 3000 broom! Can I please please get one? I’m trying out for the Abydos team this year and it’d be great if I could make it like you—”

Yoo Joonghyuk burst her bubble. “You’re not going back to the Academy.”

One sentence. That one sentence alone was enough to explode Yoo Mia into a fit of manic crying and screaming for the remainder of the day. 

Yoo Joonghyuk couldn’t lie and pretend that his sister pointing her finger at him in an accusatory manner while yelling, “I hate you! You’re ruining my life!” didn’t hurt, but it was easy to be the villain in her eyes if it meant keeping her safe from what was awaiting her at the Academy. Yoo Joonghyuk refused to entertain the prospects of sending her back to that godforsaken school. Absolutely not. 

(Yoo Joonghyuk stayed firm in his decision, even after wavering when Mia said something along the lines of the Academy being “her true home,” the line being strangely reminiscent of something said by… that guy...)

Then one day, at the end of August, Yoo Sangah burst out in the middle of his living room from the mobius he swore he had already broken when—

“Joonghyuk-ssi, how are you doing this evening?” 

Despite just rudely breaking into someone’s house uninvited , Yoo Sangah sported a polite and restrained smile on her face, her gentle facade leaving no gaps. She had always been that way. Even after the end of their seventh year, she had quietly composed herself together and confronted the endless harassment from the Wizarding press alone, being the only one calm enough to do so after what they had just faced. Today, her amicable expression was paired off with dark blue robes and twin braids hanging from her shoulder. 

Yoo Joonghyuk simply brooded. “What ”—He made sure to enunciate each word—“are you doing here?” 

Yoo Sangah kept the cryptic smile on her face. “You mean I can't greet my former classmate?”

Yoo Joonghyuk critically narrowed his eyes.

“After talking, we all decided it would be best if I came here to talk to you. You’d get angry if it was Sooyoung-ssi or Heewon-ssi who came instead.”

“Get to the point.”

“Send Yoo Mia back to the Academy.” There was a firm and righteous gleam to Yoo Sangah’s eyes, which made him wonder just how she didn’t get sorted into Geumho. 

“No.” Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t even hesitate.

“You shouldn’t neglect the studies of a budding Witch. How will she learn otherwise?”

“I’ll teach her.”

“In the entire Magical Realm, the Academy is the safest place she can possibly be in.”

Yoo Joonghyuk responded with a deadpan expression that communicated, We both know that’s not true.

“We’ll protect her.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t flatter that comment with a reply. They didn’t protect her back in June, after all.

Yoo Sangah continued, “After enjoying peace for so long, we have all become somewhat complacent, but our guards are no longer down. I have no doubt in our ability to protect your sister and every other student from… from the Demon King. We can do it again and a million times over, if necessary.”

After avoiding the elephant in the room, Yoo Joonghyuk was finally forced to confront the fact he’d been pushing to the back of his head all summer: They failed. Their hard-won “victory” was all for naught and the calamity they went through hell and back to defeat had returned against all odds. 

That guy’s sacrifice was all in vain.

“You have no idea what you’re facing.”

“Don’t say that… We were there, too, Joonghyuk-ssi.”

Silence.

“We’re adults now. All of us became mages and professors through our own merit.”

“...”

“Your master is there to protect everyone now. And Hyunsung-ssi thinks he can project a stronger barrier to subdue the Demon King this time, too!”

Silence.

“What if you were there to keep an eye on Mia-ya there?”

“You can’t seriously think I’d say yes when I’ve denied the offer every time before.”

“Ah,” Yoo Sangah said, her smile faltering just a bit. “It’s different this year, isn’t it?”

“You won’t beat it.”

“Is that what you really think?”

Yoo Joonghyuk kept the fierce mutual eye contact between them.

“Is that why you’ve been slaying beasts in the Kaizenix Forest this whole summer, right before asking them if they know where the Demon King is?”

Silence.

“We know it’s you, Joonghyuk-ssi, you didn’t have a disguise or masking spell on. Well… it’s not like you could have spelled one, anyway… you don’t even have a wand.” Yoo Sangah was referring to ten years ago, when he snapped his own wand in half. And refused to get a new one afterwards. 

“I don’t need a wand.” 

“That’s not my point.” He could tell Yoo Sangah was getting slightly impatient. “You wanna kill this demon more than any of us.”

“What does this have to do with Mia?”

“You’ll die if you go confront it by yourself…”

“That’s none of your concern.”

Yoo Sangah took in a deep breath. “You can rely on us. We can work together again. And…” Her lip quivered ever so slightly and her voice lowered forcibly. 

“No one has to die this time.”

Yoo Joonghyuk stared on, still keeping silent.

“You have a week to reply. And you don’t have to say yes but… please think about it. We’d love to have you back.”

“No.”

“Just think about it. You don’t have to bear all of your pain alone.”

“Who says I’m in pain?”

“...” 

“Get out.”

“…”

Out of all his old friends and classmates, Yoo Sangah was the one who understood people’s boundaries the best—ironic considering the glorious way she just broke into his family home. So maybe that was why, sensing his dark mood, she didn’t push any further and obediently left to wherever she came from through the portkey. But realistically speaking, she came with a mission and the only reason she left was because she already knew deep down what his final answer would be.

Because two weeks pass and he finds himself sitting on a cart on the Star Stream Express, having successfully passed the magic barrier on Platform 999 for the 8th time in his life, now holding the official Academy title of “Flying Instructor,” and escorting his younger sister to what he was convinced was their inevitable doom.

At least he’ll die in the same place as him. That’s one consolation.

“I can’t wait to show off my Lamarck 3000 to all of those ugly and mean Chumgmuros, that’ll show ‘em!” Yoo Mia had a vicious expression on her face. “I knew you’d get me one! My brother truly is the best~!”

Yoo Joonghyuk closed his eyes and laid back gently on the seat, aiming to rest during the ride. His sister chatted vibrantly to someone who wandered into their cart while he drifted off for a few moments.  

“Ah, n-nice to meet you. I’m a first-year...”

“Hmph!” Yoo Mia probably just pointed her nose up in the air pompously.

“I like your broom…”

“It’s not just a broom, it’s the Lamarck 3000!”

“Ah…” The other speaker was awfully timid.

“Don’t be rude.” Yoo Joonghyuk’s voice was cold and blunt. It achieved the goal of capturing the attention of both Yoo Mia and the other cart occupant.

“Oppa…”

Yoo Joonghyuk opened his eyes and glanced at the two of them. The first-year was a young girl with a confused face who wore plain robes that didn’t indicate any House, while Yoo Mia, in her glorious red and gold Geumho garb, was pouting. “You should make friends,” he explained.

Yoo Joonghyuk wasn’t one to forget. Despite suffering through a life and death scenario, not a single other student visited her in the Hospital Ward back in June. Considering her brash and proud personality, it wasn’t hard to see why no one liked her, but he didn’t want her to spend her formative years isolated from her peers. That other guy wasted away his first few years at the Academy that way, after all (and developed a shit sense of self-preservation while no one was looking).

Yoo Mia pouted even deeper but she conceded and introduced herself to the other girl, ending with, “You better get into Geumho!” That loud declaration was her way of saying “I wouldn’t mind being friends with you,” so Yoo Joonghyuk was satisfied by his intervention and closed his eyes again.

“I’m Shin Yoosung, nice to meet you! I… I hope I get into Geumho, too!”

The two chatted away for the rest of the ride, and a 3rd person—another first year, went by the name of “Lee Gilyoung,” probably would’ve been awfully liked by that dead bastard, even wants to get into Chungmuro—later butted into their conversation, debating over stupid stuff like the best Abydos position (Yoo Joonghyuk might be biased here but... it’s Keeper. The best position is Keeper) or which magical pet served the greatest use.

(“How would a cricket even find other people? It makes no sense!”

“It does, let me bring out my Titano.”

“AHH!!” Screams filled the cart).

Later on, Yoo Mia chipped in: “My brother is a pro Abydos player!”

Abydos was a bastard sport, an odd abomination of the human sport that involved a ball with black and white hexagons on it—football? Soccer? He wasn’t too sure on the name—but in air with brooms and the allowance of magic. It was unnecessarily aggressive in its nature, which was probably why Yoo Joonghyuk excelled in.

He obviously did not disregard the kids’ silent “ahh”s expressing their amazement at him. 

Apparently his pro Abydos player status— ex pro Abydos player status—was a fact more worth knowing than him being an equally world-famous monster hunter, swordsman, wizard (before he snapped his wand, of course), Beauty (he is not cross-dressing as the Punisher again, no thank you) and now their teacher this year.

But eventually they arrived at the main castle of Star Stream Academy and the kids’ excited chatter on the train changed to enamored jubilance at the sight of the large Great Hall, filled with energetic festivities, sounds and delicacies. They brother-sister duo took their respective seats at the Great Hall, which for Yoo Mia, meant the long Geumho table and for Yoo Joonghyuk, meant the table with the rest of the professors…

Dear God...

“When you said you were sure you convinced him, I thought it was way too good to be true,” Han Sooyoung drawled. She held her chin with her left hand and her mouth sported a cocky expression. “But huh... Mr. Hot Stuff really is here.”

Yoo Joonghyuk frowned deeply at her direction, earning him a fierce smirk from her. 

“Yoo Sangah truly is a force to be reckoned with,” said Jung Heewon, the resident Alchemy professor with a strong affinity for fire. She had an equally big grin on her face, although hers was much less maniacal than Han Sooyoung’s.

“Ah, you two flatter me too much.” Yoo Sangah smiled with her eyes closed, her hand waving frantically to deny all their high praises. “Joonghyuk-ssi, how are you liking it so far?”

“I hate it here.”

“Aww,” Jung Heewon teased mockingly. 

Han Sooyoung continued the drag. “Is big boy Joonghyuk too traumatized by the finals from year 7 to appreciate the food?”

Yoo Joonghyuk ignored the obvious bait and continued to uselessly pick at his plate. He doesn’t eat others’ food and he sure as hell wasn't gonna start now. Speaking of which, he should remind himself to cook dinner for himself after this banquet...

Luckily, he soon escaped the pestering of his co-workers, as the unassigned first year students walked down the banquet and stopped in front of the Filing Carpet, a sentient object enchanted to sort the students into their Houses. It didn’t take too long for Yoo Joonghyuk to spot the heads of Shin Yoosung and Lee Gilyoung among the back of the crowd. He didn’t want to admit that he was invested in those kids, but he secretly hoped they were also placed into Yoo Mia’s, as well as his own former, House. 

Head Teacher Namgung Minyoung spoke a few words greeting the small and nervous first-years, but her words contained more threats—“Avoid heading to the basement or the 3-headed Cerberus will eat you”—than actual pleasantries. Combined with her large presence—quite literally: she was half giant, half wizard—the words inspired terror into the eyes of these kids, who were already having second thoughts about coming to the Academy due to the Demon King’s sudden re-awakening.

The first one to react when the Filing Carpet loudly exclaimed “Changsin!”—the house of intellectuals and creatives—at the initial student was Han Sooyoung, who jumped up in excitement and yelled, “Suck on that, Anna Croft!” Yoo Joonghyuk wondered why she brought up the captain of his rival team from last year’s World Cup before remembering that Anna Croft ended up becoming the Defense From Dark Magic professor, making her receive the brunt of the rebukes (and more) from Han Sooyoung’s infamous, alcohol-induced “Chungmuros are terrible and I hate them” speech. Nevertheless, she definitely had way too much pride and enthusiasm for her House (and not enough shame); Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t even think Uriel, the professor of Human Studies sitting beside Jung Heewon, was as excited, despite being the current Head of House Changsin. Yoo Sangah, meanwhile, (also a Changsin) simply clapped lightly.

When it was Lee Gilyoung’s turn to tremble in front of the Carpet, Yoo Joonghyuk could faintly hear it say, “You wanna be in Chungmuro? Hmm… you definitely wouldn’t be ill-suited there…” 

“I’ll bet 5 coins that that poor kid is probably a Dongdaemun.”

“Sooyoung-ssi, don’t jest like that. Dongdaemun is a perfectly good House,” Yoo Sangah reprimanded her.

“They only won in the House Cup last year because of that stinking kid Jihye!”

“You’re a terrible teacher,” Jung Heewon chided lightly.

“Jihye?” Yoo Joonghyuk asked. His curiosity was bound to get piqued whenever a discussion concerned the Abydos sport.

It was at this moment that the Filing Carpet announced “Geumho!” and assigned Lee Gilyoung the color of red and the fortitude of bravery. (Whatever that meant). None of the Geumho-aligned professors reacted as brazenly as Han Sooyoung at the news, though Yoo Joonghyuk felt somewhat proud and saw Jung Heewon’s lips perk up, as well. Ah, that’s right, he remembered. So long ago, she was the other Geumho student among their tight-knit group. 

At Yoo Joonghyuk’s earlier inquiry, Yoo Sangah answered with her encyclopedic knowledge once again: “Ah, Lee Jihye is a Year 7 and the captain of Dongdaemun’s Abydos team. They’ve won for the past two years under her leadership.” 

“Ha,” Han Sooyoung perked up. “If I recall correctly, doesn’t she actually idolize Mr. Supreme King over here?” Yoo Joonghyuk grimaces at the mention of his old nickname given to him by Ki—no one, in particular, actually.

“She does respect you a great deal, Joonghyuk-ssi. I’m sure she’ll appreciate it if you drop by and greet her when classes start,” Yoo Sangah commented. Yoo Joonghyuk neither accepted nor rejected that idea. 

The Filing continued. Han Sooyoung groaned conspicuously at the first assignment of Chungmuro, which made her receive quite an angry glare from Professor Kyrgios Rodgraim, the Spells professor and the fae who headed House Chungmuro. Speaking of Kyrgios, during Yoo Joonghyuk’s time at the Academy, wasn’t he the only teacher willing to personally teach that rat? Han Sooyoung had no business needlessly provoking him like that, he bitterly thought. 

Shin Yoosung was the said student placed into Chungmuro. The only one more disappointed by this fact than Han Sooyoung was Shin Yoosung herself, whose face scrunched up horridly like a lemon. Or a dumpling. 

So she wanted Geumho but got Chungmuro, while the opposite was true for Lee Gilyoung, that other kid? Yoo Joonghyuk, from the corner of his eye, saw Lee Gilyoung immediately flinging up from his seat in a fit of envy, and pointing angry fingers at Shin Yoosung, who only reciprocated the heated banter. 

He looked away.

It was too familiar to his own childish rivalry with…

Damnit, he shouldn’t have come here, Yoo Joonghyuk thought as his expression dramatically darkened. He shouldn’t have let Yoo Sangah recite sweet words to him about trust and the power of friendship and all that bullshit. He was here and now what? Everything only reminded him of that one person he desperately tried casting out from the recesses of his memories for the better part of a decade. That one person whose death he should’ve already gotten over. Had already gotten over.

“Hey,” Han Sooyoung reached over and lightly touched his wrist. Her voice was low, and her expression was entirely serious, a stark contrast to her dramatics from earlier. It was enough to ground Yoo Joonghyuk out of his thoughts. “Don’t go drifting off by yourself again.”

Yoo Joonghyuk simply stared at her for a few seconds before deciding he'd had enough festivities for the day and getting up. He heard Han Sooyoung whisper-shout behind him, “Hey, we’re all really happy you’re here, you know! We all genuinely missed you, even Seolhwa! And Hyunsung, who’s not even here right now…”

He has paused momentarily with his back turned to her to let her know that he heard. He knew, of course. He knew he was missed— loved , even—by his friends. So how come he found it so hard to face them again, even after so long? 

———

Before he knew it, time had trailed off and found himself deep inside the Kaizenix Forest not too far from campus, getting back into the smooth flow of the routine he had perfected over the summer. He’d beat the dark creatures to submission, ask them if they had any information he wanted and if they didn’t, he’d swiftly behead them. (So far, none of them had any useful knowledge whatsoever). Of course, this process only applied to sentient, cognizant creatures; he skipped straight to the third step if the creature was among the likes of mindless monstrosities like Outer Squids. 

Even slaying one of these monsters would’ve been a hassle or a night-terror to a normal wizard. It was just child’s play to Yoo Joonghyuk, who had largely contributed to the suppression of the most dangerous calamity imaginable from the last century. (Or last ten, but who’s counting?). And he did this all without a wand. When his teacher—now Head Teacher—personally taught him higher-level offensive magic, he mastered it to the point where he didn’t even have to invoke the wrist flicks anymore to activate it like a normal wizard would; this was a fact very convenient for his monster hunting after his stubborn vow to never use a wand again. 

(Only rarely would he find himself needing to consciously draw magic. Even then, it’d only be to the tip of his sword to deliver the final blows to some particularly risky opponents.)

The carnage that ensued from his own hands barely fazed him anymore. He was merely fulfilling his purpose, or whatever it was that justified his continued existence. Tonight was no different.

Or would’ve been no different.

“Ah, so ruthless~ How scary!” 

It was a mysterious, unidentified voice, one that instantaneously triggered him to slash a dagger in the direction of.

Chapter Text

“Ah, so ruthless~ How scary!” 

It was a mysterious, unidentified voice, one that instantaneously triggered him to slash a dagger in the direction of.

“Ahh!”

The fucker dodged his dagger. Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t know such a feat was still possible after all the time he devoted to perfecting his aim. 

“You should be more gentle, hones—“

The speaker didn’t get a chance to finish before his opponent unleashed a barrage of daggers on them once again. Yoo Joonghyuk couldn’t afford to let his guard down. Not when there were dangerous beasts like giant, homicidal Arachnids that could easily imitate human speech and also pull him apart limb by limb.

His daggers did, in fact, pin something down to a tree this time. Unwilling to let his attention drop for even a second, Yoo Joonghyuk sharply turned towards it, his steps apprehensive, yet still carrying heavy intent. 

What he had pinned down to the tree was not a Giant Arachnid—not that it’d be possible to suppress such a behemoth so easily, anyway—but a sleek white jacket and a terrified furry creature that cried out a “Baat!” in fear. 

It was a baby dokkaebi. 

Despite their endearing demeanors being that of floating balls of fluff, dokkaebi were vicious . They had sharp teeth capable of ruthlessly shredding a deer, and adult dokkaebi could mind-control wizards who were too stupid to look beyond their pleasant appearances. Hell, given enough time, a very rare number of dokkaebi could even assume human form and control magic just as well as a wizard! In fact, the Academy’s Astrology professor Bihyung was living proof of that. A good amount of the upper Bureau staff were dokkaebi!

How the hell did a baby dokkaebi get here in the Kaizenix Forest?

More importantly, Yoo Joonghyuk thought, baby dokkaebi couldn’t yet emulate human speech. He realized that the male voice he'd been hearing had evaded his capture once more.

“Ah, don’t strangle Biyoo.” The voice started again, referring to Yoo Joonghyuk’s harsh grip over the dokkaebi’s head. “You’ll hurt her!”

Emitting a sinister aura, Yoo Joonghyuk flung his last dagger at the voice again. He’d never had to throw this many in a single night before.

When he turned around to the direction of the voice, what greeted his eyes was a strange man—or “man,” if this was all an illusion by a powerful creature—standing in the middle of the forest clearing, dressed in a modern human suit, easily catching the bullet-fast dagger with his thumb and index finger. Yoo Joonghyuk was dumbstruck. The only people who could do such a thing were those adept at spatial and speed magic, like Kyrgios (or Kyrgios’ dead rat successor that lived in his head rent-free). How did this random passerby catch it so easily?

“What are you?!” Yoo Joonghyuk hissed out, unsheathing his sword a few inches from its brace. He tightened his grip on the dokkaebi, or “Biyoo,” as it was called, to indicate his hostility. 

“Hey, I think I have some knowledge on what you want!” The man (?) threw his hands up as a sign of peace. “Calm down!” 

Yoo Joonghyuk did not calm down. He subconsciously executed his Red Phoenix Shunpo spell and appeared in a flash behind the man (?), pressing the end of the sword to the back of his neck. 

The man (?) could’ve easily avoided the move, judging from how he dodged all the daggers earlier, but stayed still, his hands still raised. Standing so close, Yoo Joonghyuk could hear his harsh breathing. 

“What do you know?” He demanded.

“Give me my jacket back first, and then we can talk. And give me back Biyoo, too,” he added as an afterthought.

“You’re in no position to negotiate.” Yoo Joonghyuk added more pressure onto the neck of the man (?), even though he knew he could easily get away and that the only real leverage he held was a scared Furby-lookalike that could only choke out one consonant sound. Oddly enough, a line of blood trickled out from the point where the sword met skin. So it was a highly potent illusion, Yoo Joonghyuk concluded. 

“Oh really?” The man (?) taunted. His jeering voice provoked Yoo Joonghyuk way more than it should’ve.

And then, in the space of less than half a second, the man swiftly turned around, whipped out a wand and flicked it with his wrist, a move that instantaneously striked Yoo Joonghyuk’s sword out of his hand and catapulted his body back a few meters to meet the heavy thud of tree bark. Biyoo slipped out of his grasp. 

Damnit. 

In his own defense, Yoo Joonghyuk thought as he winced in pain, he had no reason to believe that any other wizard was suicidal enough to venture this deep into the Kaizenix Forest alone. Still, he couldn’t help but get annoyingly upset by his own foolishness. Not only did he ignore all the signs of this man being a wizard, but he also got disarmed so easily. Way of the Wind was a simple spell taught to even first year Academy students,—he ignored the fact that when enacted by a powerful wizard, the charm could decimate an entire village—but it had caught him off guard in the blink of an eye. He was once again reminded that without a wand, even if he mastered how to ruthlessly slay dragons in minutes, a wizard was still his worst enemy.

The man walked over slowly and stopped when he was two steps away from where Yoo Joonghyuk laid on the ground. “I think we got off to the wrong start. Let’s introduce ourselves. My name is K-… uhh… Salvation!”

Yoo Joonghyuk stared at the handshake that was presented in front of him for a few seconds before raising his own to meet it. 

Immediately, the man cried out in pain at the silent inflammation spell Yoo Joonghyuk invoked on his hand. Idiot, he thought. His fault for thinking he’d just stay limp on the ground for no reason. Yoo Joonghyuk might be the farthest thing from a clever Changsin but without a wand or even his trusted sword by his side, it’d be stupid to confront this strange wizard head-on. Or worse, trust that this… Salvation was harmless. 

(Besides, what kind of name was that? He obviously just didn’t wanna give Yoo Joonghyuk his real one, which wasn’t exactly a sign of trustworthiness.)

Yoo Joonghyuk used Salvation’s brief moment of distraction to summon his sword from wherever it fell and let the man’s burning hand go as soon as he grasped his weapon. His immediate impulse was to point it at Salvation’s chin as a threat.

“Ah, again?” Salvation chuckled nervously, his burned hand twitching. Unlike his sister, Yoo Joonghyuk wasn’t one to be shallow, but as he looked up at Salvation’s face closely, he could see that the other man’s appearance was… quite plain, and, dare he say, even somewhat unsightly. Salvation continued, “I could just use Way of the Wind again.”

“Where’s your wand?”

“It’s right h…” The wizard’s eye widened as he realized what was being held by Yoo Joonghyuk’s left hand. How the hell did this sunfish swindle his own wand away while he wasn’t looking?

Salvation went on anyway, calmness still pervading his demeanor despite his awfully precarious position. “Well, it’s not like you have your wand with you, either. What kind of wizard are you anyways? Can you even do anything without a wand?”

Yoo Joonghyuk responded by abruptly standing up and repeatedly kneeing Salvation’s stomach with brutal force. While he was at it, he didn’t miss the opportunity to cut a deep slash into the smaller man’s back with his sword, too. The latter, despite suffering excruciating pain and blood loss as he bent over, took this as a chance to snatch his own wand out of Yoo Joonghyuk’s hand.

“Well, it was nice meeting you,” he hurriedly spit out through gasps of pain. Salvation flicked his wand and appeared at a spot at least 10 meters away, where he casted a spell, summoning both his jacket and Biyoo to him. Seeing that the nimble wizard had escaped again, Yoo Joonghyuk used Shunpo, manifesting behind Salvation just quickly enough to graze the collar of the fleeting man, who had just activated Teleportation to disappear.

Before he knew it, Salvation had already fled the Kaizenix Forest. 

Yoo Joonghyuk, meanwhile, was no closer to locating the Demon King than he was at the beginning of summer.

———

Ignoring what happened last night for now, when Yoo Joonghyuk woke up groggy the next day, he had to face the reason why he was hired at the Academy at all. 

And that was to teach small children how to fly.

When Yoo Sangah mailed him the set of staff uniforms a week ago, he almost burned it to ashes. White was not his color, and there was no he was going to wear a stuffy dress shirt of that color again after all the discomfort they caused him for seven years. While he was a student at the Academy, he doesn’t think he ever wore his Geumho uniform correctly; it was either entire buttons unbuttoned, collars up, ends untucked, or a missing vest. Hell, he couldn’t count on both hands the number of times that that other guy had to fix his tie for him. 

So despite the sweltering heat of early September, he strolled out to the Abydos field in a thick black jacket and leather combat boots, his expression ever so unfriendly and intimidating. 

The first year students arrived in two separate lines with their brooms. After they reached the center of the field, their chatter changed to nervousness, at both the prospect of flying for the first time and at the gaze of their tall, brooding instructor. Many students, among the likes of which included Lee Gilyoung and Shin Yoosung, however, were actually somewhat excited about finally interacting with the man who was practically a living legend in the Magical Realm. After all, he was the Yoo Joonghyuk. He was the Abydos prodigy so great he bypassed the ban on 1st-years being players when he was a student, then won the Abydos Cup every year for House Geumho and after graduating, led Korea to two consecutive victories at the World Cup stage, even beating out the powerhouses that were the teams from India, China and the US. Sure, haters will say he only placed 4th at the World Cup from 9 years ago, but he wasn’t even the Captain then. 

Yoo Joonghyuk acknowledged all the entranced expressions on the children. He just didn’t bother acknowledging them back in any way.

He cleared his throat, effectively making them all quiet down, and gestured to the broomsticks they laid on the ground, which were perpendicular to the two student lines. “Stand to the left of your broom. Stick your right hand over it and summon.”

His voice was brusque and lacked any pleasantries but it was enough to stir up the eager 1st-years into a flurry of activity. The open fields then concentrated an endless stream of squeaky voices commanding “Up!”—even though the directions asked for silent summoning—and brooms that were levitating, shaking, and dropping one meter from the ground. Yoo Joonghyuk made sure to pay close attention to the students who successfully commanded their brooms early on. Unsurprisingly, both Lee Gilyoung and Shin Yoosung got the action right on their first tries, though they were engaged in a heated debate over just who summoned their broom half a millisecond earlier. It was a warming scene to watch, Yoo Joonghyuk admitted.

After the students all achieved a grip of their brooms, Yoo Joonghyuk continued with the rest of the lesson. He was hardly nice or forthcoming but he showed his care through fixing individual students’ postures and concentrations or curtly nodding to them.

It was a smooth first lesson.

At least it was until two rascal senior students quite literally flew into the middle of it, shoving Lee Gilyoung down and landing haphazardly several dozen meters away. 

“You idiot! I told you we shouldn’t have interrupted their class!” A girl who had a high ponytail shrieked. In order to obscure her House identity, she was wearing a hoodie over her uniform, Yoo Joonghyuk assumed, but she clearly didn’t give enough thought to it, as her yellow striped knee socks automatically gave her away as a Dongdaemun. (Funny enough, Han Sooyoung during her Changsin days actually did the same. The one difference was that she usually got away with it.)

“Eh,” a teenager with dyed white hair—the one who had been the one doing the shoving—sheepishly remarked. “You miss all the shots you don’t take?” He shrugged without power before collapsing on the ground from the impact of crash-landing with a broken broomstick.

Yoo Joonghyuk quietly helped Lee Gilyoung get up before walking over to where the two troublemakers laid on the ground. The female student immediately got up at his presence and bowed awkwardly. “We’re so sorry!”

Yoo Joonghyuk disregarded the apology and coldly said, “30 points from Dongdaemun and Chungmuro. Each.” It felt odd to say that statement. Who’d have thought he’d end up having the power to deduct House points? As a student, usually, he was the one losing all the points from his House, the cause ranging from doing minor things like not wearing his uniform correctly or not using honorifics to refer to his professors, to heavier offenses like venturing off into closed portions of the the Academy campus or repeatedly using the Mime spell to make Kim Do—er, …that guy, finally shut up. (He usually earned back all those points and more during the Inter-House Abydos games, but that was besides the point). 

“But he was the one who shoved that kid down!” The girl protested.

Yoo Joonghyuk narrowed his eyes. “50 points from Chungmuro.”

“Way to sell me out, Jihye.” The male student got up while groaning and scratching his head. 

“It was your dumb idea, Kim Namwoon!” Jihye… Jihye… why does that name ring in a bell in Yoo Joonghyuk’s head?

“Ugh, whatever! Chungmuro is still gonna win this year, anyways,” the other boy—Kim Namwoon—remarked flippantly.

“As if Chungmuro ever stood a chance with you around!” Ah, that’s right, Yoo Joonghyuk realized. Lee Jihye was the 7th year student who Yoo Sangah had sung high praises for during the banquet last night. Huh… the scene before him was an awful contradiction.

“Are you done?” Yoo Joonghyuk’s blunt addition broke the intense back-and-forth between the two, who finally realized how annoyed the instructor felt at their bickering. 

“Yes, Master!” Lee Jihye cried out. “I-I mean Yes, Mister!”

“Heh, do you even get that wrong?” Kim Namwoon provoked brazenly. A fierce glare from Yoo Joonghyuk immediately made him quiet down and wipe the proud smirk off his face.

By the way time lunch rolled around that day, Yoo Joonghyuk felt weirdly drained. Not because of his job—flying lessons were probably the easiest subject to teach at the Academy and he had only taught one lesson earlier, anyways—but just because the steady, collective rhythm of the school year was a jarring change of speed from his usual loner adventures. In fact, he felt so out of place he didn’t protest one bit when Han Sooyoung rudely strolled into his living quarters and demanded he cook a second serving of his lunch for her.

“You should’ve seen the stupid look on Anna Croft’s face when she found out Chungmuro already lost FIFTY points!” Han Sooyoung sneered. 

They were in the small kitchen and dining room combo in Yoo Joonghyuk’s living space. He slid her plate to her and dignified her words with a grunt. 

“Especially when she found out it was you, of all people, who deducted points~” Han Sooyoung laughed maniacally.

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t understand her one-sided rivalry-slash-obsession with Anna Croft. Not even he held such strong hostility for the Dark Magic professor and she used to be his direct competitor in Abydos. After little thought, he concluded it was a holdover from his 6th year, when Anna transferred for the year from the North American wizarding school, and Chungmuro escalated upwards in House points due to her sheer brilliance, instigating the envy of all the other houses, most notably House Changsin and its 5th-year Leader at the time: Han Sooyoung. 

“By the way, where the hell did you go off to last night?”

“The Forest.”

“Did you find out anything about the Demon King?” Han Sooyoung added teasingly, “Maybe the 50th try’s the charm.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t reply, which was practically a concession of ‘no.’ Instead, he calmly asked, “What’s your plan? If it attacks again?”

“Hyunsung said he’s pretty confident his barrier magic could trap it this time,” Han Sooyoung stated smoothly after wolfing down her food. “Though actually beating it is a different ballpark. But that’s what we have you here for, isn’t that right?”

Yoo Joonghyuk ignored the cheeky grin Han Sooyoung directed towards him. He really couldn’t explain his former classmates’ optimism about the whole Demon King situation but decided to drop the topic for now. He hesitantly decided to ask, “Do you know a wizard named Salvation?”

Han Sooyoung pursed her lips. “...Salvation? What kind of name is that?”

“It was a fake name.”

“Why are you asking?”

“...He was at the Forest yesterday.”

“Huh, really… No other wizard is stupid enough to go there but you. What’d they look like?”

Yoo Joonghyuk blinked. Come to think of it, he didn’t actually remember the face of that peculiar wizard. He just recalled that it was generally unappealing and unremarkable. “I didn’t see his face. He wore a white jacket. And he was with a small dokkaebi.”

“Was he Korean?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm… I’ll ask Yoo Sangah to look into it.”

Han Sooyoung thought for a second before asserting, “He might be a Bureau snitch if he’s just loitering on the Academy grounds like that. Be careful of him.”

Yoo Joonghyuk hummed in agreement and a silence permeated the room after. He thought that was the end of the conversation, so he got up to wash the plates, but Han Sooyoung suddenly charged up from her seat. “Wait! If we’re gonna talk about the stupid Bureau of Magic, you should know that those bastards are still hounding your teacher!”

“...” Yoo Joonghyuk frowned at her loud outburst. “...That sounds like her problem.”

“But if the Head Teacher doesn’t comply this time, they’ve threatened to cut funding! Yoo Joonghyuk, do you know what this means?! We might face something even more horrid than the Demon King…” Han Sooyoung dramatized the look of dread on her face. “We’d have... s-salary cuts!”

“...”

“If you ask me, personally, though, the Bureau has been stepping wayyy too far into the Academy’ business lately. They say it’s because the Demon King attacked the school, but it’s probably just a front for trying to control us again!” Han Sooyoung seemed furious. 

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t reply and let her continue.

“Hey, in Year 6, wasn’t that guy convinced that someone in the Bureau conspired with the Demon King… oh right, it was actually your Year 7.” Han Sooyoung was a grade beneath him when they attended school together. “We all thought it was a stupid theory back then but it’s making an awful lot of sense now...”

Yoo Joonghyuk raised his eyebrow at that, but figured he wasn’t gonna get anything more out of Han Sooyoung, judging from her deep look of concentration. He simply uttered a few words:

“Kim Dokja was smarter than we gave him credit for.”

And truly, he was cunning. He figured out how to beat the Demon King so long ago, even if it meant a valiant sacrifice on his part (Yoo Joonghyuk tried not to lament on the fact that his plan did fail, albeit belatedly, since the King ended up returning ten years later). 

Han Sooyoung seemed shocked at the sudden namedrop of their old classmate after always vaguely referring to him as “that guy,” “that bastard,” or some other modifier. She grinned, though, as she realized that Yoo Joonghyuk’s words meant that he agreed with her: the Bureau has something to do with this whole thing. Or at least that someone from the Bureau was involved.

“Well, do you wanna give those sods at the Bureau a little visit this weekend?” Han Sooyoung wagged her finger as if to entice him.

“No.” If he had to tolerate those glorified bureaucrats once again, he might actually end up behind the bars of Tartarus. 

“Come on~! We can visit Lee Hyunsung there!”

Yoo Joonghyuk brooded before conceding. “Fine.” He only said so because he knew Han Sooyoung wasn’t gonna quit pestering him until he agreed. 

“If you agree with me, though, you should just stop searching for the Demon King and go after the true mastermind,” Han Sooyoung subtly hinted. 

Yoo Joonghyuk frowned. They both knew he had a personal vendetta against the Demon King after it abducted his sister, so he certainly wasn’t gonna change his entire course of action now. Besides, why was she talking of the Demon King so lightly like it was just some kind of pesky bug? It had the power to destroy all of them and here they were, practically waiting around like sitting ducks for its next act of provocation. Han Sooyoung must not have sensed the nature of his thoughts because she just shrugged and moved on. 

“By the way, I saw a divine Prophecy.” 

Han Sooyoung was referring to the Seer ability she possessed that allowed her to excel in Clairvoyance. Kim Dokja nicknamed it “Predictive Plagiarism” because it let her know the questions to exams beforehand. Usually, her predictions were minor things like that—which were wholly inaccurate half the time—but every once in a while, Han Sooyoung would get a whiff of a major Prophecy. She did foresee the first coming of the Demon King during her third year at the Academy, after all. 

“What was it?” Yoo Joonghyuk asked softly. He wasn’t one to take lightly something like a Prophecy.

Han Sooyoung stared at him for a good minute pensively before dismissing his question. “If I tell you now, it would ruin the future…”

Yoo Joonghyuk trusted her decisions, so he let the topic drop. 

When he scavenged the Forest again that night, he didn’t find the cryptic Salvation again. Thus far, that man was his only lead on the Demon King, but he tried to not be so disappointed at the other’s absence. 

However, he couldn’t shake off the feeling that he was being watched.

Chapter Text

It was Yoo Joonghyuk’s 4th Year at the Academy and he was suffering through his compulsory teenage rebellion phase. 

In fact, he had gotten so many points deducted from Geumho that his Leaders grew so inconceivably angry that they dragged him to both their House Head and Head Teacher Metatron and demanded that they punish the 14 year-old to a harsher degree. 

So here he was, following the eccentric Namgung Minyoung, the half-giant professor who taught Beast Taming, into the crevices of the Kaizenix Forest, where they were meant to rescue a Bureau member that had seemingly gotten lost there while traveling to the Academy. Of course, that’s assuming she was still alive and hadn’t become food to a pack of werewolves. Why this Bureau wizard had taken the long road instead of using magical teleportation, Yoo Joonghyuk couldn’t tell.

“It’s so dark out here.”

Ah, that’s right. Also coming along for the ride was Kim Dokja, a quiet Chungmuro student from Yoo Joonghyuk’s year who also got punished with Forest detention for breaking into the restricted section of the the Academy Library. From the little interactions they had over the past four years, Yoo Joonghyuk had already dismissed him as a cowardly wizard, so he was quite surprised that the boy possessed the guts to break such a serious rule.

Apparently not satisfied by the gleam of his lantern, Kim Dokja tapped his wand, intending to summon a halo of light to it. 

His light spell backfired and set a surrounding bush on fire.

Yoo Joonghyuk also forgot to note: Kim Dokja was so untalented at magic he might as well have been a normal human born to wizards. He was such a disappointment that Chungmuro, the House known to be intensely loyal and protective of its own, had all but abandoned him and that even their teachers—with the exception of the tiny Kyrgios, who was still somewhat indignant with his student’s lack of talent—had given up on nurturing his magic. 

“Yikes…” Kim Dokja held a dumbstruck look.

“Idiot,” Yoo Joonghyuk muttered under his breath. He whipped out his hand and with two flicks, successfully lit both his and Kim Dokja’s wands. While he was at it, he also gave a flick to suppress the flames of the bush (it was a trick he learned from Jung Heewon, a fiery Geumho girl in his year).

Next to Kim Dokja, he indeed stood out as the so-called ‘most talented wizard of his generation.’ Of course, though, even comparing Yoo Joonghyuk’s genius prowess to the likes of talentless Kim Dokja seemed a little insulting; even his height alone far eclipsed that of the other boy’s.

“Whoa…” The Chungmuro student’s eyes seemed starstruck. “You can do magic that quickly?!”

Yoo Joonghyuk rolled his eyes and left him behind, opting to run up to Professor Namgung, whose large steps—literally—were threatening to leave them stranded behind.

They travelled inside the Forest, avoiding interacting with any beasts, and kept their presence as unassuming as possible. Kim Dokja mostly stayed quiet, although Yoo Joonghyuk overheard him once whisper, “Hmm… could the Demon King possibly be in here...?” He didn’t know what those words referred to and he didn’t care enough to ask.

Luckily, they eventually found the Bureau staff member. Not so luckily, they were dangling upside down by the web of a spider, the coarse silk firmly wrapped around their entire body.

Yoo Joonghyuk quickly realized that their party had willingly walked into the den of a giant Arachnid colony. 

“Get out of the way! Let your teacher handle it!” Namgung Minyoung yelled and immediately flashed out a spell.

Yoo Joonghyuk knew that Kim Dokja would be way too slow to follow her words so he grabbed the boy, rushed at least 100 meters with him away from the massive spiders, and aggressively pushed both of them down to the ground behind an inconspicuous boulder.

“A—“ before Kim Dokja could cry out in surprise at all the sudden movement, Yoo Joonghyuk quickly clasped a tight hand around his mouth and motioned for him to be quiet. Kim Dokja trembled and widened his eyes under his grasp.

And so they huddled behind the boulder together, waiting for a sign from their teacher that it’d be safe to go out. Apparently, though, Yoo Joonghyuk greatly underestimated Kim Dokja’s uselessness, because the next thing he knew, the boy sneezed—onto Yoo Joonghyuk’s clasping hand, no less, gross!—alerting at least half a dozen Arachnids nearby to their presence. 

Shit.

Yoo Joonghyuk got up and immediately flicked the Light spell with his wand, pouring so much magic into it that the giant flash of white the spell generated was enough to momentarily repel the Arachnids. Exploiting their distraction, Yoo Joonghyuk once again grabbed Kim Dokja’s wrist and ran. He didn’t give a damn if the whimpering Chungmuro he dragged along wasn’t fast enough to keep up with his pace. 

“The food is getting away…” He heard an Arachnid with a deep, gruff voice remark.

The time he had made for them wasn’t enough; just as quickly as they got away was just as quickly as the Arachnids had caught up to them. Yoo Joonghyuk let go of Kim Dokja and started fighting them head-on, unleashing a bombardment of spells one after another, aiming to both repel and pierce the spiders. Kim Dokja, despite being unable to contribute to his fight, was somewhat helpful, occasionally yelling out an “Up!” or a “To your right!” 

Maybe this was because they were up against only a couple of Arachnid instead of the entire colony like their teacher was, but against all odds, they fended the creatures off. 

“Hey, we did it!” Kim Dokja said afterwards, wheezing and panting, his hands grasping his knees.

Yoo Joonghyuk frowned, but he felt just as tired as him. “You mean I did it. You weren’t of any help.”

“That’s not true!” He furrowed his eyebrows.

It became clear quickly, though, that they had let their guards down too early because right above Yoo Joonghyuk hung an Arachnid, just a second away from sinking one of its eight legs into his flesh. Kim Dokja saw the movement before he did.

What met Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes as he fell down on his rear was the young Chungmuro being impaled brutally by the Arachnid after pushing him out the way. Heavy splats of blood fell down from Kim Dokja’s abdomen and his ear-shattering scream filled the night. 

Yoo Joonghyuk’s breath turned coarse.

He couldn’t remember how the rest of the night went. All he knew was that when Namgung Minyoung found them immediately upon hearing the screams, she was met with the sight of a young Yoo Joonghyuk cradling a bleeding, unconscious boy in his arms.

Two days later, Kim Dokja woke up at the Academy’s Hospital Ward.

His body felt quite drained, so he yawned and stretched his arms far above his head. When he turned to his left, his eyes damn nearly popped out of his eye sockets, flabbergasted at seeing Yoo Joonghyuk sitting at his bedside staring at him with a complicated look on his graceful face. What the hell?! What was Geumho’s resident Golden Boy doing here, mingling with a mere peasant like him? 

In order to affirm that he was seeing right, Kim Dokja rubbed his eyes several times and blinked like a robot.

“Can you stop doing that?!” Yoo Joonghyuk was incredibly annoyed by his repeated fidgeting. 

Kim Dokja stopped doing that. “...W-what are you... doing here?”

Yoo Joonghyuk was surprisingly bashful. “...Who says I’m here for you?!”

“...” Kim Dokja’s dumbfounded expression quickly morphed into a leering grin. “Aww… are you here to thank your benefactor?”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t reply, instead furrowing his eyebrows to express his growing discontentment.

“Were you deeply touched that I sacrificed myself for you?” He faked a humble demeanor.

Meanwhile, Yoo Joonghyuk’s face was turning red from anger at the provocative taunt. “I didn’t need you to get stabbed for me!”

Kim Dokja was taken by his sudden outburst, but started trying to explain himself. “Ah… it wasn’t even a conscious act, though. I honestly thought I’d get out the way in time…”

Yoo Joonghyuk grimaced and seethed out, “You idiot…”

“Though if I think about it harder, better me than you…”

Yoo Joonghyuk raised an eyebrow. “...Why?” 

“Ah…” Kim Dokja sheepishly scratched the back of his head. “Your life is worth more than mine, after all…”

Yoo Joonghyuk was taken back by his self-deprecating declaration, and frowned. “No, it’s not.”

“That’s just the Geumho in you saying that.” Yoo Joonghyuk wanted to punch the calm, emotionless expression off of his face. “Us Chungmuros know how the real world really runs and the truth is that… a lot of people would probably be sad if you died. As for me… I’d be lucky if I died and got a sentence on the last page of The Weekly Apost —“

Yoo Joonghyuk had enough of his little speech before he aggressively grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and shook him. “You crazy bastard! What the hell’s wrong with you?!”

“I’m still injured...!” He yelled out in response, clearly not expecting to be manhandled or throttled. Shit, how was this guy so strong?!

Yoo Joonghyuk took a good look at him before letting go and sitting back down. His voice was unusually gentle when he spoke next. “Don’t say something like that again.” 

Kim Dokja rolled his shoulders back while flippantly saying, “Sure, if you insist…”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes trailed over to Kim Dokja’s shoulders and down his right arm, which had bandages running along it. Huh, that’s weird… From what he remembered, this dude was pierced through his abdomen, but had no injuries otherwise. 

He spoke again, “I mean it. You’re… you’re important… or whatever.” 

Kim Dokja stopped what he was doing and looked at him with wide eyes again.

Yoo Joonghyuk was starting to get annoyed again. “Stop looking at me like that!”

Kim Dokja laughed in response. “You’re usually such an intimidating guy, so I’m just surprised you’d say something so nice to me, is all.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“Ah, nothing…”

Yoo Joonghyuk stayed silent for a moment before deciding to shoot his shot and ask about the bandages. “How’d you get that?”

“Oh, that’s just nothing. I’m fine.”

Yoo Joonghyuk glared at him, which scared Kim Dokja into speaking a bit more. “I mean the Chungmuro boys were just, uh, a little too… rough, is all! We like to wrestle… a lot…” His voice thinned to the pitch of a mouse when he realized that the Geumho student wasn’t buying his story.

He groaned. “Okay, I’ll tell you, but you can’t blab to anyone or else… just promise you won’t tell, okay?!”

Yoo Joonghyuk nodded, but in his heart, he promised nothing.

“Sometimes, the other boys in my house like Cheon Inho and Song Minwoo would practice their magic on me. It’s usually just harmless things like levitating me off the ground or flashing the Light spell in front of my eyes. But today—”

“It was two days ago when we were at the Forest,” Yoo Joonghyuk corrected.

“That much time passed already?!” Kim Dokja’s mouth gaped before he closed it again. “Never mind… but anyway, they forced me to use a Dark Quill. It’s like this quill that—”

“I know what it is,” Yoo Joonghyuk interrupted again. The Dark Quill didn’t require any ink, but if one wrote something on a parchment with it, their words would show up in red; more importantly, though, the same words would painfully etch themselves on the skin of the writer. How in the world did some stupid teenagers get their hands on one of those quills? It took all the patience Yoo Joonghyuk had to not throw a desk across the room in anger. “It’s a dark object that’s used to torture people.” 

“I-I wouldn’t say it like that…” Kim Dokja fidgeted with his hands. “It’s not a big deal anyway… Hey… Hey, where are you going?!” 

Yoo Joonghyuk had enough of pitying this boy and decided to do something about it. During the 5 seconds it took for him to stroll out the room, Kim Dokja couldn’t stop shouting at his back things like “Hey, don’t leave!” or “Ughh, I knew I shouldn’t have told you!”

Yoo Joonghyuk returned to the Hospital Ward an hour later with a nasty bruise on his jaw, several burned patches on his uniform, 200 points less for his House, and another detention in the Forest with Namgung Minyoung. “Those Chungmuros won’t be bothering you again,” he stated bluntly when he came back.

After greeting him again, Kim Dokja, who had been reading the book on his bedside, looked like his spirit had left his body. “Geez… you Geumhos really are so righteous…”

“You should see the other guy.” Yoo Joonghyuk lightly smirked, obviously feeling very proud of himself. “They have detention with me for stealing a dark object.”

“My hero…” Kim Dokja’s left eye sarcastically twitched in disbelief.

———

Yoo Joonghyuk was becoming awfully sentimental, reminiscing of the past so clearly like that. 

Maybe it was because recalling that idiot’s dismal words after he actually died hurt all the more. And he was right ; ten years ago, the Apostle ’s headlines just proclaimed “Demon King Defeated!”, attributing its suppression to mostly Yoo Joonghyuk’s “bravery,” leaving out any mentions of Kim Dokja’s brilliant plan or careless deceit. To the Magical Realm, his life truly didn’t matter.

It went without saying how much his life mattered to Yoo Joonghyuk after that fateful day in the Hospital Ward.

Oh, that’s right. Another reason why his mind went back to those events was because he was in charge of Forest detentions now. Head Teacher Namgung let him have no say in this decision whatsoever.

“Master, slow down! You’re going too fast!”

Of course, crashing into a class and almost harming a first-year student warranted more than just point deductions for Lee Jihye and Kim Namwoon. So here they were, following him into the Kaizenix Forest, tasked in helping him “with whatever the hell he wants to do,” per Head Teacher’ words.

“Seriously, the kids can't keep up!”

Yoo Joonghyuk was honestly disappointed when he found out that Lee Gilyoung and Shin Yoosung also got Forest detention for not going back to their respective dorms once curfew hit. With the combination of Kim Namwoon and Shin Yoosung’s severe point losses, Chungmuro was currently dead last in rankings. He paused and waited for the four students to catch up. 

“Joonghyuk-ahjussi, where are we going? This Forest is kind of scary…”

Yoo Joonghyuk honestly didn’t know what he was doing right now, either. What he normally did at the Forest was way too dangerous for these kids.

“Shin Yoosung, shouldn’t you be calling Master seonsaengnim ? Hmph, he’s your teacher, after all.”

“But I met him as Mia-unnie’s brother first...”

“Jihye, why are you still calling him ‘Master’? Aye, you got a crush on ‘im or something?” Kim Namwoon teased.

“Of course not!” Lee Jihye’s face grew bright red. “I simply respect Master as a fellow Abydos player!”

Lee Jihye turned to face Yoo Joonghyuk and nervously cried out, “Please teach me Abydos, Master!” Yoo Joonghyuk ignored her request and leisurely walked ahead.  

“Jihye-unnie, he’s our teacher!” Shin Yoosung protested.

“Yeah!” Lee Gilyoung agreed with her, for once.

As the kids chattered amongst each other, Yoo Joonghyuk kept strolling, making sure to avoid any overtly hostile creature’s nest or colony. 

“You guys are so loud, geez…”

At the sound of the familiar voice, Yoo Joonghyuk immediately hissed and gripped the hilt of his sword, pouring some of his magic into it.

“Stay back…!” He advised the kids.

“Whoa, calm down…!” Salvation manifested a distance away in front of them, holding his hands up, Biyoo floating to the right of him. Unlike last time, he was wearing the white jacket over his suit. “I come in peace!’

“Ah!” Lee Jihye screamed. “This ahjussi is so ugly!”

“...” Salvation forcibly kept his smile up. 

“Why shouldn’t I kill you right now?” Yoo Joonghyuk threatened. He dared not make any hasty moves now after the way Salvation escaped him last time.

“Ahjussi, killing another wizard is forbidden…” Shin Yoosung feebly reminded Yoo Joonghyuk. Her form shrunk behind him.

“Hey, how’d you know I was a wizard?!” Salvation jested gleefully.

“There’s a wand poking out of your boot...”

“Huh, right…” Salvation observed, looking down. He grinned once more. “Well, in that case, you’re already smarter than your teacher over here!”

“...” Restraining himself was becoming all the more painful for Yoo Joonghyuk.

“Hey kids, did you know?” Salvation continued. ”There’s a dragon lurking in this forest right now!”

“Whoa, really?!” Shin Yoosung was awfully excited. “Where?!”

“If Yoo Joonghyuk says yes, I’ll take you there.”

“How do you know my name?” Yoo Joonghyuk raised his brow as an intimidation tactic.

“Are you kiddin’ me?” It was Kim Namwoon who spoke so dumbfoundedly. “What kinda wizard doesn’t know your name and face?!”

“And you say I have a crush on him…” Lee Jihye muttered under her breath.

“Wanna die?! At least I’m not as shameless as you!”

“Shut up, chuuni !”

“Joonghyuk-ahjussi, ah… can we please see the dragon?” Shin Yoosung asked innocently.

“No.” To soften the blow, added: “They’re dangerous.”

“Wait a minute,” Lee Jihye perked up. “Master, I’ve heard you’ve slayed dragons before! It should be fine with you there, right?”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s face twitched. “He could be leading us into a trap,” he lamely justified.

“What? Not confident you can protect your students?” Salvation instigated. 

In response to Yoo Joonghyuk’s deadpan expression, he took out his wand. When the other man pulled on his sword as a warning, Salvation replied, “Chill, I’m not gonna spell Way of the Wind on you again…” 

Instead, he threw the wand to Yoo Joonghyuk’s hand. “Here, you can have my wand if you don’t trust me.” 

Yoo Joonghyuk gazed in bafflement at Salvation’s wand.

The students apparently misunderstood this interaction as a sign of Yoo Joonghyuk’s approval because they followed behind Salvation when the wizard started walking. The said Yoo Joonghyuk, out of not knowing what to do, also followed, thinking he might as well be there to defend them should any trouble arise. He held dark, sullen eyes after the way Salvation swindled his students so easily.

“Ugh, ahjussi, you really are too ugly.” Lee Jihye broke the silent walk, scrunching up her nose. “I have to look at Master’s face after looking at you to feel good again.”

Salvation: “...”

“Yeah... I’m not the best looking either, but even I’m handsome compared to you!” It was Kim Namwoon.

“Yeah, right...” Lee Jihye snorted.

“Jihye, take that back!”

Salvation: “...”

“You guys are just mean,” Lee Gilyoung—bless him—opposed. “Hyung is perfectly average-looking.”

Salvation: “...”

“That’s right, ahjussi! You’re still average!” Shin Yoosung attempted to reassure him.

“Guys, you don’t have to say all that.” Salvation sighed, and turned his attention to Lee Jihye. “And isn’t it a little unfair to compare me to your teacher? His face really is one sculpted by the gods…”

The said face that was “sculpted by the gods” twitched in annoyance once more. 

“By the way, ugly ahjussi… what’s your name?” Lee Jihye questioned.

“You can call me Salvation.”

Kim Namwoon: “Salvation? What kinda’ name’s tha—“

“Anyways… We’re here, guys!”

From the way Salvation described it earlier, Yoo Joonghyuk thought he’d lead the children to glimpse a large dragon from afar and be done with it. Instead, as they quietly approached the inconspicuous pit of the dragon in an obscure hide in the Forest, they heard mewling coming from it.

In the center of the deep pit lay a dragon with sleek black skin and shimmering violet scales. 

While the four students let out their amazement at seeing the majestic dragon, Yoo Joonghyuk was feeling extremely troubled. “That’s an Abyssal Black Flame Dragon… it’s supposed to be extinct...”

“Ah, about that,” Salvation muttered next to him. “...This one is just the last of its kind.”

“How come you didn’t report it to the Bureau?” Yoo Joonghyuk narrowed his eyes. “...Or even the Academy?”

“…”

“How did you, of all people, even find a species that’s thought to be extinct?”

“It’s not like I was actively searching for it, I just found it.” Salvation scratched the back of his head

Yoo Joonghyuk highly doubted that but his attention had become distracted after hearing the yelp of Shin Yoosung. The child had approached the dragon despite her better judgments, and was startled when it opened its eye and started getting up.

“Stay back.” Yoo Joonghyuk immediately rushed over to her side. 

“Wait, I think it likes me.” Shin Yoosung protested Yoo Joonghyuk’s hold on her.

“Dragons can’t be domesticated.” He frowned down at her.

“Well, this one is friendly,” Salvation proudly chirped behind them.

To put it to test, Shin Yoosung reached out to touch the Abyssal Black Flame Dragon, which only complied and let out a smooth whine, in response. The other students, seeing that it was peaceful, then all surrounded it and cautiously started petting it. True enough to Salvation’s word, it was mostly docile. That is, if you disregarded the two times Kim Namwoon got way too comfortable scratching its scale and respectively got the receiving end of a fierce snarl and a puff of a fire breath.

Yoo Joonghyuk watched from afar next to Salvation, still not intending to let his guard down.

 “Your kids seem really sweet,” Salvation started. In the background, Kim Namwoon yelped as the Abyssal Black Flame Dragon playfully shoved him around. 

Yoo Joonghyuk grunted in response, before remembering why he appeased Salvation for so long thus far. He turned to the other man. “What do you know about the Demon King?”

“Oh, about that…” Salvation fidgeted, averting his gaze.

“Were you lying to me the whole time?” Yoo Joonghyuk’s fist tightened around his sword’s hilt. “Do you take me for a fool?!”

“N-no, of course not!” He took a step back at Yoo Joonghyuk’s growing restrained anger. “I-I just thought it’d be unfair if I told you everything but got nothing out of it!” 

“I’m not making any deal with you.”

“Well, I’m the only one who can give you any information, right? So you have to consider!”

“...”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s silence meant he was at least willing to listen to Salvation. “We can even do a blood oath and everything so you can hold me to my word.”

Yoo Joonghyuk stayed silent so Salvation continued, “If you fulfill your side of the agreement, I’ll tell you everything you want to know about the Demon King!

“My side of the agreement?”

“Right, I want you to find something for me.” Salvation nodded before pointing at his wand that Yoo Joonghyuk had confiscated. “There’s gonna be someone at the Bureau who has a wand that looks exactly like mine. I want you to steal it and bring it back to me.”

Yoo Joonghyuk furrowed his brows. “Why can’t you do it yourself?”

“Well, it’s not as if a random wizard like me can just stroll into the Bureau of Magic’s headquarters.” Salvation then pointed his finger at Yoo Joonghyuk. “But you’re different. You can probably do whatever you want, right?”

Yoo Joonghyuk could indeed do whatever he wanted. His fame and sheer power in the Magical Realm meant no one could control him. “Someone’s gonna immediately notice if their wand is stolen.” 

“Not if you plant a fake.” Salvation grinned before he looked around for a random stick on the ground, muttering a spell to enchant it. It transformed into something much more sleek and polished.

He handed it to Yoo Joonghyuk, who began observing its exterior. This “wand” matched every wooden ridge on Salvation’s instrument, as well as the silver details around the handle. It was a perfect fake. 

“So… Do we have an agreement? You do this for me and I’ll tell you what I know. And if neither side completes their side of the deal, they die.” 

Yoo Joonghyuk thought for a long moment pensively before nodding. “Make the pact.”

“Can I have my wand back first? You know, to cast it?”

Yoo Joonghyuk brooded before complying.

Salvation cut his hand with his wand to draw a drop of blood, and looked at Yoo Joonghyuk, who grunted in annoyance and also held out his hand for the ritual. Yoo Joonghyuk felt a small sting on his palm when Salvation drew blood. 

The manic wizard then muttered a few spells with his eyes closed, wand pointed at their entangled hands before finally looking up and grinning. “There, the pact is done. We’re now partners from life ‘til death!”

“Life and death partners?!” 

The two turned their heads to meet Lee Jihye, who had approached them probably wondering about when they were going back to school, but was met with such a strange spectacle instead.

Salvation must’ve realized how dubious his words sounded, in context of his close proximity to and hand-holding with Yoo Joonghyuk because he immediately let go and took a step back, frantically waving around his arms in front of himself as a defense. “I-I mean… we’re life and death, uh… companions! Yeah! Companions… that sounds better.”

His voice must have not reached Lee Jihye’s head because her eyes and mouth seemed like they were about to fall out from shock. “Master, what is your relationship with this man?!”

Yoo Joonghyuk tsked and turned around, intending to collect the other three students, while ignoring Lee Jihye spewing rubbish behind him. “Of course, I’m supportive—it’s the 21st century, after all—but M-Master… don’t you think you could do a little better?!”

Salvation: “...”

Chapter Text

It was very convenient that the mission Salvation assigned to Yoo Joonghyuk overlapped with Han Sooyoung’s earlier proposal about visiting the Bureau of Magic.

“Wait a damn minute, why are you here?!”

Han Sooyoung was expressing her shock at Anna Croft accompanying them on their trip.

“You didn’t really think Head Teacher would let the two most impulsive professors at the Academy disturb the Bureau, did you?” Anna Croft folded her arms in indignation and looked down at the other woman.

Han Sooyoung felt incredibly threatened by Anna’s superior height—Yoo Joonghyuk, meanwhile, wondered if 2 centimeters even counted as a height difference—and doubled down. “Who says I’m impulsive?!”

“Shut up,” said Yoo Joonghyuk. He seconds away from using the mobius only for himself and leaving them behind.

“Huh? You wanna say that to my face, you bastard?!” The image of Han Sooyoung then trying to grapple the collar of Yoo Joonghyuk, a man who was far taller than her, while pounding on his chest and making horrid stink eyes would’ve put any human Renaissance artist’s illustrations to shame.

“How unsettling.” Anna shook her head to feign disappointment, but she was clearly very amused at the sight.

“Hey, wait a minute, Professor Han!”

The three professors turned their heads to meet a disheveled Kim Namwoon who had burst into the room. It was a Saturday so he wasn’t wearing his Chungmuro garb, but grime, and what Yoo Joonghyuk assumed was oil covered his clothes from head to toe.

“Oh right, I forgot about him…” Han Sooyoung muttered.

Kim Namwoon had a look of betrayal flushed across his features. “Professor Han! You promised you’d help me with Plu… pro-project.. you said you’d help me with the project today!”

“You idiot…” Han Sooyoung’s dismal expression deepened, her frown completely etched onto her skin. When she noticed the other two adults’ questioning gaze set her way, she assumed a fake cheery demeanor to boost her credibility. “Kim Namwoon’s just helping me with a project so he’d get extra credit for Clairvoyance, that’s all!”

“But teach’, you’re making me do all the work!”

Han Sooyoung bitterly closed her eyes to take a breath, looking like she was so ready to stab into Kim Namwoon’s veins for his gross inability to keep a secret. “Just keep working on it this weekend.”

“But Profess—“

Kim Namwoon didn’t get a chance to finish before Han Sooyoung stole the mobius from Yoo Joonghyuk’s hands and activated it, quickly taking them away from the Academy room.

Yoo Joonghyuk did not miss the feeling of traveling through a mobius. A sensation of dizziness and unpleasantness overtook him and by the time they successfully teleported to the Entrance Floor of the Bureau, he had to forcibly suppress the urge to gag. Anna Croft, on the other hand, couldn’t do the same, judging from the way she keeled over a trash can almost immediately. That reminded him; how the hell did Yoo Sangah appear so fine after using a mobius to his house just two weeks ago?

“Hmph, serves her right.” It was Han Sooyoung. Her face was unusually pale, but she showed no other signs of unease.

Yoo Joonghyuk still couldn't understand her weird rivalry with the blonde, so he changed the topic. “Does your... project… have anything to do with your Prophecy?”

Han Sooyoung stared ahead cryptically before finally replying, “…Maybe.”

Yoo Joonghyuk might be a little impulsive, like Anna Croft stated, but that didn’t erase his endless patience. He’d wait for her to tell him more about what she saw in her Prophecy.

Of course, despite being a man of a few words, Yoo Joonghyuk, meanwhile, had no qualms about informing Han Sooyoung of his agreement with Salvation; secrecy was not a part of their contract, after all. If he recalled, her immediate reaction was “ Are you fucking crazy?! You made a blood oath with this random wizard?! ” but she did agree to help. 

The three walked to the long, gilded Entrance Floor. Getting approved by the the security stand at the hand of the hall there went mostly smoothly, discounting the instance where the wand checker looked incredulous at Yoo Joonghyuk’s sudden appearance—apparently he didn’t recognize Anna, despite her also being a famous Abydos player—and then equally flabbergasted at his lack of a wand. (Salvation’s dupe was spelled invisible by Han Sooyoung and wasn’t an actual wand, so it evaded detection).

“By the way… you can’t use the switching spell without a wand, can you?” Han Sooyoung remarked once they made their way into the Bureau after the security stand. 

The Bureau had ten unique levels; the Entrance Floor was on level 1 and with the charmed lift, they were currently making their way up to Lee Hyunsung’s office on the second level, which was otherwise known as the Ministry of Wizarding Law Enforcement.

“I could do it just by thinking about it,” Yoo Joonghyuk remarked. 

“I hate ambitionless bastards like you,” Han Sooyoung grumbled bitterly. 

“What a waste of talent,” Anna agreed. She had only heard the last part of their conversation.

“...” Yoo Joonghyuk wanted to protest, knowing that outside of the specific magic system his teacher taught him, he could only do a small handful of spells without a wand. He decided that his explanation wasn’t worth the effort, though. 

“Speaking of which,” Anna Croft pondered. “Isn’t it really stupid to not have a wand? Why do you even do that?”

Her question was like shattering glass. 

Yoo Joonghyuk’s expression instantaneously darkened and Han Sooyoung came to his defense, harassing Anna with, “Hey, you can’t just ask people why they don’t use a wand!”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t have to answer Anna’s question because the lift had just arrived on level two.

He was about to split from the two and search on his own but Han Sooyoung grabbed his arm and dragged him with them. “You asshole, you should at least say hi to Hyunsung first,” she muttered.

Yoo Joonghyuk grunted in disappointment. After leaving the lift, they went through heavy oak doors that led them into the Constellation Headquarters; the level then transformed into a large open space that hosted single cubicle offices that were spelled soundproof for each individual Constellation, otherwise known as wizards who acted as law enforcement in the Magical Realm. Lee Hyunsung, being an Constellation, naturally had one of said offices.

“How’s it hanging, Master of Steel?” Han Sooyoung lightly smacked the back of Lee Hyunsung’s head with a jovial grin on her face after they walked over to him. Cubicles in the Bureau could be entered by anyone, and though they occupied small sections on the actual floor, the space drastically expanded once you stepped a foot in due to spatial magic.

“Oh, Sooyoung-ssi.” Said Lee Hyunsung clearly did not expect them to be there but once his initial surprise dissipated, he stood up and opened his arms wide to offer Han Sooyoung a bear hug. She jumped into his embrace like a koala. “It’s so good to see you!”

Yoo Joonghyuk thought Anna Croft, in the background, seemed particularly annoyed by this interaction but he didn’t care enough to ask. This woman had kicked him off his broom as a last-minute sabotage during last year’s World Cup finals, after all.

Once Han Sooyoung got off, Lee Hyunsung turned to face the other two Academy professors. “Joonghyuk-ssi, Anna, I hope you two have been doing well, too.”

Yoo Joonghyuk nodded as reciprocation. Before Kim Dokja had slid into his life during 4th year, Lee Hyunsung was probably his closest friend when they were students. 

Han Sooyoung’s grin disappeared before she smacked the back of Lee Hyunsung’s head again. “You big idiot, why don’t you visit the Academy more often? You’re almost like that edgelord over here with the level of ghosting that you do, you know!”

Yoo Joonghyuk—“that edgelord”—frowned, while Lee Hyunsung sheepishly tried to explain. “I’ve just been overloaded with work lately, that’s all!”

“I’m pretty sure Jung Heewon misses you know~”, Han Sooyoung teased with a leering tone, which turned Lee Hyunsung bright red.

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t know whether Jung Heewon and Lee Hyunsung were dating or something like Han Sooyoung had implied, and once again, he didn’t care enough to ask. 

Lee Hyunsung: “My superiors at the Bureau are really strict, so I dunno about that…”

“Which superiors, huh?! I wanna speak to them right now!” Han Sooyoung put up a front of bravado and machismo, which got an amused chuckle out of Lee Hyunsung.

“You wanna speak to me?” A tall man with long blond hair tied into a ponytail walked into the office, with a proud and gracious aura radiating around him. Trailing behind him was another wizard dressed in yellow robes, although that one was more lowkey and indignant.

“Huh?! You’re Hyunsung’s boss?!” Han Sooyoung loudly exclaimed while pointing fingers.

Of course, the man who had walked into the room was Sun Wukong, the Bureau’s Head Constellation. Even Yoo Joonghyuk, who had burned all of The Weekly Apostle ’s pages detailing the governances of the insufferable Bureau of Magic, could recognize him from a mile away. The name of the other man, however, he couldn’t tell.

“Han Sooyoung, have you been living under a rock or something?” Anna Croft scoffed.

“Hey I knew who the Head Constellation was! I just didn’t think… ugh never mind!” Han Sooyoung must have seemed to think antagonizing Anna Croft was more trouble than it was worth at this time, in the face of one—or two? Yoo Joonghyuk couldn’t fathom the status of the man in the back—of the most powerful leaders in the Bureau, and the Magical Realm, as a whole.

“Ah, Sun Wukong sir, what’d you need to talk to me for?” Lee Hyunsung peered politely.

“Ah right, there was another breach in Tartarus. You should probably go clean that up or something?”

Discounting Yoo Joonghyuk and his exceptional poker face, every wizard in the room seemed like they were about to pass out at the word of such a news. 

“Tartarus?! How the hell is that possible?!”

“Sir, am I hearing right?! May I ask why I’m being tasked with such a serious task? Of course, I’m flattered but…”

“What do you mean ‘ another breach’?! You mean there was a first one?!”

“I wonder what the logistics of a Tartarus break is like… of course, its difficulty was probably exaggerated or something. I could probably do it…”

“Are we even allowed to hear such a thing?! Why are you Bureau bureaucrats so incompetent ?!”

“How troublesome.” 

The last statement was uttered by the man at the back, who tsked in frustration before flashing his hand out of his robes and flicked a spell to silence Han Sooyoung. The room immediately grew quiet at the sudden demonstration.

“You’re on cleanup duty again, maknae!” Sun Wukong reiterated.

“But I’m always on cleanup duty, I was wondering if I could do something different th…” Lee Hyunsung stopped mumbling timidly when he realized that Sun Wukong started flippantly brushing his golden locks and no longer paid any attention to him.

Han Sooyoung started miming around and fidgeting, pointing aggressively at the expanse of skin where her mouth used to be. Because Yoo Joonghyuk had no wand, her miming actions were mostly directed towards Anna Croft.

“Head Constellation, are we even allowed to know this information?” Anna asked with a raised eyebrow, ignoring an increasingly frustrated Han Sooyoung.

“Hmm… you’re probably right about that.” Sun Wukong gestured at the four of them with his wand, firing out rapid spells at them, and grinned brightly afterwards. “There, now you can no longer talk about this after leaving the room.”

Yoo Joonghyuk glared fiercely at Anna Croft for bringing it up and making him bound to a secrecy spell, while Han Sooyoung began scratching at her arm for attention. Anna pulled her tongue at Han Sooyoung, who was turning a deep tomato from rage and stomping on the floor.

“Lee Hyunsung, put the counter-spell on Han Sooyoung.” This was the first time Yoo Joonghyuk had spoken during the whole conversation. 

“Um!” Lee Hyunsung bit his lip. “…How does that go again?”

Yoo Joonghyuk deadpanned, writing a three-quarters infinity symbol in the air to mimic its flicking motions. 

Lee Hyunsung did as requested and after Han Sooyoung sent a furious look at Anna Croft—not before coughing from the sensation of getting her mouth back, though—he asked her, “Sooyoung-ssi, why’d you come here?”

Han Sooyoung asked flippantly, “Why? I can’t visit my friend?”

“Ah, of course, I didn’t mean it like that. I just thought you’d come with a purpose after the…” He looked at Yoo Joonghyuk’s face for a sign of irritation on it—there was none. “You know… after the Demon King came back and all…”

“I was gonna ask you for help with a project of mine,” Han Sooyoung replied seriously. “But seeing that you’re so flooded, never mind, actually…”

“You know, you could always ask me for help,” Anna Croft remarked matter-of-factly.

Her words immediately pissed off Han Sooyoung, who sneered grossly. “Huh?! Why the hell would I ask a backstabbing snitch like you for help?”

Anna Croft’s mouth turned sour. She was about to retaliate but—

“Han Sooyoung.”

It was Yoo Joonghyuk speaking. “I found it.”

Han Sooyoung’s mocking countenance turned immediately serious. “Huh, who would’ve thought it’d be right under our nose? Wasn’t that way too easy…?”

Of course, ever since he stepped foot into the Bureau of Magic, Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes were meticulously tracking the wands of every single wizard he sighted, from the large hordes of people at the Entrance Floor, every single Constellation on level two, and just now: the man who accompanied Sun Wukong. 

“What the hell are you guys talking about?” Anna Croft questioned.

Ignoring her query, Han Sooyoung asked: “Lee Hyunsung, where did those two go?”

“Oh.” Lee Hyunsung’s puppy dog eyes widened when he realized the two were asking for his help. “Surya is an Transcendent from the Ministry of Enigmas, they probably went there… Wait, why do you guys wanna know?”

“No reason, we’re leaving,” Han Sooyoung proclaimed. “It was nice seeing you but we have to leave now! Keep working on a better defense to protect the Academy while we’re gone!”

Lee Hyunsung tried to wave but he was clearly dumbstruck by her hurried, vague words.

And so they bid their farewell and went back on the Bureau’s magical lift.

“You know what to do, right?” Han Sooyoung asked under her breath as the lift busily rummaged down.

At Yoo Joonghyuk’s nod, she passed him a piece of fabric inconspicuously and started whistling to drown out the ruffling noises. Anna Croft, completely unsuspecting, stepped out the lift with Han Sooyoung when it stopped at the Entrance Floor at level 1, before swiftly turning around once she realized that Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t step forward with them. “Wait, why is he not coming with—”

The lift’s door shut on her face before she could finish.

Yoo Joonghyuk, meanwhile, looked down at the Invisibility Robe Han Sooyoung handed to him before he left. He had to hold back his trembles when the two women were also in the lift with him but now that they had left, an indescribable sense of grief washed over him. 

This Invisibility Robe had belonged to Kim Dokja before he died.

He didn’t question how Han Sooyoung held onto it the whole time, but he hurriedly put it on and waited for the lift to reach The Ministry of Enigmas.

Located on level ten, it was the only subsection of the Bureau that didn’t have to answer to the Constellations of the Ministry of Wizarding Law Enforcement. The reason why regarded its operations being required to be carried out with the express most secrecy; the officials who worked there, called Transcendents, studied all the mysteries of the world, both Wizarding and otherwise, with hearsay believing that Transcendents observed time, space, and even abstractions like love .

With the cloak concealing him, Yoo Joonghyuk stepped out of the lift. At times like this, while walking down chilly, endless halls that were barely lit blue, Yoo Joonghyuk really missed the convenience of his wand. With the movement of a spell like the Tracking Spell, he could have easily found the previous steps of the Transcendent named Surya and been done with it already.

Yoo Joonghyuk gripped his teeth and moved on. 

After traversing for what felt like forever, Yoo Joonghyuk heard the hushed spat of a heated conversation occurring nearby. When he turned right to head into that hall, he was met with sight of Surya speaking in an accusatory manner towards another man, who was wearing a top hat and held a cane. 

“Don’t you think this has gone too far?! We can’t even summon it anymore!”

Despite being relatively close, the voice of the other party was muffled, probably due to a charm that made his private conversations unintelligible to outsiders. 

Yoo Joonghyuk obviously did not recognize the second man or understand what he was saying, but he was only here for one mission, so it didn’t matter to him anyways. From the inside of his jacket, he pulled out Salvation’s dupe and spotted Surya’s own wand. Not daring to let sound escape, he concentrated hard with strong intent of a charm.

Contrary to Han Sooyung’s impressions, wandless spells were still difficult for him and consumed a great deal of energy. But nonetheless, as Yoo Joonghyuk felt that the glorified wooden stick in his wand suddenly held a mystifying quality to it, he realized the switching spell was successful: the stick in his was Surya‘s wand, the wand that exactly resembled Salvation’s, the one Yoo Joonghyuk was tasked to steal. Now to escape without detecti—

Suddenly, the chilling argument between the two Bureau wizards had reached a startling permafrost. The unknown wizard’s wand shot out a burst of light after he uttered a spell—from the best of Yoo Joonghyuk’s lip reading, it resembled the sinister likes of First-Person , one of the Three Forbidden Hexes, which were among the rare verbal spells. But Yoo Joonghyuk also remembered that he dropped out of his lip-reading class in 6th year midway, so as far as he knew, it could just be the simple amnesia spell Forget —and Surya whipped out his wand to counteract the spell.

Unfortunately for Surya, Yoo Joonghyuk’s spell was already done and the Transcendent was completely powerless against the other wizard, now that his “wand” was essentially a tree branch under an illusion.

Surya’s nonverbal counter failed uselessly and the other wizard’s spell reached him without obstruction. The hallway quieted down and after the second wizard said something, Surya obediently nodded and followed him down the halls of level 10. 

So it was First-Person, Yoo Joonghyuk thought. It was a banned curse because it allowed the caster to control the receptor indefinitely; the punishment for it was so severe that the Bureau immediately sentenced casters to a lifetime in Tartarus. The second wizard must be high up on the Bureau’s ladders to confidently cast it, Yoo Joonghyuk reasoned. Either that, or they were suicidal. 

No matter. Yoo Joonghyuk would think about what to do with this situation once he told Han Sooyoung about it.

———

Yoo Joonghyuk went back to the Forest right after he returned to the Academy. The situation with Surya and the unrecognizable wizard had certainly jarred him, but his utmost priority had always been the Demon King.

When Salvation manifested in front of him for the third time, Yoo Joonghyuk released the slight breath he didn’t know he was holding.

“You got the wand?” 

Yoo Joonghyuk threw Surya’s wand at him. “The wizard was spelled with First Person after I took it . ”

“Oh really?” Judging from Salvation’s tone, he didn’t care all that much. “Well, kinda’ expected that.”

“What are you going to do with it?” Yoo Joonghyuk was referring to the wand.

“...” Salvation thought for a moment as he pocketed Surya’s wand into his white jacket. “I’ll explain it later, not important now.”

Yoo Joonghyuk was getting awfully impatient so he finally asked, “What about your side of the agreement?”

“Eager now, are we?” Salvation teased with a charming smile. When Yoo Joonghyuk threateningly motioned to his sword in response, he relaxed his tone. “Okay, okay, fine, I’ll show you where the Demon King is, if you’re so excited. You might have to take a short break from school, though.”

Out of the blue, a pair of dark black wings sprouted from the back of Salvation’s back, accompanied by horns on his head.

Yoo Joonghyuk rubbed his eyes, wondering if it was another one of Salvation’s illusions before a flash of light appeared beneath his feet, taking the both of them away from the Magical Realm.

Chapter Text

It was Yoo Joonghyuk’s 7th year at Star Stream Academy and several things had happened since the past flashback.

Firstly, he and Kim Dokja became… friends. Yoo Joonghyuk, being the powerhouse wizard that he was, was admired by many, and sure, there were a few students he routinely hung around and even considered friends, but despite his astounding popularity, he had always preferred doing things by myself, proudly sticking his head higher than the crowd. So it came as quite a shock to most students and staff when the most powerful student in school willingly walked around the halls of the Academy everyday with, well… the least powerful student.

“How dare this conniving Chungmuro steal him from right under our nose?” was what the other Geumho students whispered among themselves.

“Are you sure he didn’t use an enchantment on Yoo Joonghyuk?”

“As if! He’s so useless with a wand, and besides, those spells are banned by the Bureau!”

Yoo Joonghyuk ignored their words, already having become quite used to people chattering behind his back since first year. He did find the hushed giggles of Uriel, a senior Changsin, around them somewhat weird but nonetheless, his reaction, or lack thereof, had a marked difference to Kim Dokja’s.

“Can we even study with so many people looking at us like that?”

“You idiot, who cares about that! We should be looking in the books for any mention of this ‘Demon King’!”

Right, that was another difference. 

Yoo Joonghyuk had introduced Kim Dokja to his (tentative) friends Jung Heewon, Lee Hyunsung and Lee Seolhwa, the latter two being remarkably friendly Dongdaemuns, while Kim Dokja has introduced him to his (only) friend Han Sooyoung, a Changsin girl one year lower than them. 

Upon meeting her, the two had immediately informed Yoo Joonghyuk about her psychic dreams, the latest of one being a major Prophecy warning them of the first coming of the Demon King Asmodeus. (It was the same “Demon King” Kim Dokja had muttered that night in the Kaizenix Forest). Yoo Joonghyuk had thought it was complete bullshit when first hearing of it but true to her Prophecy, at the end of his 4th year, when the Demon King attacked the Academy and heavily injured a few students along the way—one of them even being Dongdaemun’s Student Leader Han Myungoh—he had no choice but to believe.

Sadly though, at the end of 4th year, they were also too distracted to warn any the Academy staff beforehand.

In the same month, Kim Dokja’s mother had been locked away in Tartarus for brutally murdering her abusive human husband; she didn’t use the Death Curse—God forbid—but it was still enough for a 20 year sentence. Kim Dokja was in a Spells class at the time when the news broke and like the bastard he was, he started internalizing his grief afterwards under the calm facade of “I’m fine” before a week passed and he broke down into a crying mess on Han Sooyoung’s shoulders.

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t know the first thing about comforting other people, much less the likes of someone as indecipherable as Kim Dokja. 

He did, however, beat up any student who dared call him “the son of a murderer” to his face; it was Yoo Joonghyuk’s way of caring. It went without saying that Geumho had net negative points in the final tally that year, despite winning by far in Abydos. Han Sooyoung, of course, did not forget to brag to his face about how first-place Changsin had a 600-point lead over them.

The national team desperately tried to recruit him for the Abydos World Cup scheduled that August, and he vehemently refused after everything that happened.

(For the next three summers, before their school terms started, he let Kim Dokja stay over at his house due to the boy's sudden lack of one. It’s not like Yoo Joonghyuk’s parents were ever there to protest, anyways; he had practically raised himself. 

Yoo Joonghyuk was a very capable wizard who far outshone his peers and even fended off homicidal giant Arachnids singlehandedly. For some reason, though, he was utterly useless when confronted with Kim Dokja’s occasional breakdowns that summer after the tragedy of his parents. Yoo Joonghyuk could only mindlessly hand him a tissue or pat him on the back.)

During Yoo Joonghyuk’s 5th year, Namgung Minyoung finally had been harassed enough by him to agree to teach him combat magic. The night at the Forest with the Arachnids had mostly been a blur but Yoo Joonghyuk couldn’t wash away the amazement he felt when he heard the next day about how the half-giant held off an entire colony off by herself; he had been so amazed he basically forgot about the Bureau wizard they were supposed to rescue—did he even remember their name?—and hounded her repeatedly afterwards to teach him. After all, he had to be strong enough to protect Kim Dokja well next time.

Han Sooyoung had another prophecy in the 5th year. When Demon King Asmodeus attacked again in June, unlike last time, the three students had alerted Head Teacher Metatron in time for the attack to be thwarted. Yoo Joonghyuk felt proud when Kim Dokja’s foolproof plan had come to fruition.

Strangely enough, though, Professor Namgung Minyoung practically disappeared after Asmodeus’ second appearance. Yoo Joonghyuk’s training under her, which had greatly strengthened his combative magic, was mostly completed already, but he couldn’t conceal his great disappointment in her absence.

Making a great comeback from last year’s shit show after Yoo Joonghyuk’s rebellious phase, Geumho had won the House Cup during 5th Year. Han Sooyoung looked like she was ready to kill a man when the final tallies were announced.

(Yoo Mia was born that May. She was being taken care of by wet nurses in their parents’ absence, a move that Kim Dokja had described as “unnecessarily cruel” during the summer after that school year. Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t comment but he silently agreed as he peered down the crib at his helpless baby sister.)

The calendar shifted to Yoo Joonghyuk’s 6th year at the Academy.

In addition to the grueling coursework that exams entailed for senior students, the transfer of Anna Croft from the North American Wizarding School had driven up a storm during the first week of classes, especially considering the way she rapidly collected up points for Chungmuro. 

“I bet she’s even stronger than Yoo Joonghyuk,” a particularly shameless Chungmuro had claimed.

“She can probably do more wandless spells than him, too~!”

“Do you think she can even beat Geumho in Abydos this year?”

“Don’t listen to them,” Kim Dokja had later told him with a shit-eating grin during their lunch period. Despite being a Chungmuro, he still cheered on Yoo Joonghyuk. “They don’t know what the hell you’re capable of.”

“If she duels you, you better beat her!” Han Sooyoung demanded. Unlike the two, she had become a House Leader this term—last year, Kim Dokja was too “untalented” to be a House Leader and Yoo Joonghyuk couldn’t give less of a damn about the rules, much less enforcing it—and seemed personally offended by Anna disturbing the Academy’s status quo.

“Han Sooyoung, you should keep your voice down.”

Yoo Sangah, same year as Yoo Joonghyuk, was Changsin’s 6th Year female House Leader, a girl who was always ever so polite and rule-abiding, and said such words with an amiable smile on her face. 

“Sangah-unnie, you should live a little more, honestly~,” Han Sooyoung flippantly replied.

6th year was when the friend group between them—Yoo Joonghyuk, Kim Dokja, Han Sooyoung, Lee Hyunsung, and Jung Heewon—strengthened significantly due to their mutual suffering over tests, and it was also when Yoo Sangah was added into the mix due to her House ties with Han Sooyoung.

Towards her, Yoo Joonghyuk was indifferent but the girls liked her, so he had good reason to believe that she was quite trustworthy. He did, however, get quite annoyed by her awfully close relationship with Kim Dokja.

“Yoo Sangah, how did you like the book?”

“I honestly thought that the plot twist at the end with Secretive Plotter was too predictable, ah~.”

“I know, right?”

They would always have insider jokes and conversations between them and Yoo Joonghyuk, who didn’t exactly like reading, would often become the third wheel by their side. Just looking at the warm smiles the two sent each other’s way infuriated him. He had told Han Sooyoung as much, when she annoyingly retorted:

“You’re just jealous.”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s ugly mood worsened at her response. What the hell was even there to be jealous of? Him being jealous of Kim Dokja? Sure, Yoo Sangah was pretty and all, but she wasn’t exactly his type, so the rat bastard could fucking marry her, for all he cared.

Besides, he was pretty sure he already liked Lee Seolhwa, the beautiful Dongdaemun girl in the year below him.

(Kim Dokja had mercilessly teased Yoo Joonghyuk so much for his awkward and clumsy interactions around her to the point he would have to cast silencing spells on the Chungmuro boy to make him shut up. Geumho lost an awful lot of points once again.)

6th Year finished just as quickly as it started, with no Prophecy or Demon King getting in the way.

(Han Sooyoung would never admit this but she was awfully disappointed by Anna Croft’s departure from the Academy at the end of June.

“It was only because she pushed Changsin to do better this year!” She had claimed when Kim Dokja annoyed her about it. 

And indeed, Anna had pushed the students of Changsin—they were always on their best behavior, had the highest marks by far, won first place in the overall House Cup, and because Anna was not a one-man team despite how good a player she was, Changsin won by a small margin against Chungmuro in the first round of the Inter-House Abydos Cup before, of course, being ruthlessly beaten by Geumho’s monstrous team in the Finals—but Han Sooyoung’s feelings about Anna probably went much further than petty rivalry, if the fact that she sometimes sent letters by owls to the girl after she left was anything to go by.)

And so, it was Yoo Joonghyuk’s final year at the Academy. 

He was 17 years old and had matured into quite a strong—and handsome—wizard. Despite that, Lee Seolhwa broke up with him on the first day of class, reasoning that she needed to “focus on studying this year without any distractions,” marking it as quite an embarrassing conversation that he was too dumbstruck to input a single word into.  

Unfortunately, Han Sooyoung’s prophecies about the Demon King had resumed that year.

She woke up in screams in the middle of the September night when she received the Prophecy and the next day, Han Sooyoung, despite usually being so proud and arrogant, couldn’t stop shaking during her classes.

“You don’t understand, it’s going to destroy all of us!” Her hands frantically tapped against the library table anxiously.

“There’s a simple solution for it, really,” Kim Dokja replied calmly.

“What?!” Han Sooyoung exclaimed, halting up from her seat.

“Shh!” The librarian warned. They held up 5 fingers to imply the point deduction from Changsin.

Han Sooyoung winced and sat back down.

“All we have to do is kill this Demon King, simple.”

The deadpans both Han Sooyoung and Yoo Joonghyuk sent his way would’ve been enough to make any other wizard piss their pants. 

“How would it even be possible? You’ve seen the thing before.” It was Yoo Joonghyuk. 

“You don’t understand…” Han Sooyoung shook her head before drastically lowering her voice. “I saw everyone die. ”

But Kim Dokja had been completely serious. Throughout the year, he kept plotting in his head alone about how to beat the ferocious creature, muttering vague things to himself like “Maybe that’s how I could make the potion” or “What could the President possibly be up to?” Whenever Yoo Joonghyuk tried asking him for more information, he’d simply shake his head before saying, “Not important…”

It wasn’t long before the other three students in their friend group were confided into Han Sooyoung’s prophecies about the Demon King.

“You mean you suicidal fuckers want to try beating it alone?!” Jung Heewon looked absolutely baffled when Kim Dokja had vaguely let out parts of his scheme to them. “You’d get destroyed!”

“She’s right,” Yoo Sangah agreed, although her tone was a lot more considerate. “Dokja-sunbae can’t even use magic that well, either.”

“W-Why don’t we just let Head Teacher deal with it?” Lee Hyunsung nervously stammered out.

“No reason…” Kim Dokja whistled with a grin. “What fun would it be to leave it all to the adults?”

After endless hours of trying to convince the three against their crazy plan, Yoo Sangah, Jung Heewon and Lee Hyunsung eventually realized their words were going over deaf ears and decided that they might as well join them.

If teenaged Yoo Joonghyuk said so himself, they made up a pretty strong team against the Demon King Asmodeus together.

With his swordsmanship and endless magical power that was honed under Namgung Minyoung’s mentorship, Yoo Joonghyuk was the main combative strength of the team. Jung Heewon—who was learning how to cast the likes of fierce elemental curses, such as Fiendfyre—was not far behind him in combat, while Han Sooyoung’s Predictive Plagiarism was quite useful in foretelling attacks beforehand. Yoo Sangah showed how adept she was at slowing down others’ movements through her time charms and the barriers Lee Hyunsung created with his magic could probably even give the Bureau of Magic a run for its money. 

Kim Dokja brought absolutely nothing to the battlefield, so they all agreed that he’d stay behind during the main fight.

“Even you died in the Prophecy, so it’s for the best,” Han Sooyoung justified.

Kim Dokja whistled while agreeing, “If you insist…”

“We mean it, you idiot.” Yoo Joonghyuk frowned.

In between cramming for their final year exams—Lee Hyunsung was trying to become a Constellation, so he needed five Outstanding marks!—and Abydos practice—Yoo Joonghyuk had to teach his Geumho underclassmen how to fend on their own after he graduated—they practiced their battle formations in the Kaizenix Forest against the fearsome dark creatures there.

“Dokja-sunbae, how did you get approval to be here?” Yoo Sangah asked after she effortlessly slayed a dark creature with her wand. The Kaizenix Forest was off-limits to the Academy students.

“Professor Rodgraim pulled some strings for me.” Kim Dokja smirked cheek to cheek.

“Do you think he could pull some strings and fix my failing grade in Potions?” Jung Heewon asked, while she grunted. Despite her casual words, she had just pulled out a sword blazed in fire from the heart of a Manticore. 

“No can do!”

“Watch out,” Yoo Joonghyuk whispered. He pulled Kim Dokja behind him before slashing the Outer Squid that tried to attack the Chungmuro with its slimy tentacle earlier.

Even though Kim Dokja was useless as a wizard, he was the blueprint for their plans and formations, so they unfortunately had to train with him nearby in order to get his input. Thus, the group all took turns shielding him during their outings at the Kaizenix Forest. 

It was Yoo Joonghyuk’s turn that day and he had finally grown strong enough to protect Kim Dokja from the giant Arachnids.

“Shit, I hate to say it but your stupid plan might actually work,” Jung Heewon commented in astonishment as they walked back to the the Academy castle.

It was the night before Han Sooyoung’s Prophecy was destined to come true.

“Our chances are still so-so.” Han Sooyoung subtly hinted for the last time, “Our chances would increase a lot if we got Head Teacher Metatron to help us, though…”

“No can do.” Kim Dokja frowned. He was clearly distracted, judging by the look of concentration on his face.

Jung Heewon: “Kim Dokja, you still never told us the reason for that. Don’t you still trust the Head Teacher?”

“Ah, isn’t it enough that I trust you guys?”

Han Sooyoung was more cynical. “Trust isn’t gonna break a Prophecy…”

“Leave it all to me!” Kim Dokja sounded extremely confident. “With me there, nothing will happen to you guys.”

Instead of being moved by his selfless words, all the girls of the party simply burst out laughing at his brazen proclamation.

“What are you even going to do? Hide behind Yoo Joonghyuk?!” Jung Heewon jested.

Han Sooyoung: “Huh…? What are you talking about?!”

Yoo Sangah: “Dokja-sunbae, you don’t have to act tough in front of us.”

Lee Hyusung: “I actually think what he said is very commendable. We should all strive…”

Despite Kim Dokja’s words not being taken seriously at all, the spirit of the party had greatly increased due to them as they all departed into their dorms that night. 

“What did you mean by that?” 

Yoo Joonghyuk finally asked the question plaguing his mind after they arrived in front of the Chungmuro dormitory. He had escorted Kim Dokja back. 

“Uh...,” Kim Dokja, who was about to enter the verbal password for the Chungmuro dorm, visibly flinched at Yoo Joonghyuk’s query. “N-nothing much.”

Yoo Joonghyuk narrowed his eyes, but knew that he couldn’t pry anything out of these cryptic answers that Kim Dokja whipped out.

As he turned around to leave for the Geumho dorms, Kim Dokja called him from behind. “Yoo Joonghyuk! ...Do you think you can still teach me how to fly a broom?”

Of course, shabby magical skills translated poorly to broom riding; Kim Dokja, already 18, was worse than the first-years on that front.

“It’s after curfew.”

“Oh come on~ I know you don’t actually care about curfew.” Kim Dokja pursued, “Especially not during our last few days at the Academy…”

Yoo Joonghyuk relented and led him into the Abydos field, taking out two random brooms that he used for practice. 

Despite all his best efforts for the next hour, though, Yoo Joonghyuk wasn’t a miracle worker. He couldn’t actually teach him what their Professors failed in doing over the course of the last seven years. When Kim Dokja fell from his broom again after barely getting it to levitate for the nth time, Yoo Joonghyuk became awfully impatient and just cast a charm on it, making it lift the other boy up into the air dramatically.

“Ah!” Kim Dokja yelped. The spell Yoo Joonghyuk casted only made the broom levitate dozens of meters up, instead of actually letting him tame it, so he clung on desperately in order to not fall. “You bastard, I actually wanted to learn!”

Despite how well he hung on, he clearly didn’t expect the broom to flip upside down because in the next moment, Kim Dokja was freefalling down the better span of a hundred meters, about to meet his human father a little sooner than he planned.

What met him, though, wasn’t the hard thud of the ground below but the embrace of strong arms wrapping around his back and under his knees. When Kim Dokja looked up to see another person’s face barely far from his own, his hands subconsciously reached to hold on to their neck, and all the words of protests he planned on yelling out immediately squeezed up in his throat. 

“Let’s go to sleep.”

If someone had told Kim Dokja that the other boy was capable of making such a gentle and patient expression, he would’ve laughed directly at their face. Yet, under the cool moonlight, he could only look up in astonishment at Yoo Joonghyuk, the darkness of the night barely concealing the planes of his sharp jaw or the warm flush reaching his cheeks.

“Ah…” Kim Dokja was rendered speechless. “Let’s head back…”

By the time the next day ended, Yoo Joonghyuk finished his 7th and final year at the Academy without his wand or his best friend by his side.

———

Unlike last time, Yoo Joonghyuk could perfectly understand why he suddenly recalled memories of the past so suddenly:

He was freefalling, and this was his life flashing before his eyes.

In between all the air pressure blocking his ears, Yoo Joonghyuk could vaguely make out someone saying, “Right, he can’t fly…”

Yoo Joonghyuk saw Salvation hover above him before the wizard—if he could even be called a wizard after growing wings and horns—dove rapidly his way before catching him by the collar.

“Hngh,” Salvation grunted. “You know… you’re a lot heavier than you look.”

Yoo Joonghyuk looked at the hand scrunched up around the clothing covering his collarbone and immediately frowned. “Let me go!”

“If you insist...”

Before he knew it, Salvation really did drop him in midair. It was a fall of only a few meters, so Yoo Joonghhyuk landed safely, albeit a little shaky, on the ground.

While he was plunging like a dead bird through the atmosphere, Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t exactly have the liberty to look around the environment and see where he was. But now after he stood on the floor, grass under his boots, he understood very clearly: this was not the Magical Realm. 

He and Salvation had landed near a cliff overlooking a giant metal factory and a sprawling town that surrounded it. The fog coming from the gargantuan iron husk covered some parts of the pale red sky, while endless plains and cliffs surrounded them on all sides. From the far off distance stood a mountain range with sinister, black edges.

“Where the hell are we?!” Yoo Joonghyuk demanded, ready to unleash his sword on Salvation any second.

“My friend, you see,” Salvation started. “…We’re in the 73rd Demon Realm!” 

The awfully glum smirk plastered across Salvation’s face was one Yoo Joonghyuk wanted nothing more than to slap away.

Chapter Text

Yoo Joonghyuk stifled both his disbelief and curiosity. “Where is the Demon King?”

Salvation shrugged. “He’s somewhere in this world.” 

Yoo Joonghyuk had no more patience left. Channeling some magic into his sword, he flashed in front of Salvation, pointing the weapon at the chin of the wizard—demon?—before growling out, “Tell me.”

Salvation simply teleported a distance away, while laughing. “How do you know it’s not me?”

Yoo Joonghyuk pondered for a bit. “Can demons even use magic?”

“Demons can do magic,” Salvation explained, while he started flying in the air. “They just can’t control it like wizards.”

“Then what are you?” Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t relax the critical expression on his face or sheathe his sword.

“I’m just me.” Salvation gave Yoo Joonghyuk a knowing look before fluttering his wings, going down from the cliff to the ground. “Follow me!”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t get flustered by the long cliff drop and jumped down to meet Salvation. He couldn’t see it from up ahead but standing guard in front of the factory was an Abyssal Black Flame Dragon.

The same one that Shin Yoosung had taken an awful liking to.

“How’s that thing here?” Yoo Joonghyuk frowned.

“The same way you’re here.”

“Is that why it’s not extinct?”

“Of course, you can’t just keep the last dragon of its kind hidden in the Kaizenix Forest for over thirteen years without no one noticing.”

“...Thirteen years?” Yoo Joonghyuk thought Salvation’s words were accurate, such that he definitely would’ve noticed a dragon, especially an Abyssal Black Flame Dragon, with how often he scavenged the Kaizenix Forest. Thirteen years ago was still an awfully specific time of reference, though. Didn’t it coincide with the first appearance of the Demon King?

Salvation either didn’t hear his words, or chose to ignore them, judging by how he stood in front of the gates of the factory and made a motion to open it. Yoo Joonghyuk cautiously followed behind him, entering the dark expanse of the industrial complex’s interior, which started slowly lighting up. He noted how the Abyssal Black Flame Dragon muzzled slowly not too far behind, implying it was following them.

“Jang Hayoung! Aileen! Mark! I’m back!” Salvation yelled out, prompting the eager sounds of several steps coming down the stairs.

A woman with a mechanic’s outfit asked Salvation after she descended down the staircase. She seemed awfully familiar. “Yoo Joonghyuk, you’re back so soon?” 

Yoo Joonghyuk? Salvation flinched at her words and desperately avoided the fierce gaze that Yoo Joonghyuk sent his way.

Another person, one with an extremely beautiful and androgynous face, perked up next. “Who’s this man with you?”

His face was extremely rough when he spoke. “ I’m Yoo Joonghyuk.”

The two newcomers shared a confused look between each other. 

“Don’t worry, it’s just an inside joke between us.” Salvation laughed a little too forcibly. “They usually call me Salvation. Right, guys?!”

They looked at each other once again, hesitantly echoing a “Right…”

Yoo Joonghyuk, in his thoughts, couldn’t possibly fathom why their inside joke involved him before remembering that he couldn’t trust a word that came out of Salvation’s mouth. 

Yoo Joonghyuk’s wasted too much time again. He hissed and unsheathed his sword. “ Where is the Demon King?!”

(He should remind himself to get a better intimidation tactic—threatening to stab people hasn’t really worked well against Salvation so far.)

“Just be patient, you’ll get your answers soon~,” Salvation said as he dodged the dagger Yoo Joonghyuk threw his way. “By the way, guys, where’s Mark?”

“He has a job, you know,” the woman wearing the mechanics’ overalls said. Yoo Joonghyuk was sure of it now: he’s definitely seen her before. “He’s at the pub.”

“Right.” Salvation was now dodging a scimitar. “Aileen, we should do the spell for the wand soon, right? Ah! Where are you getting all these weapons from?!”

“You really got the wand?” Aileen replied. 

“Of course.” Salvation threw Surya’s instrument to her way while Yoo Joonghyuk still chased him around the industrial complex persistently. “It's the other half of the dragon’s horn, right?”

Yoo Joonghyuk wondered how the Abyssal Black Flame Dragon had anything to do with… this whole situation before he threw his last dagger. It missed. “What’s the hell going on?!”

“It is.” Aileen nodded, before giving a glance to Yoo Joonghyuk’s angry, homicidal presence. “By the way, I don’t think we should be having this conversation here…”

“Right,” Salvation agreed. “Jang Hayoung, show him around town. We’ll meet you guys in half an hour at Mark’s pub.”

The beautiful blonde one, who had been mostly quiet, was startled by Salvation’s sudden request. “Alright!”

“I’m not following anyone around town.” Yoo Joonghyuk‘s scowl was getting nasty. He thought he might actually kill this annoying wizard soon.

“Jang Hayoung probably has more answers than me.” Salvation shrugged flippantly. “She and Aileen were born in the Magical Realm, like you.”

“Aren’t you a wizard?” Yoo Joonghyuk raised an eyebrow. 

“Only because I learned how to use this powerful wand.” Salvation bowed his head slightly and held out his wand—the one that was completely identical to Surya’s—to show his humility. To Yoo Joonghyuk, it felt like an act of mockery. “Jang Hayoung taught me.”

“Huh?” The youthful woman tilted her head. “I don’t think s—”

Aileen smacked a palm over her mouth. “Go show this nice man around town and tell him about us. Don't say too much though…”

At those words, any normal person would think she was insinuating that Jang Hayoung overshared too often, but Yoo Joonghyuk was no fool: there were things they didn’t want to tell him, things Aileen was reminding Jang Hayoung to keep secret. 

After glaring a good amount at her, Yoo Joonghyuk suddenly remembered where he recognized Aileen from:

She was the Bureau wizard he and his teacher rescued so long ago from the nest of the giant Arachnids in the Kaizenix Forest. 

Thirteen years ago, to be exact. 

Her appearance didn’t look much different from that day, either. Did she place an anti-aging spell on herself? No, that couldn’t be it; maintaining those spells were a hefty, tedious waste of magic, especially since wizards could easily live over a century, anyways.  

Before he knew it, Yoo Joonghyuk was mindlessly following the short blond girl—he was sure she was an adult but her face was so ridiculously youthful—into the streets of the town surrounding the industrial complex. The streets were mostly quiet this time of the day, with the buzz of the market quieting down, and the sky setting a soft pink hue. They walked in complete silence—because Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t know what the fuck to ask—past various demon pedestrians, ranging from mere human-lookalikes with tails to hideous beasts that would give the dark creatures in the Kaizenix Forest a run for their money.

Jang Hayoung must’ve felt awkward by the chilling silence between her and the daunting older man because she suddenly spoke up. 

“Right, I should probably tell you about the town and the factory.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t reply, so she continued. 

“You know, Yoo Joon—I-I mean, Salvation, he saved us... The people in this town all used to work in the factory, being forced to slave away for this really scary Demon Duke named Syswitz. Even my teacher didn’t want to interfere, but Salvation drove all of the nobles away a few months ago, and now they don’t dare come to the 73rd realm.” 

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t miss the Freudian slip in the beginning of her irrelevant monologue but here, in a completely foreign realm that he didn’t even know existed just an hour ago, with a Bureau witch who didn’t age one bit, a dragon that was supposed to be extinct, an enormous factory that served no function whatsoever, and an insufferable wizard-demon hybrid he wanted nothing more than to stab brutally, Yoo Joonghyuk felt that the name Salvation went by, even if it was his own, was the least of his concerns.

“I don’t care.” He truly didn’t care about demon politics, he just wanted to kill their King again. 

“You don’t understand. I’m a Sky Swordsmanship user and even I can’t fend off against some of the nobles…”

Hm ? That was his teacher’s unique magic system, the one she taught him back in 5th year. Yoo Joonghyuk sent the girl a severe look.

“Oh, r-right… Breaking the Sky Swordsmanship is—“

“I know what it is,” he interrupted. “How do you know?”

“My teacher—“

“Is it Namgung Minyoung?”

Jang Hayoung’s eyes brightened up. “How did you know?!”

“She was my teacher.”

“She was mine, too! …This actually wasn’t too long ago for me because of the time freezing spell, but…” Yoo Joonghyuk’s ears perked up. A time freeze would certainly explain why Aileen only aged a few years, instead of a decade; it was a tricky enchantment that had disastrous effects when gone wrong, though. “...I believe it was twelve years ago when Teacher stayed over at the Demon World.”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes widened over that. Was Jang Hayoung implying that his teacher’s disappearance at the end of his 5th year had something to with this? She was over at the Demon World ? “How the hell did she get here?”

“When Asmodeus was summoned there—“

“It was summoned ?” So Kim Dokja was right.

“I think she tried fighting him.”

His teacher tried fighting the Demon King? This was news to him; Kim Dokja’s plan during 5th year certainly didn’t include her. Then again… he hardly explained any of his plans to his own friends. 

“But she probably failed... so the wizard who summoned Asmodeus might have banished her here…”

“What wizard?!” Yoo Joonghyuk gripped the hilt of his sword. 

“ I'm getting there.” Jang Hayoung frowned. “As I was saying… Teacher taught me during the two years she was here.”

The two year span coincided with the gap in her disappearance. When Han Sooyoung started her 7th year at the Academy, two months after Yoo Joonghyuk had already graduated, Namgung Minyoung had somehow resumed her teaching position as the Beast Taming Professor, and even been promoted to Head Teacher! 

She had absolutely refused to reveal where she was during those two years, though, leading to a nasty decade-long fallout between her and her prodigal student. 

There was still something that didn’t make sense to Yoo Joonghyuk. “How are you two still here while my Teacher left?”

“How do you think the Demon Realm opened up?”

Yoo Joonghyuk perked up his eyebrows at that query. 

Nothing was making sense to him anymore. Jang Hayoung might as well tell Yoo Joonghyuk that the sky was purple—which it’s not, it’s actually red in the Demon Realm—and he’d be damned inclined to believe her. 

“Aileen and I were Transcendents at the Bureau of Magic. We were trying to detect the presence of any coexisting worlds—y’know like how the Magical Realm coexists along the Human World?—and we came across this one…” Jang Hayoung paused, looking somewhat petrified. “We didn’t realize we’d accidentally summon the most powerful beast from the realm when we created the breach, though…”

“...” Yoo Joonghyuk wanted to be understanding of Jang Hayoung’s meek mood, but couldn’t help but ask, “Was it placed under First-Person ?”

“Ah, yes… It was the only way we could control the King… By the way, how’d you even guess that?”

“…” Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t particularly feel like recalling the battle at the end of 7th year.

“Aileen and I didn’t want to be a part of the project anymore but when we spoke out, we were banished here. If we left, I honestly don’t know what the Transcendents would do to us…” Jang Hayoung trembled. “By the way, Mark’s pub should be right around here—“

As informative as Jang Hayoung’s sob story was, Yoo Joonghyuk had no reason to stick around her for so long other than to get escorted to the pub. Her answers had been more than enough to bridge the gaps in the timeline he’d always questioned, anyways. 

So when Yoo Joonghyuk stormed inside the pub that was reminiscent of gross medieval architecture with a complicated look in his face that looked both homicidal and close to tears, the response from Salvation at his entrance was much contrasting. 

“Ah~ Back so soon? Come have a drink with us!”

Yoo Joonghyuk had no interest in wasting his time with such an activity but obliged anyway, taking a hesitant seat besides Salvation at the bar counter. 

Jang Hayoung wasn’t too far behind and slid next to Aileen, who was to Salvation’s right.

“Don’t worry, I didn’t say too much! Especially not about you, Joong—“

“Especially not to you, you mean.” Aileen raised her voice while chuckling unconvincingly, and harshly whispering, “He’s Salvation. ” 

“Mark, four of the usual!” Salvation asked of the man behind the counter.

The friendly bartender—who looked more human than demon—threw a jovial thumbs up in agreement before taking some mugs out.

Aileen: “I’d say today deserves a celebration, don’t you think?”

Jang Hayoung’s eyes widened. “You guys already removed the first rift? That fast?!”

Salvation replied: “I’ve had ten years to think of a counter spell, after all~”

“What about the second one?” Jang Hayoung pointed to the wand on the male wizard’s—demon’s?—hand.

“How else am I gonna send this guy back home?” Salvation pointed at the brooding Yoo Joonghyuk behind him. “Besides, we should always head back into the Magical Realm every once in a while~.”

Aileen sighed. “The two of us would be tried by the Bureau on sight if we stepped foot in there again. Transcendents have trackers.”

Mark handed the four their drinks; Yoo Joonghyuk frowned once he realized his one was identical in appearance to Salvation’s. 

Salvation chuckled near his ear, prompting Yoo Joonghyuk to look up from his drink. “You should try it, it’s similar to soju .”

Yoo Joonghyuk followed Salvation’s gesture and mindlessly took a sip. He couldn’t focus on his own actions when his thoughts were somewhere else after everything he’d heard that evening. 

“So how’d you like the 73rd Demon Realm?”

“…”

“Did you get all the answers you needed? See I told you, I wouldn’t fall back on my words. The blood oath should be fulfilled by now…”

“…”

“ Wow, Yoo Joonghyuk, you’re so talkative.”

Yoo Joonghyuk glanced his way and stared for a deep moment at Salvation’s wand before finally speaking. “The dragon doesn’t have a left horn.”

It was true; when he first saw the Abyssal Black Flame Dragon that night at the Kaizenix Forest, he was too shocked by its presence to notice that it only had one horn. Salvation must not have anticipated Yoo Joonghyuk’s observation, judging by the way he widened his eyes dumbfoundedly 

“Were the wands made with its horn?”

The reason why Abyssal Black Flame Dragons were thought to be extinct was because wizards hunted them to extinction several centuries ago, long before the Bureau of Magic was organized enough to enact any anti-poaching laws. The reason why? The wands formed by the cores of Abyssal Flame Dragons were powerful beyond belief, surpassing even the ones wielded by the Academy’s Head Teachers. They were unbelievably rare but were most likely the only magical instruments strong enough to create or destroy a rift between two worlds. 

A talentless sod could probably even match up to the likes of Yoo Joonghyuk with such a wand. Probably…

Salvation nodded slightly, his expression changing to a cool smile. “Yeah… It was used to make the wands that opened the rifts to the Demon World in the first place.”

Yoo Joonghyuk could understand why the Head Transcendent Surya possessed one of the two wands, but: “How’d you get one?”

Salvation shrugged. “That’s not important.”

Things didn’t line up. He knew now that those two wands were the only way one could travel between the realms, so how did Namgung Minyoung leave the Demon World ten years ago if she didn’t have the second wand? One way or another, it passed from her hands to Salvation's.

Yoo Joonghyuk raised his eyebrows, even though he knew he’d get no further answers. He had an indecipherable expression on his face.

“Is this how you’ve been spending the last ten years?”

Yoo Joonghyuk maintained his intense stare at Salvation, making the other wizard—demon?—get incredibly flustered. Averting his eyes, with blush creeping his neck, Salvation stammered out, “S-stop looking at me like that…”

Yoo Joonghyuk parted his lips, but hesitated before a sound could come out. He reached out with his rough hand and gently placed it over Salvation’s, who in turn, looked back at him with a questioning look about the sudden initiation of physical contact. Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t let go, even at the other’s flinching. On the periphery, he could hear Aileen and Jang Hayoung chatter vividly with each other, all the more unaware of the strange interaction happening between the two of them.

Finally, he spoke.

“Kim Dokja…”

His voice was soft as a feather and held the grief of over ten years of longing.

“…It’s you, isn’t it?”

Chapter Text

“Kim Dokja…

“…It’s you, isn’t it?”

Yoo Joonghyuk was no Han Sooyoung or Kim Dokja but he’d be stupid beyond belief if he ignored all the signs. Same physique, same means of assertion, acquainted with too many members of the Magical Realm, going by Yoo Joonghyuk’s name , and he somehow knew all about the Bureau’s plotting, like he desperately longed to learn more about ten and eleven years ago. 

In response, the other party’s eyes widened dramatically, caught in an absolutely dumbstruck, yet speechless, expression. Yoo Joonghyuk could feel his hand shake slightly under his grasp. 

Voice straining, Yoo Joonghyuk continued. “Asmodeus is dead already. I killed him.”

“...”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s deceptively calm facade broke. His eyebrows furrowed and a slow tremble started playing across his lips and limbs. 

“I… I thought I killed you , too…”

The other man released an exhale in relief while looking to the side. “...Finally… I thought you’d never figure it out…”

“It’s you.”

“Yeah, it’s me.” Kim Dokja grinned bashfully the other way before he turned to face Yoo Joonghyuk. “W-Wait a minute! Why… Why are you crying??”

Amidst his distraught realization, Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t even notice his own vision going blurry due to the moisture pooling around his eye ducts.

Kim Dokja wrestled his hand from under Yoo Joonghyuk’s grasp and reached out his hand towards his cheek to wipe the singular tear away. His fingers lingered for a few seconds afterwards, while he stared at the other’s face. 

Yoo Joonghyuk ignored Kim Dokja’s gaze and grabbed his fleeting hand before the other could fully retract it; despite the swift action, his grasp was gentle. 

“ How did you live…?”

Kim Dokja’s eyes glossed over Yoo Joonghyuk’s hand on his wrist and scratched his neck with his other hand. “Ah, I think I did die, honestly…”

After witnessing Yoo Joonghyuk’s sorrowful glance darken once more like the switch of a button, Kim Dokja backtracked and clarified, “I-I mean… I died but I woke up again… and I ended up here.”

Yoo Joonghyuk stayed silent with a fierce frown, observably making the finicky wizard get nervous with unnecessary movements. 

How weird… over a decade of regrets, hopeless questions, and frustrations, yet he couldn’t get out anything he truly wanted to say. Not ” Why’d you do it? ”, “ Did you not trust me? ”, “ You selfish bastard... ” or, God forbid: “ I missed you. I mourned for you so much that sometimes the guilt and loss would consume me alive.”

Instead, he could only weakly choke out, “You look different.”

Indeed, Kim Dokja looked nothing alike now to what he did back then. That unidentifiable—or “ugly,” like Lee Jihye had graciously described—blob of a profile looking back at him hardly resembled the animated and sly expressions from the pale, youthful face that still pervaded among Yoo Joonghyuk’s thoughts like a never-ending heart attack. 

Kim Dokja must’ve guessed the nature of Yoo Joonghyuk’s thoughts because he nodded happily, then said, “Right, I wasn’t sure how you’d react if you saw me in the Kaizenix Forest that first time. So I… spelled my face...”

“...” Knowing his overly cautious self, Yoo Joonghyuk probably would’ve thought any creature showing up with Kim Dokja’s face in the Kaizenix Forest would’ve been another illusion by a beast to exploit his weaknesses. Kim Dokja truly knew him best.

“And I was right! You did try to kill me!” Kim Dokja pointed the index finger of his free hand at him accusingly. In turn, Yoo Joonghyuk bitterly strengthened his grip over his wrist. “—Ach! Several times, too!”

“Change back.” 

Yoo Joonghyuk let his deathly grasp go with a curt statement. Kim Dokja, in turn, flicked his wand and the appearance that met his companion after the spell’s enactment was one so starkly familiar. Yoo Joonghyuk was prepared so he looked at the familiar soft cheeks and dark eyes—now with a sudden maturity to them—before he quickly removed his eyes, turning his attention back towards his drink. 

“Ten years…” He muttered. “How come you didn’t try to come back even once?”

Kim Dokja took a sip. “About that… it’s not like I didn’t try to leave . ”

Yoo Joonghyuk raised a stern brow.

“I didn’t get this wand until last June, so I couldn’t actually teleport back to the Magical Realm until quite recently.”

Yoo Joonghyuk lifted his cup from his lip pensively. “Last June…”

Kim Dokja must have noticed the direction that Yoo Joonghyuk was heading towards because he immediately slammed his drink on the counter and stammered, “I-It wasn’t me who did that to your sister…!”

“Keep it down, you two,” Aileen muttered from next to them, obviously startled by the sudden noise.

Unaffected by her intervention, Yoo Joonghyuk stared at him for a long moment.

Kim Dokja felt that his words were a bit suspicious so he added, “At least… I’m assuming it’s your sister…” 

“You’re lying,” Yoo Joonghyuk deduced.

The flurry of nerves surely culminating within Kim Dokja showed on his face for a mere moment before he resumed his default, shit-eating grin. “What the hell would you know, you bastard?”

“Asmodeus is dead. You’re the Demon King.”

“ Actually , my subjects call me the Demon King of Salvation. This humble and benevolent king bravely defended them from a tyrannical ruler, after all.”

How shameless. Yoo Joonghyuk was quite humored by Kim Dokja’s words but didn’t dare show it. “You were able to do that because you inherited Asmodeus’ power.” As he said that, he conceded that Jang Hayoung’s boring monologue turned out to be useful, after all. “You couldn’t even do the Light spell back then.”

“Hey, I have my own merits, you know! And besides… aren’t you angry at me?! I did attack your sister…” Kim Dokja seemed baffled. 

“Were you under First-Person when you were summoned in June?” Yoo Joonghyuk’s questioning stare turned into one of fury—not fury directed at Kim Dokja, of course.

“Huh, you figured it out… you’re actually lot brighter than what I remember you as.”

Yoo Joonghyuk ignored the obvious jab—how could Yoo Joonghyuk possibly get upset at him after everything?—and asked, “Who casted it?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Kim Dokja shrugged nonchalantly. “The one you stole the wand from?”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s glass shattered under the deathly grip of his fingers. 

Kim Dokja was startled at Yoo Joonghyuk’s glass breaking and suddenly sitting up. “What the...?! Did you get more impulsive over the years?”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s tone was colder than a glacier. “Take me back.”

They had attracted the attention of some of the others in the pub.

Aileen tried to mediate. “Why don’t you guys just talk it out? Geez...”

She misunderstood his anger as being placed on Kim Dokja instead of his assailant—whom apparently had death wishes for daring to harm not one, but two, of Yoo Joonghyuk’s loved ones, by indirectly injuring his sister, to placing the other under the hypnotizing First-Person curse to inflict said injury. 

“It’s not a big deal.” Kim Dokja cringed. “I broke First-Person by myself, anyway, so I didn’t hurt too many people...”

Unlike the other two of 3 Forbidden Hexes, First-Person was the only one that could be fought off; it wasn’t easy, though, and only the most headstrong and indomitable of wills among wizards could possibly hope to fight it off. Yoo Joonghyuk’s pride was piqued at the idea that Kim Dokja, a wizard renowned for always being useless, possessed such a strong will, but he soon stifled his glee to hiss out, “Take me back.”

“I really don’t think it’s a good idea to do what I think you’re about to do right now.”

Yoo Joonghyuk was seething now. “We’re. Going. Back.”

“Who’s we ? Are you referring to me? And can’t you just trust me?”

“...I trusted you last time.” In 7th Year, he truly did trust Kim Dokja to save them all.

“Well, I say we met bygones be bygones!” Kim Dokja shamelessly proposed.

Yoo Joonghyuk’s quiet frustrations continued to grow in rage. “Kim Dokja…”

The said Kim Dokja simply sighed and called out, “Put him down.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t know when but the two women following Kim Dokja’s orders had already surrounded him. From behind, Jang Hayoung kicked him with ludicrous strength, forcing him to his knees on the ground. Before he could respond meaningfully or get up, a wand was pressed against his forehead. 

The last thing he heard before he passed out was Aileen spelling him with the sleeping hex.

———

When Yoo Joonghyuk woke up, he was on an unfamiliar, lumpy bed, covered by a quilt that was far too short for his legs.

He vaguely heard someone say, “So your name is really Kim Dokja ?” 

Yoo Joonghyuk cracked his eyes open slightly and observed that someone was sitting on the edge of his bed near his waist. It was Kim Dokja, clothed in a simple white dress shirt, lacking the ridiculous wings, horns, white jacket, and fucking tail that had defined his appearance thus far.

“Yep. This guy is Yoo Joonghyuk. You know, the one who’s been ruining all of my plans?”

“Nice, because I think he’s awa—“

The other speaker in the room didn’t get sufficient time to warn Kim Dokja because the next thing they knew, Yoo Joonghyuk leapt up and effectively tackled the defenseless wizard under him, knees holding legs down and left hand pinning both wrists above. 

“Kim Dokja,” Yoo Joonghyuk spit out, merely a few inches from his subject’s face. “What the fuck did you do?!”

“It was just a sleeping curse!” Kim Dokja, who had been pinned down so easily, met his glance, only to look away on instinct and stammer out. “A-And it was Aileen who cast it, anyways!”

The other voice in the room—Aileen—interrupted awkwardly. “I believe that is my cue to leave…”

“Wait no, don’t leave me—!” His shouts were sadly wasted on the former Transcendent, who slammed the door swiftly behind her. 

Meanwhile, Yoo Joonghyuk’s scowl greatly softened. “Let’s go back.”

“No way, I have subjects in the demon realm to look after! H-hey, where are your hands roaming, you bastard?!”

His dubious words referred to Yoo Joonghyuk’s frantic search with his free hand for either of the Abyssal Black Flame Dragon wands through Kim Dokja’s front pockets and belt seams. 

Yoo Joonghyuk got agitated when failure he couldn’t find it. With a strained voice, he seethed. “Let’s. Go. Back.”

“I take back what I said about you being ‘bright.’ You must be so dumb if you think I’d walk around with the one thing that’d send you back.”

Yoo Joonghyuk gripped the collar of his shirt with his free hand, getting aggressively close and pressing his body weight further. “Kim. Dokja…”

Despite his reddening ears, an infuriating smirk spread across Kim Dokja’s face before he shamelessly spoke. “Joonghyuk-ah, if you want to do this kind of stuff with me, you should always ask for consent first… how barbaric of you…”

“Huh…?” Yoo Joonghyuk peered a brow. Amidst his confusion, he accidentally let his grip loosen enough that Kim Dokja shoved him aside harshly and shook free of his grasp. 

“...Hey… Kim Dokja…!” He cried, out as the nimble man got himself up and escaped through the door. 

What the hell…? He thought as he laid on the lumpy bed, looking incredulous, yet also doubly irritated. 

———

Yoo Joonghyuk reckoned he hated the 73rd Demon Realm.

Aside from the obvious reasons involving an impish demon king, spending a week in the world without a goal in sight or getting any answers whatsoever from either of the three wizard residents there had made him quite anxious and provoked. 

“Yoo Joonghyuk, why the long face? You writing poetry in your head or something?”

It was Kim Dokja, teasing him again for probably the 1863rd time this week.

If there was one consolation for being trapped here, it was that Yoo Joonghyuk was able to spend quite a considerable amount of time with Kim Dokja. Granted, that mostly came out of him stubbornly refusing to leave the demon king‘s side—even going as far as hissing whenever Aileen asked to speak to Kim Dokja alone—but the unrest plaguing his mind due to the unfamiliar environment greatly eased around his companion’s presence. 

They even caught up to over a decade’s worth of news!

(“Whoa! You went pro in Abydos? And won?! How come you retired, though?”

Yoo Joonghyuk had waved his hand. “Too troublesome.”

“You’re no fun…”)

(“You got back together with Lee Seolhwa? Congrats!”

“We broke up five years ago. I haven’t talked to her since.”

“...”

“...”)

(“Ah, Han Sooyoung and Anna Croft reunited, I always knew they had something going on!”

“???”)

(“Lee Hyunsung really did become a Constellation? Ah, that actually could help us later on.”

“Tell me your plan.”

“No can do, Joonghyuk-ah~!”

“Kim Dokja...!”)

The week, filled with an uncomfortable bliss, eventually came to an end, however. 

Yoo Joonghyuk and Kim Dokja had been taking a silent walk around the town in the evening when a teenage girl with a horn suddenly teleportd in front of them.

“Dad, I’m done with the task!”

Yoo Joonghyuk turned to Kim Dokja. “Dad..?”

Kim Dokja: “...”

“I got the recording the previous Head Tea—“

“Th-the recording that no one left behind,” Kim Dokja unconvincingly hushed her up with a strained smile. Under his breath, he frantically whispered, “Biyoo!”

“Biyoo…?” Yoo Joonghyuk muttered. Last he saw, it was a baby dokkaebi that could only squeal out a “Baat!” Either it had matured rapidly, or for whatever reason, it occasionally assumed an inconvenient, fluffy form despite already having obtained a human persona. 

Despite how ill he felt at the thought of Kim Dokja being a father, he didn’t let his thoughts linger for too long before he rushed to the girl’s—Biyoo’s—side and grabbed her. 

Because in her hand was a very familiar wand. 

Yoo Joonghyuk assumed that Biyoo had teleported with the Abyssal Dragon wand—one of them—back to the Demon World from the Magical Realm, but nonetheless, while her guard was down, he easily wrangled it out of her clutch.

“Yoo Joonghyuk!” Kim Dokja seemed panicked, obviously not having expected the dokkaebi’s intervention or his old friend acquiring the one thing he didn’t want them to acquire. “Hand it back. Please…”

Yoo Joonghyuk stepped a distance away from them, peering curiously at the wand. How strange—probably the most powerful magical instrument, yet it only felt underwhelming in his grasp. With a mundane design, consisting of a thin slope, black horned texture, and a silver handle, it could pass off as any other wand in the Magical Realm. 

“Kim Dokja,” he spoke finally, after prolonging the other’s worried silence. “Let’s go back…”

“...”

Yoo Joonghyuk stared straight at him chillingly. “They miss you.”

Kim Dokja, always so brazen, actually looked apologetic for once. “You know I can’t yet…”

“Why not?”

“...”

“Don’t have the balls to face them?”

Biyoo, who was mostly mum until now, spoke up. “Dad… can’t you just get it back? What’s the issue?”

“Biyoo, you should stay out of this.” Upon his command, the teenage girl magically switched back into the original spherical form, lamely spewing out a “Baa~” after doing so. 

Kim Dokja took a step, probably ready to wrestle the wand out of Yoo Joonghyuk’s hand, but paused, realizing his opponent would be Yoo Joonghyuk , not just any ordinary Joe. “Joonghyuk, you can’t say that... it’s not like I don’t want to see them, but if you leave now, you’ll ruin all my planning...”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t give a damn about any of Kim Dokja’s plans after last time. “We’re going back.”

“You’re being too stubborn!” Kim Dokja was grimacing now. “Do you even have a teleportation license?!”

Because teleporting—flashing from one place to another—was incredibly difficult, and doubly consequential when gone wrong, wizards who were minors were forbidden from casting it and had to obtain a license through a test from the Bureau of Magic when they came of age. Yoo Joonghyuk had no such license, but that didn’t matter: the Bureau had long since given up on controlling him. “I can do it.”

“No you can’t, it’s teleporting between two realms! Th-there’s a reason why you could only do it with these two wands,” the other sputtered out.

Yoo Joonghyuk’s glance was unamused. 

As a last-ditch effort, Kim Dokja added: “I thought you didn’t use a wand!”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s face flipped like a light switch once again, instantly grimacing. He sneered. “Why do you think I don’t use one?”

“How would I know? ‘Cause… ‘cause you’re a bastard who likes making things unnecessarily difficult???”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s breathing was irregular and heavy. “...You don’t remember? What was the last spell I used around you?”

Kim Dokja had a questioning look for a second before it dawned on him. “Oh, are you talking about ten years ago? That’s no big deal, let bygones be bygones, I say~”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s pupils dilated to a point out of anger. What was “no big deal” for Kim Dokja was, in fact, quite a big deal for him. The subject had plagued him with intolerable guilt ever since, pervading his nightmares like a lingering cold. “Kim Dokja… do you still not value your own life…?”

“Hey, it’s not like I wanted to die!”

It was at that moment that Yoo Joonghyuk forcefully grabbed the wrist of Kim Dokja, who yelped in response and motioned for Biyoo to rest on his shoulder. 

And then Yoo Joonghyuk concentrated. For a long moment. He didn’t open his eyes, even when he felt sparks surrounding them, signaling to him the effects of Teleportation. 

Similar to most spells, Teleportation didn’t require words: just strong intent. The one difference was that the user needed absurd levels of determination and focus, making it the sole reason why it was such a troublesome charm. Of course, for a genius like Yoo Joonghyuk, it was no problem at all, which explained his lack of a reaction when he opened his eyes, hand still grasping Kim Dokja, and was met with the sight of the ever-familiar Kaizenix Forest.

“Whoa! You can control where you land with Teleportation?”

“Baa~”

“I usually end up in midair or something when I teleport, damn it… Yoo Joonghyuk, you really are such a waste of talent.”

His words flew over the head of its recipient, who simply asked, “What recording of the previous Head Teacher?”

“Hmm… that's not important.”

“Kim Dokja.”

He turned his head up and saw the hopeless look on Yoo Joonghyuk, reminiscent of a lost puppy. Kim Dokja couldn’t help but sigh. “Ah, I promise I’ll tell you everything later.”

“Do you have to make an oath again?” Yoo Joonghyuk knew better than to trust the other’s words.

“We don’t! Scout’s honor, I swear.”

Yoo Joonghyuk demanded: “Give me the other wand.”

Kim Dokja cringed. “And why should I even do that?”

“So you can’t go back.”

“I already broke the rift made with the second wand, I can’t go back with it. Only yours can teleport.”

Yoo Joonghyuk piqued his eyes. One way or another, Kim Dokja could probably make a new rift as easily as he broke it.

Kim Dokja thought for a second before saying, “I’ll give it to you but only if you don’t run off to the Bureau.” 

“I’m not making any promises.”

“Reeeally?” Kim Dokja groaned, his incredulous features denoting that he knew Yoo Joonghyuk would most definitely run off to the Bureau (probably to beat up Surya into eight pieces, something Kim Dokja isn’t actually opposed to, but would make things overly complicated). “Don’t tell me you’re trying to do that spell?”

Yoo Joonghyuk wondered how Kim Dokja read through him. “...Yes.”

“You’re not gonna be able to prove anything. The spell has a time range and I don’t think even you can trace it back 3 months! And besides, the Bureau is probably too clever for that!”

Yoo Joonghyuk highly doubted that, considering that the Bureau of Magic’s President , the single highest position of the Korean Magical Realm, was a seat currently occupied by Han Myungoh, who happened to a leader most incompetent, if Yoo Joonghyuk recalled correctly from when the two used to be classmates. Yoo Joonghyuk trusted his own capabilities—especially considering how the Bureau hardly possessed a spine when it came to keeping powerful wizards in check—so he replied nonchalantly. “I’ll be fine.”

Kim Dokja clicked his tongue in appeasement. “Fine! But don’t say I didn’t warn you if you end up in Tartarus…!”

Yoo Joonghyuk gave a knowing smile. “You can just break me out, anyway.”

Right. His words suddenly reminded him of Sun Wukong’s slip of the tongue, remembering that someone had breached into Tartarus not once, but twice . Yoo Joonghyuk figured that Kim Dokja’s weird Demon King powers probably made him a likely candidate.

“What makes you say that?”

Yoo Joonghyuk couldn’t say it outright due to the seal of confidentiality the blonde Head Constellation placed on him. “Did you visit your mom there?”

“Kinda… but not really. I have nothing to say to her, anyway.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t miss the look of pain flashing across Kim Dokja’s face, which made his own heart skip. He ignored the feeling. “Then why?”

“Hmm… it’s where the old snake Metatron is, after all.”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s soft features faltered. “I thought he was dead...?” 

“I’ll explain it later.” At Yoo Joonghyuk’s raised eyebrow, Kim Dokja pressed on. “Now go on… and remember to not come back for a long long time!”

Yoo Joonghyuk tried to stab him again after that.

———

The Bureau of Magic was one of various places protected against teleportations. Even with a wand, the only viable entrance Yoo Joonghyuk could take was through the Entrance Floor. 

The two Abyssal Dragon wands tucked into his belt, he rushed over to the Ministry of Wizarding Law Enforcement.

“Yoo Joonghyuk, w-what are you doing here?! Everyone thought that you’ve been missing for a week!”

He ignored Lee Hyunsung’s confused sputters and rushed over to the Head Constellation’s office, violently kicking the door down.

“Where is he? Where is that Transcendent?!”

Sun Wukong was lazily lounging his legs over his desk, without a care in the world. “I’m busy, kid. Get out.”

Yoo Joonghyuk was 28 years old; he was not a kid. He gritted his teeth. “Where is Surya?!”

Sun Wukong finally gave Yoo Joonghyuk, arrogance filling his gaze. “What’s it to you?”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t feel the need to reply, hissing, “...Tell me.”

Sun Wukong gave him a staredown and when Yoo Joonghyuk blinked first and lost, the Constellation wore a proud smile before swivelling his chair around. “...I’ll ring him in.”

It became dead quiet for a moment. With the sheer adrenaline and anger that previously powered him running out, Yoo Joonghyuk felt quite embarrassed standing in the office like that, with the lazy Head Constellation singing nonchalantly and Lee Hyunsung trying to sneakily look inside, hovering like a peckish chicken.

Yoo Joonghyuk sighed, stepping out onto the main floor, casting the Repair spell on the broken door. 

He hated having this wand on him. 

He hated the way everything was so convenient, the way he could just feel the magic rushing through him, ready to create or destroy anything at will. For now, the wand was a necessity but the sooner he could get rid of it, the better. The discomfort had all but burned the hand wielding it. 

“What was I called for?”

Upon hearing that voice, the rage that Yoo Joonghyuk felt at learning of Kim Dokja’s First-Person curse resurfaced. His hand instinctively reached towards his sword, grimacing at the opponent in front of him.

Surya felt perplexed at being given the stink eye by some homicidal man decked in black from head to toe. His question was directed to the person behind Yoo Joonghyuk. “Who is this guy?” 

“Dunno,” Sun Wukong replied. Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t notice when but the Head Constellation had stepped out of his office. “This guy asked for you.”

“Huh?”

Yoo Joonghyuk, running on thin patience, threw one of the wands to Surya—the one he’d stolen, the one that had its connection to the Demon World broken by Kim Dokja. “Duel!”

Surya reflexively caught the wand. “Are you the one who stole my wand? That’s a criminal offense!”

Like Yoo Joonghyuk cared about following the rules; being a trouble-maker was a trait that persisted since his teenage rebellion phase during his 4th year. Without waiting from a response, he held his own wand out, cursing internally.

He used the Wounding Curse, used to inflict precise slashes on the object; Yoo Joonghyuk controlled it enough so that it wouldn’t be fatal. 

“Yoo Joonghyuk, w-what are you doing?!” Lee Hyunsung cried out beside them.

Surya wasn’t the Head Transcendent for a reason, however. Just as fast, he readily defended with an application of Way of the Wind .

Yoo Joonghyuk thought that it was an odd choice of a counterspell, considering how using Way of the Wind to disarm an opponent was a simple defensive maneuver taught to first-years . 

Nonetheless, the flashes from the two Abyssal Dragon wands flew out and met midway, colliding into a colorful and explosive tug and pull. Good, he thought. It’s what he wanted to happen in the first place.

“Yoo Joonghyuk, what is the meaning of this?!” It was Lee Hyunsung. Besides him, Sun Wukong chuckled in amusement.

The other Bureau Constellations surrounded them in an instant, ready to stop them after this initial shot. Yoo Joonghyuk’s focus, however, didn’t stop as he put even stronger intent behind the spell.

It was a given that Yoo Joonghyuk, given his extraordinary magical talent, was gaining an edge in the struggle, slowly but surely. The linear flash of light funneled towards Surya, eventually ricocheting on the Transcendent with a bright flash of light. Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t dare put his arm down.

And then it happened.

A dome of light surrounded them, causing every wizard in the scene to reflexively flinch, while streams of echoes moved from Surya’s wand. 

When two wands that have the same magical cores are used against each other, the one that becomes overpowered—in this case, Surya’s—would regurgitate memories of the past several spells enacted by it. At the current moment, Yoo Joonghyuk was witnessing it. From the echoes, the wand was rarely ever used by Surya, but going back through the past weeks was met with mostly mundane tasks, like a Repair or a teleportation. 

The effect was similar to the intentional Spell-Tracking Hex, which traced back just the last spell of a wand. Most wizards could not manage to even use that spell, much less trace back three months, like Yoo Joonghyuk. 

Yoo Joonghyuk’s arm was trembling but he stubbornly held on—Kim Dokja’s “I don’t think even you can trace it back 3 months!” be damned; even after a decade without a wand, he was still the greatest wizard of his generation—to the wand as the echoes went back through August. Through July. And finally to June.

“I summon thou from the deepest recesses of the realm! First-Person!”

No one missed it. The caster summoned a menacing creature from another world—strangely humanoid, with talons, horns, and wings monstrously large enough to shroud a room—before placing it under First-Person , one of the three Forbidden Hexes. 

“J-Joonghyuk, why did that… thing look like him?!” Lee Hyunsung cried out.

You can just say his name, Yoo Joonghyuk thought bitterly. He finally put his wand down, arms aching from the strain, while the dome sputtered out and the echoes halted. The effects of the giant Spell-Tracking Hex had stopped, with Surya collapsed on the ground, and all the Constellations absolutely frenzied by the sight, most of all Lee Hyunsung.

“Now you know who summoned it!” Yoo Joonghyuk yelled out towards the crowd.

The wizards halted and after a silence overcame the floor, there were muttered whispers among them, as they stared down in contempt at the disgraced Transcendent.

“Is no one to arrest him?!” Yoo Joonghyuk was annoyed at their idlety.

“Wait, hold on!” Someone spoke out from the crowd. “Aren’t your wands the same?”

The Constellations all peered at the devices of the two, nodding and murmuring in agreement.

“That’s the only way that application of Spell-Tracking works, right?”

“How weird? How does Yoo Joonghyuk have the same wand as the Head Transcendent?”

“What’s going on?”

“Who’s to say he didn’t switch the wands to frame another person?!”

The last voice was from the first person who stirred the pot. Yoo Joonghyuk couldn’t spot them.

“I didn’t figure him to be so despicable.”

“Joonghyuk-ah would not do such a thing! How dare you accuse him?!”

“He’s always hated the Bureau, it’s not so far-fetched.”

“I say we detain them both, just to be safe!”

After darting his eyes around, Yoo Joonghyuk finally spotted the one with the familiar voice. It was an indiscernible man with a top hat in the back.

The Constellations glanced nervously between each other, obviously not having expected to suppress a person as powerful as Yoo Joonghyuk, who’d easily decimate them in his sleep. They did, however, quickly surround him, wands out. 

So that’s how they want to play it. Yoo Joonghyuk grimaced. He had walked straight into the mastermind’s plan and now he’d have to play the scapegoat while his real enemy hid in plain sight. Infuriatingly enough, Kim Dokja was right once again, though he wasn’t the least bit surprised by this term of outcomes; Yoo Joonghyuk had been ready for this. 

This was his way of getting answers. 

He dismissed his thoughts, and made a series of curt decisions. With a flick of a wand and a chant of “Collapse,” the ground directly between him exploded, sending powder and debris everywhere, deflecting the visions of the Bureau Constellations. Yoo Joonghyuk arrived by Surya’s side and roughly grabbed the unconscious wizard by the collar (not forgetting to pocket the other wand) before evading the Constellations.  

“Get them!”

“What the—?!”

“Joonghyuk-ah, you’ll be a wanted fugitive if you leave! Just try to explain things and it’ll be alright!” 

The last thing he realized before he fully escaped the Bureau of Magic—leaving way too many explosions in his wake for Lee Hyunsung to clean up—was that the top hat man was the same wizard who spelled First-Person on the Transcendent he was currently kidnapping during the last time he had come to the Bureau headquarters. 

When he teleported back to the Kaizenix Forest in the evening, Kim Dokja wasn’t where he left him.

Typical.

No matter, Yoo Joonghyuk thought, grumbling. He wasn’t looking for him right now, anyways.

Except when he kicked down the door of an office in the Academy with the “Head Teacher” plaque engraved on it in pursuit of some answers, the woefully glum and insufferable face of said Kim Dokja was what greeted him. 

“Yoo Joonghyuk, back from your trip? I told you it’d go terribly.” His cheeky smile set off an explosion of feelings inside Yoo Joonghyuk’s stomach. It was rage, of course; what else could he be feeling around this awful , annoying demon king? “I’m having a chat with your teacher!”

“You brat, you’ve finally come for a beating from your Master?” A half-giant remarked, in a very pleasant mood. Professor—now Head Teacher—Namgung Minyoung clearly ignored the limp body of Surya dangling from Yoo Joonghyuk’s man-handling hands. 

A large dog lapped up to her feet and whined.

Yoo Joonghyuk glowered bitterly at the two, a deep frown starting to embed onto his skin.

Chapter Text

Amidst the terribly transphobic actions and statements being made by the author of Harry Potter, I feel obligated to write this statement.

When I first started writing this fic (around mid-August 2020), I merely wanted to write a fun AU where I re-imagined the ORV characters I love in a different setting; however, over the course of these past updates, I have been aware of how the author of Harry Potter has repeatedly made several blunders against the trans community, which completely opposes my own values and opinions. (I will refrain from saying specific details about what she has done, as I feel they can be triggering; you can search it up if you are curious but please be warned).

While it could be easy for me to say “death to the author,” I feel like that’s the easy way out for me as a cis person, since I would essentially be turning a blind eye to an issue because it doesn’t directly affect me. “Death to the author” should apply to how we interpret texts; it is impossible to separate the creator from their work, especially when their bigoted views visibly show up in the text and when the author is still alive and continues to use their platform to actively harm and vilify an entire marginalized community. 

I do not feel strongly for Harry Potter. Of course, I read it and enjoyed it, but this fic that I’ve been writing can work in any magical school setting, not just Hogwarts. Thus, over the next week or so, I am going to be rewriting this fic to work in a more general magical setting because I do not personally feel comfortable with supporting a work created by a transphobic figure, even if it’s indirectly; I do not want to help Harry Potter continue to persist into pop culture and media. 

If you do not agree with my decision to rewrite the setting, that is completely fine; you can stop reading. 

For those of you who stay, many things will change and you might have to wait just a little longer for my next updates. At the beginning of the actual chapter 8, I will create a master list of changes and contextual notes, so hopefully the transition is a bit less weird. Thank you for being patient and understanding with me.

Most importantly, if you are trans: you are valid. You are loved. You deserve better in the media you consume and from the people you look up to. I am sincere in trying to become a better ally and hopefully, this decision reflects that. 

Chapter Text

The Headteacher’s office at the Academy was a high room, decorated with symmetrical staircases and a wide array of book shelves to their sides. It seethed an ivory fragrance and decor with warm, ambient lighting.

Yoo Joonghyuk ignored all of their irrelevant pleasantries, skipping straight to the point.

“Why were you at the Demon World?!” He directed his index finger towards his teacher accusingly. His other hand threw Kim Dokja’s wand back to him. “Why’d you fight Asmodeus during 5th Year?!”

“You haven’t talked to me in 10 years and that’s the first thing you say, you brat?” Namgung Minyoung walked over from her seat in the center of the office and easily lifted him from the ground by the back of his collar, making him drop Surya in the process.

“Put me down!” Yoo Joonghyuk swore he heard Kim Dokja, that bastard, snicker in the background.

“Let’s have some tea first,” his teacher said, unbothered by the violent thrashing of her student’s legs, as she walked up the right staircase. “Your classmate even brought some dumplings to share!”

They weren't even classmates anymore, Yoo Joonghyuk thought; after that monumental day, he’d graduated and the other somehow merged into a powerful demon king. Instead, what he commented was, “You went to Murim…?”

Kim Dokja shrugged as he sat down on the table on second level of the maisonette; the dining set there was made specifically for the giant stature of the Head Teacher, so he was taken by how he had practically shrunk on the seat (Yoo Joonghyuk, meanwhile, fought off all thoughts that dared call the sight “endearing”—as if). “While you were having your little adventure at the Bureau, I figured I might as well. You always loved the dumplings from the Murim shop, didn’t you?”

“Hngh,” Yoo Joonghyuk grunted as Namgung Minyoung plopped him down on the seat next to Kim Dokja. “...You could’ve just asked me to make them.”

At the way Yoo Joonghyuk averted his eyes—definitely not out of shyness, mind you; he’s Yoo Joonghyuk, as if he’d ever get shy—Kim Dokja leaned over and decided to tease a little. “You would sully your hands to feed me~? You’d always said ‘no’ whenever I asked before.”

(“You can cook, too?!” Kim Dokja had commented incredulously. It was the summer after 4th year, the first time Yoo Joonghyuk made him breakfast. “You really are the main character, geez…”

“???”

“Make me some!”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t even think before replying. “No.”)

That might’ve been true, but in the past, Yoo Joonghyuk would almost always appease his request, anyways. Even Han Sooyoung had received the same treatment after he became better friends with her, too. 

“Aww, is Yoo Joonghyuk blushing ?” 

He was most definitely not blushing; his redness came from the boiling rage he felt around this dude’s presence, not fluttering warmth. He seethed, “Kim Dokja…” 

“Alright kid, what question did you have?” Namgung Minyoung interrupted, setting a pot of tea on the gargantuan table. 

“Are you actually gonna answer?” Yoo Joonghyuk glowered, ignoring the large cup of tea she pushed his way; Kim Dokja, meanwhile, had no qualms about taking a sip.

“Maybe,” she replied, beckoning her dog to come to the table. The retriever obliged, transforming it into a larger size while it ran up the staircase enthusiastically. Right… Yoo Joonghyuk almost forgot that it was an animal that could use magic. Back in the day, he reckoned that even when she was a pup, Namgung Minyoung’s dog was already better at magic than Kim Dokja (though at the time, he’d never thought of voicing that sentiment to the boy after hearing all of his self-deprecating spiels).

Unsatisfied with her answer, Yoo Joonghyuk let out an “I hate you both…”, though the words lacked any noticeable bite.

“Is that why you came crawling back to me?” His teacher grinned, reaching her broad hands over to ruffle his wavy hair. 

Aggravatingly enough, Kim Dokja also reached over. Yoo Joonghyuk tried his hardest not to focus on how the man’s slender fingers, much gentler than Namgung Minyoung’s large ones, dug into his roots and softly tugged on them, even lingering for a moment after the Head Teacher retracted her own hands.

“You don’t remember?” Namgung Minyoung spoke, removing Yoo Joonghyuk’s attention from his companion. It seemed she was finally taking him seriously, so he changed his bothered demeanor to one more serious. “The Transcendent we rescued at the Forest?”

“Thirteen years ago?” Yoo Joonghyuk asked. “...Aileen?”

“Mm-hmm.” She nodded. “She was coming to the Academy by foot to ask us for help from the Bureau. Head Teacher wasn’t there at the time, though, so her cries fell on deaf ears. She disappeared a few weeks later…”

“After Asmodeus’ first appearance?”

“Probably? I started digging on my own after that. Tried fighting the vicious beast myself. Lost badly, and somehow found myself in the Demon World when I came to. Figured I got banished by those Bureau parasites.”

“How’d you come back?”

Namgung Minyoung tensed up and motioned behind her seat. It didn’t take long to realize that she was referring to the unconscious Surya behind her. “This guy summoned me back… though I don’t know what the hell he wanted at the time, even now...”

“It’s quite convenient that you got him back for us, though,” Kim Dokja perked up. With a flick of his black wand, he casted a spell that manifested thin ropes, chaining Surya. “Serves him right, bastard didn’t even bother getting the rest of us out.”

“You know Aileen and Hayoung would be arrested on sight if they showed up in the Magical Realm. They broke the Transcendents’ Vow of Secrecy.” She sighed. “And until now, even I thought you were dead. It’s not everyday someone escapes the effects of a Forbidden Hex—”

Yoo Joonghyuk coldly interrupted, reminding Kim Dokja about Surya’s situation. “He’s under First-Person .”

The idiot’s smile fell off his face. “On second thought… probably not so great that he’s here now, probably been ordered to not reveal anything. Though better he can’t do anything now that he’s chained up like this…”

Yoo Joonghyuk furrowed his brows. “How’d you come back, then…?”

“Surya had both of the wands the whole time,” Kim Dokja explained. His tone was so casual it seemed like he was covering the irrelevant gossip of Yoo Joonghyuk’s much-debated-about dating life (like the Weekly Apostle did occasionally—he wasn’t the so-called “Magical Realm’s Hottest Bachelor” for no reason), rather than a major conspiracy of a governing body. “When I broke off from his First-Person spell last June, I snatched it from him and left. Should’ve given him a beating while I was at it…”

“He summoned you on the Academy grounds?” Yoo Joonghyuk wore a nasty expression. He still remembered the limp, tattered body of his younger sister. 

“Still don’t know how in the world that’s possible,” Namgung Minyoung commented. “I’ve placed extra wards on campus since, but even that’s probably not enough.”

“It was the previous Head Teacher!” Kim Dokja asserted confidently. “He gave the Transcendents administrative access!”

Namgung Minyoung: “Why the hell would that old fart do that? And how would you know that?”

Yoo Joonghyuk: “Is that why you didn’t trust him?”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he’s never actually done anything to combat the Demon King.”

Yoo Joonghyuk furrowed his brows, about to object, but the words suddenly sank in his throat. 

During June of 4th Year, several students were kidnapped during the Demon King’s pillaging of the Academy campus for the better part of a week before it vanished—it left all on its own, no one had the nerve to initiate an attack; despite how pressing the situation was, though, Metatron didn’t even come back to campus during the entire time. 

During 5th year, he and his friends had informed the Head Teacher of Han Sooyoung’s prophecy; Yoo Joonghyuk had been told to leave the room when Kim Dokja outlined his “infallible plan” behind closed doors, so the suppression of Asmodeus in mere minutes by the upper Academy staff when it arrived that year led him to believe that the plan was just successfully implemented. Could it be that Kim Dokja didn’t actually have a plan back then, but had instead accused the Head Teacher so brazenly in his own office? It would explain why later on, Kim Dokja was convinced in thinking that the Demon King didn’t just manifest out of nowhere, but was summoned by someone.

It’d also explain why Asmodeus’ power level in Year 5 was far surpassed in Year 7; it would’ve been absolutely impossible for such a monster to be held back through the power of mere wizards, no matter how powerful their combined power was. In 7th Year, Kim Dokja and Co. battled Asmodeus immediately upon its reappearance, so there was no way the Head Teacher could have reacted first, but that certainly didn’t absolve Metatron of suspicion.

“I see your brain working, Joonghyuk! You know I’m right.” The wizard beside him started, the confidence overflowing.

Namgung Minyoung was connecting things together, too, much like Yoo Joonghyuk. “So for whatever reason the Bureau unleashed the Demon King in the Academy for…”

“…You can guarantee that they had Metatron’s support,” Kim Dokja finished.

Yoo Joonghyuk asked, “...Why?”

“Think about it! Every time it attacked the Academy, it was from a different place on campus.” Kim Dokja leaned forward. “And in 4th Year, it destroyed so much of the campus in its frenzy. And last June... I was summoned to a floor I didn’t even know existed in the Academy.”

Yoo Joonghyuk subconsciously gripped the curve of the table at the addition of the last part. He hesitated. “...The Transcendents and Metatron were looking for something?”

“Now you’re getting it.”

“That doesn’t make sense.” Namgung Minyoung’s disconcerted frown somewhat resembled that of her former disciple’s. “Why would they need to burn down the Academy if they wanted to find something?”

“...Did they find it?” Yoo Joonghyuk ventured, thinking of the hiatus of ten years between the Demon King’s attack.

“Well, clearly not.” Kim Dokja leaned back in his chair coolly. “If you let me look into the Academy Story, we can find out.”

The question was directed towards the Head Teacher. 

She gave him a suspicious look in return. “...You've already looked into it, haven’t you?”

“I made Biyoo save a recording of it, too.”

Yoo Joonghyuk was puzzled. “Hm?”

“He broke all the wards of the Academy and broke into my office,” Namgung Minyoung explained. “Imagine my shock when I found him here, alive and somehow with magic…”

“This wand really is so great~,” Kim Dokja commented, mockingly directing his eyes down to act humble. Yoo Joonghyuk had to refrain from telling him that his sudden wizarding prowess was due to him being a demon king right now and that a powerful wand, even an Abyssal Dragon one, could only do so much for a talentless wizard, much less the likes of breaking millennium-old magic defenses. “The the Academy wards were a piece of cake compared to the ones at Tartarus.”

He knew it was changing the topic, but Yoo Joonghyuk couldn’t help but ask, “What about the Bureau?”

“Joonghyuk-ah, do you think me a joke?” Kim Dokja’s punchable smirk made a reappearance. “Of course I can collapse those ones too. I only sent you there for the wand to bother you~!”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s left eye ticked. 

“Ahem...” Namgung Minyoung cleared her throat. “About the Story?”

“Take a look for yourself.” Kim Dokja leaned back even further, making no motions to get up himself. “March 28, fourteen years ago.”

“Tch.” Out of annoyance, Yoo Joonghyuk quickly seized Kim Dokja by the collar and lifted him to the ground, dragging him along as he rushed over to the Story. The move mirrored his teacher from earlier, but Yoo Joonghyuk liked to think he was softer with his movements.

“You could be more gentle, you know!”

Or not. He couldn’t care less.

(Yoo Joonghyuk tried not to feel so disappointed when Kim Dokja shook free from his grasp after that complaint.)

Located inside an obscure cupboard on the first level of the office, the Academy Story resembled a jade fountain. Of course, though, it was a highly enchanted object, and the “water” in the “fountain” was simply a mirror of the various memories generations of the Academy Head Teachers embedded into it.

“Why would Metatron even immortalize that memory?” Yoo Joonghyuk cautiously asked.

Kim Dokja replied. “When I paid him a visit in Tartarus, he said it was to seal his legacy on the Academy… what a load of shit.”

He thought that made sense; the Academy Head Teacher often had tenures stretching over a century, so Metatron probably had no reason to believe that he’d get replaced so soon, especially not due to the likes of something like magical arrest . Yoo Joonghyuk glared at his teacher, anyway. “And you didn’t bother searching through it?”

She frowned. “I had no reason to believe Metatron was involved.”

“Tch.”

“Quit chatting, let’s go see it.” It was Kim Dokja.

At his words, Namgung Minyoung flicked her wand and together, the three of them practically “jumped” into the memory. The scene started materializing around them so vividly, like they had personally witnessed that day themselves. 

As he looked around, Yoo Joonghyuk recognized the place. They were at Floor 10 of the Bureau of Magic.

At the Ministry of Enigmas.

It was almost identical to when he visited it personally just a week ago, though the lighting was a bit different.

“Are you certain the Cursed Tombs exist?”

The wizard in the memory who spoke next to Yoo Joonghyuk was Surya. His demeanor was a lot more composed here than his current pathetic state after being dueled and kidnapped by Yoo Joonghyuk. 

Out of curiosity, Yoo Joonghyuk tried to poke the wizard. As expected, though, his hand went through. It was a reminder that this was merely a memory, not the scheme of a time turner. 

“Of course.” Yoo Joonghyuk turned his head to see the previous Head Teacher Metatron decked out in a sleek Muggle suit—old bastard spent way too much time in the Human Realm, instead of actually doing his job—, his light hair a stark contrast to the dim lighting of Level 10’s hallways. Kim Dokja stood next to the gracious wizard and once he caught Yoo Joonghyuk’s eye, he stuck out a tongue to tease; Yoo Joonghyuk had to tighten his fights steadily in order to not get provoked. “It’s definitely in the Academy.”

“Can’t you just search it yourself?” Another man with a top hat spoke up. Yoo Joonghyuk recognized him as the same one who cursed Surya under First-Person and instigated the Constellations against him earlier in the day. 

“Who is that?” He whispered to his teacher to the side of him.

“Dokkaebi Baram. Head Judge of the Court of Wizarding Law.” She was referring to the official court of the Bureau and subsequently frowned. “What the hell is going on…?”

“The Academy’s old wards can’t be unraveled,” Metatron calmly replied. “No wizard has the magic to do so. Not even me.”

At those words, Yoo Joonghyuk called bullshit, giving a raised eyebrow to Kim Dokja, who simply averted his gaze and started whistling innocently. (To be fair, “No wizard has the magic” still held true, considering that his old friend was now more Demon than wizard. And breaking defensive wards was much different from decoding spelled locations.)

Surya didn’t respond but grit his teeth.

“The Academy’s wards can’t be unraveled, but…” Metatron paused. “...They can be destroyed. I think you Transcendents could help me out with that.”

“So you want to use t-the… that beast?!” Surya’s eyes were bulging. “It could destroy us all!”

“It is still a living creature,” Metatron calmly reasoned. “Wizards have means to control it with.”

“You can’t possibly be suggesting that…” Surya’s expression looked incredibly stricken. “First-Person is an Forbidden Hex!” 

“Did you forget who I am?” It was Baram. “The Magical Council will look the other way if I desire so.”

“Head Judge, not you, too…”

Metatron nodded. “I’m glad you see it my way, too. There’s much to be learned from finding the Cursed Tombs... honestly, I am quite surprised that the Ministry of Enigmas isn’t as curious as I am at the prospect.”

Surya held a criticizing look. “Is it so important to find the Tombs?”

Metatron smiled. “Yes. Finding them is as important as why the Academy founders decided to lock them away for good in the first place.”

At that ridiculous justification, Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes turned bloodshot, with his hand just itching for his sword, but the scene immediately ended after that and he soon found himself catapulted back to the Story fountain in the Academy office again.

His breathing was heavy. “...Just for that?”

Kim Dokja turned his head over, puzzled. “For what?”

To say that Yoo Joonghyuk was furious would be a gross understatement. Han Sooyoung was plagued by gruesome prophecies, the Academy went under siege several times, the entire Magical Realm fell into disarray, Yoo Mia got injured, his best friend fucking died, ...under such means, too, no less, Yoo Joonghyuk had to suffer through that corresponding guilt for a decade alone and all because… Metatron wanted to find some fucking Tombs ? The talk of mere legends?

Seething, Yoo Joonghyuk turned to his teacher. “Why didn’t you tell me this ten years ago?”

Namgung Minyoung gave him a scrutinizing look. “How could I have told you stuff I didn’t even know myself?”

“You knew about the Demon World…” Yoo Joonghyuk lashed out. “About the Transcendents! You could’ve told me!”

Her expression was resentful, and somewhat guilty. “What would you have even done? We didn’t have either of the wands, so neither of us could have saved the day, even if we knew..”

Yoo Joonghyuk sneered, thinking of the way he had easily deceived Surya with a branch that was placed under an illusion just a week ago. “We could’ve just stolen it! He wouldn’t have had to spend ten years in that godforsaken place!”

“ Excuse me, the 73rd Demon Realm is a perfectly livable place—”

“You have such little faith in your teacher?” Namgung Minyoung’s expression was strained while scrambling to remain calm. “I looked everywhere! Surya didn’t use those wands once during those ten years; he certainly wasn’t walking in broad daylight with them. I even broke into the Bureau’s and Minosoft’s Vaults several times, but they might as well have disappeared into thin air… Believe me, I tried...”

Regarding the way her voice was shaking near the end, Yoo Joonghyuk knew he was being overly unreasonable as he gave her one final livid stare-down. His next words felt like poison on his tongue. 

“You didn’t try hard enough.”

His teacher’s expression became unbelievably hurt, practically crumbling at those weight of the words.

Yoo Joonghyuk turned around and ran out the office, not forgetting to yank Kim Dokja’s wrist away with him too, while he was at it. 

“Ow! You can’t just grab people like that,” Kim Dokja remarked, massaging his wrist once they made their way down to a discreet the Academy hallway.

Yoo Joonghyuk, meanwhile, only had one thing on his mind.

“What are you going to do now?”

Kim Dokja seemed puzzled, flailing his arm. “You’re asking me?!”

Yoo Joonghyuk hesitated. “You’ve always done the planning… in the past.”

“I was just surprised you’d ask me for my humble opinion after ignoring everything I said the entire week,” he teased, a smirk beginning to grow. 

Embarrassed, Yoo Joonghyuk’s cheeks started to burn.

“About my plan… well, I had one that involved more subtle infiltration to find out just how many wizards were involved.” Kim Dokja groaned midway. “But ugh… now everyone in the Bureau knows that you broke in and kidnapped their Head Transcendent. They’re onto us now.. thanks a lot, Yoo Joonghyuk.”

“...”

He rubbed his neck in contemplation. “Honestly, it’s probably better to just take the brute away now.”

“Do we have to beat up the Bureau?” Yoo Joonghyuk gripped his sword, already prepared.

“Don’t get so excited, Joonghyuk-ah, we can’t do it by ourselves.” Kim Dokja’s smirk widened, with a small dimple on his fair cheek forming. “It’s about time we give our old friends a greeting, right…?”

Yoo Joonghyuk stared pensively before promptly smacking the other man in the back of his head.

“Ow!”

“You idiot…”

“What was that for???”

Yoo Joonghyuk subconsciously tugged on Kim Dokja’s jacket, pulling him slightly closer. 

“…They missed you.”