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Chapter Text

Time Period: 400 years ago (When Jinu became a demon)

I do not know who I am. My life has been less of a narrative than a procession of hours, stitched together with survival and little else. 

My name is Hong Gil-dog, eldest son of a widowed mother.

My mother bore me alone. My father, as fleeting as cigarette smoke in the summer air, vanished at the very whisper of my birth. He was afraid, that I would arrive not as a son but as a daughter, as if a child's gender 

might matter to a man who’d already made up his mind to disappear.

Thirteen years later, my brother, Myung, was born of another man, another brief flicker in my mother’s life, died a month into Ma’s pregnancy. She was left with one child toddling on the edge of manhood, and another yet unborn.

We were poor. Dirt poor. Hunger was less a visitor in our house than a roommate. The water was seldom clean. The rice—when we had it—seldom enough. Still, I never blamed her. Her hands, always chapped from scrubbing strangers' homes, had done more than enough. So I helped. I toiled in the hot fields beneath a sky that seemed far too large for boys like me. And when the days were too long, I sang the lullabies she once whispered to me beneath the shroud of sleep.

Those melodies were my escape. My prized gift. My secret fortune.

One day, the farmer who paid me in coins too light to feed a rat asked me to sing for his pregnant wife. He said something about good luck—some belief, perhaps, that a child might come into this world more kindly if cradled by song. I hardly listened. I only knew he would pay me more, and in this world, that was enough.

My favorite melody to sing was a ballad about the Sun goddess. With her skin that glows in the radiance of the suns rays, adorned in a gown that compliments her complexion with divinity. 

The ballad spoke of her punishment: condemned to rise and fall with the turning Earth, cursed for once refusing to shine. The moon stood in for her then, humble and pale in her place. But she was clever, the 

Goddess for she knows that the world literally revolves around her.

“Hong.”

A voice like sugar on the edge of shattering glass pulled me back. My mother. There was fear in her tone, though she masked it with her usual tenderness. She placed five-year-old Myung into my arms, and something in me folded.

“What is it, Ma?” I asked, my voice cracked with sleep and dread.

“They’re here,” she said. Her eyes, always heavy with something unspoken, now brimmed with panic. “You have to go.”

They.

Two summers ago, during the jangma, the flood took everything we owned—every memory soaked and swept away. With no money, Ma borrowed from the sort of men who never ask nicely twice. They had been chasing her ever since, dogs starved long past reason. Tonight, it seems, they were ready to feast.

“I’m not a boy anymore,” I said. “I’ll pay them. I’ll fight them if I have to.”

“Don’t be foolish, Gil-dog.” She was already pushing a bundle of necessities into my hands. “Go north. Don’t stop until you see snow.”

“No.” I gripped her wrist—half defiance, half plea. “We’ll all run. We’ll be faster together.”

“You’ll only lose me faster,” she said. Her voice—gentle, final—cut me more than any blade could.

Shadows fell against the paper door like ghosts come to collect a debt.

She pressed the pouch of money to my chest. I knew then, this was goodbye.

I wanted to turn back. To say something worthy of the moment. But there was nothing. I hoisted Myung onto my hip, fastened the money to my wrist like a lifeline, and fled.

The night was a new moon night—black as grief, cold as truth. The wind whispered urgency through the leaves, urging me forward, step after weary step, until my legs gave way beneath the pink hush of morning. 

Myung slept on, and I clutched the pouch against my heart before sleep pulled me under.

“Hyeong.”

I woke to hands dragging me through the underbrush. My eyes flew open.

“Myung?” I called, frantic. “Myung!”

Then—arms around me, desperate and familiar. Myung. Tears on his face.

“Hyeong... where’s Ma?”

“She’s...” I could not finish. Instead, my gaze caught a stranger’s.

He was close to my age, I thought, though the sun and wind had aged him strangely. His dark hair fell like shadows across his brow. There was something kind in his eyes—and something tired, like he too had fled something behind him.

“She’s away,” I said at last. “She’ll be back soon.”

I smoothed Myung’s hair, more lie than comfort.

The boy stepped closer. “I’m Jinu Kim. You passed out in the fields I work in.”

“I’m Hong Gil-dog,” I said. “This is my brother, Myung. We are alone.”

He nodded, a solemn echo of my bow. “Are you well?”

I didn’t answer.

Because how do you answer that when all the gods are gone, and all the ghosts remain?

Chapter Text

“I take it you’re homeless?” Jinu asked, his voice casual, though not unkind. We were walking along a dirt path curling outward from the heart of the village—toward the edge of everything. His home, if one could call it that, stood like a forgotten stanza at the end of a poem: a small cottage, shrunken by time and stuffed to the ceiling with the sorts of things people keep only because they cannot afford to lose them.

“Yes,” I said after a pause. “I need to find work so I can take care of Myung and I.” My voice sounded uncertain, even to myself, as if it hadn’t yet learned how to speak aloud the truth we had been carrying for so long.

As I stepped across the threshold of Jinu’s home, a peculiar sensation washed over me—not comfort, not quite—but something like it. Perhaps familiarity. Poverty has a way of recognizing itself. The cramped corners, the scattered bowls, the mismatched floor mats worn thin with stories—they reminded me of our own home, which no longer existed except in memory.

Then a girl appeared—no taller than Myung, but coated in the dust of morning’s neglect. Her black hair fell straight down her back like midnight stitched to her spine. She blinked at us once, twice. “Nari,” Jinu said, clearing his throat. “These are our guests. Hong and Myung Gil-dog.” She didn’t reply, only nodded with a sort of solemn gravity children seem to carry when they’ve learned the world won’t wait for them.

It was the first time Myung let go of my hand since he realized we left.

I wanted to stay and watch them. I wanted to pause here, where innocence still danced on the edge of ruin, but time whispered otherwise. The light was fading. The real world awaited. “Myung,” I said gently, “stay with Nari. I have to go. I’ll be back.”

But the moment I stepped back, he clung to me with surprising strength. “Don’t go, Hyeong. Please,” he wept, his tears darkening the rough fabric of my tunic. “Don’t go.”

I looked at Jinu for help, some small rescue. “I can’t stay,” I said. “I need to find us shelter. I need to find work.”

I bent down until I was eye level with him. “You have to be strong,” I said, though the words nearly broke me. “For me…” I hesitated, swallowing the ache. “For Ma too.”

He didn’t respond. He only watched me, his wide eyes filled with trust I didn’t deserve. I led him to Nari and turned away.

Jinu placed a hand on my shoulder. A gesture that said, Go before you can’t.

I did.

The rest of the afternoon was an act in futility—moving from face to face, asking for anything, and receiving nothing but cold refusals and curt words, as though poverty were a contagion they feared might spread if they made too much eye contact.

By the time I returned to Jinu, the sun had begun its slow descent into the earth.

“We need a new strategy,” he said, brushing the dirt from his sleeves. “We’re not getting anywhere like this.”

I gave him a look. “And what do you suggest?”

He grinned, boyish and defiant, as if we weren’t two desperate souls looking for sustenance. “Wait here.”

He returned moments later, clutching a wolgeum, its lacquered wood glinting faintly in the dusk.

“Can you sing?”

I laughed. “Can I sing? Jinu, I could sing before I could walk. Probably better than you.”

He raised an eyebrow and sat beside his hat on the ground like an actor settling into character. “Then follow my lead.”

He played the first notes—gentle, almost uncertain. But to me, they were deliberate, sculpted with intimacy. He played again, louder this time, his fingers confident, the music no longer asking for attention but demanding it. The crowd began to gather like moths unsure if the flame would burn.

Then he sang.

His voice was clear, achingly steady, with a kind of hope woven into it that made people stop. The melody—one my mother used to hum when the rice pot was empty—tied the past to the present in a single, fragile thread. Jinu glanced toward me, his eyes urging me in.

I joined in.

Our voices intertwined like two streams converging—mine a low, warm harmony beneath his brighter tone. Together, we filled the space between the villagers and their distractions, their judgments. The wolgeum beat beneath our song like a quiet drum of defiance.

At first, the crowd sneered. But then their expressions softened, and the lines on their faces began to shift. We gave them a memory. They gave us their silence.

Then applause. At first timid, then thunderous. Coins rained down like brief mercies from the sky.

Later, Jinu split the earnings evenly, even insisting I take a portion of his rice. Only then did I realize how hollow my stomach had become. I sat beside him, the dust of the day settling into the folds of our worn clothes, and asked softly, “How old are you?”

“Eighteen,” he replied. “And you?”

I smiled. “So am I.”

We sat in a silence that felt less lonely than usual. Jinu, too, had only a mother and a younger sibling. Like me, he had learned to make music from the brokenness of things.

“You have a beautiful voice,” I told him.

He nodded. “Yours is different. Deep. Silky. I like it.”

“Thank you,” I said, and meant it. But no warmth could completely thaw the cold knowledge within me—I was still homeless. Still responsible. Still running out of time.

“Do you know any place offering work with housing?”

Jinu looked at the ground, considering. Then he said it: “I have an idea.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“What if I give you my job?”

“What?” I stood upright. “Jinu, I can’t take your job—”

“Let me finish,” he said quickly. “I don’t want to work the fields anymore. I want to sing, just me and my wolgeum.”

For a moment, we didn’t speak. Then he stood, brushing the dust from his pants, and extended a hand. “Let’s go get you that job.”

I hesitated. His sacrifice felt too large.. but I followed him. What choice did I have?

He brought me to the farm owner, Mr. Yi. A sun-withered man with a gut that jutted outward as though greed itself had grown roots inside him. His face was pinched into a permanent grimace, his words sour and brittle. He dismissed Jinu with a grunt, barely bothering to say goodbye.

“You,” he pointed at me, “start tomorrow. You can sleep in the shed.”

It struck me harder than expected—getting what I needed and still falling short. The shed was worse than nothing. The work would be grueling. But I would be close to Myung.

I rushed after Jinu, dropping to my knees, pressing my forehead to the ground in gratitude. “You’ve given me a chance to be with my brother. I owe you everything.”

He pulled me up. “No debts between us. We’re both just trying to survive.”

Instead of bowing again, I hugged him, holding tightly, as if some piece of my soul had found its echo in his.

We turned back to collect Myung.

And for the first time since Ma pushed me into the night, I felt like I was no longer entirely alone.

The morning after announced itself not with golden light or the sweet trill of birdsong, but with the harsh, rural honesty of a rooster’s cry, sharp and deliberate beside my ear. I awoke on my makeshift bed of hay, its fragrance earthy and bitter, the winter air threading through the cracks in the barn like whispers of some colder world just beyond.

So I worked. And the days ran together like pages in an old book left in the rain—blurred, indistinct, yet persistent. There was a rhythm to it: the lift, the ache, the small silver reward at the end of each day. All for the promise of something better—for Myung, for the quiet memory of my mother, and for the songs she gave me like secret treasures tucked behind my ribs.

The seasons fell away like worn leaves. Spring vanished in a veil of frost, and winter arrived cloaked in severity—white skies, gray fields, and the kind of wind that stole your breath just to hear it echo.

Soon, I realized I was no longer scrawny. My limbs thickened with strength, my back straightened with burden, and I began to sense—unwillingly, but certainly—the way the village girls glanced from behind baskets and scarves. Their eyes lingered.

Myung, too, filled out too. His small hands grew fuller, his cheeks once hollow now rounded by the bread I placed before him nightly, chosen in place of a warmer roof or thicker coat. Food was life; shelter could wait.

That day, I had planned to finish my chores early. I planned to meet Jinu today. We used to meet up every day but as the season grew colder, it became harsh to meet anymore.. We both had people and things to oversee so we wouldn’t freeze to death. I trudged toward the village, my breath clouding before me, my body steaming from the effort. As I headed away from the farms and toward the town I took in the white scenery. The more I worked meant the more heat my body produced, so even though I couldn’t afford clothes fit for the weather- I found that I didn’t need it anyways.

The road, once soft with earth, was now paved in snow. The trees had lost their leaves and stood like empty chandeliers, brittle and still. And just then, I heard it—a sound that didn’t belong to wind or winter. A human sound.

I turned.

Off the path, between the rows of skeletal trees, I saw her.

A girl—no, a woman, though her frame suggested something ephemeral. She lay motionless, curled in the snow like some fallen bird. Her hair, dark and delicate, spilled around her shoulders like plumage. Her skin—dear God, her skin—gleamed like something from a dream, some alchemy of light and warmth and translucent fragility. And her clothes: a gown, gossamer and strange, unfit for this world, much less the merciless weather.

I did not question where she came from. It did not matter. She was unconscious, pale as winter moonlight, and I might be going crazy because it seemed as though her very glow was fading.

I lifted her gently, as though she might crack, and flung her over my shoulder. Her body was ice. I ran.

Back at the barn, I stoked the fire with desperation, watching for any flicker of warmth to return to her face. I must have been mad from cold or fatigue, but I swore—truly—I saw the glow return. Not the blush of skin, no. It was something deeper, something beneath. A glow like she held a star inside her.

Hours passed. At last, her eyes opened.

They were unlike any I’d ever seen—rimmed in gold, glinting even in the dimness. Eyes that made you believe in gods.

“Who are you?” I asked, my voice hoarse. She startled, gasped, recoiled as if I had reached through her dream too quickly.

“I’m sorry,” I said, laughing awkwardly, wishing Myung were there to break the tension with a question or a snack request.

She examined me with silent caution, then touched her own face, her legs. Like someone waking into the wrong life.

She coughed. The sound was delicate but final.

“Where am I?” she asked.

“Damyang Village.”

“When?”

The word clung to the air like frost.

I paused. “Joseon Dynasty.”

She exhaled slowly, some invisible weight settling onto her shoulders. Her eyes clouded—not with fear, but with recognition.

“I don’t… have a name,” she said after a moment, her voice struggling through disuse.

“What?”

“You can call me Hae,” she added, offering the faintest, most improbable smile. Like it was the only thing she could still afford.

I nodded. “Do you live nearby? Can I take you home?”

Her eyes danced away from mine, evasive. “No, that’s alright.”

She stood, her movements as fragile as spun sugar in the sun. Every step seemed to drain her more.

“You don’t look alright,” I insisted.

And then, as if summoned by some cosmic trick of timing, Myung entered the barn, rubbing sleep from his eyes and trailing the night in behind him.

“Hello, Hyeong,” he said, glancing at Hae. “Hello, Noona.”

He asked no questions but I saw the confusion bloom across his face like frost creeping up a windowpane.

“I have to go,” she said again, and her voice was quieter this time, almost distant. “Thank you… truly.”

She walked out into the cold, into the darkness.

I didn’t follow—not at first. But Myung, ever the gentleman, nudged me with his elbow and muttered, “You should walk her out.”

I stepped outside.

There was nothing there.

Just snow falling on snow. Her footprints had already begun to vanish.

Like she had never been there at all.

There was no sun the next day. Only an endless ceiling of cold gray clouds, swelling with the promise of a blizzard that would not ask permission before it came. The air itself had a sort of hush to it, as though the earth had drawn in its breath and was waiting for something unnamed.

Mr. Yi gave me the day off. The sort of gesture that seemed generous on the surface, though it was simply winter's will, not mercy, that had slowed the world enough to justify a pause. After tucking the heavy blankets over the rows of withering crops and securing warmth for the animals with stiff fingers and stiff rope, I made my way to Myung. He sat near the hearth, his body small but composed, like a child pretending at adulthood, but doing it so convincingly it broke your heart.

“I have to go to the village,” I told him, brushing melting snow from my shoulders. “Before all the food’s gone.”

He nodded, no protest, just a soft “Okay,” followed by a flicker of a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. And suddenly, I saw it clearly—he had the body of a six-year-old, yes, but the eyes of someone older than me, someone who’d read the final pages of a sad novel and folded the cover shut with a sigh. It pained me that I had not allowed him the soft, rose-colored lens of childhood—but perhaps, more than that, I was grateful he understood. That I would return. That I must.

I wrapped myself in a black coat too thin to dignify the word “protection” and ran- not from urgency, but necessity. In this kind of cold, stillness was death.

The village looked like something from a postcard no one would ever send. Stalls shuttered, snow softening the edges of everything, turning rooftops into paper lanterns. I bartered for bread and water, what was left of them, as the vendors packed up, their hands too numb to care about fair price.

And just as I turned to leave—there she was.

Hae.

Standing beneath a crooked street-lantern dusted in snow, she looked like a sculpture carved from frost and moonlight. Her skin shimmered faintly beneath a lace of flurries, her hair haloed in white like a crown fashioned from the night itself. She wasn’t so much alive as she was present—beautiful in a way that made you wonder whether she belonged to this world at all.

“Hae?” I said, half in disbelief, half in longing.

She looked over her shoulder, her eyes finding mine, and smiled—though it trembled at the corners. “Nice to meet you again,” she murmured, her breath clouding the air between us. “Shouldn’t you be inside?”

I let out a laugh, the dry kind that escapes through clenched teeth. “Shouldn’t you be?”

Another wind slipped past, and she winced, drawing her thin arms around herself like they might guard against the chill. Without thinking, I closed the distance and pulled my coat open to wrap around her as best I could. The contact was electric… not in the way of passion, but in the way one might touch something sacred and foreign.

“I’ll be fine,” she whispered. “Just a little sick.”

“And freezing,” I added.

She didn’t argue.

I sighed, gathered the bread and water under one arm and her in the other, hoisting her again over my shoulder with a familiarity that should have felt absurd. She was so light, like air that had forgotten how to hold itself together.

“H-Hey!” she objected weakly, voice muffled by my scarf. “What do you think you’re doing?”

I didn’t answer. Not directly.

“Do you have somewhere else to be?” I said instead. “Or do you want to be with me?”

She was silent then, and I didn’t need her to say yes.

By the time we reached the barn, the snow had grown violent. A blizzard wept around, sharp and tearing across the fields like spirits looking for something to haunt.

Inside, it was warm- but how?

Myung, clever as ever, had released the horses and gathered them near the fire. They stood like sentinels in a circle, bodies pressed together, creating a dome of breath and body heat. Myung sat in the middle, looking up as I entered with wide eyes that barely masked his amusement.

“Room for one more?” Hae asked softly, her voice a sliver of music.

“Always,” I said, settling down beside a resting mare.

Even under the firelight, her skin looked drained of color, I was beginning to fear it never would. I touched her cheek, cautious, reverent.

“You look like you’re dying,” I said, the words escaping before I could temper them.

She shivered at my touch, not from repulsion but from something older and deeper. “I just… fall sick without the sun.”

“So you’re allergic to the cold?” Myung piped in, his voice curious, not mocking.

She didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she stared into the fire, her eyes distant and flickering like old film. “You can say that.”

“Where did you come from?” I asked, though I already sensed the answer wouldn’t come.

And still, she said nothing.

Instead, she leaned into me, her small body folding against mine like a page being turned. I panicked—not from her touch, but from the weight of it, the trust implied. Myung saw my expression and smirked in that devilish way only little brothers can.

“I don’t really want to talk about me,” she said, her voice almost against my chest. “Tell me about you. About you and him.”

“We…” I began, swallowing a knot of emotion. “We’ve just been living here. Working. Our mother…”

My voice faltered as my gaze slid to Myung, who had gone still.

“…she got lost trying to find us,” I finished quietly.

She nodded slowly, her fingers curling around the edge of my sleeve. “You’re strong. Both of you.”

Now, I realized I had been smiling for so long that my face began to ache. A tender, stupid ache.

Just who is this girl?

She seemed like she was born of another world, sent here not to be part of our lives but to transform them—one snowfall, one smile, one shiver at a time.

Days slipped away as if time itself had grown drowsy in the arms of spring. The bitter machinery of winter finally exhaled its last breath, and in its place came the hesitant bloom of warmth—soft grass pushing through thawed earth, cherry blossoms blinking open like drowsy eyes. My life fell into rhythm again, though no longer the same one. There was Hae now. She became a thread woven into the daily fabric of things, and I began to measure time not by sunrises but by her laughter, her footsteps, the color in her cheeks when the fever gave her pause.

Her illness had not loosened its grip completely. All winter she had remained a ghost in our barn—wrapped in quilts and silence, her glow dimmed but never extinguished. Myung, dutiful as ever, tended the fire for her as though he understood something about her survival that I couldn’t name. I told Jinu and Nari about her, and they came to see this strange girl who spoke like a poem and smiled like it cost her nothing.

Now the spring belonged to her.

Each day, after my work ended and the sun softened, we would slip into the woods like a secret—talking, dreaming, losing ourselves in conversations that bent time. Today was no different, or at least it didn’t begin that way.

“Hong,” she said suddenly, voice bright with mischief. There was that look again—her lashes fluttering with practiced innocence, but her eyes betraying something wilder. “I have something for you.”

I tilted my head. “What is it, Hae?”

She grinned, cheeks pink with anticipation. “You remember telling me how much you hated your hair? That black doesn’t suit you. That you wanted to change it.”

I nodded, laughing under my breath. “Yeah, I just don’t like it. Doesn’t feel like me.”

“Well.” She stepped closer, impossibly delighted. “There are berries. When crushed, they make a kind of dye. Temporary, but beautiful.”

“You want to dye my hair?”

She nodded enthusiastically, her hands resting boldly on my chest now. “Yes. Just try it, please?”

Her touch was featherlight, but it struck like a confession. I smirked. “Fine. I can wash it out if I hate it.”

She beamed. “Perfect. Now—what color?”

I turned toward the river, its surface like glass, reflecting a version of myself that seemed half-myth, half-boy. Blue felt too cold, green too eager. “Red,” I said, my voice low, watching her from the corner of my eye as she drifted through the trees in search of her pigment.

She moved with a grace that defied the earth beneath her—as though each of her steps coaxed wildflowers from the soil. There was something divine about it. Something too radiant to belong to the mortal.

I sat at the river’s edge, letting my feet bathe in its cool song. When she returned, she settled behind me with the berries in hand and something more dangerous in her eyes.

“Aein,” she whispered.

The word startled me into a coughing fit. Did I hear her right?

“Yes, I called you that.” She giggled, beginning to part my hair with her fingers, those same fingers now stained like rubies.

“What are you trying to do?” I asked, heart suddenly caught in my throat. “Was that a confession?”

“Maybe,” she said, voice molten. “Maybe not. But if you want me to finish your hair, you better be quiet.”

And so I sat. Silenced by beauty and closeness. Her fingers, now threading through my scalp, felt like spells. Her touch was maddening, delicate, and maddening again. Each motion was both intimacy and ritual. I hummed softly, trying not to float away.

“You know…” I murmured, voice thick with memory, “I used to do my mother’s hair. When she was tired.”

Her hands paused briefly, then resumed. “Really? Tell me more about her.”

I hesitated. Her name alone could unravel me. “She taught me songs.”

“You can sing?”

“I can. I can’t believe I haven’t told you.”

“Sing for me,” she asked, with a sweetness so intentional it could break your heart.

I grinned, playful now. “Only if you pay me back.”

She caught my meaning instantly. Her eyes flickered down to my lips, then back up. I didn’t wait.

I cupped her chin softly, as if she were made of light and breath alone, and drew her mouth to mine.

And in that kiss, the world stood still.

Her lips tasted like secrets, soft and tremulous. She met me not with hesitation, but with something deeper—passion. The kind of kiss that felt like it had already happened in dreams long before we ever met. I didn’t want to close my eyes, afraid I’d lose the moment’s fragile spell. She pressed into me, and it was as if she had been waiting her whole life for that kind of permission.

When we broke apart, her cheeks bloomed redder than the berries still in her hands. She looked so beautiful—so alive—that I had to laugh. Joy had broken through my chest like sunlight through shattered glass.

“Hong Gil-dong!” she shrieked, splashing me with river water, her voice full of indignation and embarrassment and joy all at once. “You cheeky little bastard! You think you’re clever, don’t you?”

“Maybe,” I teased, echoing her. “Maybe not.”
“You better sing now,” she warned, eyes dancing. “And it better be a good one.”

Wiping tears from the corners of my eyes, I cleared my throat, trying to decide. “I’ll sing my favorite. It’s about a Sun goddess.”

She stilled and said nothing and she returned back to her original position- away from my perception.

I began low, my voice trembling slightly with emotion. The melody built gradually, like the story itself—full of longing, warmth, and reverence. I sang of a goddess who carried light in her hands, whose footsteps
thawed the earth, who vanished every night only to rise again. I sang the story of her cunningness and her trickery towards the Universe God.

When I finished, I didn’t want it to end. So I sang it again. And again. Until my throat ached and her fingers, still tangled with red, looked like they belonged to some ancient painter.

She sat beside me now, silently rinsing her hands in the water, her eyes unreadable.

“Hong…” she whispered at last, lifting her gaze. “That was perfect.”

She leaned in and kissed me again, softer this time. Like punctuation to a song.

“You are perfect.”

And somehow, I believed her. I could have sung for another hour just for that.

When she pulled away, I glanced down into the river’s reflection. My hair—now tinged the color of dusk and fire—shone back at me.

“I like it,” she said.

“I love…”I looked over to her, letting the forest take in the rest of our moments.

That night, the world had grown still with a rare sort of hush, as though even time had stopped to admire the velvet sprawl of stars that hung above us like spilled pearls. We lay on our backs in the barn’s loft, the air around us cool and humming with the quiet of summer’s retreat. The kind of night that feels eternal until it isn't.

“Are you afraid of death?” Hae asked, her voice a whisper, featherlight, as if the question might bruise if spoken too loud.
I turned to look at her. The stars above were brilliant, but she was brighter. Her skin caught moonlight like silk; her eyes were not of this earth—they belonged to another world entirely, one made of echoes and light.

“Death?” I echoed, brushing a lock of her hair behind her ear. “No. I’ve met it face to face too many times to be scared. Are you?”

She considered this, her gaze fixed on the celestial spread above us, as if searching for the right star to belong to. “No,” she said softly. “I think… I’ll join the stars.”

I furrowed my brow. “What do you mean?”

“When I die,” she whispered, lifting a fragile arm and pointing upward, “I’ll go there. I want to become one of them. They're so beautiful. And quiet. And eternal.”

I took her hand then and kissed each cold knuckle, slowly, reverently. “You’re already beautiful, Hae. The stars could never outshine you.”

She smiled—but there was a shadow in her smile. A farewell that hadn't yet found its words.

She was gone the next morning.

She left before sunrise, claiming some errand in town. I thought little of it—Hae often vanished like wind on the hillside, always returning with some story, some smile, something plucked from the seam of the
world to show me.

But this time she did not return.

Not that day.

Not the next.

Not that week.

Not the one after.

I waited. Waited until the sky changed seasons. Until the trees began to sing again, then silence themselves once more. But no footsteps ever came. Her voice never curled around the barn doors again. Her laugh never echoed off the river.

It was impossible. Hae wouldn’t leave me without a word. Hae would never disappear like that.

And so one dusky afternoon, driven half-mad with worry and silence, I set out for the village. The road was heavy with mud and memory. I asked every vendor, every face. Nothing.

Then—just off the path, a rustle.

My heart seized. Could it be?

“Hae—?” I called, the name catching in my throat.

But the moment I stepped into the clearing, the world fractured.

“Oh no…” I whispered, stumbling toward her.

“Oh no. No, no, no—”

There she was, crumpled like a love letter thrown to the wind, discarded by fate itself. Her body was lightless, drained of that glow she had once carried so stubbornly through the coldest winter. Her skin had turned the color of ashes. Her lips were pale flowers pressed against silence. She was a husk.

I fell to my knees beside her. She looked almost peaceful, as though the world had simply become too loud, and she had slipped away to find the quiet she always longed for.

“Hae,” I breathed. “Hae, no…”

I searched for signs—bruises, wounds, any trace of foul play. There were none. No struggle. No harm. Just… absence.

“What took you from me?” I choked out, brushing her hair from her face like I had that night beneath the stars. “Was it your sickness? The cold?”

I had never cried before. Not when Mother died. Not during the leanest winters. Not even when hunger twisted inside me like fire.

But I cried now.

I cried for her absence, for the half-written story she left behind, for the way her body felt so light in my arms, like paper or the memory of a dream.

When I told Myung, he wept openly, folding into himself like a broken kite. Jinu and Nari came, too—quiet, respectful, their eyes filled with the ache of things they didn’t fully understand but felt nonetheless.

We carried her to the hillside where the wind kissed the grass gently. The tallest grave, we decided. The one that caught the most sun. Because Hae always needed the warmth. Always craved the light.

She was easy to carry—too easy. As if she were already halfway gone before we even found her.

“Oh, Hae,” I whispered one last time as we laid her down beneath the earth. “I should have loved you harder. I should have held on longer.”

But fate, it seemed, had a crueler flourish still tucked in its sleeve.

Exactly one week later, as I was tending the fields—trying to find rhythm again in a life that felt like ruin—Myung ran ahead of me, chasing laughter through golden grain.

Then I heard it.

His scream.

Not playful.

Real.

Final.

I turned just in time to see the bull's massive body turn and buck, the sun glinting off its horns, Myung caught in its wrath like a thread between fingers.

I ran—

Too late.

When I reached him, he was already still.

His body—so small, so light—felt like glass in my arms.

I screamed, but the fields did not echo back.

Chapter Text

“He was just a child!” I cried, the heat in my voice betraying the rawness of my soul. The grief hadn’t scabbed yet—it was fresh, gaping, and furious. The man across from me, Mr. Yi, stood like a portrait smeared in the dust of cruelty. My employer. My captor. The gatekeeper of my misery.

“You two were both living on my property,” he sneered, his voice serpentine and guttural, the words biting at my skin. “I gave you shelter. The boy was put to work. If he couldn’t avoid the back of a bull, it’s his fault—not mine.”

I wanted to scream. I wanted to crush his smug mouth beneath my fists until the syllables stopped. But I bit my tongue so hard I tasted iron. Rage stirred like wildfire inside me, scorching every rational thought.

I glanced at the white sheet across Myung’s small, still form. The final curtain for the only person I had left. Then I turned my eyes filled with fury back on Mr. Yi.

“This happened on your land. He died on your land. You owe him a proper burial. You owe me that.”

He looked out over his fields, his expression flat as turned soil. “You’ve worked for me almost a year. I’ve paid you. Housed you. I’ve done more than enough.”

And just like that, he walked away—boots crunching the gravel, trailing silence behind him like smoke.

I stood there, too hollow to speak, too furious to weep. My fists clenched and unclenched, as if grasping for something invisible. Justice, maybe. Vengeance. Or just the past.

Later, I found myself atop the hill—where the wind moved like a mourner’s hymn. Hae and Myung lay beneath the same sky they both used to dream under. I stood between their graves, a lone figure painted in shadow. Nothing left. No one. Not even the bitter mercy of explanation.

I struck the great oak beside me with all the strength grief could conjure. Splinters tore into my hand; blood kissed the bark. I did it again. Again. Until pain finally acknowledged me.

Why is it always you that suffers?

The thought slid through my mind like smoke under a door. But it wasn’t mine.

I froze.

My lungs refused to move. The air turned strange, colder. The voice had no sound—only presence.

“Hello?” My voice cracked into the night. I waited. Listened. Dared.

Why do you bear the weight of a world that scorns your kindness?

The whisper threaded through the marrow of me, velvet and terrible.

You took care of your mother. You loved your brother. You gave and gave—and this is your reward.

It wasn’t a voice made of air. It was ancient, oiled in darkness, and somehow—soothing.

Panic clawed up my spine. My breath quickened. My skin prickled with the primal knowledge that something old and inhuman had crept inside the walls of me.

My son, it said, I’m here for you.

Son?

Every bone inside me froze. I wanted to run. To fall to my knees. To scream for something holy to banish whatever had found me.

But I didn’t.

Instead, I stood still, heart drumming, as if hypnotized.

I can give you everything.

Anything you desire.

Memories of Myung’s laughter, Hae’s voice, their warmth, the injustice… it all surged back, a tsunami in my chest.

You want revenge, the voice murmured, seductive as a silk noose. You want to see them again. Don’t lie to me.

Yes.

“Who... who are you?” I managed to rasp.

There was silence on the other end. Until the voice finally spoke again. I can grant your wishes, my child. But I need something in return. I ask for so little. Souls. Just souls.

There was no cruelty in his tone—just hunger masquerading as love.

I looked at Hae’s grave, her name carved with trembling hands just days before. I could wish for riches, I thought. Wish to have them back.

But no. That would be mockery against what they were—who they were. The dead deserved their peace.

Then I whispered my answer—not to the voice, not even to the trees—but to the stars above.

“I wish... to join the stars.”

A long silence followed. Even the wind ceased.

Then—So be it.

But first, bring me what I ask. Bring me the weight of other lives, and I shall lift yours into the sky.

The voice vanished as quickly as it came, leaving the night too quiet, too clean. But something had changed in me. A door opened. A thread pulled taut.

The the voice left me, the demon’s seduction fading like an echo in the night, and I found myself able to control myself again. Pain gripped my limbs as they reanimated, but beneath it stirred something new: a power crisp and electric, like a promise or a curse. I felt indestructible. I felt monstrous.

The sky overhead no longer carried mere clouds, it brooded, heavy with thunder. Every heartbeat seemed to drum out the tension, primal and foreboding.

The farm lay empty now, hollowed by departure. Only Mr. Yi and I remained.

Taking a life is no joke… whatever I do cannot come back.

I closed my eyes, images flickering of Hae’s pale smile, Myung’s last breath—images too sharp to ignore. I didn’t deserve this power. I had nothing left to cling to.

“But you do,” I whispered to myself, washing away any last remnant of hesitation.

With that in my mind, I opened the locked door—an effortless motion—walking into the world I had left behind.

Inside, Mr. Yi reclined with his wife and child, their evening stilled by my presence. He sneered, “Just who do you think you are, barging in here?”

I felt no fear as I straightened my back. This body… this hunger isn’t mine.

“It was your fault my brother died,” I told him, baring my teeth. “You made him work. He was a child—no older than your own son.”

His wife shrank behind him, and his child peeked from her skirts. Myung had been stronger than that coward.

“I knew you were trouble,” Mr. Yi spat. “But I gave you a chance. Now you’re fired.” He flicked smoke in my face as if sealing my fate.

I saw fear ripple through his family. I felt the creature within me stir.

Then I struck—

My arms moved as if led by wind. He collapsed to the floor, frantic and gasping. I grasped him by the throat—no time for mercy. No room for regret. His eyes widened, but I felt nothing but cold satisfaction when he stopped fighting. His body turned slack.

His wife screamed, trying to alert anyone nearby, but I was already on her. Clothes rustled, and then there was silence. She did not squirm. I held her aloft, and felt her breath slow until it stopped. And suddenly, her body dropping from my grasp felt as natural as autumn’s last leaf.

Then the boy—small and broken—stood still. I grabbed his arm and felt it pull away without resistance. A clean rip. I stared at it in horror and awe as blood pooled at his feet.

What in me had done this?

He wailed and doubled over. I looked down at him. Where was pity?

“You’re pathetic,” I whispered, my voice as cold as the steel in my hands. And then—I crushed him. My palm struck where his chest met his ribs. I remember the sound: dull, final.

I saw my reflection in a cracked-pane window beside me—a horror. My neck carried a low glow of purple markings. My fingernails- no longer nails, but talons fit for some thing not human.

I stepped back. No guilt. No trace of the man I had been. Just an emptiness filled by what the voice had promised.

Out the door I walked. The storm was waiting outside, cleansed by lightning. My soul… unstormed.

I needed distance. I needed control. I must say goodbye to Jinu before I fled this place.

The village square was bathed in unexpected brilliance: silk banners, soft gold embroidery, happiness glowing in every wrinkle of Jinu’s mother’s smile. The fallen had become affluent overnight.

“J‑Jinu!” I called, pushing through the crowd.

He turned. His smile lit the place like lanterns on a summer’s eve. “We… inherited money. Look at us!”

I hugged him fiercely in the hollow way of a stranger. His success—his fortune—felt like a lie I couldn’t challenge.

“Live with us, Hong.”

His hand closed on my shoulder, a warm presence. He deserves this. He worked too hard and now he deserves this newfound wish granted. 

“I can’t,” I said. “I… I have to leave.”

He stared at me, pain etched into innocence. “… I’ll miss you, brother.”

His whisper felt like a promise. I nodded wordlessly.

He led me to the steps of a house with gilded gates. He looked back once—longing, fear, love.

Then the gates closed.

And I walked away—leaving behind blood and sorrow, fortune and friendship, knowing that this village would never hold me again.

What… do I do now? I have no enemies, no ill feelings. No need for reconcilia-

But then her name rose—Ma—not as memory, but as a wound reopening in my chest, fresh and pulsing.

She had never returned. Not even a whisper on the wind or a name carried by rumor. I needed to know what happened to her.

It began as a walk, feet unsure, breath steady. Then a jog. Then something more. My body moved faster than thought, faster than grief, and by the time my feet touched the familiar earth of my childhood, the journey that once took me three days had folded into fifteen minutes.

I looked down—my calves were bare, the lower half of my pants burned away. My skin steamed, my soles smoked, and something else stirred inside me—something unholy and alive.

Had the voice given me this? This… superspeed?

The markings had grown since last I looked. They curled up my arms like vines, glowing with ancient purpose, tracing sigils I didn’t understand.

Then came the village—my birthplace, if such a word could be applied to a place where dreams died before they had names. The same rotting houses, the same collapsing stalls, the same people: thin, hollowed-out, more bone than breath.

Even the air was stale with memory—the perfume of decay, of lost hope, of lives lived sideways in the gutters of the world.

And there, tucked behind a bent alley, stood what was left of my home. The shack still stood, though barely. The roof hung like tired eyelids. The door had no hinges, and the walls had been stolen by wind and hunger.

Three men emerged like shadows congealing. The first—broad, smirking, hair in a bun, a hwando hanging from his belt like a badge of stolen valor. His face was vaguely familiar, but not enough to claim blood.

“Hello, sir,” I said. I bowed. Still remembering courtesy.

He looked at me, confused, then exploded with laughter so coarse it scratched the very air. “Look at this one,” he said to the other two. “Who are you supposed to be? You don’t even know who I am, do you?”

“No, sir,” I said evenly. “But this land—this home—it belonged to my mother. And now it belongs to me.”

The second man spat. ““He must’ve been that bitch’s son. Remember the one who ran like a dog last year, Sajang-nim?”

Bitch.

The woman who wept through nights so Myung and I could sleep. Who sewed her fingers raw for a single bowl of rice. Bitch.

“Oh?” Sajang tilted his head. “A runaway. He looks strong. Could be useful?”He smirked. And I saw it. In his eyes. The thing he wasn’t saying. 

“What did you do to her?” I asked, quietly, like a fire waiting to leap.

The smile widened. “Dead,” he said simply. “She screamed too much. Whined like a mutt. Couldn’t hold her still when we stripped her. Naturally, we had to teach her a lesso—”

He never finished.

My fist connected with his nose with a sound that was part thunder, part eulogy. A sharp crack echoed through the alley. His blood sprayed in an arc like spilled wine across a white tablecloth.

He staggered, eyes wild. “You—! You’re dead!” he shrieked through shattered teeth, and drew his hawndo.

The other two lunged.

They were flies, and I was fire.

It didn’t take long before I realized to win this match, I needed a weapon. 

Yelling in range as I yanked out the arm of the man closest to me, I stole his hwando and sliced off his head. No hesitation. No remorse. No regret. 

Darkness was clouding my vision, forcing me to focus admist my rage. I still needed to kill two more people- but by the time I blinked back to reality, I had cut off their heads and drowned the blade in their blood. 

It had started to rain, washing off the blood from my body and blade and making diluted puddles of red. 

No remorse. No regret. 

I feel nothing now, looking at their mutilated body. I avenged Ma. I avenged Myung. I avenged myself. And now I can see Hae. 

6 souls should be enough surely.

The sky wept as I ran—not in sorrow, but in a kind of half-hearted relief, as though even the heavens were exhausted by all they’d seen. The earth beneath me blurred into motion, water washing across the hills in heavy, sweeping gestures, the land itself seeming to tremble as I passed.

It was in that rushing reflection, dancing in the shallow pools at my feet, that I first saw it.

My eyes.

Not gold-rimmed like Hae’s—but a new kind of brilliance: sickly, luminous yellow, the color of madness, the color of poisoned moonlight. My pupils were no longer human. They had thinned to sharp, vertical slits—predator’s eyes—and I could feel the faint pressure of fangs behind my lips. 

The markings—those tattoos that had once whispered across my forearms—had spread all over me. They screamed across my chest, climbed the walls of my throat, bled onto my face like firebrands, declaring their conquest of every inch of me.

And then, as I stepped through the cemetery gates, a hush fell. It wasn't the quiet of peace, but the tense, brittle silence that comes right before a ballroom chandelier shatters.

"You did well, my son."

The voice curled into my spine like warm smoke and ice water all at once.

It wasn’t deliverance. It wasn’t a god reaching down to cradle me in divine arms.

It was him.

And he was not a savior.

He was not a genie. Not a wish-granter. Not even a trickster.

He was a Demon. 

"My son," he said again, and the syllables bled through my brain like wine through silk, staining the folds of my mind. There was no hatred in his tone this time. No growling threat. Just... amusement, the lazy satisfaction of a man who had wagered well.

My body went still, like the moment before a leap. Or a fall. I forced every muscle into obedience, pushed every frantic scream deep into the well of myself, just to hear him.

“You are ready,” he said. “You’ve proven your worth. And now… your wish will be granted.”

And oh, how my breath wanted to come out as a sigh—a quiet, desperate exhale of longing and confusion and the need to be forgiven.

But what escaped my lips was a shriek, sharp and unholy. 

My skin turned to ash, crumbling in delicate flakes, revealing something beneath that no longer belonged to this world. My hair—no longer black—spilled around my face in brilliant, unnatural red. The same red Hae once painted into my roots, laughing softly as she called me perfect.

Claws unfurled from my hands like bone made beautiful. The purple tattoos writhed across me like living lightning, glowing from within as though I had swallowed the storm.

I looked at my reflection in the rainwater pooling beneath Hae’s grave.

What am I?

I turned my face upward, shouting into the wind, into the sky, into the throat of whatever god had once pretended to hear me.

“What is this? I wished to be joined with the stars! Not turned into… this!”

The reply came like a whisper born of rotted silk.

“You could have,” he said, low and fond. “But when you spilled their blood, you forfeited your purity.”

A pause. The sky rippled with thunder.

“You’re shackled to the ground now.”

He tricked me.

The earth, at first bashful, reached delicately yet forcefully around my ankles—as though nature herself were drawing up the hem of her evening dress, unsure whether to dance or devour. But then it swallowed.

First my knees, then hips, then shoulders. A breath later, my head.

And just like that, where I had once stood—trembling over Hae’s grave—there was only freshly patted soil. Clean. Undisturbed. As if I had never been at all.

I fell without falling. No gravity, no light. No color, but no darkness either. It was a hush, a velvet blankness too complete to describe. Then a shift—a tilt—and I knew I was no longer still. I wasn’t flying. I was plummeting.

I crashed into that forgotten land like a dropped coin into a deep well—small and screaming. The air tasted of copper and soot, and when I opened my eyes, the world before me was a sketch of ruin: an endless desert of red dust and thick, black fog, a land that reeked of old fire and forgotten sins.

Creatures loitered around, with mouths too wide and eyes too wise. They looked like they had once been men, but had worn out their humanity like old dinner jackets. Their teeth were longer than their fingers.

Behind me rose a staircase— a temple's jaw, steep and yawning—carved from stone, wide as ambition. And as I stared, it grew taller, unspooling infinitely into a sky I could not see. There was no question. I knew where I had to go. Hewas waiting above.

I placed a foot on the first step.

Then the next.

Then the next.

Time blurred. Hours folded into days. Days into eras. Each step became a universe I crossed and lost. I tried to mark them with thought—Myung, I whispered to myself. But his name slipped through my memory like sand in rain.

I told myself a story to pass the time. A memory of Myung, how I used to chase him through the rice fields with a haunted lullaby on my lips, laughing, always laughing. But the melody faltered.

What was the song? What did he do when I scared him?

I furrowed my brow. Stepped again.

The thought dissolved before I could catch it.

Another image drifted up: my mother scolding us, the smell of smoke in our clothes. No—his clothes. My brother. Or... was it me?

Step by step.

I tried to hold onto their faces. But even they blurred, like the edges of a wet photograph left in the sun too long. Had I dreamt them?

And the girl—the girl at the grave. She knew me. Didn’t she? She would remember my name...

But I couldn’t.

The realization struck like thunder cracking against cathedral glass.

I was forgetting.

Every mortal thought, every warm and human thing that tethered me to the world above—it unraveled with each step I climbed. I felt like an empty picture frame, once hung in a family home, now shattered and left in some dim attic corner.

Then, a breath. A cold, silken breeze touched my skin—sharp and ceremonial. I looked up, and there he was.

The voice that had always been just behind my thoughts, now made flesh. The Demon.

He spoke and his words curled like smoke around my ribs: "My son."

The fire behind him licked the air, hot as lust and ancient as blood. I knelt—not from reverence, but because his words bent the spine more effectively than any hand ever could.

"You’ve made it up here after great misfortune. You’ve once again proven your place."

My knees pressed into marble colder than death. "Of course, Father," I said, mouth dry as ash. "Anything to please you."

A pause. The kind of silence that implies calculation. Then:

"You’ve created me joy. You will now be Abby."

Abby?

What a strange name. Childish. New. Like a stranger's signature forged at the bottom of my soul. I already had a name—

Didn’t I?

Why couldn’t I remember it?

Before I could answer myself, another boy appeared beside me—dripping in silks, wearing my clothes, but stitched in finery. His eyes mirrored my own. The same hat. The same eyes. A memory dressed in gold.

Familiarity tugged at me like a dream you almost remember after waking. I knew him. But from where?

He knelt too.

"I would like my voice too, Father," I whispered, forehead pressed to the polished stone. The lie tasted like honey, thick and gleaming.

The Demon waited. Measured. Judged.

Then said, "As you wish… but know that you are that more in debt to me, Abby."

I looked down at my hand. It no longer belonged to a boy. Or a man. Or a brother. Or a son. It was bone-white, dusted with ash, the nails curled into dark crescents. My skin carried the glow of violet markings. My breath fogged like smoke from a chimney.

A demon.

Of course.

"Thank you, Father," I said, the words as smooth as oil and twice as flammable.

I will work my hardest to repay a fraction of gratitude I have for you. You granted my wish to be with the Earth, deep into the soil and finest grains of sand. You granted my wish to keep my voice in the darkest of worlds. My mind is to you.

I know my name. My name is Abby.

Chapter Text

Time Period: 200 years after Joseon Dynasty (1910ish)

“You’re a monster,” Romance- Aejeong- snarled across the flickering checkerboard, the flames of Ji-ok playing gleeful shadows across his face. His eyes—glowing faintly amber in the firelight—narrowed in mock fury. “You goddamn cheater. Who do you think you are?”

“Are you kidding me?” I leaned lazily back, grinning. “You’re only saying that because you’ve lost five times in a row. Admit it, you sore little rat.” With exaggerated flourish, I plucked his wide-brimmed hat from the table and flung it like a drunken frisbee.

It sailed past his head—barely—and collided with Baby- Agi- who sat cross-legged by the hearth, plucking harmonies from a battered mandolin as if this corner of Hell were a candlelit jazz club in Montmartre. The hat slid off his face with tragic dignity.

Agi didn’t flinch. He simply blinked, plucked one last note, and said flatly, “Really? I’m busy right now.”

He picked up the hat and lobbed it back—this time with weight, with punctuation. It landed squarely on Aejeong’s chest.

On the other side of the long banquet table—once opulent, now charred and scarred—Jinu reclined against the stone wall for the first time all day, the tension easing from his bones like breath escaping a tired violin.

“Where were you?” Mystery- Sinbi- asked him softly, curiosity blooming in the way only old souls inquire—tired of everything, yet longing for small certainties. Jinu didn’t answer right away. He took off his hat and folded it neatly, almost reverently, as though it were the last heirloom of a forgotten dynasty.

“Do I have to explain everything I do to you people?” he muttered.

There was a gentleness to the moment. Not warmth—but something like it. The hellfire no longer roared, merely whispered, casting halos of emberlight across our chamber carved into the rock and rot of Ji-ok.

And it was in that moment I studied him.

Jinu—stern, angular, hardened by the centuries—looked at me as he often did: with faint irritation and some ghost of grief. We had, 

apparently, become demons on the same cursed day. He claimed to know me. Said he remembered me from before.

But I remembered nothing. Not the surface. Not the skies. Not my name.

It’s a funny thing, how time moves down here. Months slither by like smoke in molasses. Sometimes I feel like I’ve been here days. 

Sometimes decades. Perhaps two hundred years have passed. Perhaps more. What is a century when time doesn’t walk but crawls, and the clocks have no hands?

When I first saw Jinu again, it was... anticlimactic.

He looked at me, truly looked, and whispered, “Hong Gil-dog?”

His voice broke the air like a violin string snapping. The name meant nothing.

“Excuse me?” I blinked, laughing lightly to settle down the tension. Demons don’t usually interact with each other. “My name’s Abby. And you are?”

The weight of disappointment sat heavy between us. His eyes, so used to fire and fury, dulled suddenly into something quieter.

“Do you... not remember?”

“No,” I said, gently. “Nothing before this place.”

A pause. He searched my face like a scholar trying to recover a ruined manuscript. “You don’t remember your life before Gwi-ma?”

“Who?”

“The devil who brought you here.”

“Oh. Father?”

His eyes widened in disbelief. “He’s your dad?”

“No! No. I mean... that’s what I call him. He calls me ‘son.’ Said it would make me feel safe. I suppose it did.”

Jinu paced then, agitated. The air thickened with heat and unspoken memory. “You don’t remember anything?” he asked again, this time as though confirmation might somehow soothe him.

I looked at my clawed fingers. My skin, now a muted ash-grey, shimmered faintly beneath the firelight.

“There was a time I even forgot my name,” I confessed. “He gave me a new one. Abby.”

Jinu flinched, just slightly. His voice softened. “You’re... so lucky.”

“Lucky?” I laughed bitterly. “I have no past. No people. No possessions. Just a fake name and the one thing he allowed me to keep—my voice.”

That made him pause.

“We used to sing together,” he said slowly, like someone laying down memories like cards in a losing game. “I’m glad you kept it.”

“I didn’t,” I admitted. “You did. I remember—barely—you begged him to let you keep yours. So I asked, too. I thought maybe... it meant something.”

Jinu looked at me with a sorrow so raw, it could have lit the sky.

“I treated you like my brother,” he whispered.

A strange ache curled in my chest. Guilt? Grief? I didn’t know what to call it, but I nodded slowly. “I’m sorry.”

He sighed. The tension in his shoulders didn’t vanish, but it shifted—tiredness replacing anger.

“If you’re alone in this hellhole,” he murmured, “stick with me.”

I grinned. “Was gonna ask you the same thing. You stole the words right out of my mouth.”

That was years ago—decades, maybe. Our little circle of the damned has grown since then. No memories, but something stronger has formed between us: trust.

And tonight, watching him from across the room, I realize Ji-ok has weathered him—made him colder, sharper, like obsidian fractured under pressure. But I know, despite everything, he still cares.

Changing my view and memory from Jinu, I look at Aejeong. He sat across from me, his charcoal features curled into a theatrical scowl, his purple markings casting faint bioluminescent glimmers across the scorched tabletop. I watched him as one might a discontented actor mid-performance—fondly, bemusedly. The firelight licked the corners of the cavern we called home, and the eternal dusk of Ji-ok seemed, for a moment, less suffocating.

I couldn’t remember anything of Jinu from my so-called past life, but Aejeong? Aejeong I remembered all too well. He had arrived years after Jinu and I had grown from strangers into something more dependable—partners in dissonance, if not harmony. I had been alone then, meandering through Ji-ok’s lifeless plains, craving distraction more than purpose. That was when the sky opened in a scarlet streak, and something—someone—fell.

Most souls arrived here in silent blue flares, slipping neatly into Gwi-ma’s flame like stars swallowed by fire. But this soul was different. Red. Brilliant. 

Wounded. And loud.

He didn’t fall so much as crash, his descent violent and theatrical. His robes—silken black hanbok, not unlike mine—billowed like a crow’s wings. And his gat, tilted at an arrogant angle, concealed much of his face until he tumbled from the great staircase above and landed, with a thud and an oath, at my feet.

“Who are you?” I asked, half-curious, half-cautious.

He looked up, bloodied pride glinting in his eyes. “Romance,” he bit out. “And who the hell are you, pretending to be me with my clothes?” He snatched his hat from my hands with flair, straightened his disheveled hair, and adjusted the collar of his ruined pride.

Despite the ash-toned skin and the cursed violet runes burned into all of us, his pastel-pink hair caught the dim light like a smoldering ember. Objectively—annoyingly—he was handsome. But the personality…

“I’m Abby,” I said with a thin, diplomatic smile, already stealing his gat again for the sheer pleasure of needling him. “And I’m not copying you. If anything, you’re copying me.”

He gave me a grin sharp enough to cut glass, slipping into the same fake politeness I had adopted. “Is that so? I don’t know how I feel copying clothes from a girl…” 

I scoffed, a low rise of confusion forming on my face. “Excuse me?”

Romance adjusted his gat to fit perfectly on his head. “I hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but ‘Abby’ sounds more like a courtesan than a demon.”

I blinked. Sweetheart? Courtesan?

“I am far from feminine, sunshine.” I let my hanbok fall open, revealing the sculpted, inhuman perfection of my demon form. “I’m practically carved from god’s hands himself.”

He smirked, catching the gat midair this time. “You’re carved from something, that’s for sure.”

“You bastard.” I shot back. This playful banter something I haven’t experienced. “You planning to mope around here forever, or are you looking for company?”

Jinu appeared beside me, his sudden presence drawing gravity into the room like a black hole. “What are you doing, Abby?” he said, his voice low and flat. 

“We’re not recruiting.”

“Why not?” I shrugged. “There’s room for one more pain in the ass.”

Jinu sighed with the weight of someone who had aged a thousand years in one. “Can he sing?”

Romance rolled his eyes. “Sing? I used to summon girls with a single hum.”

Jinu arched a brow. At the same time, a blue tiger rose silently from the ground, delivering his wolgeum. “Then play,” he said, voice cold. He snapped his fingers, and the three of us were whisked away to our quarters.

Really, it was an abandoned house that Jinu and I inhabited and refurbished to make living in the hell seem a little bit better. We all sat down on the carpet, Romance a few feet away from us, fidgeting. I watched him with interest.

“Don’t bomb, pretty boy,” I teased.

“Okay... just don’t be a tough audience for me.” He joked lightly, trying to wipe away the low panic rumbling in the back of his throat.

Romance placed his fingers strategically on the wolgeum, taking a break before strumming a note. 

He opened his mouth to sing before groaning. “I don’t want to play this relic.” He shoved it into Jinu’s lap with disdain. “I sing. I don’t do strings.”

Jinu didn’t flinch. He simply crossed his arms and waited.

Eventually, Romance sang. And when he did, the silence bent around him. His voice was high and fluid, silk soaked in moonlight, precise as a blade. He sang an old chorus I’d forgotten I knew. He closed his eyes as if the performance were for himself alone.

When it ended, he looked smug. Of course he did. He was good, and he knew it.

I laughed. “Join our little duo, would you? Make it a trio. It'll be fun.” I held out my hand.

Jinu gave the smallest nod—a gesture more valuable than gold down here.

Romance paused. Then he took my hand. “Romance is just a stage name,” he said. “My real name is Aejeong. You can use it now.”

He never left. He became a fixture of the underworld—the third wheel of our infernal tricycle. And even now, years later, he’s still trying to beat me at checkers.

“What are you staring at, punk?” he growled, resetting the board.

“You want another rematch?” I smirked. “Still haven’t learned shame?”

“I’ll beat you eventually,” he grinned, fangs glinting. “Either on the board or with fists. Dealer’s choice.”

Then Jinu stood up, and the room’s heat shifted. Our laughter thinned into smoke.

“Aren’t you tired?” he asked suddenly. “Of being trapped here?”

Silence. 

“Gwi-ma yelled at me last time I asked to go.” Agi stood up. Despite being the shortest of the group, he definitely has the most guts to do anything risky.

“I want out,” Jinu said, pacing. “I want to breathe something that isn’t ash.”

“Then let’s go together,” I said. “If we stand as one, he might let us roam. Maybe even harvest some souls.”

“I’m exhausted from living here for decades on end…” Aejeong muttered, his voice uncharacteristically low. “Let’s give it a shot.”

Sinbi—ever quiet—opened the door without a word and walked into the smoke and shadows.

I suppose that meant yes on his part.

Jinu, ever cautious, had ensured our home was tucked deep into the sinews of Ji-ok, far from the twisting breath of Gwi-ma’s heart. No demon could teleport there without precise direction, and we gave none. It was our secret haven, our sanctuary from the rot.

Only the five of us shared it, our isolation a sort of camaraderie. Not quite friendship, but survival polished down to intimacy. And for a time, that was enough.

I blinked, and with that blink summoned the infernal magic that now threaded through my marrow, and found myself at the base of Gwi-ma’s temple—the malignant heart of Ji-ok. The others were already gathered in his suffocating shadow: Jinu, already poised; Agi, following suit; Sinbi, still as death; Aejeong, all false bravado and silk.

Suddenly a voice—not spoken, not heard, but felt, like a blade across the belly—rippled through the air.

“What are you doing here, child?”

I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. Invisible hands—his—wrapped around my ribs and squeezed. The air disappeared. The world bent in half. I was lifted like a marionette, yanked upwards to the top of the temple until I collapsed before the flame.

“Ah—” The sound was pitiful, strangled.

The others followed in sequence, pulled by the same merciless gravity, except Jinu, who had always known how to slip beneath the Demon’s notice. Clever idiot. He had already arrived, unchoked, unshaken.

Gwi-ma’s fire twisted before us, ancient and arrogant. Even now it whispered things in a dozen languages—pleas, bargains, threats, all tangled in the hiss and spit of flame. I hated it. I hated him.

“More than two centuries,” I said, my voice raw, “and you haven’t led me- have not blessed me- with the ability to see the world above.”

Jinu stepped forward. “I’m strong enough. We. Are are enough. Each of us will deliver one soul a day. Minimum.” His addition added confidence in us. Like a cool steel spine to straighten our backs.

There was silence on the flame’s end. “In exchange for what? Don’t tell me all you want to do is go the world above and do my dirtywork.”

Now it was Aejeong’s turn, “We want a week. Seven days in the mortal realm. No tether. No interference.”

A pause.

Then a whisper—just for me—slithered across my mind.

You dog.

I staggered. I felt the burn in my throat before the pain. My windpipe narrowed under his invisible hand. My knees buckled. The flame roared in approval.

Then he let go.

“Fine,” he rumbled aloud. “But if you fail—if even one day you fall a soul short—I will take back your voices. No mercy. No warning.”

We didn’t breathe until it passed. My fingers brushed my neck as if the imprint of his grip were still there. Maybe it was.

Jinu turned to leave, and something in his face shifted. He was pale—even more than usual. Hollowed. Sick.

“Do you feel that?” Aejeong murmured, a hand resting on my shoulder.

I opened my mouth to answer, but my body beat me to it. The nausea hit like an ocean wave—sudden, deep, drowning. My stomach twisted, and then—

Pop.

 I teleported- popped out of Ji-ok and then next thing I remember was landing on Aejeong’s flat ass. “You have absolutely no cushion.” I laugh getting off of him, delighted to see the others were already there. 

He shoved me off, but even he was smiling. “You’re too heavy.”

The air was different. Crisp. Sweet. Alive.

Looking around the scenery, we landed in an urban setting- or it looked urban. So many people were clustered within this location with infrastructure sandwiched together, every shop the same size unless it was important. The roads, still made of dust like 200 years ago. It was like everything changed. But nothing. Korea looked the same.

“We’re out,” I whispered pointing to the sky. “Agi—look.”

He did. We all did. 

Above us, a beautiful night sky stretched out forever. The stars twinkled with beauty and grace and the cool fresh air sent the night’s atmosphere so ethereal. Maybe I’m feeling this way because this is the first time i’ve been outside for as long as I can remember. The whole scene made my heart ache.

And for a rare moment, none of us spoke.

Until Jinu did.

“This is time without Gwi-ma’s voice,” he said, his voice firm. “This is time without Gwi-ma’s voice. Which means even though we no longer feel him, that doesn’t mean he can’t control us and see through our eyes. So don’t do anything stupid.”

He pointed at Aejeong and me.

The pink haired demon and I looked at each other with a matching fox smile, rolled our eyes in unison and looked back at Jinu. “We won’t do anything.”

Then he turned to Agi and Sinbi. “And no attention.”

Agi gave a sarcastic thumbs-up.

“Speaking of drawing attention…” Sinbi waved his hand in front of a passing human. Nothing. Not even a blink.

“Demons are naturally devoid of the human eyes. They can’t see us,” Jinu said. “Not unless we want them to.”

He said more, probably something important, but I wasn’t listening anymore. There were too many souls. Too many fragile, flickering things walking just beyond reach. I was starving.

Then I felt it. A pressure. A presence. Three, to be exact.

Aejeong went rigid beside me. I caught his glance—tense, searching. Jinu fell silent.

“Demon hunters,” he said at last. “We stay together.”

And then we saw them.

The first woman stood to my left, statuesque and regal. Her black hair fell in sculpted waves, and her bottle-green gown shimmered like forest glass under 

moonlight. Gold accented every line of her—neck, wrists, the hilt of a cruel-looking blade. Her beauty was mythic, old-world, but her eyes? Empty of mercy.

The second wore navy and red like a second skin. Her face was caked with stage-paint makeup—deliberate, exaggerated, a war mask. Her weapon glinted at 

her side like a lover’s gift. The silver in her dress caught every sliver of starlight and twisted it cruelly.

And the third—silent, composed—wore orange. Her hair was pinned tightly, not a strand out of place. Her dress burned like the edge of a flame, accented in 

silver veins like cracking ice. She stood behind Jinu, but somehow loomed over all of us.

This was our first meeting with the Demon Hunters.

Killers of our kind. Relics of war. Saints dressed as executioners.

The air thickened. My claws itched to extend. My muscles tensed like they had been waiting a hundred years for this very moment.

“They have markings,” the green one said, her voice sharp as her blade.

The orange one pointed at Jinu. “Then you must die.”

She didn’t shout it. She didn’t roar. She declared it—as if fate had already written the words.

And before I even understood what was happening, my instincts did.

Attack.

I leapt toward the demon hunter in forest-green silk, my fists cutting through the starlit air. I struck once—twice—but she glided aside as if moved by breeze, her gown rustling like leaves in a forgotten forest. Aejeong materialized behind her with predatory grace, encircling her wrists in a vice of shadowy hunger.

In the firelight, his smile vanished. His eyes, once playful, were now jagged coals. Beneath that gaze lay something feral—I recognized it with a chill. He looked evil

She managed to get out of his grip, but not before I sent a heavy blow right on the base of her neck. SHe stiffened, gasping. “Seo-yun!” she rasped.

Aejeong lunged again, intent brutal, but she vanished in the shadows. At my side, an orange-gowned woman materialized. Her blade pressed to my throat—so close that I could taste its cold. One cut, one slip, and I would fall into oblivion.

I shoved her with brute force, hurling her backward. My teeth clenched in satisfaction.

She sprinted toward her sister in navy-blue, who steadied the fallen green woman with trembling arms. “Ha-rin! Ji-a is wounded!” she cried, voice sharp with 

urgency.

The green-clad warrior staggered away, backed by her sister in blue, leaving us amid dust and distant thunder.

I turned to Jinu. “Should we chase them? Gwi‑ma would be pleased if we killed them.”

He thought for a moment, watching them leave before shaking his head. “No. Why waste our time pleasing Gwi-ma when we don’t have to do anything else but keep our deal.”

“They’ll be busy all night.” Agi reappeared beside us, weapon in hand, eyes alight with battle-lust.-“Great work everybody. Maybe we should choreograph something next time.”

Aejeong patted me on the back with mischievous affection—his smile wide. “You were amazing, Wonsung-i.”

I nearly bit his arm, growling when he dodged me. “You ugly buffalo, stop your pranks.”

Jinu cleared his throat, ghost of a smile tugging at his lips. “Is anyone hurt?”

“We’re fine. We’ll regenerate anyway- quit mothering us” Aejeong replied airily, vaulting onto the roof’s edge. “I want to explore. Do we have to use the buddy system?”

“Yes.”

A chorus of groans met his word.

“But Jinu…” Sinbi began softly. “I want to be alone tonight.”

Agi joined: “Me too. After years with you demons... I just want silence.”

In perfect unison, the four of us huddled together, folding our hands. “Please?” We spoke in unison, harmonizing even without trying to.

Jinu studied us, equal parts exasperated and amused. “You’re not demons—you all are a comedy group made up of golden retrievers in devil’s masks-“ he scoffed, “Fine!” He pushed us aside.

Victory charged the air. Aejeong high‑fived me. “Let’s meet at dawn. Find safe shelter. Then...”He vanished first in a whirl of violet mist, followed by Sinbi. Agi sprinted off at superhuman speed.

Only Jinu remained.

“You’re too cynical,” I said, stepping closer.

He turned, eyes not kind. “And you, too flippant. Just because you lost your memories- you don’t remember any turmoil- doesn’t mean everything you experience is fun and without overhaul.” With that, he too disappeared. Poof.

Ouch. That hurt.

Minutes later I found myself hours away from where we originally were and in the most busiest place I’ve seen. I realized we were originally in a village. Buildings soared like celestial 

towers. Dust still coated the road, but souls—souls walked freely.

My hunger roared loud; my limbs quivered as invisible energy surged, craving. Down alleyways, in rooms I phased through, sucking the souls of anyone I wanted to. 

Freedom at last. The bright blue hue of each soul reaching my stomach, filling my belly, before disappearing to Ji-ok to fuel Gwi-ma.

Demons have the choice to eat the husks of the people who no longer have a soul, but I personally choose not to. It’s rumored that once we eat human flesh, there will be a never ending thirst for human flesh to quench.

By now I lost how many souls I killed. Looking at the mirror up on the wall of my most recent victim, I saw my form—lean muscle, rippling biceps, my claws were long, but proud. The purple markings have grown all over my body now. There isn’t a single place void of it other than the a bulk of my face. I wasn’t ashamed of this. I like them. 

They define me. Who I am. A demon. A monster. A nobody. 

I smirked. This is me.

I caught movement in my peripheral vision—a white streak singing across the night sky. I darted outside, leaving neon behind.

What was I looking at? Stars. White and beautiful, painting a stroke as they cross the night sky and moon. 

Without even thinking it I lift myself in the air. Hovering above I keep rising, rising and rising. 

I want the sky to swallow me, it’s so beautiful. A comet, brilliant and swift, tore through black velvet sky.

I rose on the breeze: the city, so small beneath me; the comet, large with promise.

Higher still, through the clouds, I ascended—drawn to that luminous streak.

There, as if drawn from a dream, I broke through to a world of pastel brilliance: billowing clouds under pale lantern-light, opalescent towers and gardens 

floating in air. It was like a civilization cast from moonlight and mist—heaven itself, born from breath and beauty.

Wherever I am is Ji-ok. But for angels. Not demons.

Chapter Text

This couldn’t be real.

Only moments ago, I was hovering above the city, reaching—foolishly, boyishly—for the night sky. Not out of ignorance, but hope. Of course I knew I couldn’t touch it. The stars were too far, the heavens too old, the sky too proud to allow the reach of something like me. I thought perhaps the cold would beckon me home. Perhaps breathlessness would shake me back to sense.

But something happened. Something above the sky happened.

The air changed.

Light—brilliant and iridescent—began to bleed into the black. And when the veil of night peeled back like silk, I found myself not falling, not returning, but ascending, rising beyond anything I thought existed.

Beyond the cloudline, a new world revealed itself—like a secret garden no longer willing to stay hidden. Where darkness ended, day began, but not the day I knew. This was a day that glowed forever, suspended in time, untouched by shadow. The light refracted into chromatic hues—rose-gold, honey-lavender, opal blue—and danced across a sky so vast it felt like the lungs of eternity.

In the distance, a civilization unfolded in quiet majesty. I stood at the edge of it, scared to dare and venture into this location. A sanctuary above all sanctuaries. In the distance, stretching farther than the eye could dare imagine, loomed a gate of hammered gold, impossibly tall, impossibly wide, its intricate carvings alive with motion—stars spinning in vines, moons woven into its arches, the very breath of light threading through its seams.

And beyond that gate—a city. A city of clouds and gold, where the towers looked like frozen sunbeams and the rooftops curled like the tops of ocean waves. It was the opposite of Ji-ok, my world of cracked clay and dust-choked wind. Here, even silence hummed.

I glanced down. Clouds swirled beneath me, soft and thick as wool. Could I walk? Would I fall?

I lowered one foot, hesitating as it sank slightly into the cloud's surface. But then it held. My toes found purchase. Then my heel. Then the other foot followed. I was walking on clouds—truly walking.

My breath caught. Not just at the absurdity of it—but the beauty. Where was I? Had I died? Was this Cheonguk?

I was so struck by the splendor of it all—the too-perfect stillness, the taste of radiance on the air—that I didn’t notice I wasn’t alone.

She passed me like the drifting of a memory—soft, and yet sharply unforgettable.

A woman—or something more than woman. She was not demon. She was not soul. 

She wore flowing robes of white so pure they gleamed like snow beneath sunlight. Her skin shimmered faintly, as if woven with powdered crystal, yet there was nothing artificial in her glow. Her arms bore delicate golden markings that twisted like calligraphy down to her wrists. Her hair—silver kissed with sunlight—cascaded down her back, catching the chromatic light in strands like woven silk thread. And above her floated a golden crown, perfectly still despite the breeze.

I reached for her before I could think, my dark, clawed hand brushing her arm.

She visibly recoiled as she stared at me, making me coil back as well.

I withdrew, instantly ashamed. My gray skin, my ragged black robes, the demonic curl of my features—everything about me screamed intrusion.

Her eyes, wide and wary, met mine. Not yellow like mine, not even human. Her iris were a ring of pure gold—liquid gold. They weren’t eyes. They were wells. Encapsulating thoughts and beings. And they saw too much.

“Ah—excuse me,” I managed, the words scraping from my throat.

She looked at me not with fear, but with a deep, wordless confusion, as if I were a note in a melody she once heard long ago. Her voice, when it came, was soft, the sound of pages turning in a long-forgotten story.

“Who…” She’s like nostalgia. I wonder if… I’ve heard her voice before… “are you?” She finished her sentence. 

The words rang like a chime in my bones. Not loud—but resonant. Echoing. Familiar in some aching, unreachable way.

I couldn’t answer. My mouth parted but no sound emerged. I felt like a stain upon this canvas, a storm cloud wandering into paradise. And yet... she didn’t turn away.

She searched me with her gaze, her brow furrowed—not in judgment, but in memory. As though she were trying to find something buried within me. As though she almost knew me.

We stood there, two figures bound by some invisible thread—one of dust and shadow, the other of light and legend. Neither speaking. Both unwilling to break the moment.

It would be best if I didn’t answer her.

Because I don’t belong here. 

“Uhm,” I offered, attempting my most disarming smile. “Forgive me. I’m… new here.” A half-truth, if there ever was one. “Could you tell me—where exactly is here?”

She didn’t answer. Not immediately.

It was then, in the thick velvet of her silence, that I became suddenly and terribly aware: my hand, gray and clawed, still rested against her skin. Her skin, which shimmered like starlight caught in silk, soft with a glow that did not belong to mortals or demons or even dreams. I started to pull away in quiet embarrassment, my mouth already opening to apologize.

But then she caught me.

Her fingers closed around my wrist with surprising force, not violent, but deliberate. And she looked at me—not my face, not my fangs, but my hand, as though it were an artifact unearthed from some ancient ruin. 

Her gaze was unreadable, yet filled with a fragile awe, as if memory brushed her cheek but would not say its name aloud.

With her free hand, she traced my arm in gentle, almost reverent lines. She followed the violet tattoos that glowed softly against the eternal daylight, as though they had been lit from within by an old fire. Her fingers hovered over the ridges of my knuckles, then slipped over the jagged curve of my claws. She pressed there, cautious but unafraid.

I flinched—not wanting myself to pierce her skin—and in an instant my claws vanished, folded away with a whisper of magic. Human fingers replaced them. Soft. Almost normal.

She startled, pulling back ever so slightly—not from fear, but from fascination. Her brows lifted, curious and wide-eyed, like a cat caught between wonder and instinct. I had seen that look before—on Jinu’s cat, on creatures who sensed something once forgotten but still familiar. Now, both her hands encased mine as if trying to memorize its texture, its weight, its contradiction.

What was she doing?

My eyes darted toward the golden horizon, looking for signs of others, anyone who might bear witness to this strange and intimate inspection. But the world remained empty. Not barren—just quiet. A hush between realities. We were alone, suspended in a moment that felt stolen from another life.

I turned back to her, just as I felt it—her fingers weaving gently- intertwining with mine.

“Hong—?” she began-

But my breath seized. My entire body bristled, startled by the touch itself.

“Ah!” I gasped, jerking my hand away as though burned. “I’m not some specimen to gaze at like in a zoo.” My words came out sharper than I intended, my fangs flashing with the hiss of insult before I could tuck them away.

The silence that followed was fragile. I straightened, flustered, pulling my spine into a rigid line. In this form, I towered over her—at least a foot taller—so that I looked down into her upturned face, golden and calm beneath the sunlight- 

Wait a minute.

“What… did you just call me?” My voice was quieter now, uncertain. Now that my hand was back to me I contracted my claws—not in fear, nor caution, but from some strange need to be myself.

She looked away then, laughing softly, the sound low and unsteady, like the flutter of paper wings. “My mistake,” she murmured. “I thought you were someone else. I—”

She gathered her poise like silk around her shoulders and took a single step forward, her eyes locked to mine. “To answer your question,” she said, “you’re in Jeong-Won. The Citadel of Gods and Goddesses.”

Her words rang like wind chimes in a memory. The name felt holy. Untouchable.

My heart dropped.

Jeong-Won. The exact antithesis of Ji-ok. Where the skies remain gold and the ground sings.

I was not meant to be here. Not in this city of light. Not in front of her.

“What… are you?” she asked at last, the question more breath than sound.

I cleared my throat and stepped aside, as if dodging the words with my whole body. “Thank you,” I said stiffly, “for the information.”

And then I turned. I didn’t run. I descended. Quietly. Willfully. Like a fallen leaf returning to the forest floor. Down from the clouds, down from the golden radiance of Jeong-Won and her eyes. I left her behind because I had to.

But the warmth of her hands lingered long after the sky gave me back to shadow.

Returning to the rooftop where the others waited, I felt a curious tingling in the hand she’d touched. Her behavior—so tender and so strange—stirred something in me. I have never met her, never laid my eyes on her as far as my memory goes, but she’d regarded me with a wistful surprise, as though I were a long-lost chapter in a book she barely remembered.

I turned my hand in the fading sunlight, tiny flecks of her celestial glow clinging to my gray skin like dusted moonlight. It was like we exchanged sweat. Disgust twisted my stomach—ew, I thought—yet I couldn’t shake the longing her touch ignited.

From that moment, the rooftop, massive and silent as a forgotten stage, seemed to wait for me. Aejeong paced along the edge, his silhouette restless against the sky’s muted dusk. When our eyes met, I reached in greeting, but was yanked back by Agi—his voice urgent, warm. “There you are!”

With a flash, I found myself folded into the center of our hovering circle: Aejeong, mask shifting between frustration and fear; Sinbi, silent sentinel; Agi, bright flame of unguarded curiosity—and at the circle’s heart, Jinu, calm steel.

Aejeong shoved a human at me. “Eat.”

“Take it. Quickly.” Jinu’s voice carried a blade’s edge.

“Why—?”

“Where were you? No time, Abby—don’t speak!” Agi pressed.

I inhaled sharply, panic forging panic. I drew from the stranger’s soul, my pulse thrumming with power as warmth spread in my veins and shadow inside. I then threw the body to Sinbi, who liked to eat the flesh.

“What... what happened?” I murmured. “I was only gone for minutes—how did you get here so fast?”

Aejeong’s eyes narrowed. “Minutes? Abby, you were gone all day. We waited.” His voice dropped to a mumbled, “We were worried.”

I gave him a quick smile, catching on to the last portion of his sentence, but that feeling with soon flooded with more confusion. 

Man, I’m getting tired of being in a constant state of confusion. “I don’t understand. I left when you guys left and I came back just now.” I pointed to the moon which was basically at the same position. “Maybe thirty minutes I’d been gone?”

I looked at Jinu, who was furious. “Are you drunk? You came back ten minutes before 24 hours were completed”

A cold knot formed in my gut. Just like how Ji-ok manipulates time compared to the surface world- making a long period of time in Ji-ok last only a few days on Earth, Jeong-won must do the opposite: a short period of time in Jeong-won speeds through time on Earth. 

My lungs collapsed. Shock and raw guilt snatched my voice. “I—I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

He planted his hands on my shoulders, silent heat in his grip. “Where. Were. You?”

“You’re not going to believe me.” I groan, flashes of the goddess from above appearing like scenes from a movie. 

“Try us..” Sinbi piped up, now growing impatient at this suspense. 

I stare at all four of them and I can’t help but feel like a student getting yelled at by teachers. “You guys look so dumb right now.” I grinned, pushing them away from my face. “So,” I started. Standing up to give a more theatrical experience as I continued telling my memory from when I saw the comets and started to follow it. “…Soon I was flying higher and higher until I saw a civilization above the clouds!”. As the others sat down I recognized flashes of recognition in some of them. 

Now, ironically, I became the teacher teaching the students what I saw. “Even though it was night time, the sun was still shining brightly- I don’t think it sets.”

“Wait a minute.” Jinu stared at the roof tiles for a moment. 

Aejeong also caught up with Jinu’s confusion. “A land above the clouds… are you talking about Jeong-won?” 

I pointed at them, holding my gat in surprise. “Yes! I went to Jeong-won- golden gates as far as I could see- it never ended. I saw a g- uh, I saw someone there too!” Why did I hesitate?

Silence. Then Sinbi’s voice pierced soft and curious: “What’s Jeong‑won?”

“It’s... the gods’ realm,” Jinu supplied, as though quoting sacred text. “ust like how we have one for the land of demons and devils, it’s one for gods and angels. Their version of Gwi-ma is the God of the Universe, Vishnu. Except he’s nice and oversees the world with his companions” Jinu paused as he glanced at Sinbi, half amused. “Didn’t you do your homework?”

Sinbi just shrugged “I don’t need to.”

That’s right. The entire group and I guessed that Sinbi’s past life was a dog or some canine. It makes sense. The huge fangs encasing his mouth, the overgrown hair past his face- his tendency to eat meat. I remember the first time we met Sinbi too-

But that’s for another time, let’s focus on the subject in hand. 

I gave him a sideways grin. “I didn’t know what Jeong-won is either, but memories went bye bye so…” I shrugged. 

“That explains why you say you were gone for less than an hour, but in reality it was a day.” Agi touched his chin as he thought. “I want to go to this place.” 

“You’re such a gatekeeper.” Aejeong reached over and moved my hat to cover my eyes annoyingly. “Show us this mythical place!”

I shake my head, “I don’t think I should. We are ugly dots in that place. Everything is perfect there but we’re just…” I look at my peers. The gray skin, the long robes, shady gats, and faces that scare humans. I see their faces change from hurt to offended. 

“What’s going on with you? Eh? Who do you think you are?” Aejeong poked harshly at my temple and pulled my ear. 

“Ah-! Get away you monkey!” I swat him away. 

“We are demons.” He continued. “You are proud of that. So what if that place isn’t for us? Is there harm in exploring?” 

I swallowed my insecurity, snapped back to my senses. Aejeong’s right. I’m not acting like myself. 

But it’s because I don’t want them to see… her. 

Especially Aejeong. I know he’s going to do something with her. 

I scoff, disgusted with how soft I was acting. “You’re right. Okay let’s go.”

Jinu’s face hardened. “We can’t. Time will go by too fast- we'll miss our quota.” 

It was a simple truth, but my heart clenched. In Jeong‑won, I had touched something real—something ethereal, something mine—and I wanted to go back. Dusk deepened around us, and whatever I chose now would shape all that followed.

The group exhaled collectively, a sigh stitched with impatience, weariness, and that particular flavor of dramatics reserved for conspirators and lounge singers. Somewhere outside, a cicada whined like a forgotten music box.

It was Aejeong who broke the silence, not with a sound but with a look — a glint in his eye that sparkled like gin under chandelier light. Mischief, ancient and unrepentant, flickered in his gaze as he turned toward me.

What, in Gwi-ma’s precariously balanced name, is this bastard plotting?

He leaned back in his midair lounge like a man who had just placed his final bet. “For us to break our side of the compromise,” he began, voice smooth as whiskey on tired nerves, “we need Gwi-ma to break his part first.”

And in that moment, I saw the devil dancing in his smile. The plan unfolded in my mind, a bouquet of poor judgment and brilliance in equal measure.

“So we do something stupid,” I murmured, finishing Aejeong’s thought. 

Agi, tuned into our wavelength like a radio that only caught bad ideas, grinned. “And we attract attention to ourselves.”

We all collectively looked at Jinu with ridiculously maniacal- but silly- smiles. 

Jinu, who moments earlier had been sulking with the theatricality of a French poet in exile, cracked a smile. “You guys are such clowns. Smart clowns- I’ll give you that. But still clowns.” 

Sinbi, ever the realist — a pillar of deadpan composure in our temple of chaos — didn’t look up from his polished claws. “What exactly are we doing that’s both stupid and attention-seeking?” His voice was flat, the verbal equivalent of a raised eyebrow.

Then Agi stood up with the energy of someone who had just remembered they left the stove on — practically levitating with excitement. “Oh! Oh! I know- we sing!”

There was a silence so absolute it might’ve belonged in a museum. Sing? Even though we all can sing, we have never sung together, all five of us.  It felt like proposing synchronized swimming in the middle of a chess match.

“How,” Jinu asked, voicing what we were all thinking, “does that make Gwi-ma infiltrate our bodies? Unless he’s allergic to harmony.” He smiled dryly. 

I tried to answer, but the plan was like smoke — there, then gone. My mind spiraled through a catalogue of everything Gwi-ma despised: betrayal, Demon Hunters, irony. Then it hit me.

“We could…” I began, before trailing off into the glamorous, dangerous ether of possibility. Slowly, I unfurled the idea — like a silk scarf that just might conceal a dagger.

When I finished, the silence was instantaneous and theatrical.

“What!?” they gasped, as one. A chorus of disbelief, like a synchronized panic attack.

“Think about it,” I urged. “If we make it look like we’re committing treason — real cloak-and-dagger stuff, with stage lighting and everything — Gwi-ma won’t be able to resist. He’ll jump at the bait, try to possess one of us to control the betrayal. But the second he does, we expose him. He broke the terms, not us. Then we demand more time.”

A moment passed. Then another. The air quivered.

“It’ll work,” Jinu admitted at last, reluctantly rising from his armchair like a man headed to his own duel. “But we’ll have to be careful. One wrong note and we’re dead. Or worse — voices gone.”

Aejeong rolled his eyes. “He needs to get his priorities straight.” He elbowed me after I stifled a laugh. 

“Agi,” I said, turning to our unpredictable firecracker, “Why don’t you choreograph? You brought it up earlier.”

He saluted with all the dignity of a man holding a rubber chicken.

“God help us all,” Jinu murmured as he massaged his temples. 

And thus, the plan was born — half-mad, wholly theatrical, and just possibly brilliant. Like all our finest disasters.

Chapter Text

I had a dream.  

The kind that arrives not with a whisper but with a velvet curtain dropping suddenly over consciousness.

It began in a room without edges. The air hung heavy, like the final note of a jazz solo in an empty club, and the walls- if they existed- were swallowed whole by an impossible darkness, as if ink itself had thickened and risen like fog. There was no moonlight. Not even the soft flicker of my own purple markings, which normally lit my skin with a dim, bioluminescent glamour managed to illuminate the areas close to me.

All had been devoured by the same tar-like black. It was the sort of dark that refused to be named, or noticed, or looked into too long.

But I wasn’t afraid. I’m a demon after all. 

Realizing I was hovering, I let my bare feet touch the cold bare floor.  A cool shock rippling through my body at contact.

Then, as dreams do, it shifted.

Somewhere far off: a laugh. Sharpened, muffled, like silverware clinking in another room. I turned instinctively.

“Jinu?” I called into the abyss. My voice didn’t echo. It was swallowed immediately, like everything else.

I stepped forward. The sound grew louder- not nearer, just louder, as if proximity had become unmoored from the laws of space. And then- hands. A sudden, visceral grip against my body, yanking — heat flaring like a match against the nape of my neck. I turned swiftly, ready to strike, only to find... nothing. No assailant. Only the slow, deliberate red glow seeping into the edges of my hanbok, painting its silhouette in infernal hues. Heat grew on my back.

No.

The heat wasn’t just light. It was presence.

I turned again, slower this time, as if afraid that to turn too quickly would cause the world to vanish entirely.

“Gwi-ma.” The name clung to the air like perfume and dread. My body, usually so composed, took an instinctive step back- recoiling in a way that made me feel both deeply ancient and terribly young. My throat burned with a panic I hadn’t felt in centuries.

But... something was wrong.

This wasn’t him- not really. Gwi-ma, yes, but not in the way one sees a man across a room and knows him. This was a mirage. A mask. The dream’s idea of Gwi-ma — which, somehow, was worse.

I blinked once. And something- someone- new came up. 

She was there.

The goddess. The one from earlier. Hey body poised midair like a statue. The hand she had touched me with- that strange, wretched touch- now itched with such intensity I very nearly bit the skin from my own palm, wanting to rip that whole hand off. She hovered before me, glowing and grotesque in a way only beauty can be when it teeters on the edge of tragedy.

“You—” I began, but I blinked again, and now she became different.

Now bound.

Tied with a single cord, elegant and cruel, her arms hoisted above her head like some sacrificial ornament. Her eyes blindfolded in gauze that looked torn from silk bedsheets. Wet tears dampening the cloth. Her hair, once divine, now loose and tangled as if pulled by ghosts- by demons. Her dress, torn short that it left her soft legs exposed and bare. Once reformed and godlike demeanor now embarrassingly reduced to a sacrifice.

Beneath her, Gwi-ma’s fire licked eagerly at the air, threatening to bloom. The flames grew slowly, first swallowing her feet. 

Her crown, which once floated proudly upon her head, melted slowly in the heat, droplets of gold trailing down her temple and cheeks like tears she could no longer afford to cry. The molten metal kissed her skin as it fell, coloring her clavicles and sternum. They burned her perfect skin like wax as they dried. 

I reached for her.

Not to save her. No.

I didn’t want to help her. Not when she looked so-

So delicious.

My clawed fingers, more an extension of hunger than flesh, traced her neck. She flinched, exquisitely, not knowing I was there- the blindfold protecting her from the knowledge of what touched her. My lips twisted into something unholy and satisfied. A smile? A sneer?

And then, the same hand that held her once moved again, this time not in welcome, but in violation. It pierced her skin, shimmering and sacred, like ruining a masterpiece with a signature. Her blood, glimmering against Gwi-ma’s fire, ran down her shoulder and down her breasts like rubies in warm champagne.

So delicious.

The smell of her blood only enhanced my hunger, pulling me closer and closer to her until I stayed inches away. Gwi-ma’s fire now consuming me too- but I felt nothing. 

The same hand the pierced her skin grabbed her face with gentle force. Irresistible. 

And then- suddenly, violently- some deep, aching hunger stirred in me, not like the crashing arrival of a long-forgotten song that once meant everything, but rather the predatory.-like urge to rip her and gouge out her heart so I can savor every moment of her. It rose unbidden, a tide against the ribs, and without thinking-no, without choosing- I pulled her into me like I had been starved my whole life and she was my sustenance.

Her lips met mine with a ferocity, as if they'd been waiting in silence their whole lives for this singular contact, and now that it had arrived, they trembled with too much feeling to hold back. She whimpered—a small, stifled sound laced with fear, like a secret slipping through a crack in the universe—and I felt the quake of it in my bones, my skin ignited on fire and I found it difficult to stop piercing my nails into her.

There was something sacred in the chaos of it. Her breath hitched against my cheek, a fragile warmth, sweet and sharp, and for a fleeting instant I tasted not just her mouth but her existence—the hopes, the fears, the unbearable beauty of being wanted back. The kiss wasn’t neat, nor practiced. It was alive. Wild. Hungry. Her lips trembling with heat and the soft tremor of fear, and mine—starved, greedy, grateful—meeting hers again and again like we had hours, when we only had heartbeats.

I pulled back slightly, repositioning my hand across her throat — and she gasped. Her larynx caught against my grip, her breath stalling as if daring me to do it again. To press. To destroy.

Then—

“Abby,” she spoke. But not with the same voice. 

This one was manlier. 

Uglier. 

I groaned. 

I opened my eyes with pure irritation and annoyance. My surroundings returned to me in layers: dust thick enough to be historical, wooden beams that creaked like they had secrets, and the soft hush of nocturnal silence occasionally disturbed by the soft, drowsy snore of Jinu two cots over.

The room, if one could call it that without sarcasm, was the temporary sanctuary Jinu had found for us — a tired, creaking farmhouse with moth-eaten curtains and a backstory I didn’t want to investigate. It was the kind of place where ghosts wouldn’t even bother haunting you unless you asked nicely.

To my right, Sinbi was shaking me lightly. His overgrown teeth caught the moonlight like cutlery at an eerie banquet. “Abby.” He repeated.

“Yes?” I groaned, pressing my hands to my face like a mourner. I missed that dream already… I loved that dream.

“I don’t feel well,” Sinbi whispered, nudging me again with the fragility of a porcelain confession. “Take me out. I’m too scared to go by myself.”

“What?” I blinked at him, still half-asleep, glancing toward the other side of the room where Agi-  his usual friend and partner in midnight theatrics-  was conspicuously absent. “O…kay,” I relented, brushing off the folds of sleep like ash. “We can go.”

I rose quietly, careful not to wake Aejeong or Jinu, and phased through the wooden wall as easily as a breath slipping through cracked lips. The house, like everything we touched, wasn’t ours — just a temporary indulgence. A borrowed body, like so many others.

Last night, after our plan was etched in whispers and ambition, Jinu decided we needed to vanish to avoid attracting attention. He scouted us farther from the city’s glow, past the radar of Demon Hunters and suspicious eyes. We found a village with just the right kind of emptiness. Five souls. One for each of us. It had all the eerie symmetry of a fable.

And we fed.

Gluttonously, recklessly. We were demons, after all - half-sins in borrowed clothing. Even Aejeong, ever-proud and delicately vain, had collapsed into sleep with the grace of a drunk nobleman, one sleeve trailing over his cot like a fallen curtain.

Now, outside, the sky was beginning to change.

The horizon flirted with dawn- a pale ribbon of yellow unspooling in the east and fading upward into a dreamy, smoke-washed blue. Dusk’s twin, but with gentler hands. In front of me lay an expanse of field, wet with dew and stillness. Sinbi jogged ahead, barefoot, boyish. He’d taken off his gat and hanbok and folded them neatly on the porch, his usual elegance preserved even in disarray.

His blue-gray hair, always a little too long, danced in front of his eyes as he moved. And in that instant- that single, golden breath of time- I was hit with déjà vu so strong it rattled the air around me.

The first time I met Sinbi had been pure accident, as so many things are when fate has a cruel sense of humor.

In Ji-ok, far from Gwi-ma’s Temple- from his scorching gaze and omniscient scorn- the landscape begins to change. You pass a threshold where rot becomes routine. There, among the ashes, infrastructure stubbornly clings to existence. Buildings with bowed roofs. Lanterns hung with no festival to bless them. There’s a market — eternal and moody — where demons hawk goods and curses alike, where even damnation finds time to shop.

That day, Aejeong had fallen violently ill. Hallucinatory sick. He claimed, with believable hysteria, that Gwi-ma was turning his stomach inside out for the joke he made the day before- something about tossing lesser demons into the Gwi-ma’s fire like kindling. Divine wrath, it turned out, was less metaphorical than we’d hoped.

Jinu, always the reluctant caretaker, had decided that maybe something in the market, an herb, a tincture, an old wife’s tale wrapped in cloth, might dull the divine nausea. I had meant to stay with Aejeong. Really.

But Aejeong did not appreciate waking up to a demon chicken in his bed…

He hurled a pitchfork at me, which missed me by a poetic margin, and I took the hint. I went to find Jinu instead, tail metaphorically between my legs.

I arrived just in time to see him in what could only be described as a negotiation turned blood feud. He stood rigid at a stall draped in moth-bitten velvet, his expression the kind he usually reserved for ancient enemies and poorly sung music.

“What’s going on?” I asked, laying a casual hand on his shoulder, more out of curiosity than concern.

“He’s not selling me anything,” Jinu growled through gritted teeth, flashing the merchant a look that could have soured milk. “Because I don’t have anything to barter with.”

The merchant raised an unimpressed brow. Jinu sneered. “But what is there to barter with,” he hissed, “when we don’t have anything to trade?”

I pursed my lips with the performative calm of someone who wanted to rip a stall to pieces but instead opted for diplomacy. The stall owner — a scrawny red demon with two horns like thumbtacks jammed into his skull — blinked at me through slitted eyes. His hair was an accidental creation, the kind you get by cutting it yourself at midnight. One tusk jutted out from under his lip, giving him the distinct look of someone who chewed on cutlery for sport.

“Well,” I said sweetly, “why don’t we sing for you?”

Jinu snapped his head toward me, eyes wide. The look he gave hinted that this was about my past life. What part of my past life he knew that I didn’t remember.

“Singing’s a form of entertainment,” I continued, turning to the demon. “That’s got to be worth something in a place like this.”

The stall owner squinted at us, unimpressed. “How do I know you two aren’t complete crap?” he rasped, his voice sounding like rusted iron being filed down with a butter knife.

I gave him my most charming smirk, the kind I usually reserved for bad ideas and worse company. “Well, you’ll just have to find out. But we want the medicine first.”

I held out my hand with the ceremonial gravity of a queen bestowing mercy. He scoffed.

“Do you know how many hoops I jumped through to get this?” he sneered, holding up a crumpled cloth pouch as if it were spun gold. “If I’m giving up the goods, I want a song.”

There was a beat of silence.

“My favorite song,” he added with a grin that made me wish I could legally snap a tusk.

Jinu stepped forward, suddenly calm, too calm.. the kind of calm that meant he was about to sell both our souls to the wrong bidder just to get out of this conversation. “That’s fine,” he said. “What song?”

The demon smiled like a man who just found out his enemies had inherited debt. “It’s a Minyo.”

My face cracked slightly. Minyo. Of course it was Minyo. A traditional folk pattern so intricate it needed at least three voices to function — harmonies, syncopation, the works.

I turned sharply. “Minyo?” I said, voice laced with disbelief and an undertone of "I swear I will end that bastard.”

Jinu was already sighing. “There’s no way Aejeong can sing in his condition. He’d sound like a dying animal trapped in a gong.”

That left the two of us. One man down.

“But,” I said, turning to the stall owner, “how do you expect us to perform that with just two?”

The demon shrugged, unbothered. “Figure it out. You’ve got an hour. After that, I sell it to someone else.”

He flashed a smile so toothy it looked like a warning sign.

I turned to Jinu. “Should we ask another stall for medicine?”

He let out a sound that could only be described as despair choking on sarcasm. “Already tried. No one else has any healing supplies. We’re stuck with this idiot.”

He started pacing, then stopped abruptly, his gaze fixed somewhere in the crowd.

“What?” I whispered.

“You didn’t hear that?”

“Hear what?” I frowned, scanning the crowd. All I could hear was the familiar murmur of demons haggling, arguing, and existing in their usual exhausting glory.

“Humming,” Jinu said, then pushed past me like a man possessed.

We wound our way through the crowded stalls and turned a corner to find… him.

Sitting on the ground, leaning against a crooked wooden post, was a demon- our age, maybe, but impossible to place. He wore the same style hanbok and gat we did, but far less neatly. It was the kind of outfit that suggested either careless rebellion or complete aesthetic mastery. His hair, a soft, blue-gray tumble, draped across his face in waves. From beneath it peeked a set of elegantly carved canines, white and too prominent, as if smiling even when he wasn’t.

Jinu stepped forward and opened his mouth — a diplomatic gesture. “Excuse me—”

The demon barked.

Jinu leapt back a full step. I stared, blinking.

Yes. Barked. What the hell?

“What the hell—”

We glanced at each other as if trying to confirm whether this was really happening or whether the market haze had finally gotten to us.

I leaned toward Jinu. “This guy is definitely crazy. Maybe we should leav-”

“S-Sorry!” the demon suddenly said, cutting in. His voice was soft and breathy, like someone who hadn’t spoken in weeks. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Silence.

“He speaks,” Jinu muttered, as if narrating a miracle.

The demon scrambled to his feet, dropping a book in the process. He held out a clawed hand awkwardly, like someone trying to remember how greetings worked.

“I-It’s a habit I have,” he offered, shrugging nervously.

I shook his hand, slow and cautious, trying to glimpse his eyes through the veil of hair. Jinu followed suit, visibly confused but too polite to bolt.

We stood there in a frozen triangle of silence, none of us quite knowing what to say next. Finally, Jinu cleared his throat. “I heard you humming. Do you… do you have a voice?”

The demon nodded.

I grinned and slung an arm around his shoulders with the warm force of someone about to make a questionable offer. “Perfect! Do you know Minyo? Sing with us. We’ll pay you.”

Jinu’s eyes shot daggers. “With what, exactly?” he hissed.

I turned back to our new mystery companion. “We’ll pay you with… a good time?”

Another pause. Our trio, by now, had the social rhythm of a broken metronome. The blue-gray demon said nothing — not even a nod. But he didn’t pull away, either.

Then, silently, he slipped out of my grasp and walked toward a porch, where he picked up a biwa.

I took that as a yes.

“Lead the way, Jinu,” I said, hoping the tremor in my voice wasn’t audible.

And so we returned to the vendor — a mismatched trio, not even sure if our third member could sing. Panic simmered in my stomach, hot and aimless. I tried to explain the song to him, speaking low and fast, watching for signs of comprehension. He nodded once. Just once.

And for reasons I couldn’t explain, I felt like that was enough.

“We’re back,” Jinu announced to the stall owner, voice dipped in the kind of contempt only someone morally bankrupt but temporarily dependent can muster. He tossed the words like coins into a wishing well he didn’t believe in.

The vendor, still oozing smugness like sap from a cursed tree, clapped his claws together. “Good. Now sing the song I requested.”

The three of us sat cross-legged on the ground. Jinu first, then me, and finally our newest acquisition, the Blue-Gray haired Demon. The moment had the languid tension of a dinner party right before someone spills red wine on a white tablecloth. Somewhere in the crawlspace of my brain, a memory scratched gently- déjà vu, or perhaps something deeper. A loop from another life.

Then, the demon struck the first note on his biwa.

It was delicate, eerie, like a secret being whispered in a cathedral. The sound rippled outward, caught by the oily air of the market. Within moments, demons emerged from every corner, forming a wide circle around us. The curious, the bored, the desperate — all drawn by the uncanny spell of three demons preparing to sing Minyo in the middle of the cursed bazaar like idiots.

Jinu inhaled, his voice slipping out like velvet soaked in smoke. It was ridiculous how good he sounded. Smooth. Deep. Authoritative. No matter how many times I hear him sing, it’s a new experience every time. He glanced sideways, subtle but sharp, a nudge without words.

Right. My turn.

I drew breath, then sang — harmony stitched like silk to his melody. The response was immediate and dramatic. A collective gasp from the crowd, not mockery, not disdain, but awe. It shimmered in the air like perfume. We’d stunned them.

Jinu and I continued, our voices wrapping around each other, climbing and coiling like vines up a decaying palace. And then, on cue, the Blue-Gray Demon joined us- a low, rhythmic hum beneath the melody. A base. A heartbeat. It wasn’t just functional; it was transcendent.

Jinu and I exchanged startled glances, but mine lingered. Because in that moment, I saw something rare- something flickering beneath the habitual smirk and sarcasm.

Jinu was enjoying himself.

The vendor, previously all tooth and swagger, was now sobbing — sobbing — as if we’d peeled the cruelty out of his chest for three minutes and replaced it with sentiment. The crowd murmured and swooned, their cold-blooded hearts briefly thawed by melody.

As the song wound down, trailing into silence, the merchant hurled the pouch of medicine at us like a bouquet at a funeral — but with it came trinkets, coins, and a strange, reverent hush.

“It was beautiful,” he rasped, tears glistening in the corner of his eye. “Come sing here anytime. You’ll never pay again.”

Jinu held up the pouch triumphantly. “Okay, now let’s go—”

But before he could finish, the applause resumed. This time slow, deliberate, approaching from the left.

A figure appeared. Our uniform. But the hair? Long. Pink. Disastrously healthy.

I felt my soul leave my body. “You have got to be kidding me.”

Aejeong strolled into view, grinning as if he’d just won a beauty pageant. “I can’t believe you sang a whole song for me!”

“What are you doing here, you ugly giraffe? Aren’t you supposed to be sick out of your mind?!” I snapped, tugging his ear until he howled.

“AHH! Unhand me, you wretched demon!” he yelped, clawing his way to freedom. “Gwi-ma stopped twisting my organs an hour ago, so I came to catch your performance. Right on time!”

He turned to the Blue-Gray Demon, who stood serenely amid our chaos like an aesthetically pleasing paperweight.

Aejeong grew serious — a shift so sudden it startled me. “Your voice. It’s… different. You should come with us.”

Jinu stiffened, voice clipped. “What? We already have a trio.”

I shoved him gently. “Relax, hotshot. Now we’re a quartet.”

I turned to the new demon. “What’s your name?”

He opened his mouth, then hesitated. “I don’t know. My past life doesn’t… make sense. It’s a mystery.”

Aejeong and I made eye contact, which, as always, was dangerous. In perfect, unnecessary synchronization, we snapped our fingers.

“Sinbi—” Aejeong began.

“Why don’t you call yourself Sinbi?” I interrupted. “It suits you. You’re a walking riddle anyway.”

Jinu looked like he’d swallowed his own pride. “Wonderful.”

As if to add punctuation, Aejeong extended a hand toward Sinbi- who promptly barked. Sharp. Canine. Startling.

Aejeong jumped behind me. “DID HE JUST BARK?!”

Jinu and I burst out laughing.

“Sinbi, it’s alright,” I said between giggles. “This is Aejeong. He’s a friend.”

Sinbi, ever silent, turned his head — maybe in acknowledgment, maybe just habit — and slowly took Aejeong’s hand.

“Sorry,” he said. “I tend to do that.”

Aejeong leaned in to whisper. “I think he’s a dog. Reincarnated.”

“That’s insulting,” Jinu snapped. “But… accurate.”

Sinbi, meanwhile, was drumming his claws rhythmically against his chest — the casual indifference of someone used to being odd in every room. We turned to look at him in silence.

He grinned. His teeth were white and sharp and far too charming.

“I like the name Sinbi,” he said. “It fits.”

Looking back, I can’t believe we ignored the signs. Sinbi never quite remembered who he was. Said his past life felt scrambled. He had a family once, he claimed, but he was always a problem child — misunderstood, quiet, too weird for polite company.

He theorized he was mute. Not because he couldn’t speak — but because no one ever listened.

Now the sun was climbing. Dusk had finally retreated. The shadows around us shrank as morning clawed its way into the sky.

“I feel better,” Sinbi said, stretching lazily. “Think it was all the bodies I ate yesterday…”

I hummed. “Where’s Agi?”

“I’m here,” a voice called from behind. Agi materialized with the casual flair of a magician and dropped three lifeless forms at our feet. “I thought Sinbi might want a snack, but maybe not if he’s feeling delicate.”His tone was tired, almost lazy.

The two of them wandered into the house together, shadows melting into shadows.

I watched them go and smiled, because while in the heart of Ji-ok, surrounded by ash and misfits and trauma stitched together with jokes, we’d found something that almost looked like home.

“What’s got you grinning, Punk?” Aejeong slid behind me, arms folded like a judge’s, his frown a private invitation to irritation.

This guy. This bastard.

I clambered onto the roof’s weathered shingles, seating myself at the crest of the house. The valley stretched out before me—soft shadows and silver reflections, and weirdly, a moment of peace. “Nothing,” I lied, placing my face in my hands.

Aejeong followed with the casual grace of someone stepping into a painting, and sat beside me. He watched me for longer than felt polite, like someone reading the plot of your life in your expression. Then he looked away, letting the silence do its slow dance.

I hadn’t even realized how far our ragtag chorus had grown. First Jinu and me, then Aejeong, then Sinbi, and to seal our group, Agi, with his reckless ideas and dreams.

A grin spread across my face. “Hey, Wonsung-i.” I poked Aejeong’s shoulder, seeing his pink hair catch the moonlight.

He scowled. “What?”

“Remember when Agi first crashed our duet?”

His mouth twitched upward—a smile disguised as exasperation. “Yeah, that idiot. It was the first time you and I sang together.” He paused, voice lilting with memory. 

Aejeong’s voice is higher than mine, but that doesn’t mean we don’t compliment our pitches. 

One day he was teaching me a ballad- I later learned from Jinu that it was my favorite ballad in my past life- and out of nowhere another demon popped up next to us. 

His hair was blue and his skin- the one with the least amount of purple tattoos seen on his face. Though, he didn’t wear the same clothes as us, just the idea that he interacted with us first meant that he was different. Not like other Gwi-ma demons. 

“What are you demons doing?” He said flatly. Demanding an answer.

“A greeting would’ve been nice, first.” I scoff, already feeling annoyed by this newcomer. 

The demon threw his hands up in mock offense. “Seriously? We’re demons. Civility’s overrated.” His foot tapped impatience into the rooftop boards.

Aejeong raised a hand. “A bit of courtesy wouldn’t kill us.”

Agi crossed his arms. “Fine,” he sighed theatrically. “Hello. I’m Agi.”

“Abby,” I answered, patting him on the back so hard he nearly lost balance. “And this is Aejeong.”

Agi lifted a brow. “I heard you guys”

Aejeong draped his arm over my shoulder. “So?”

Agi chuckled—a light, amused sound. “I liked your voices. I was humming earlier and thought-”

My grin turned savage. Looking this demon up and down, not only is he the shortest one between the three of us but he’s also the smallest. “You? A singer? You’d run out of breath before the first note.”

He glared, puffing out his chest. “Think I can’t? I’ll prove you wrong.”

Aejeong sighed, eyes drifting to me.

I nudged him. “How about you and Agi sing together?” I grin a sly smile at Aejeong’s negative response. 

Offended, Agi stomped on Aejeong’s foot. The demon yelped and hopped on one leg. “You—!” he snarled, indignation writ large. “Fine! I’ll sing—but you’ll regret it.”

With a smug snap, Agi conjured a mandolin. I touched the polished wood. “I’ve always wanted to learn this instrument.”

Agu took the mandolin in his hand. “I can teach you later.”

He launched into a melody I’d never heard- fast, taut, unapologetic. His voice crackled: a cold rasp that struck like frost on glass. It was mature, too precise, too poised.

I frowned. This wasn’t folk. This was rebellion set to strings.

But then something shifted. Aejeong, a creature allergic to spontaneity, leaned closer, tuning into the words. He responded with that innate dramatic flair of his, matching Agi’s sharp articulation with smooth counter-melody, teasing texture from the haste.

They spiraled together, twin forces: Agi earnest, edgy; Aejeong measured, dramatic. They built the song, chorus rising like dawn’s crescendo.

Silence followed—the kind so sudden you felt it crackle. Then I laughed, genuine and delighted.

“That was stunning,” I managed. “Faster than usual Korean folk fare—but brilliant. And Aejeong? You caught that in two lines flat. Not bad for a man who sings like a warthog.”

He growled like he wanted blood. “Don’t call me that, you bastard.”

I laughed harder. “Touché.”

“Don’t even think about asking me.”The voice arrived like a cold gust through a velvet curtain. Jinu. The ever-dour, the self-proclaimed guardian of reason in our absurd little operetta. He stood there at the edge of the clearing with Sinbi beside him, pale and quiet as an afterthought, the moonlight slicing across his face like a blade of glass.

“Jinu,” I crooned, summoning a smile that could have sold perfume or poison. “Did you hear it? Did you feel it? The way this demon sang? So elegant. So mature. So unique.”

Jinu looked at Agi, who was fiddling nervously with the hem of his sleeve, and then back at me with the kind of expression reserved for particularly bad decisions. “We already have a quartet,” he deadpanned. “No more people.”

“But he’s fun,” Aejeong said, his arms folding in mock protest. “Look at him.”

And we did. Together, like a choreographed act in some vaudevillian farce, Aejeong and I gestured grandly toward Agi, who—caught completely off guard—jerked into a ninety-degree bow so fast he might’ve pulled a muscle.

“Hi!” Agi chirped, cheeks glowing like embers. “I’m Agi. I want to join your group.”

“Our group,” Jinu replied, glancing between all of us like we were foreign currency he hadn’t agreed to accept, “doesn’t do anything. We pull each other’s hair and narrowly avoid being incinerated. That’s it.”

Agi straightened, defiant despite being nearly a head shorter. “Then I want to pull hair too. I’ve been a demon for fifty years. Fifty. And I’ve been tormented by isolation for every minute of it. Everything smells like sulfur and regrets. No music. No companionship. Just me and the hollow ache of time. I want to belong.”

It was earnest. Over the top. Ridiculous. And it worked.

Jinu stared at him for a moment longer than necessary, the way one might study a poorly written contract or an unusually shaped fruit. Then he sighed, heavily, as if each breath he exhaled was stitched with existential responsibility.

“Fine,” he said, pointing a dramatic, accusatory finger at me. “But if you bring in one more stray demon, I will personally evict you from our company.”

I nodded with military precision, immediately glancing over to find Agi already deep in whispered conversation with Sinbi.

Aejeong leaned toward me, his whisper like a secret being poured into a cocktail glass. “Sinbi never barked at him.”

“Hmm?”

“I’ve been watching. They’re weirdly familiar. I think… I think they knew each other in their past life.”

Intriguing. Possibly true. Probably absurd.

As Jinu rejoined us—expression smoothing out like ironed silk. 

Aejeong turned his attention back to business. “He needs our clothes,” he declared with the gravity of a general. “We’re a unit now. We gotta match.”

“Easy fix,” Jinu said.

He snapped his fingers and, with an audible pop, summoned a trembling demon from the ether—skin pale, eyes wide, as if he had just been personally dismissed by Gwi-ma himself. He wore the exact outfit we did—black hanbok, bead necklace, tall gat—but it sagged from his frame like stage curtains two sizes too large.

“You.” I pointed at the newcomer, then at Agi. “Swap.”

“Gladly,” Agi replied, already halfway out of his old rags. “I’ve hated these clothes foever.”

They traded. The transformation was subtle at first—just new fabric, a straighter line of posture. But the moment Agi placed the gat upon his head and stood before us in full regalia, a hush swept over our gathering like the start of something sacred. Or, at the very least, coordinated.

There was a click. A spark. An unspoken alignment, as though the last note of a long-lost chord had finally been found.

That feeling—whatever it was—didn’t vanish. It settled over us, silky and strange, persisting through decades, through fires and betrayals and laughter and hunger and sleepless nights beneath a starless sky. That feeling clung to us like perfume clings to silk. 

It’s here even now, with Aejeong beside me on the rooftop trading jokes, Sinbi and Agi lounging below like cats in the sun, and Jinu emerging for the first time today, looking like he felt safe.

“Okay, you clowns,” he said, mouth tight but with the corners of his mouth curved up just slightly. “Time to practice our plan.”

Chapter Text

By the time dusk draped its violet veil across the horizon every demon in our group begged for Jinu’s mercy. We became an ensemble that has been driven to our knees, or close enough to taste the dirt of exhaustion.

Rehearsals had stretched on without mercy, like some infernal marathon of breathless voices and bone-snapping choreography.

And for what? 

I had come up with the plan after all. Yet it was Jinu who took the reins with a dictator’s precision. 

I tried to ask him once- during a rare and bitterly short break- but he cut me off so coldly, so decisively, that the air itself seemed to stiffen in response. “If you have time to whine,” he’d said, his voice honed like a blade, “you have time to run the chorus again.”

I mean, at that point, I felt like tearing my vocal cords out and shoving them down his throat.

“Jinu…” Aejeong’s voice came from the dirt, where he lay like a dying soldier on a battlefield of gravel and sweat. He pulled himself toward our merciless leader, arms trembling, pride long abandoned. “Let’s stop. Please.”

Behind him, Agi made a sharp sound of pain—a sound born of overwork, not injury. His back severely arched as if he’d been a hunchback forever. His jaw slack, eyes vacant from too many verses spilled into the dust.

But Jinu remained unmoved, pacing like an officer before a firing line. “We’re not ready. We’re not convincing,” he growled. He kicked Romance’s limp hand off his boot. “This is our only chance. If we mess it up, Gwi-ma won’t just kill us. He’ll peel back our bones and make us dance on them.”

There was more in his voice than threat. Beneath it-tangled between the syllables- was something quieter. Something desperate.

Sinbi collapsed beside a water jug and drank greedily, the jug sloshing with the sounds of surrender. “We can do it, Jinu. We’ve practiced enough. You just… you need to believe in us.”

Aejeong nodded beside me, forcing himself upright. His weight landed squarely on my already-trembling legs, and in an undignified collapse we fell into a tangle of limbs, voices, and aching joints.

“Aejeong, you idiot—” I began, but Jinu’s voice lashed out like a whip.

“This is exactly why I don’t trust any of you! You’re a bunch of clowns, always laughing, never focused.” His eyes seethed. “You think this is a game. A show. But it’s not. You’re all wrong-”

This time Agi stood up- with struggle- and faced Jinu with a gaze stripped of all his usual charm. Now it was cold. Surgical. “No. You’re wrong.” 

A pause choked the air.

“We have rehearsed. We’ve listened to every single neurotic, nit-picking note you made, and we’ve broken ourselves trying to get it right. Do you think we’re not serious? We’ve bled for this.”

He jabbed a finger against Jinu’s chest- not in challenge, but in conviction.

Jinu blinked, startled. Something in his expression crumbled, just for a second. He opened his mouth, but Agi surged forward.

“Before you say anything,” he snapped, “just hear this. I joined this group to not be lonely and to experience time with people like me. I didn’t come to be micromanaged by someone who treats us like a burden.”

Sinbi, crawling out from under our pile, stared with wide-eyed wonder at the eruption. Even Aejeong was struck dumb. It was as if Agi had revealed some buried, burning star.

Even if we’re demons, even if we aren’t supposed to feel,” Agi spat, “we do. I do.”

He staggered. The fire waned. “And right now, I feel tired. Someone get me a soul to eat, or I’ll fall asleep in the damn dirt.”

And like that- like a curtain dropping mid-scene- he walked off, hunched, silent, into the house.

We turned in unison toward Jinu, waiting to see how he’d respond. But his face had become marble again. He wrinkled his nose, let out a long, dismissive tsk, and took to the sky like a storm cloud with a secret.

“You should follow him.” Aejeong’s hand landed softly on my shoulder, his mischief for once absent. 

“You know him best.”

“Me?” I blinked.

“If anyone can get through to him, it’s you.” He paused, smirk returning faintly. “And bring us back a body, yeah? I’m starving.”

With Sinbi slumped across his back like a sack of laundry, he vanished into the house.

I left my gat on the porch and took to the air. The night was still but tense, like a theater just before the overture.

I found him perched on the highest rooftop of the city, silhouetted against the moonlight like something both broken and divine. He didn’t look at me. Didn’t need to.

The silence between us wasn’t empty. It was waiting to be filled.

Suddenly, he turned away from me with a scoff so cold it felt like a blade across silk.

“What, you want to say something now, too?” he snapped, rage coating every syllable.

I leave my hands up as an act of surrender. “Hey,” I began softly, my voice a tentative bridge between us. “ I just came to help you collect bodies. Don’t get mad.”

Jinu’s expression twisted, disgust growing in the silence between us like a spreading stain. Finally he spoke, furious and ragged, as if the words themselves were too heavy to bear.

“Was I really that harsh?” he demanded. “I mean really? To Demons that regenerate in a blink of an eye- to beings that are immortal- I overworked you all?!” Each word sounded like paper slashed by a scythe.

My throat itched with unshed argument.

“If you want honesty,” I said, steadying, “promise you won’t get mad.”

“I’m already angry,” he replied, voice flat—astonishingly serene in its emotional wreckage.

“Uh-huh.” I sighed through my teeth. “It’s not that you pushed us too hard—but that you dictated everything, left us in the dark. No reason why. No explanation.”

“What explanation do you need?” he shot back, eyebrows lowering like storm clouds. “To trick Gwi‑ma, we rehearse.”

“That’s what you’ve been telling yourself,” I said, and smiled, half-wry, half-broken. “But you know that’s not why. You’re hiding something. We all feel it. It drains us. We’ve no reason to keep going but blind obedience.”

He fell silent, the air growing heavier as he absorbed each word. There, in the sinking dusk, he snatched off his gat—the brim catching the last of the dying light—and raked his fingers through his hair, eyes softening.

“For Agi to speak like that… I must’ve really messed up.”

I nodded. “Yeah. I’ve never seen him like that before.”

Jinu looked as if his insides had decayed for a moment.

“And…what did he mean, that I don’t spend time with you all? I do.”

“Listen, Jinu,” I said gently, stepping forward. “We all look up to you—I especially. You know the most out of all of us- it would be me but because I forgot everything my reliability as a leader is.. unreliable. We look up to you, and you know that. We follow you half because we trust—half because we long for you to belong to us. And when we bond… when we dare to laugh… you turn the ship. You steer us somewhere colder.. You understand?”

His eyes widened. Just once. Shame, maybe.

“I… I didn’t…” he stammered, voice small in the evening hush. “It’s just… my past…”

“Hey,” I pressed a hand to his shoulder, firm. “We all have one. But now? You’ve heard us. Now let us in.” My voice softened. “Tell us why.”

He nodded. Shoulders slumping.

“You’re right.” He shook his head as though he’d half-lost it. He drew a shaky breath. “I… messed up. I’ve been messing up.”

“Stop overthinking,” I urged. “We love who you are, Jinu. You just overstepped today- and you’re regretful for that so it shows that you haven’t messed up as badly as what you think.”

For a long moment, we just watched the last traces of daylight slip into night. Finally Jinu straightened, placed his gat back in place with an almost regal care.

“Come on,” he said quietly. “Let’s bring food back to the group.”

“Nice, we’re getting takeout?” I quipped, but my stomach rumbled.

Together, under the moon’s first glow, we descended toward the city to gather souls—like weary soldiers gathering ammunition before dawn.

When we returned, the mood inside had shifted: suspicion edged across every face. Their eyes flicked to Jinu with nervous reverence. But he simply drew a heavy breath and knelt before them with such unexpected humility his posture seemed lit from within.

“I need to apologize,” he began, voice low, all the harder for it. “Today I… I ignored your complaints and pushed my own agenda without explanation. That was wrong. Cruel. I sounded like Gwi‑ma.”

He looked at each of us now- Agi, Aejeong, Sinbi, me- with something open in his gaze.

“In my past life, I was selfish. I turned on people I should’ve protected. I’ve been running from that, trying to suppress those memories that Gwi-ma holds over me as his leash. Ever since I became a demon I’ve been trying to find a way to overthrow Gwi-ma. This was the first opportunity I saw, and during this whole ordeal I… lost sight of you all.”

He paused.

“Please forgive me, Agi.” He turned, voice quivering until it was barely a whisper. “Your words slapped me back to reality. Thank you—and I hope you accept my apology.”

For long moments we held the silence, sunken in the weight of what he said. Then Agi- usually the calm, cool presence- stood up and embraced Jinu in a side-hug of surprising warmth.

“That was… solid,” he said, voice wry. “But next time? Maybe run it by us first. And practice it.”

Jinu broke into an unguarded laugh. “I’m too exhausted to rehearse again today.”

That night while everyone slept soundly, I was left to the tossing and turning of anxiety. Not for the plan we would execute tomorrow, but the idea of meeting her. 

After I had that dream, I’ve felt so sick to my stomach to be with her… to eat her. Tear her flesh slowly, savoring every drop, and keep her skin for comfort. But at the same time- if I kill her then she won’t be able to talk to me with that lustrous voice anymore. 

I had to choose. 

Every time I close my eyes I see her face. Her eyes that glowed against the sunlight and hair that bounced elegantly onto her shoulders. Her lips, coated with a lipstick that complimented her body perfectly and skin that glittered into her surroundings. 

I turn the hand she held, looking systematically from my palm to the back of my hand. Even now if I concentrate hard enough I can feel her hands against mine. 

I groan. This is sick. I feel it from my brain all the way to the pit of my stomach- the crave to have her as my life force only strengthens the more depraved I am from her. 

I’m so tired of this girl. 

“Okay we only have one shot,” Jinu muttered for the dozenth time, his voice coiled tight like the spring of a wound clock seconds before it snaps. “We have to be fast. Convincing. Sly.” His tone broke like sunlight over wine when he added, “Though, we already have half the group that’s naturally like that.” He cast a crooked smile at Aejeong and me, and I gave him a thumbs up.

Our chaos bloomed across the horizon like spilled oil catching fire. Agi, ever the lunatic muse, piggybacked on Sinbi, devouring souls mid-air with a grin that belonged in the paintings of madmen. 

The air pulsed dark with spectral energy, and that’s when they arrived.

First, Ha-rin—cloaked in her usual orange and silver haori that shimmered like cold steel beneath a summer sun. She moved with the precision of a blade long-honed. Then, Seo-yun, draped in navy and red like a dusk-touched flame, her voice already sharpening into battle. And last… Ji-a—dressed in forest green, looking at me with the intent to finish the incomplete business  from the last time we met. 

“You again,” she breathed, and her eyes betrayed a flicker of fear- the kind that tastes like metal in your mouth. That momentary terror awoke something inside me. For a quick second fear flashed before her eyes and I instantly felt my heartbeat quicken, adrenaline rush through my veins getting ready to attack. I could kill her.

But we weren’t here for blood. Not today.

I glanced at Jinu- one nod and the performance began.

Like trained songbirds, the Demon Hunters opened their mouths and the world began to shimmer. 

Their voices, bright and laced with dangerous beauty, soaked the air in melody- the same one from our last encounter. It was a war-cry disguised as a lullaby.

Ji-a lunged. I dodged—graceful, nearly choreographed—and slid beneath her strike like water slipping through fingers. My hand found her waist, my other disarmed her, and I began to sing—her tune, just an octave lower, honeyed and threatening.

She gasped as I spun her into Aejeong’s arms. He twirled her like a lover at a midsummer ball, his voice joining ours, velvet and coaxing.

Confusion painted her expression in broad, helpless strokes.

Agi and Sinbi mirrored us, weaving between attacks and turning defense into dance. Our harmony bolstered theirs, a subtle sabotage masked in harmony. We were strengthening the Honmoon- but only just. Just enough.

The Demon Hunters stumbled in their rhythm, their eyes searching, furious. We were helping them, and that confused them more than any illusion could.

But it wasn’t just them who noticed.

Suddenly, silence. Utter and jarring. My vision tunneled to black. A ringing pierced my ears and—

Flames.

When I came to, I was no longer on Earth. I stood atop Gwi-ma’s temple- a monstrous cathedral of stone and anguish, crowned in living fire. The heavens above Ji-ok rippled with heat and rage.

He had pulled me onto his throne.

Abby.

I panicked. My fingers snapped, a desperate beacon to my brothers. Why me?

The fire turned from red to blue—the color of wrath so deep it bordered divine. It doubled in size, roaring without sound.

What were you—

“You broke your promise,” Jinu’s voice sliced in like a sword drawn from velvet. My breath caught. Relief and fear collided in my chest.

I couldn’t turn to face him. Gwi-ma had seized me, locked my body in an invisible grip, holding me aloft like a sinner before the final blow.

“You promised you wouldn’t infiltrate us while on Earth,” Jinu’s voice rose. Steady. Condemning.

Gwi-ma’s attention shifted. In a blink, Jinu was snatched by invisible force, dragged into the blaze, body limp like a marionette with its strings cut.

All of you! the voice thundered—not through ears but through bones. Treason! Lies.

“That’s not true!” Aejeong cried, stepping forward. “We kept our part of the deal! We sent you souls—they attacked us!”

A laugh—low, ancient, cruel—rumbled from the flame like an avalanche of hate. He grabbed Aejeong next, drawing him skyward, a hiss of pain escaping as his muscles seized.

I am no fool. You strengthened the Honmoon.

“No,” Agi said, flying up, defiant even in agony. “We countered their melody- twisted it. Our song fought theirs. It weakened the bond.”

LIES! The grip tightened. Bones cracked. Blood surged up from my throat, thick and sharp and full of iron. I could feel my ribs splinter inside me, puncturing something soft.

“It’s the truth!” Aejeong gasped, red staining his lips.

“If you’re—” I wheezed, hearing a crack within my chest. “If you’re going to let your wrath devour us, at least know this: you’ll be destroying the most loyal demons you’ve ever created.”

The pain sharpened, folding me inward. I couldn’t scream. Only bleed.

Then—he let go.

We fell like broken angels.

Jinu’s voice- shaking and hoarse- pierced the inferno. “You infiltrated Abby. You broke your side of the deal.”

Gwi-ma said nothing. His silence was more terrifying than his fury.

Sinbi stepped forward, bold despite the burn across his cheek. “A whole month. No quotas. No control. Hands off.”

You want freedom…? Gwi-ma hissed, mocking. It was a trap, the kind we’d fallen for before.

“We ask for a month,” Jinu replied evenly. “You owe us that.”

I was the last to hit the ground—my bones reknitting slowly, aching with the effort of rebirth. Aejeong lifted me, whispering nothing and everything.

You think you survived me, Abby? The voice was now only for me—intimate, malevolent. Know this. No matter what you ask, you will forever be my dog. Trapped between my will and your neverending confinement. 

You live because I allow it. You die when I wish it.

To the others, it was silence. But I heard it in my soul’s marrow.

With the last shreds of control I had, I knelt.

“Thank you, Father,” I said, bile rising with the words. “For granting our request.”

I bit my tongue to keep from spitting at the flame. Fury boiled in every cell.

I blinked.

And we were back. The front porch of our stolen house. The scent of dust and sunset in the air. The sky above us cool and indifferent.

Free.

For now.

“Abby—” Sinbi’s voice cracked through the haze as he fell beside me, his hands already searching, feeling the angles of my broken ribs through torn cloth and skin. “Shit.”

“It’s fine. I’m fine.” I heard my voice as if it belonged to someone else, hollow and echoing across the veranda of some forgotten dream. “I’ll heal.” I was gazing upward at the sky, the way one stares into a cathedral ceiling, waiting for meaning to fall down like stained glass and grace.

Around me, the others rustled in a stunned hush. A strange quiet had fallen upon the house—not silence, but a sort of bruised reverence. None of us had ever seen Gwi-ma like that before—his wrath was always present, yes, but distant, like thunder over water. This was different. This was intimate. 

Viscous. He believed us. Or maybe he wanted us to believe he believed us, to tie us tighter into his invisible leash.

It didn’t matter. What mattered was that in a matter of minutes, I could feel my bones knitting themselves back together, the bruises peeling from my skin like the petals of a wilted flower folding up at dusk. The pain dulled. My breath steadied.

“What did you guys do to the Demon Hunters?” I asked, sitting up, vitality surging back into me like someone had turned on the lights in a long-empty room. All around me, I could see the others were whole again—tired, but healing.

Aejeong gave a half-shrug, brushing dust from his sleeve. “You disappeared. Just vanished. I figured Gwi-ma caught you- so I told the others. The second the hunters stopped attacking us, we followed you.”

Agi moved closer, brushing a phantom fleck of ash from his temple. “Now that we’ve got time,” he said, his voice unusually soft, almost cautious, “Can we go? To Jeong-won?”

The name landed like a pebble dropped into still water.

All eyes fell on me.

“Now?” I asked. “You want to go now—after we just got our asses handed to us by a wrathful fire god?” I dragged a hand through my hair, fingers catching on dried blood and half-healed wounds.

Jinu answered for them. “Tonight,” he said simply. “That’s when you left, isn’t it? If Jeong-won opens at specific times, we should return then. It’s the only way.”

I hesitated, something in me recoiling—not in fear, but in possession. Jeong-won. It wasn’t mine, not really. But I’d found it. It had whispered to me and opened its gates and wrapped its sky around my shoulders. The idea of sharing it with them stirred a territorial ache in my chest. Why do I have to give it away?

Hours passed.

I waited outside alone, letting the night rise like a curtain. The sky softened and darkened, the colors melting into indigo and violet until the stars began to blink into place like scattered pearls. “It was the stars,” I murmured to no one, “that pulled me in.”

As we flew toward the same patch of sky where it had all begun, I searched for the sign. The comet.

“There!” Sinbi shouted suddenly, his eyes shining like he’d swallowed starlight. One long, silver streak tore across the heavens—white as silk, radiant as a lie told too well.

I patted his back and rose into the sky. “I just kept hovering,” I whispered, “until something broke.”

And then it came.

A white beam, blinding, consuming, holy, crashed into me, and the world changed again.

Suddenly we stood in Jeong-won.

It was pastel made tangible, clouds painted with soft gold and pale peach, the sun casting light that had never once burned. Gates stretched endlessly, carved not from metal but from divinity itself, and behind them—structures that seemed to breathe. Towers of spun light. Domes of silence. Homes sculpted from hope. Just like how I remembered it. 

The others stood beside me in stunned awe, their usual snark and slouch replaced with wide eyes and parted lips.

“This place…” Jinu breathed, his voice catching.

“…is beautiful,” Agi finished, his usually sharp eyes reflecting the sky’s softness. For a moment he didn’t look like a demon- he looked like something older. Something waiting to be forgiven.

I stepped back, instinctively. The five of us stood there, an inkblot on a holy canvas. We don’t belong here, I thought. We’re the mistake in the masterpiece. Caterpillars chewing through Eden.

We are pests.

But the thought turned in on itself. Ugly. False. Our laughter, our memories, our love for one another—those things were real. 

The form didn’t undo the soul.

We are blessings.

“You can touch the floor,” I said, walking forward. “It’s safe.”

“What floor—? Ah—!” Aejeong stumbled dramatically, slipping on the soft, cloudlike surface.

I laughed, loud and real, and tugged at his ear. “You’re such a kokkili,learn some grace before you go fixing your hair for the fifteenth time!”

“Touch me again and I’ll feed you punches instead of souls,” he grumbled, brushing invisible dust from his hanbok, though I caught the ghost of a smile.

The others had already moved ahead, inching closer to the gates, as though compelled by something unspoken.

Jealousy flickered in my chest—an ember, nothing more—but I smothered it quickly and caught up. I’d led them here. This, too, is ours.

The gates loomed larger.

Jeong-won awaited.

And for the first time in a long time, freedom didn’t feel like an illusion.

It felt like the beginning of a story worth telling.

Then it happened.

With each step we took toward the gates—gates not built so much as imagined by some celestial architect—more gods began to appear. They gathered like elegant ghosts across the horizon, wrapped in conversation like silk shawls, their voices lilting, effortless. But one by one, like candles extinguished by the wind, they fell quiet when they saw us.

Their eyes were rimmed in gold, unblemished by malice or misunderstanding. They stared, not with disgust, but with the unblinking curiosity of those who have never seen a thing and therefore have no name to hate it.

“They’re not judging us,” Jinu murmured, his voice low and factual, yet edged with something vulnerable. The confirmation rippled in my chest like the echo of a wound.

“Of course not,” I said, lifting my gaze to meet the radiant, hollow stares. “We’re something new. A wrinkle in the tapestry. We haven’t proven to be a threat.”

“We aren’t a threat,” I added, quieter this time, like a question swallowed by wind. “Right?”

Jinu turned to me. His face, normally an atlas of expression, was now unreadable—calm, yes, but distant. “No,” he said at last. “We’re not a threat. Why should we be?”

Before I could answer, Aejeong draped himself over us like an expensive scarf, his arms flung lazily around our necks. “Wait a second,” he said, eyes narrowing with playful hunger. “Didn’t you say you saw someone here? Who?” His gaze swept toward a gathering of female deities, pupils dilating like a man who’d gone too long without feeding.

A knot twisted in my gut—not sickness, but envy. That old, unfamiliar ache that had started infecting me lately. Jealousy.It reached down into the marrow, igniting instincts I didn’t know I had. I scanned the crowd, hoping not to see her—but knowing I wanted nothing else.

“…Just some god,” I lied. “A man, I think. Don’t remember much.” I shrugged, the gesture casual, but something in me shrank from the words like they were bitter herbs.

Now we stood at the opening in the gates and the heart of the divine city lay before us. My heart sat in my throat, pulsing wildly. I felt strange. Inflamed. Something’s happening to me. Jealousy was never something I felt before but now it dictates every sympathetic nerve in my body causing thoughts and bodily reactions that make me want to eat flesh. 

I looked at Sinbi, his face illuminated by the divine glow, smiling like a boy at a fair. “Sinbi,” I whispered.

He turned, still smiling at everything as though each sight was a secret whispered just for him. “Yeah?”

I want to ask him about his flesh addiction. Can you get it even without tasting flesh before?

 But I couldn’t. Not now. “Nothing,” I said, forcing a laugh. “Later.”

And then I saw her.

Just beyond the golden fountain, her body half-turned as though sculpted by a moment. Her. The one I’d seen before and in my dreams. She stood like the personification of some remembered prayer.

Her gown now was not white, but the exact hue of a tropical lagoon—teal-blue, endless and alive, the color of serenity touched by secrets. Silk kissed her skin like adoration. Gold gleamed along her wrists and collarbone, traced the hem of her dress in motifs that danced like constellations.

Her hair, once unbound, was now swept into a loose chignon, soft strands falling with a studied imperfection. Her skin shimmered, yes—but while every god sparkled like marble lit by sun, she shone. Her light wasn’t brightness. It was allure. It was the kind of beauty that noticed itself.

I turned, saw Aejeong already speaking to a different goddess, his laugh casual, his posture open. Something primal stirred in me, dark and sharp as a blade. I wanted to defend her from him. I will kill him if he spoke to her.

Then came the voice.

“Excuse me.”

It rolled over us like thunder muffled by velvet.

We turned to see a god His skin was warm brown, the color of ancient earth. Gold adorned him in garlands and chains, each piece crafted with obsessive precision. His arm- four of them- rested at various angles of peace and power, two of them holding sacred weapons with ease. His hair flowed in white cascades past his waist, and his eyes—blank, glowing slits of alabaster—betrayed no emotion, only eternity.

Power clung to him the way incense clings to silk.

“If I may,” he said, his tone gentle, fatherly. “Who are you five?”

Jinu stepped forward with a practiced smile, but then, the god looked. Not with his eyes, but with something more ancient. He took one step back, his face shifting from serenity to disbelief, then to something almost like grief.

“You…” he whispered. One hand lifted to point at Jinu, then at Aejeong, Sinbi, Agi, and finally me. “You are all… demons?”

A gasp surged through the crowd of divinities like a windstorm through chimes.

His voice remained kind. Not accusatory. Not cruel. Just confused—like he’d read a line in a holy book that should never have been written.

I turned to my goddess. She had been walking closer, casual and unafraid, until her eyes locked with mine. In that moment, her body stilled. The softness of her poise vanished. Her face drained.

She saw me. She remembered me.

And she recoiled.

I smiled—a crooked, malicious thing. The grin of a boy who’d broken something valuable and didn’t feel sorry. She remembered me. Good.

“Yes,” Aejeong said, his voice now iron. “We are.”

“But we don’t mean any threat,” Jinu added quickly, laying a hand on Aejeong’s shoulder, trying to soften the blow.

The god looked down, his many arms adjusting the placement of his weapons like they were ceremonial scepters rather than tools of violence. “Demons… on Jeong-won?” he murmured. “No. I am sorry, young ones. Your souls have been tainted. You cannot stay here.”

“What?” Agi frowned, stepping forward. “But we haven’t done anything here. You can’t deny us the right to exist just because we hunger.”

“I understand, my son,” he said, as gently as a lullaby.

My son.

The words struck me like lightning in a cathedral.

I looked closer. This was not just any god. This was Vishnu, the God of the Universe. The breath between beginning and end. The one who keeps the world spinning with infinite, weary grace.

“Lord Vishnu,” I murmured. He turned to me at the sound of his name, and as his gaze washed over me, he frowned.

“You,” he said, and then gestured toward Sinbi. “You two… are alike. The shadows on your souls are thick, but not eternal. There is something in you—finite darkness, not infinite rot.”

He stepped closer, brows tightening in contemplation. “What was your past life?”

I swallowed. The goddess still looked at me. “I… don’t remember.”

Vishnu stared at me a moment longer, then nodded slowly.

“Lord Vishnu,” Jinu said, adopting the most respectful tone I’ve ever heard him use, “we apologize. We didn’t mean to intrude—”

He raised a hand. “You didn’t intrude. You explored. There’s no crime in curiosity.” He smiled once, and then it vanished like mist. “But you do not belong here. Return to Ji-ok. That is where you must remain.”

Aejeong’s fists clenched. But even his anger, white-hot as it was, began to cool beneath the tranquil radiance Lord Vishnu exhaled. Slowly, reluctantly, we began to descend from that celestial place.

I lingered.

At the last moment—when the clouds began to slip from under my feet—I turned back toward her. The goddess.

“Meet me at three,” I whispered. I held up three fingers. A final signal.

I didn’t wait to see her reaction.

Some things, after all, are sweeter left unanswered.

As I hurried to rejoin the others, the voices of my companions drifted toward me through the gentle hush of clouds. Their tones were brittle, tossed like dice on the velvet of post-rejection silence.

Aejeong’s voice, ever theatrical in his despair, rang out first. “Can you believe they rejected us?” he exclaimed, waving his arms in the air as though to scatter the very idea. “All because we’ve taken a few souls.” He cleared his throat, not quite meeting anyone’s eye. “A few thousand souls, sure—but souls are our literal food. That shouldn’t make us criminals.”

There was a pause, the kind that’s heavy with unspoken agreements.

“We should respect his decision,” Jinu said finally, his voice trimmed with steel, yet softened by reluctant admiration. “Lord Vishnu may have spoken like silk, but make no mistake—if we trespass again, we’ll feel the fire of Gwi-ma twice over. Gods play by rules older than ours. It’s not just pride—it’s order.”

“So what then?” Agi asked, his brow furrowed beneath wind-swept hair. “Do we never return? Is this it? Are we just supposed to forget it ever existed—like a dream that fades the harder you try to remember it?”

Sinbi nodded, eyes unusually solemn beneath his usually impish smile. “I guess so,” he said simply, the clouds parting behind him as though in agreement.

Aejeong let out a frustrated growl and kicked at the cloud beneath his feet, which gave no satisfaction—no resistance, no noise, only a gentle ripple of white. “It’s bull,” he muttered. “We’re demons, for Gwi-ma’s sake. We take, we feed, we haunt the living with elegance and style. If I want to go to—”

“No,” Jinu interrupted, his voice suddenly ice. There was an authority in it that didn’t beg for silence—it commanded it.

“Yes, we are demons,” he said, his voice calmer now but edged. “But we’re refined. Sophisticated in our own... haunting way.” His gaze was distant, fixed somewhere none of us could see. “We respect the gods as they respected us today. Don’t pretend you didn’t notice it—none of them scorned us. Not with their eyes, nor their voices. Not like the humans do, with their spit and prayers and fires. The gods…” He trailed off, then added softly, “They treated us with dignity.”

There was silence after that. A silence that swelled—not empty, but full of all the things no one could say.

The others resumed their conversation, bickering in low voices, still tangled in the memory of rejection and the strange grace of that divine city. But my mind drifted.

I tilted my head back, letting my eyes trace the skies above us. The clouds were layered in hues of lavender and pale gold, as though the heavens themselves mourned the fading of a dream. I ached-viscerally- to see her one more time. The goddess with eyes like sunlit rivers and a voice I hadn’t even heard, yet somehow knew.

She had pierced something in me—something ancient, something fragile. A longing for flesh, and conquest, and even recognition. For the unbearable hope that someone like her might remember someone like me.

So I watched the sky, hoping for a comet. A crack in the clouds. A sign.

But it remained still—beautiful and aloof, just like her.

Chapter Text

I can’t remember anything.

It wasn’t the sweet forgetfulness of sleep, nor the kind that steals in kindly and numbs old wounds. No… this was the kind of forgetting that stalks you from the edges, that rips away meaning and leaves only sensations behind, floating unmoored in the darkness.

Ever since Jeong-wun touched my bones and ingrained in my memory, my nights had become longer. Restless. Too bright. Too vivid.

And now, I was sick.

Not just sick- fevered.

Last night blurred like a watercolor drowned in rain. 

Just flashes: the ghost of Jinu’s palm resting against my forehead. His hand cool, like moonlight slipping across wet tile. 

I think he said something to me. Maybe my name. Maybe a question. But all I could hear was a tide of overlapping voices, rising and crashing over each other like warring choirs, their sharp edges slicing through my skull. The sound made me ache behind my eyes, so sharply that I slipped under again, into sleep or something near to it.

Then came water- I felt it again. Not the scald of sweat but the gentle wetness of a river, touched to my neck and chest. Hands at my collar, fingers pulling the knot of my hanbok. Instinct tugged me upward through the haze and I caught a wrist.

Aejeong.

His face hovered over mine, blurred at the edges like a portrait painted in a rush. I think he smiled- to lighten the mood but concern still painted on his face with acrylics, not watercolor. He whispered something low and clean as glass. "Only trying to help," he said.

Help what, exactly?

I must’ve drifted again because when I opened my eyes next, Sinbi’s arms were behind my shoulders, propping me up like I was something fragile. Agi crouched by my feet, loosening my shoes with careful fingers. His touch, too, felt cold, like wind skimming off a grave marker.

“What are you doing?” I asked, my voice slurring like wine spilled across silk. I wasn’t angry. Just bewildered. 

I couldn’t remember when I had started trembling, but now my teeth chattered behind dry lips, and my skin felt like it no longer belonged to me, as if someone had dressed me in a stranger’s body, one too soft and too tired.

Jinu was suddenly there, his silhouette carved in gold and shadow beside me. He was speaking something long, something urgent, but the words scattered before I could catch them. All I managed to seize was the end, the part he made deliberate:

“You have a fever.”

Fever. A simple word, but it rang through me like a bell: old, ominous, final.

My head tipped back. Sinbi’s hands guided me downward until my spine met the floor. There was the weight of a blanket then , Agi’s doing, I think,  but it may as well have been snow. I shivered violently, the cold so total that it felt spiritual. I shut my eyes, hoping the black behind my lids would be restful.

But even that was too much.

Each second passed like a tolling of some distant bell- my heart laboring with it, heavy and slow like an overworked instrument in a quiet symphony. My breath caught on the rise, on the fall. The world slipped away again.

I don’t remember anything after that.

Suddenly, I jerk awake. 

It was as if I had surfaced from the bottom of a black, ancient sea. A gasp, hoarse and reluctant, ripped itself from my throat, and suddenly the world came pouring back in like floodlight through a crack in stained glass.

The room was steeped in that soft golden hush that only comes at the tail end of a feverish night.

The light filtered in pale and holy through the curtains, dust glinting like falling stars. Everything ached.

To my right, Jinu and Aejeong sat slumped against the peeling wall of the house, sleep having claimed them in uneven postures, their limbs tangled like discarded marionettes. On my left, Agi lay curled delicately on a worn cot, one hand half-submerged in a pail of water still rippling from use. And there- across my legs, like some strange devoted sentinel- Sinbi had fallen asleep, his head resting on me, his body curled inwards like a child in mourning.

When I shifted the faintest inch, Sinbi stirred. His eyes blinked open, startled and soft.
“Abby?” he breathed, as if my name had just been remembered after a long war. “How are you feeling?”

How was I feeling? I was made of smoke and salt and pain.

There was a piercing, surgical kind of ache behind my eyes—like glass wedged just beneath the surface of the skull. My thoughts slipped through me like wet coins in water, uncatchable, heavy with meaning I couldn’t hold. I tried to rise, but even with Sinbi’s hands guiding me like a ghost through a half-faded dream, it felt as though my limbs were made of porcelain about to crack. My back met the wall like a distant ship meeting the shore.

“Horrible,” I whispered. “I… can’t do anything.”

The world around me blurred again. My hearing was muffled, as though I were submerged, and my vision rippled at the edges, with faces distorting before I could read them. Somewhere in the haze, I caught sight of myself, my torso bare, my muscles still defined but unfamiliar. A cruel joke: a body built strong, but rendered utterly useless. Even the act of shivering became theatrical, as if my bones were acting without permission.

“Why—why is everyone like this?” I asked, the words thick, slow, stitched together only by effort.

Sinbi’s hand grazed my neck and withdrew instantly, as if scalded. His eyes widened with alarm.
“You had a fever,” he said. “Still do.”

Fever. That singular word that once meant mothers and cold cloths now meant collapse, confusion, and the slow erosion of self.

The sun was starting to reach across the room like a lover searching for warmth, catching on the purple tattoos that slithered beneath my skin. I felt them glow faintly, like embers under parchment. 

The sunlight...

Suddenly, something inside me surged—half panic, half instinct—and I rose. The movement was clumsy, filled with nausea and dizziness, but I phased through the wall, the world bending momentarily around my motion. I surfaced on the rooftop, gasping.

“Oh… shit.”

The sun struck my skin like a blade, and each drop of sweat felt laced with mercury. My pulse throbbed in my throat, my wrists, my knees. Behind me, I heard Sinbi follow.

“You shouldn’t be moving like that,” he said, already holding out my clothes, neatly folded with concern. “What’s the matter?”

I couldn’t meet his gaze. Panic was blooming in my chest like a flower with too many thorns.

“Sinbi… what time is it?”

He blinked. “Quarter past two? Maybe. I don’t really understand how time works yet.”

That’s close to three. 

I yanked my shirt on, felt it like lead draped across wet bones, and my stomach coiled in on itself. 

Hunger, sharp and strange, bloomed suddenly. Not for food, not for souls.

For her.

“Where are you going?” Sinbi tilted his head, voice clipped with a note of worry. “Are we… going somewhere?”

My throat clenched. I couldn’t tell him I was running headlong into a goddess’s arms like some fevered romantic from a broken myth.

“I’m… hungry,” I lied. “Going to eat.”

“Oh,” Sinbi frowned, looking down toward the camp below. “We brought food. You threw the souls up. Couldn’t even keep it down.”

Something cracked.

“I threw up… souls?”

That had never happened before.

But it had happened to Sinbi, when he crossed a line not meant for demons.

“Did you eat flesh?” Sinbi finally asked. “You’ve been acting weirdly. Even in Jeong-wun you wanted to ask me something but chose not to.”

I gulped, my stomach cramping. I should tell the truth. 

“To be honest… No. I haven’t eaten flesh but lately I’ve been having cravings.” Even saying it cracked something in me. Flashes of her danced behind my eyes, her skin like soft starlight, her mouth painted with divinity. I wanted to claw at the memory, to drink it, to consume the divine until I could no longer distinguish her from myself.

Without even feeling it, I noticed my mouth coat with fresh saliva. Quickly swallowing and clearing my throat I continue. “Can one having cravings without having flesh?”

“I don’t know,” he said slowly, shrugging. “ But I do know that I didn’t crave flesh until after I ate someone.”

The silence sat thick between us.

My mouth filled with saliva again. I swallowed, hard.

“I need to go,” I said at last.

“You shouldn’t go alone,” Sinbi murmured, his voice raw and frightened. “Not like this. Not while you’re…”

“I’m fine,” I lied again, laying a trembling hand on his shoulder. “Tell the others I’ll be back soon.”

And before he could stop me, I vanished into my own red smoke, like a letter half-burned, like a breath lost in wind.

But the teleportation failed.

I fell short. Landed hard, knees sinking into the warm dirt, my entire body soaked with sweat. My vision was haloed, my head pounding.

What’s happening to me?

I had never missed a teleport.

Never felt this weak.

Never wanted someone so much I thought it might unmake me.

It took more effort than I expected—more effort than I had ever known—to make those final teleportations. Each one felt like an exhale stolen from some deeper part of me, a soul-tax I hadn’t realized I was paying until my body began to tremble, hollow with hunger and spent magic.

I landed with a softness that betrayed the chaos inside me. My feet touched the ground as though I were descending into velvet, but within, I was cracked glass and molten want. The hunger gnawed at me, primitive and vivid. I spotted an unsuspecting human nearby. Without hesitation, I reached forward, fingers already pulsing with intent, and drew the soul to my lips.

But the moment it touched me, something snapped. I gagged violently, wrenching away, spitting the soul out as though it were spoiled wine. The taste was wrong. Rotten. Unbearable.

I doubled over, coughing, my hands trembling uncontrollably.

What the fuck?

I collapsed onto the tallest rooftop I could find, my breath growing heavier by the minute. I leaned back against the stone like a dying man in a cathedral, head tilted to the sky, eyes roaming in quiet desperation. The sky itself seemed to pulse with heat and color, blurring in and out of focus. Even the clouds seemed too bright, too vivid—like a painting done in mercury and goldleaf.

What time was it now?

I pressed a hand to my chest. My heart felt too large for its cage, each beat like a fist against the ribs. My breath stuttered. My muscles, once unwavering, now sagged with a weight I couldn’t name. 

Was this Gwi-ma’s punishment? Is he punishing me for going against him?

I shouldn’t have come.

I think I’m going to die.

And then—something strange. A flicker in the sky. A brief dimming, as if the sun had faltered in its ancient duty. A shudder in the horizon. And then… stillness.

I tried to rise, to leave, to run, to disappear. My vision swam. My soul felt like it was bleeding out through my breath.

And that was when I saw her.

She stood there—my goddess—as if summoned not by voice, but by ache. Her silhouette was bathed in sunlight so pure it felt ceremonial. The white dress she wore fluttered in a wind I could not feel, draping around her like seafoam under a full moon. Her hair, still in the elegant chignon from the day before, bore no flaw, no fatigue, no question. She seemed more vision than woman, more starlight than flesh.

For a moment I thought I was hallucinating.

I reached out, dazed, and cupped her cheek, almost expecting my fingers to meet nothing but light and warmthless illusion.

But I touched skin.

Warm, supple, real.

My breath caught. I could feel the divinity beneath her surface, a softness that didn’t belong in this world.

She didn’t flinch. Her hand came up, gentle as a prayer, and removed mine from her cheek with reverence, then held it—formally, not like the first time. Her palm held my fingers delicately.

“Hello,” she said. Her voice was music formed into language. The kind of sound that turns into memory before it ever reaches the ear. Her lips curved slightly, just at one side, and I felt the shift inside me—a familiar ache, a hunger not just of flesh, but of the soul.

She was perfect. But more than that, her lips were perfect. They were not just beautiful—they were unbearable. I wanted to write about them, sing about them, carve them into stone and never let the world forget they existed.

I swallowed back the fever in my throat and steadied my breath, struggling to speak past the iron chains of desire and illness.

“You came,” I rasped, barely able to say it without breaking.

She nodded, her gaze sharp but not unkind. Her eyes searched mine, full of confusion—the same unfathomable emotion I saw in her before.

“Do you want me?” she asked suddenly, her voice echoing in my dizzy mind.

I choked on air. “What?”

“I said—do you want anything?” she repeated- I’m going insane- letting go of my hand. Glitter shimmered down from her touch like stardust against my blackened skin. “You look… different.”

I tried to laugh but it came out like smoke. “I’m just a little tired.”

I needed shade. Or silence. Or escape. But instead I turned to her and murmured, “Come with me.”

We flew, rising slowly above the world below. She followed, her white dress catching the wind like a banner of peace. Around her waist, a golden batten wrapped her figure in a way that felt almost Greek—something ancient, something sacred. I couldn’t stop looking at her.

And then it happened.

It tore through me like a scream—a sharp pain that wrenched my chest into a knot. My heart plummeted to my stomach. My teeth extended without warning, carving into the inside of my cheek. My nails, once dull, grew twice their length, dark and pointed like obsidian thorns.

I wanted to eat her.

Not in lust. Not in metaphor. But truly, physically, in a way that made my bones twitch and my skin hum.

The hunger returned—not just in my belly, but in my being.

I wanted to sink my teeth into her divinity, to devour her beauty so it would never again exist beyond my grasp. I wanted to consume her perfection, to pull her light into the dark of me and make it mine.

And that was when I understood.

The fever wasn’t killing me.

It was transforming me.

She was no longer just a goddess to me.

She was the only thing in all the realms I wanted to possess.

The sun cast its golden glow upon where we landed- a park, I think-  painting the grass a vibrant hue and setting the flowers ablaze with color. We sat, as if ensnared by the seductive allure of the scene, she on the verdant carpet of the earth and I on the cold, unfeeling wood of the bench.

Her presence seemed to breathe life into the landscape, making the grass greener, the flowers more resplendent, and the air thick with the intoxicating perfume of blossoming desire.

"You look so familiar," she murmured, her voice a melody that danced upon the gentle breeze, weaving its way into the very fabric of my being.

"I do?" I responded, my voice a mere whisper- only half listening. This urge to find out how different she can look. What more words can she say. What different sounds she can make overtook my ability to effectively converse.

Her eyes, those pools of liquid gems, seemed to pierce the veil of my soul, laying bare the insatiable hunger that gnawed at my very core. 

"What is your name?" she asked, her voice tinged with curiosity and a hint of amusement.

I looked away, licking my lips. 

“Abby," I replied, my voice barely audible, my heart pounding in my chest like a frenzied drumbeat.

A silence descended upon us, a silence that seemed to stretch on for an eternity, a chasm between us that threatened to swallow us whole.

"Why did you call me, Abby?" she inquired, her voice a tremulous whisper, her eyes searching mine for answers that I could not provide.

My hunger, that insatiable, gnawing hunger, threatened to consume me, to obliterate the fragile thread of sanity that tethered me to reality. I could feel it, the burning desire that clawed at my insides, threatening to devour me from within.

Fuck.

"I just... I felt different when I saw you that first day," I confessed, my voice hoarse with the intensity of my emotions. "And then I saw you again yesterday, and... and I couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to…”touch you, to taste you, to... to know you in a way that transcended the boundaries of time and space. “To be with you.” I summed up, a weak smile plastered across my face.

As I spoke, I could feel the world around me begin to fade away, the colors bleeding together like the brushstrokes of a painting left out in the rain. The only thing that remained was my goddess, her eyes locked with mine, her breath hot upon my face, her heart beating in time with my own.

She cupped my face with both her hands, moving my head in a circular motion. “You’re acting distant. Are you…” She spoke more words but I was too busy trying not to explode from her sudden touch. Her touch was like butter. Smooth and poised. She set a fire in my hunger, partially feeding it- but now I want more. The dizziness progressed.

My mouth salivated, nearly dripping on her skin before I caught it and swallowed thickly. I could only shake my head, my voice lost to the maelstrom of emotions that swirled within me.

 I stand up, moving into a building- a hotel it seemed, since I landed in an empty room. 

“No, something’s wrong. You can tell me.” She stepped in front of me, her hand squarely on her chest. 

Blood flowed hot through my body, unfiltered energy shooting through my skin. I can’t control it. I can’t-

I needed her, needed to feel her body pressed against mine, needed to taste the sweet nectar of her lips upon my own.

I took her hand- gripped it so harshly she yelped in surprise. 

I stood in shock, not realizing my force and I began to soften my hold but instead some unnatural force in myself pulled her to me, my hands rough and insistent, my hunger threatening to consume me. As our lips met, I felt a shiver of pleasure course through my body, a pleasure that was equal parts pain and ecstasy.. 

I could feel her heart beating against my chest, a wild, untamed rhythm that seemed to match my own.

As we kissed, I could feel the world around us begin to crumble, the very fabric of reality unraveling before our eyes. The room, my fever, my senses- all of it seemed to fade away, leaving only her and I, locked in our passionate embrace.

My hands glide down to her hips as I kiss her, fangs piercing her skin and dripping hot blood. The taste of her blood, that sweet, intoxicating ambrosia, seemed to fuel the fire of my desire, to stroke flames of my hunger. 

I could feel it, the insatiable need that gnawed at my very core, threatening to devour me from within.

I pulled away, my breath coming in ragged gasps, my heart pounding in my chest like a frenzied drumbeat. 

She tried to pull away once, but I invaded her mouth with my tongue, lathering the walls of her throat with my saliva, and then- finally- she pushed back. Some force, some reciprocation. 

She let out a heavy cry and I realized my claws had dug into her hips too much. Instantly I let go, taking one hand to her throat and the other to the back of her head. Once releasing her from the kiss I search her expression for a response. 

Did she like it? Hate it? Disgusted by it? 

Her once sharp eyes were glossed over, tears at the verge of falling. Her lip- pathetically bruised, a blemish in her beauty, panted lightly.

Yet somehow… it made her more delightable.

“What’s your name?” My words slur together like my thoughts. 

She looked down at the floor, her eyes catching my physique causing her to blush more. “...Hae. I’m a Sun goddess.” 

Something dull crossed my mind. Quick and fleeting like a drowned lullaby

The next thing I know, I pressed her against the wall, a tumult of raw sensation overwhelming me, my hands gliding with deliberate slowness to unfurl her dress until it pooled at her feet like a cascade of silk in the dim, shadowed room. 

The air hung heavy with the scent of jasmine and something primal, electric, as if the very day itself conspired in our transgression. 

My lips first traced her neck with tender, fleeting kisses, each one a whisper of restraint, but when her softest moan escaped at the brush of my fingers against her breast—a sound like the faintest echo of forbidden symphonies—I bit down on the nape of her neck with a ferocity that thrilled me to my core.

She recoiled with a sharp yelp, her eyes widening in a blend of surprise and that elusive emotion, perhaps fear laced with unwilling desire, her breath quickening in the golden haze of the lamplight that danced across the wallpapered walls. 

I couldn't help but smirk, a dark delight surging through me like champagne bubbles in bloodied veins, my hand trailing possessively down the curve of her hips, drawing her body flush against mine. "Do gods regenerate?" I murmured, my voice a low, intoxicating drawl, heavy with the weight of my yearning.

She averted her gaze, her fingers tentatively exploring the lines of my abs, as if seeking solace in the tangible amid the chaos. "I can regenerate... but it takes time," she replied, her words fragile, almost ethereal. It was enough to fuel my hunger, that insatiable void gnawing at my stomach, uncontrollable. 

Good enough.

Without pause, I descended upon her neck once more, beginning with gentle nips that belied the storm brewing inside me—each peck stoking the fire until I bit deeper, drawing blood that sparkled like starlight on her radiant skin, spilling in chaotic rivulets.

I lapped at it greedily, like a man parched in the desert, the taste igniting a frenzy that blurred the line between ecstasy and madness.

Her body tensed beneath me, a cycle of pain morphing into pleasure and back again, her moans rising like a haunting melody in the opulent chamber, drowning out my own guttural grunts. In that moment, I felt her hand tangle in my hair, a gentle pull that sent shivers of bliss through me. 

I would do anything for you, a confession buried in the depths of my turbulent soul. 

Yet her neck was no longer sufficient; I craved more, the room spinning with shadows and secrets as I lifted her by the thighs, her legs wrapping around me instinctively, and laid her upon the bed, her arms instinctively covering mer breasts.

I scarcely recalled stripping my clothes—the gat and hanbok discarded in the haze—for my world had narrowed to the symphony of taste and touch, her essence consuming me.

 "Now, why would you do that?" I breathed heavily, tearing her arms away and pinning her hands above her head, my thoughts racing ahead of my actions. 

My lips ventured downward, brushing her breasts with quick, reverent kisses, though they were flawless in form and allure; even in my sickens state, a flicker of restraint held me back, fearing the damage I might inflict.

Glancing up, I saw her there, eyes clenched shut, her moans a delicate aria, blood smeared across her skin like an abstract masterpiece, rendering her achingly vulnerable.

My free hand, with claws that seemed extensions of my darkened desires, traced intricate patterns over her torso, the pressure building with my growing impatience until I carved a fresh wound, deep and flowing like a fountain of crimson elixir. She cried out, her body arching in pain, "What are you doing?" 

I tsked, impatience flaring, my grip tightening as I growled, "I'm eating you, didn't you get that?" My tongue followed the trail, savoring every drop until the wound was drained, the experience surpassing even my fevered dreams—no, this was infinitely better, her flavor a revelation that bound me in its thrall.

"You're not going to kill me, are you?" she whimpered, her voice soft as a summer breeze laced with terror, utterly endearing in its fragility. 

"No, my goddess," I replied, kissing her lips stained with blood like vivid lipstick, the taste lingering as a promise. "If I did that, then I couldn't see you again." In that instant, my emotions roiled—a hurricane of possessive adoration and primal hunger. 

I turned back to the gaping wound on her form, a crimson torrent overflowing with each shuddering breath she took, the hot red essence spilling like forbidden wine from a shattered chalice in the flickering glow of the bedside lamp—its light casting elongated shadows that danced across the wallpapered walls, reminiscent of some lavish Long Island estate where secrets festered beneath the veneer of opulence. 

The air was thick with the metallic tang of blood, mingling with the faint perfume of wilted roses from a vase on the nightstand, evoking the faded glamour of a bygone era, where passions burned bright and reckless under the watchful eyes of indifferent gods. 

Yet my gaze inevitably drifted lower, to the growing pool of wet that glistened between her thighs, a discovery that ignited a fresh urge in my soul—a yearning not merely of hunger, but of a deeper, more insidious longing, an emotional vortex that swirled with the ghosts of desires unfulfilled, pulling me into its depths. 

With a deliberate release, I let her hands fall free from my grasp, my own fingers, once claws of primal fury, now softened to a human touch, parting her thighs with the careful precision of a collector unveiling a rare artifact. 

I pressed my lips to the inner curves, each kiss a tender betrayal, igniting in her a chorus of moans that had transformed from the quick, sharp whispers of hidden secrets to long, high, slurred symphonies of abandon, echoing through the room like the distant jazz melodies from a roaring twenties speakeasy, where inhibitions dissolved in the haze of gin and glamour. 

Wonder surged through me, a intoxicating blend of curiosity and ravenous emotion, as I pondered her taste in this uncharted realm, my mind a storm of conflicted adoration and savage appetite, for she was not merely flesh and blood, but a vision of perfection that ensnared my heart even as it fed my darkest cravings.

I dared a small bite upon her thigh, feeling her body tense anew in that vicious cycle of pain yielding to pleasure, her breath hitching like a sob in the night, before she released another cry that pierced the heavy silence. 

My claws retracted fully now, yielding to fingers that traced the opening of her most intimate core, rubbing in slow, even circles that drew from her a involuntary bucking of hips, a silent affirmation that fueled my spiraling ecstasy. 

She was so achingly pretty in this moment. Her form a masterpiece of vulnerability and allure, her eyes half-lidded in the dim light, her skin a canvas of smeared blood and sweat that made me wish to freeze time itself, to linger forever in this illicit paradise where my emotions raged unchecked—a possessive devotion that bordered on madness, echoing the tragic obsessions of those doomed souls I’ve eaten, forever chasing illusions that slipped through their fingers.

Her hands gripped my hair in desperate entreaty, pulling me closer as I kissed the threshold of her essence, then pressed my tongue flat against it, breaching the barrier with a boldness that sent shockwaves through my being. 

"Abby..." she whined, a single word that plunged me into blackness, my vision blurring as if the world had dissolved into the void, leaving only the raw intensity of the moment. 

She tasted of sweet nirvana, a flavor that rivaled yet differed from the ecstasy of her blood—like comparing the decadent cake of a society ball to the hearty meat of a forbidden feast, each supreme in its own realm, her juices flooding my mouth with an unexpected torrent that I lapped at eagerly, my tongue exploring the hidden walls as if charting the contours of a lost continent.

She pulled at my hair with greater urgency, her thighs clenching around my neck in encouragement, a rhythm that matched the uneven rise and fall of her chest, her mouth agape in unrestrained moans that filled the room like a haunting sonata. 

I let out a soft growl, returning with renewed fervor, my tongue twisting and sharpening in rhythmic pulses until she cried out in a high-pitched crescendo, her sweet nectar spilling in a vulgar rush that I devoured like a man starved for salvation.

As I lapped her up, the world gradually reformed around me—sight returning in sharp focus, hearing perfected to catch every faint whisper, my fangs receding as satiety washed over me, leaving me full in body and soul, yet my emotions roiled still, a twisted amalgamation of satisfaction and sorrow.

Tears streamed down her face, mirroring the trails of blood from her neck, torso, and thighs, a sight that twisted my smile into something grotesque, a large, sick grin as I surveyed the toll I had exacted—skin torn, flesh missing like carelessly discarded cheese from a lavish spread, the room now a tableau of exquisite ruin. 

She covered her face weakly, murmuring, "Don’t look at me." 

How odd, I thought, the words striking a chord of irony in my heart, as I drew back to rest beside her, the bed's satin sheets whispering like echoes of forgotten revels. “Don’t look at you? Hae,” I said, the name emerging from my lips as if etched in eternity, “I’ll die if I can’t see you. Don’t do that to me.” 

She stammered, glancing down at her marred form, and I could only respond with a growing smile, dark and possessive, as I gently removed her hand from her face, interlocking our fingers and wondering, in the depths of my turbulent soul, how even her fingers might taste—a final, unspoken yearning in the shadow of our shared chaos. 

She whimpered, drawing the blanket over herself, a feeble barrier against the storm we had unleashed.

By the time I had sated my primal cravings upon her, a tempest of indecision raged in her eyes—whether to flee from me forever, vanishing into Jeong-won forever, or to yield once more to the magnetic pull that bound us, crawling back through the wreckage of our shared excesses as if drawn by some inescapable fate. 

We stumbled together into the shower, the steamy cascade washing away the vivid stains of our indulgence, and oh, how a sharp pang erupted in my chest, as her blood—once a sacred elixir upon her skin—swirled down the drainlike crimson petals from a wilting garden, leaving only the ghost of her warmth against my flesh.

She donned her clothes with a quiet resignation, her once-pure dress now marred in shades of pink, red- and black. From my skin. Her dress became a mocking canvas of our night's debauchery, its fabric clinging to her like the faded glamour of a forgotten flapper's gown in the harsh light of the evening. 

I groaned, baring my teeth in a feral grimace that I hid behind my hands, shielding my eyes from the torment of her nearness. "Hae, you have to go before I eat you,” I uttered, my voice a low rumble laced with desperation, the words tumbling out as if torn from the pages of a confessional diary amid the ruins of a lavish estate.

She flinched, retreating like a startled bird from the storm, her voice a fragile whisper: "What?" Yet her eyes softened as I leaned my head against her palm, feeling the gentle cup of her hand upon my face, a fleeting tenderness that only amplified the chaos within me. 

"Your flesh, your voice, your skin—I crave to devour it all. I starve for you in ways that defy reason," I confessed, the admission raw and unfiltered, my emotions swirling like the mouth of Charybidis. “I can’t help myself.”

Understanding dawned upon her features, but it was veiled in devastation, her gaze a portrait of sorrow that might have graced Bernini’s melancholy sculptures. 

"Abby… I have to go for a bit.” she murmured, her words heavy with the weight of unseen duties, as if she were a spectral figure slipping away from a glittering party into the enveloping night. 

She kissed me swiftly, yet with a love that lingered like the echo of a saxophone's final note, her lips brushing mine in promise. "If you need me, call for me okay? And really mean it or else I won’t come." A cheeky smile played upon her lips, but I averted my eyes, fearing the surge of instinct that might drive me to tear into her once more, my body a vessel of unrestrained impulses.

I nodded shakily, watching as she enveloped me in a brief hug before dissolving into the ether, leaving me alone in the dim, opulent chamber—its walls adorned with ornate tapestries that whispered of bygone extravagances, now shadows in the fading light. 

"I…" I began, the realization of her absence crashing over me like waves upon a forsaken beach, "feel love." The words stumbled forth in a frantic bid for coherence as I tried to search for the right sentence. 

No—don't go. Please stay. But with a single blink, she had vanished to Jeong-won, leaving me to murmur into the dead air, "I miss you," the phrase hanging like a forlorn echo in the empty room.

Moments later, as I prepared to depart, I caught my reflection in the antique mirror, its gilded frame a relic of lavish illusions, and noted the transformations etched upon me—my tattoos glowing with an otherworldly brilliance yet contracted like the shrinking horizons of a dreamer's ambitions, no longer sprawling across my face and legs. My claws had sharpened to lethal points, mirroring my fangs, and my eyes gleamed with a predator's hunger, ever watchful, eternally yearning.

I glided from the room without a backward glance, my thoughts ensnared by fantasies of her flesh, her voice, her eyes, deeming her the epitome of beauty in a world of fleeting splendors.

When I approached them I gave them all a wave, honestly happy to see them. I’m thankful that they took care of me last night even though they had no obligations to do so.

 They asked how I was, satisfied that I looked- and felt- better.

Aejeong's initial annoyance at my unexplained absence melted into a shrug, his voice laced with casual observation. "Wow, I guess some alone time—" he began, but his words halted as his gaze locked upon me, shock etching his features like a sudden crack in a porcelain mask. 

A wave of guilt washed over me then, as if I had been caught.

Suspicion ignited across Aejeong’s face like wildfire through a parched summer field. "Abby," he pressed, his tone thick with accusation, "why do you look and smell like you've had sex?”

Chapter Text

The silence curdled in the air like some ghastly perfume left to rot in a forgotten ballroom, where laughter had long since died and only suspicion remained. 

They all turned to me in unison, their faces alight with the cruel curiosity of spectators at a particularly dismal circus act. I could practically hear the spotlight click on above my head, illuminating me in all my wretched, trembling glory.

I gave a laugh-dry, brittle, and as false as a dime-store diamond. “Aejeong, what are you saying? I think you’re just mixing things up-” I tried to back away with all the poise of a man ducking out of a firing squad.

But fate, as always, was cruelly theatrical. I collided with Sinbi, who spun me around like some deranged tailor, his sharp eyes under his hair sweeping over me as though searching for the price tag.

“Then why,” he said, his voice silk over steel, “did you take your clothes off?”

“My clothes- what?” I sputtered, like a poorly tuned automobile on the verge of collapse. “I didn’t take my clothes off!”

A sharp thwack interrupted my protest; Aejeong had struck my head with the enthusiasm of a frustrated schoolmarm. “Rotten fucking liar,” he hissed. “Your hanbok is inside out.”

I looked down. 

My clothes were inside out. The seams gaped at me, exposed and traitorous. I might as well have worn a confession sign around my neck.

“Listen, I can explain-” I began, but explanation was a dwindling luxury.

The circle closed in on me like hounds around a fox, their faces flickering between disbelief, amusement, and something darkly ravenous.

“You had sex?” Agi questioned, a lazy smile plastered across his face. His finger stabbed toward me with the finality of a courtroom gavel. “You? That face of yours actually seduced a human being?”

I slapped his hand away with all the wounded dignity I could summon. “Okay, no, I did not—”

“Stop lying!” Aejeong wailed, like some tragic heroine on the stage. “We caught you red-handed. I caught you!”

I turned, desperate, to Jinu. His smirk was a lazy, lopsided thing, half-amusement, half-confusion, as though he couldn’t decide whether to laugh at me or pity me.

“Who was it, then?” Jinu asked, voice casual as a blade. “Who did you make love with?”

“Yeah, who??” Aejeong seized my shoulders, shaking me like an old snow globe in search of buried truths.

I growled, swatting his hands away, but Sinbi, ever the scientist, pried open my mouth like I was some cursed artifact. “Look at this—his fangs grew.”

“Mmph—Hey!” I protested, as best as one could with someone’s fingers prying at your jaw. “Leave my mouth alone!”

“And his nails,” Agi announced, lifting my hands as if unveiling some new species. “Why are they glittery?”

Glittery. As if the situation lacked humiliation.

I choked on my own disbelief, looking desperately to Jinu, who offered no help, only that maddening, sphinx-like shake of his head.

“So?” he asked, voice like velvet lined with malice. “What happened, Abby?”

Groaning, I wrenched my hands away, my patience wearing thin as old silk. “Why are you demons always gnawing on my neck? It’s no one.”

But Aejeong’s patience had cracked like thin ice under a drunken dancer. His smile vanished, replaced with the cold gleam of something older, sharper.

“Abby,” he said, voice low, teeth glinting like knives. “Who do you think we are? Fools? Who in Ji-ok is this girl you’re hiding from us?”

The world seemed to fall away. I could hear the frantic thudding of my own heart, or perhaps it was the echo of the question hammering against my skull.

I swallowed, throat dry as ash. “Okay. I did—”

“I KNEW IT!” Aejeong roared, leaping into the air with such force the earth gave a broken crack beneath his feet. “Who is she?!”

“Well maybe if you'd let me finish!” I snapped, teeth clenched so tight they might crack. I exhaled hard, the weight of my secret pressing like lead against my ribs. Should I tell them? Should I really invite them into this fragile little heaven I’d stolen for myself? What if they wanted to meet her?

Jealousy, hot and sharp, gnawed at my chest. The hunger she’d taken from me returned with a vengeance, curling its fingers around my ribs.

“Just some girl,” I muttered, evasive. “It was a fever dream, a passing craze. Nothing real.”

Technically, not a lie.

Agi was unimpressed, arms crossed, voice flat as a spent record. “Yah, I don’t buy he. When has Abby ever done something like this and never told us?”

Jinu stepped forward, gaze sharpening. His voice, quiet but sure, carved through the air. “Abby. Was this girl... a goddess?”

The question hit me like a stone to the chest. I flinched- just enough for them to see it.

And there, in that breathless second, the room seemed to freeze, every face turned toward me, waiting, watching, as if the truth itself had come knocking at the door.

“Ah.” Jinu gave a slow, philosophical nod, his face slipping into the vague neutrality of a man standing at the edge of a moral precipice, considering whether to leap or simply light a cigarette. Across from him, Sinbi’s mouth hung open—an empty cathedral of disbelief—while Agi’s wide, horrified eyes looked as though they’d seen the ghost of decency itself.

“WHAT?!” Aejeong exploded, his voice a cannon shot across the quiet, shattering what little composure the room had left. He jabbed a finger in my direction as if he were some deranged prosecutor unveiling the crime of the century. “You- you fucked a goddess?!”

He spun to Agi and Sinbi for confirmation, arms flailing with the drama of a man denied his inheritance. “He fucked a goddess! He fucked a goddess!”

Then, back to me again, incredulous as ever. “You, Abby, you fucked a goddess?!”

I growled, irritation crackling in my chest like one of Gwi-ma’s cursed fires, burning with the brilliant stupidity of the entire situation. “Yes, you idiot! Yes. I did. Are you satisfied now?”

And with that, I exhaled a sigh so deep it might have carried away my soul with it. What else could I do but tell them? Not the whole story, of course, some truths are meant to be worn like silk beneath armor, never fully revealed. I spoke of the hunger, the cruel, gnawing thing that had driven me to her—though I tastefully omitted the whole... affair part.

“And then what?” Aejeong pressed, like a child poking at a fresh wound.

I shrugged, staring off into the abyss beyond the flickering lantern light. “I don’t know. The hunger—it was fatal. I thought it would kill me. But when I... ate her, it stopped.”

The word ate fell between us like an ill-timed joke at a funeral.

Around me, their faces twisted into a cocktail of horror, intrigue, and something dangerously close to admiration.

At last, Jinu laid a hand on my shoulder, gentle as falling ash. “You love her, don’t you?”

“What kind of bullshit—” Agi cut in, scoffing so loudly the stars might have heard him. “Demons don’t love.”

I love you guys, though, I thought bitterly.

I shook my head, more weary than wise. “I don’t know. None of this makes sense.” I waved my hand in the air, as if dismissing the very gods from whom I’d stolen. “But I don’t want you to meet her.”

“Why not?” Aejeong hissed, sharp as a paper cut.

“Because she’s mine,” I snapped, and something feral glinted in my eyes. “My goddess. My prey. My entertainment. Not yours.”

Aejeong rolled his eyes, lounging in disbelief. “Come on, Abby. What’s the harm? We just want to see her.”

“I mean, it’s not every day you come back looking like... this.” Jinu traced a lazy circle in the air, outlining my disheveled frame as if describing an art exhibit gone horribly wrong. 

I hesitated. Maybe I was being too protective. These clowns were practically my family, after all. The only devils I’d trust with my back turned. Still, the thought of their eyes on her... it made my blood turn cold and hot all at once.

“Okay,” I said finally, my voice thin and reluctant as a dying string.

“But there’s a problem.” Agi tilted his head, voice dry. “She’s in Jeong-wun. We’re forbidden to go there, remember?”

A flicker of concern crossed my face, but before I could speak, Jinu straightened, the glimmer of a reckless idea already burning in his gaze.

“Then we’ll disguise ourselves as gods.” He smiled faintly, like a man daring fate to strike him down. “It’ll work, as long as we don’t attract attention.”

I stared at him as if he’d suggested we rob the sun. “Are you insane? You’re the one who told us never to cross Lord Vishnu.”

Jinu opened his mouth, then closed it again, words evaporating like mist.

“We’ll be fine,” Aejeong said, throwing an arm around both our necks with the easy familiarity of someone dragging his friends to their doom. “Fifteen minutes, tops. What could possibly go wrong?”

The three of them stared at me, faces aglow with terrible expectation. And despite myself, I turned to Jinu, seeking permission like some lost soul craving absolution.

Jinu smiled faintly, dangerous and dazzling. “Let’s go at dusk. We’ll meet your goddess.”

She might not even be there. This whole operation is a gamble on whether she’d even be there, when last she told me she had to leave. But in the space between longing and dread, the thought of seeing her again blazed bright as a meteor burning across a midnight sky.

We waited for the sun to fall—sitting in a loose, lazy circle, our laughter low and wicked, the way only old friends can laugh when they know they’re already damned.

“So, what’s she like anyway?” Aejeong asked, spinning his gat between his fingers with absent-minded grace.

Something sharp and territorial snapped in me. “Aejeong, if you so much as look at her, I’ll rip your throat out and make a necklace from the pieces.”

“Sheesh!” He scrambled up, hands raised, knocking my hat over my eyes in a show of mock surrender. “Why me specifically?”

“Because I know you,” I hissed, fixing my hat with a scowl.

He gave a hum of admission, satisfied in his guilt, and it only fanned the restless hunger in my chest.

And as we watched the final threads of sunlight unravel across the horizon, slipping away like the memory of a better day, I stood.

“Okay,” I said, my voice low and final. “Time to transform.”

“How do gods even look, anyway?” Agi asked, his voice distant, as if already imagining the costume party of eternity.

I closed my eyes, as one does before plunging headlong into foolishness. In the dark of my mind, I summoned them- Hae and Lord Vishnu- draped in impossible beauty, painted in the soft gold of some unreachable dawn. Their skin was a shifting mosaic of pale light, neither mortal nor divine, freckled with glimmering silver or gold as though the stars themselves had leaned down to kiss them in passing. Hae’s skin gleamed with the warm blush of sunlight—her glitter was gold, of course. Of course.

They bore no crude tattoos like ours, no jagged symbols of battles fought and lost. Instead, delicate markings traced their skin, intricate and subtle, like whispers only the cosmos could hear. Gone were the claws and fangs that marked us as creatures of the underworld. And their eyes—oh, their eyes—each rimmed in molten gold, like the halos of forgotten saints, except for Vishnu, whose iris’ were nonexistent. 

And then there were their clothes. Hae’s silks wrapped around her like scented smoke, brushing against her form as if in love with the curve of her shoulders. Vishnu, regal and casual in the same breath, wore a white and gold dhoti, its folds artfully careless, and a silk cloth that curved lazily over his bare chest, resting across his right shoulder as though the universe itself had laid it there.

“Holy shit,” came Aejeong’s eloquent gasp, snapping me from my reverie.

My eyes flew open, and I fixed him with a glare sharp enough to cut glass. “What now?”

But it was Jinu who spoke, his voice mild but edged with something like wonder. He pointed to me, the faintest curl of a smile playing at his lips. “Look at what you’ve done.”

I glanced down—and for a rare, fleeting second, I was stunned into silence.

There I was: no longer demon, but deity. Pale skin that shimmered like moonlit water, glitter woven across my body as though I were some living relic of the heavens. The claws and fangs, my usual calling cards, vanished as though they’d never been. My robes now mirrored Vishnu’s, albeit with some rebellious modifications. A lion sigil, faintly glowing gold, shone softly on my right shoulder, a small rebellion against the otherwise serene façade.

And when I found a mirror, because even false gods crave their reflections, I hardly recognized myself. My face had softened, the sharp lines dulled into something fragile, almost innocent. My eyes, once sharp enough to cut, were now smooth pools of white rimmed in molten gold. My hair, no longer burning red, had faded into a muted flame, softer, lighter.

I smiled, slow and wicked. “Ha. Look at me.”

“I want to go next,” Sinbi announced, stepping forward with the enthusiasm of a schoolboy eyeing his first glass of champagne. “How did you do it?”

I shrugged, as if conjuring divinity were as simple as tying a necktie. “I just… imagined them. Copied the parts I liked.”

Sinbi closed his eyes. For a moment—nothing. And then, as though the world exhaled for him, red dust began to swirl around his form like moths seduced by candlelight. Slowly, piece by piece, he was remade. His hair lightened to a pale lilac, the color of forgotten springtimes, while his tusks withdrew, leaving behind the neat, human teeth of someone who'd never known hunger. His skin, now kissed with silver freckles, mirrored mine in shimmer, though his fashion sense betrayed him. Instead of Indian silks, Sinbi fashioned himself into a Roman deity—something out of an ancient fresco, all draped tunics and effortless arrogance.

He, too, bore the lion mark, glowing faintly against his pale shoulder. Copycat.

“You look good,” I said with a grin, only to turn and- “You fucking bastard.”

There was Aejeong, grinning like the devil at Sunday service, wearing—my face. My hair, my glitter, my exact outfit. A carbon copy so flawless even the gods themselves might have mistaken us for twins.

“IT WAS A JOKE!” Aejeong yelped, vaulting behind Jinu as I stalked toward him, radiating the barely-contained wrath of a thunderstorm in a crystal ballroom. “IT WAS A JOKE, ABBY, PLEASE—”

Before I could throttle him, his face shifted back to his own smug, troublemaking self, though he kept the lighter hair and that lion sigil on his left shoulder, as if claiming some part of my glory for himself.

I huffed, snorting like a bull seeing red silk.

“I don’t like your clothes,” Agi announced, unimpressed. “Too boring.”

He closed his eyes, and in an instant, silver glitter danced across his skin like moonlight skipping across the sea. His hair remained the same disheveled mess, but his eyes- they softened, becoming something heartbreakingly innocent. And yet, he clung stubbornly to his hanbok and gat, a ghost of our former selves lingering in his silhouette.

“That won’t do,” Aejeong said, voice still breathless from narrowly avoiding my wrath. “Just wear a white toga if you hate the rest.”

With a snap of his fingers, Agi’s hanbok faded to white, its folds re-draping into a toga that curved elegantly around his shoulders. He inspected himself with the frown of a man reluctantly impressed. “...It’s alright,” he muttered.

And then, all eyes turned to Jinu.

He sighed, scratching the back of his neck like a weary professor watching his students set fire to the library. “I can’t help but feel this is a terrible idea.”

I stepped forward, unable to hide the ache beneath my bravado. “I want to see her, Jinu.” My voice cracked, embarrassingly raw. I waved it away, as though brushing off a fly. “It’ll be quick. In and out.”

Jinu stared at me, the easy camaraderie gone from his face, replaced by the steady weight of warning. “You’re addicted. Like those demons who burn themselves for a taste of Gwi-ma’s fire. This won’t end well for you.”

I paced, heart thudding like a frantic drumbeat. Of course he was right. He always was. But knowing a truth and accepting it are two different things entirely.

“This is the last time,” I promised, tasting the lie before it even left my lips.

Jinu studied me for a long moment before nodding, slow and heavy.

“What’s with the lion symbol?” he asked at last.

I shrugged, adjusting my newly divine silks. “It’s ‘Saja.’ Means lion. Or darkness, depending on the tongue. I thought it felt... fitting.”

Aejeong laughed, clapping my back so hard I nearly collapsed. “A double meaning! Very clever for a rock.”

I ignored hid tease, focusing on Jinu. 

With a sigh that seemed to shake the heavens themselves, Jinu transformed. Pale skin kissed with iridescent glitter. Eyes like twin suns rimmed in gold. His body gleamed with the ease of perfection—clean, radiant, untouched by the grime of our former selves.

I clicked my tongue, unable to suppress my irritation. “Why do you always look the best out of all of us?”

“Hey.” Agi scowled, crossing his arms. “Just because you’re ugly doesn’t mean we all are. Keep my name out of your mouth.”

Jinu chuckled, soft and distant, like a bell tolling across a moonlit sea.

“You’re all a bunch of clowns,” he said, shaking his head. “How we haven’t died yet, I’ll never know.”

And in that absurd little moment, glittering in borrowed godhood, we laughed. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Aejeong mumbled, the words slipping from his mouth like smoke from a tired jazz singer’s lips, before he launched himself into the sky with the casual recklessness of a man who thought gravity a mere suggestion. “I’ll race you!”

And suddenly we were off, splitting the air like fallen stars desperate to return to the heavens. I bent my knees, an old, forgotten reflex, and sprang into flight, the earth below shrinking into irrelevance.

Ever since Hae fed that terrible hunger, something new stirred in me—a wild, golden flame of strength, dangerous in its novelty. My body felt lighter, faster, filled with a reckless energy that coursed through my veins like champagne bubbles rising to the top of a glass.

With ease—too much ease—I soared past Aejeong, grinning like the devil in borrowed silk. I turned mid-flight, catching his narrowed gaze, and with all the maturity I could muster, flipped him off. “So lame!” I called, my voice trailing behind me like a comet's tail.

But Aejeong, never one to be outdone in the theater of chaos, bared his teeth in a mischievous smile and, in one impossibly fluid motion, grabbed Agi by the collar and hurled him- yes, hurled him- straight at me like some deranged missile.

“Ah—!” Agi barely had time to curse before we collided in midair, our limbs tangled like poorly strung marionettes, crashing gracelessly through the treetops below.

“That idiot!” we shouted in perfect, miserable unison, our voices muffled by leaves and bruised egos as Aejeong zipped by, triumphant as a delinquent angel.

Above us, Sinbi hovered like some patient schoolteacher, waiting for his pupils to untangle themselves from disaster. “Are you guys okay?” he called down, the picture of innocent concern framed against the endless sky.

“Sinbi, what are you doing?” I groaned, brushing leaves from my newly divine silk. “Go catch Aejeong—win for us!”

Without another word, Sinbi nodded and sped away, obedient as ever.

Needless to say, I didn’t win. But, thank Gwi-ma, neither did Aejeong.

Victory, as it turned out, belonged to Jinu, who had—rather unfairly—simply teleported to the finish like a chess player bored of the opening moves.

“You’re a goddamn cheater!” I heard Aejeong bark, gesturing wildly at Jinu, who stood beneath the pearlescent gates of Jeong-won with all the serenity of a man who had just stepped out of a poem.

“No,” Jinu replied coolly, brushing imaginary dust from his shoulder, “I used my brains. If you had any, you would’ve done the same.”

Agi clenched his fists beside me, muttering darkly. “You’re going to pay for that, Aejeong.”

“Hey,” I said, collapsing against Agi’s shoulder with the sigh of a man who had lived through far worse. “You landed on me. You got a cushion, I didn’t.”

Their voices blurred into background noise as my gaze drifted upward—up past the squabbling, past the laughter—to the clouds of Jeong-won that hung overhead like spun sugar and marble, soft and cold, both dream and warning.

And then a streak of white across the sky, a lone comet dashing through the clouds. My heart clenched. We were close now. So close I could feel the air humming against my skin.

A few minutes passed in restless waiting before I cleared my throat. The sound seemed absurdly small beneath the infinite sky. I glanced at my friends and then at the horizon where dreams live and die.

“Right,” Jinu finally said, his voice steady, his smile the kind that makes you wonder whether he’s going to save you or bury you alive. “Let’s go to Jeong-won.”

And in one, perfectly imperfect moment, we rose together. Our bodies hovered against the blinding light, crossing the threshold of the clouds as though they were paper walls torn through by restless hands.

White light swallowed us whole, dazzling, burning, and then—just like that—we were through.

Jeong-won unfolded before us like a memory preserved in ice. The clouds still lay exactly where we’d left them, shadows curling in the same places as though time itself had been paused, waiting for our inevitable return.

It was quiet here. Quiet in the way only heaven can be.

The others drifted ahead toward the great gate, already slipping back into their roles like actors returning to a familiar stage.

“Just point her out when you see her,” Jinu murmured under his breath, offering a casual nod to a passing god who returned the gesture with disarming warmth.

I followed, my steps light but my heart unbearably heavy. I scanned every face we passed, each god wrapped in silk and sunlight, their laughter soft as wind chimes, mentally begging the universe to show me hers.

And then—there, to the left—Aejeong had already peeled away from the group, his silver glittered skin aglow, spinning charm like a spider spins silk. He had found a pink-haired goddess, and his arm, oh so casually, was draped around her waist. She leaned into him as though she had known him for centuries.

I would have strangled him with a smile if I hadn’t heard it— 

“Abby?”

Soft, familiar, the voice that split the sky and silenced my thoughts.

I spun, and there she was—radiant, alive, impossibly real.

“My goddess—” I whispered, and all the noise, all the reckless laughter and games, fell away.

“Abby, what are you doing here?!” she cried, her voice trembling between awe and fury. Her brows knitted, her golden-rimmed eyes—those terrible, beautiful eyes—roamed over me, seeing straight through the silk and glitter I had wrapped around myself like a child playing dress-up in a divine wardrobe.

She cupped my face in her palms, warm and small and heartbreakingly familiar, pulling me down to her eye level, as if proximity could drag me back to reason. “Are you crazy?”

But what is sanity when she is near? What is caution when her touch quiets every fire within me?

I slid my hands to her waist—her delicate waist—and lifted her easily, spinning her in the cold, scented air of Jeong-won. My laughter rose like champagne bubbles, fragile and fleeting.

“Hae, I couldn’t stay away from you.”

And in that moment, I meant it. The weight of punishments past, the snarling threat of gods and demons alike, the torment of my endless hunger—it all melted away in the heat of her nearness. The world had never offered me anything but suffering, and suddenly here was this. This moment of quiet, absurd joy. I wanted only to breathe her air, to fill my starving lungs with her scent until I forgot I’d ever been empty.

But reality was never far behind.

“Abby, this isn’t funny!” she scolded, though her voice softened against my chest, her fingers sliding against my skin beneath the thin silk. “If Lord Vishnu—or anyone else—recognizes you, you’ll be killed.”

I tried to appear unbothered, tried to focus on her, but my foolish eyes drifted. They drifted where they always do, to what I should not see.

The others were watching.

Mouths open in stunned silence, eyes wide with some cocktail of horror and betrayal. And there was Jinu, his face pale as winter light, staring as though he had seen not me, but a ghost—a ghost he once knew, and perhaps once loved.

The sight burned.

I bit down the bitterness and turned back to her, forcing a laugh, careless and false. “Did you... not miss me?”

She sighed, exasperated and fond, as though my question were the most pitiful thing she’d ever heard. Then, without warning, she kissed me, soft and brief. Somewhere behind us, one of my so-called friends gasped like a child spying his parents' secret.

“Of course I missed you,” she murmured against my lips, “but...”

But. There was always a but.

“Come on,” I pleaded, wrapping my arm around her waist like a shield. “Show me your favorite place beyond the gates. Just a little time together.”

She hesitated, her gaze falling to the clouds beneath our feet. The weight of eternity seemed to rest on her shoulders.

And then, at last, she nodded. Hesitantly. “Okay. I’ve been meaning to tell you something anyway.”

I couldn’t help myself. As we walked, I threw a glance over my shoulder to the gaggle of wide-eyed clowns still frozen in place, their disbelief hanging in the air like smoke. I flashed them a thumbs-up, a petty little victory, knowing it would only sharpen their confusion.

She led me on, her voice suddenly distant, serious.

“Abby,” she said, almost hesitant. “Do you... not remember me?”

Her words slid beneath my ribs, sharp and cold.

I turned to her, drinking in the impossible beauty of her golden eyes. Even now, they had the power to choke me with longing, to fill my throat with hunger that no feast could cure.

“What do you mean?” I asked, though part of me feared I already knew.

She gave a soft, almost sorrowful smile. “In your past life. I was your lover.”

The sky spun.

The air tasted thin.

“What?” The word came out strangled.

Never before had I felt the weight of my lost memories so cruelly. My mind clawed through shadows, desperate to find a glimpse, a spark, anything of the man I once was.

But there was nothing.

Gwi-ma had stolen it all—every memory, every dream. He had taken my name and replaced it with this hollow joke of a moniker: Abby. His hound, his plaything.

I pressed trembling hands against my face, fingers digging into my temples as if I could squeeze the truth from my skull.

“When I became a demon,” I confessed quietly, “Gwi-ma took everything from me. My name, my past. I’ve been his dog ever since.”

Shame burned hotter than fire.

How much had I forgotten? First Jinu... now her.

But before the self-pity could drown me, she wrapped her arms around me. Warm, tender, steadying. A light in the fog.

“You know,” she whispered, “there’s an elixir. They say it can lift memory curses.”

I barely had time to absorb this when she turned, her gaze drifting past me—and there, her breath caught.

“Jinu?” she gasped.

And there she went, walking toward him, circling him as if rediscovering a long-lost treasure.

And in that moment, my heart curdled.

Because in her eyes, I saw recognition.

In his eyes, I saw a mix of shock and guilt.

They remembered each other.

“Oh, Jinu…” Her voice broke like porcelain in a careless hand—soft, fragile, impossibly sad. “Not you too... a demon?”

There it was again—that unbearable softness in her tone, reserved for the ghosts of her past. “But you were such a kind man,” she continued, the words slipping from her lips like a remembered prayer, “taking care of your mother and sister—”

And then, as if struck by a sudden cruelty, she reached out to him.

I watched, paralyzed, as her slender hand—my goddess’ hand—dared to touch him.

Jinu recoiled, his usual calm breaking into something brittle and sharp. He slapped her hand away with a force that startled even the wind around us. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he hissed, his voice like broken glass.

Jinu had always hidden the shards of his past beneath silk smiles and quiet sighs. But it wasn’t his refusal that pained me.

It was the fact that she wanted to know.

And suddenly, I could no longer bear the sight of her so close to him. I crossed the space between us in an instant, each step pounding with the dull roar of my jealousy, and gently—perhaps too gently—pulled her back from the group. My hand curled around her waist as if to remind them all who she belonged to.

Or maybe to remind myself.

She blinked up at me, her gold-rimmed eyes still full of some aching pity for Jinu. I hated that pity. I wanted it burned out of her heart, leaving room for nothing but me.

But then she turned to the others, scanning them with a curious, softened gaze, and my heart sank further.

“I’m assuming these are your demon friends from last time?” she asked, her voice no longer fragile but light—too light, like she could laugh away the danger we carried on our shoulders.

Aejeong looked at me, alarm flashing in his ridiculous, grinning face. He pointed to his own eyes hurriedly and mouthed the words I didn’t want to hear.

“Demon eyes.”

Damn it.

Panic crackled through my chest. I threw my hands up to my face, fingers trembling as I willed my eyes to shift, smoothing them into the familiar, deceiving glow of the gods.

“Uh, yes,” I forced a smile, too tight, too brittle. “This is Aejeong, and you’ve met Jinu… then Agi… and finally, Sinbi.”

She gave a polite little wave to them all, a gesture so soft, so infuriatingly kind.

“Hello. It’s so nice to meet you all,” she said, her voice warm like late afternoon sun. And then, like a sudden gust through a house of cards, her smile faltered.

“But I’m sorry to say this—you have to go.”

The words fell like a stone in my stomach.

“But we just got here,” Aejeong whined, his lazy drawl resting like an unwanted arm across Jinu’s shoulder.

And why—why was he talking to her?

Had I not told them explicitly not to?

Did they not see what this was doing to me?

Jealousy rose in me, sharp and hot, curling in my chest like smoke from an old, forgotten fire. Every word Aejeong spoke was a blade to my ribs. Every glance he stole from her was another quiet theft.

And she laughed at him—laughed!—that same silver laugh she always gave me.

My fingers itched to break something.

“You aren’t supposed to be here in the first place,” she chided, a little edge sharpening her voice.

“I just wanted to see you, Hae,” I said, my voice low, raw, desperate. My hand found her shoulder, but it wasn’t right—it was wrong. My skin, slick and dark, burned against her light.

I looked down and horror clawed up my throat. My hand- my cursed, traitorous hand- was slipping into its true form: black as shadow, claws just beneath the skin.

No. Not now.

I forced it back, willed it away. In a blink, it returned to its borrowed beauty.

“Okay,” she said gently, as if trying to soothe a child’s tantrum, “and I love that you thought of me that much. You’ve been on my mind too.”

A flicker of hope. A breath of mercy.

But it didn’t last.

“But you being here jeopardizes everything. Not only you—but me. If I die by the hand of a god, Abby, I only have one mortal life left. One. My goddess powers will be stripped from me like autumn leaves from a dying tree.”

Her words hung in the air between us, fragile and irreversible.

I nodded, the motion automatic, but my heart refused to accept it. I didn’t care about gods, or rules, or mortality. Not when she was in my arms, breathing the same reckless air as me.

We wouldn’t get caught.

For a moment, the air between us stilled—as if even the gods themselves were holding their breath, waiting to see who would break first.

Her hand lingered on my shoulder, featherlight, but my heart thudded against my ribs like a wild animal against its cage. I should have cherished her touch, should have drowned in the fragile warmth of it, but instead, all I could feel was the way her gaze kept drifting back- to Jinu.

Jinu, with his quiet gravity, his pale hands folded politely before him, his lips pressed into that damnable, sympathetic line. Jinu, who spoke her language better than I did, whose past life still clung to him like a faded crown.

Hunger erupted in my stomach, flowing through my chest and seizing control in my mind. Dictating my thoughts, my feelings, my logic.

“Why do you keep looking at him?” The words slipped out, low and sharp, a blade disguised as a whisper.

She blinked, startled. “What? what are you talking about?”

“You remember him,” I spat, unable to stop myself now. “You remembered his mother and his sister. You reached for him like you’ve spent eternity waiting to touch him again.”

“Because I knew him,” she snapped, gold-rimmed eyes flashing. “You don’t remember but the three of us had many memories together. I thought he just died from old age, I never expected you and him to be a demon. Do you want me to apologize for that?”

I flinched.

The sky seemed too bright suddenly, the clouds too pale.

“Did you… love him?” I accused, voice breaking in half, a new discordant voice joining mine. Possessing mine..

Jinu stepped forward, genuine shock spreading through his face like wildfire. “Abby- It’s not what you think-”

I looked at Hae and watch her face twist in disbelief. “Abby, stop. This isn’t about him. It never was. My heart is to you- I was just remember how you were, your past life, your past behaviors!”

And there it was. The accusation that burned worse than any god’s flame.

“I’ve risked hell and heaven to see you again, and you stand there comparing me to someone I don’t even remember? Someone who I used to be?” My tone laced with ridicule.

Something within me cracked, like breaking an egg and watching the yolk seep through.

Suddenly, she took a step back, fear flickering across her face for the first time.

“Look at yourself, Abby.” Her voice trembled, though whether from sorrow or anger I couldn’t tell. “Look what you’re becoming.”

And I did.

My hands—blackened at the edges, claws slipping through trembling fingers. My chest, once pale and shining like the gods’, now cracked and pulsing with the shadows of Ji-ok. Purple tattoos blooming all over my face to the point where there is barely any skin shown. My disguise, splintering like glass beneath the weight of my fury.

The air around us thickened. Somewhere beyond, the gods who had been pretending not to watch were now fully turned toward us. Their gasps grew like wind in the trees:

"Demon."

"It’s those demons."

"They’ve come back."

And above it all, her voice—quiet, breaking.

“Abby... stop.”

But I couldn’t stop. Not now. Not when I saw Jinu’s face, calm and unafraid. Not when I saw Aejeong’s smirk, amused by my fall from grace. Agi and Sinbi seemed to have shifted into their demon forms, realizing that the gig was up. That I blew it. Every eye in Jeong-won looked at me and saw the monster I was trying to hide.

And in that instant—

The skies split open.

A blinding light fell upon us like judgment itself, cold and sharp as winter rain.

“Enough.”

The voice was everywhere and nowhere.

Heavy as eternity.

Lord Vishnu had arrived.

Then, I felt it. It was a fear I knew too well—one that curled around my ribs like cold iron and dragged me to my knees. The kind of fear that stole the breath from your lungs before your mind could make sense of it. A fear I’d only tasted in the shadow of Gwi-ma’s throne, where whispers meant punishment and silence meant death.

But this… This was worse.

Because this wasn’t Ji-ok. This was Jeong-won. And we didn’t belong here.

I turned slowly, shoulders rigid, as if my bones themselves resisted what I was about to see. And when I did—

There he stood.

Lord Vishnu.

The weight of his presence struck me before my eyes could fully see him. His power pushed against my chest like a tidal wave, leaving me small, fragile, exposed.

His eyes, blank and endless before, now burned with the light of suns, pupils rimmed with molten gold that scorched the air. And yet his face, so terrifyingly calm, held the serenity of a summer lake untouched by wind. It was that calmness, not his power, that chilled my soul the most.

“Children.” His voice was not loud, but it filled the air like distant thunder rolling across endless fields. It was gentle. Too gentle. “You disobeyed my request.”

His gaze drifted across our trembling figures one by one, and we—all powerful in our own cursed corner of the world—shrank beneath it like insects in the sun.

Hae collapsed at his feet, her knees folding like wilted silk. Tears clung to her lashes, and she bowed low, her forehead nearly kissing the ground.

“Lord Vishnu,” she cried, voice breaking like glass on stone. She reached out to touch his feet out of feared respect, “I’m sorry- I tried to send them away. I tried- please, it was me they came for—”

But Vishnu, patient as eternity itself, drew his foot back as though she had defiled his shadow.

“Not now, my daughter,” he said softly, shaking his head, not in anger but in quiet, devastating disappointment.

“No!” She screamed, raw and desperate. “Please don’t kill them! Please—punish me instead! They were just… just curious!”

Her cries filled the hollow space of the heavens, hanging in the air long after her voice gave out.

And still, he ignored her.

He turned to us, his trishula in hand, the weapon shining like liquid fire. He raised it, pointing at each of us in turn, marking us like condemned souls already halfway to Ji-ok.

“You trespassed in our domain,” he said. “And now you will learn the cost of your trespass.”

I felt my legs give out beneath me, collapsing as though the weight of his words alone could break me.

Aejeong groaned beside me, looking frantically around, sparks and static circling us like swarming hornets.

“Abby, you cursed Wonsung-i, you screwed us over!” he spat, voice strained and cracking.

I clutched my chest, as though that would hold my heart in place. I dropped to my knees, panic clawing up my throat like smoke from a burning house.

“I’m sorry!” I shouted, voice trembling, raw, and naked in the stillness. “I didn’t know! I didn’t mean to—I was confused—”

But Vishnu only shook his head, pity threading his silence.

And then—he spoke.

A quiet muttering, almost too soft to hear. A death sentence wrapped in prayer, its syllables gentle and final. The ground beneath us shook as though even the heavens mourned what was about to happen.

Hae was suddenly beside me, her cold hand gripping mine, fierce and trembling.

“You idiot,” she hissed through gritted teeth. “You have to go. Under the clouds. Run—before it’s too late.”

But there was no time.

Pop.

The sky cracked open like a snapped bone, and suddenly, we were falling—falling into an endless chasm of red and black.

The clouds that once held us up now recoiled, casting us into the pit like refuse.

The wind tore the screams from our throats as we plummeted deeper and deeper. Sinbi’s voice broke into sobs somewhere beside me. Agi shouted curses that were stolen by the storm. Aejeong’s laughter had vanished, replaced by something much more hollow.

And then—

We hit.

Hard, cold stone smashed the breath from my body. The impact cracked through my bones like glass struck by a hammer.

I barely managed to lift my head, the darkness closing in. My last thought was not of Gwi-ma’s wrath, or of Ji-ok’s endless cruelty—

It was of her.

And then the darkness took me.

Time passed- or perhaps it was eternity wrapped in darkness. When I finally stirred, the world around me felt brittle, as though it might shatter if I dared to move. My body, raw and broken from the fall, barely obeyed the plea of my mind. Light—what little there was—spun violently behind my eyes, and pain rang in my bones like bells tolling for the dead.

Beside me, a groan. Aejeong, his face shadowed and pale beneath bloodied lips, pressed a hand to his head and sighed—a sound so human, so painfully alive, that my throat clenched with relief.

“Aejeong—!” I cried, scrambling toward him with what little strength remained.

He turned his weary eyes to me, lips parting in a thin, ragged smile. “You’re here,” he whispered hoarsely, as if the weight of survival alone crushed his chest.

To my right, Sinbi sat curled into himself, his mouth barely forming a “hello,” more ghost than boy. But Jinu and Agi… where were they?

And then Aejeong’s face drained of all remaining color. His eyes widened, his mouth parted in a silent scream before the sound clawed its way out of his throat.

I followed his gaze—and there he was.

Gwi-ma.

The air thickened into tar. My lungs seized as though the very atmosphere refused to sustain my life in his presence.

We were in his temple now—the heart of Ji-ok. Where flame was not warmth but punishment, and shadows whispered your sins before you could confess them yourself.

His fire burned wild and hateful, licking the sky with crimson tongues, twisting and writhing as though alive, as though ravenous. If I stared too long, I swore my skin would peel from bone and soul alike.

And there, suspended in his cruel dominion—

Agi and Jinu, limp and dangling like grotesque marionettes, caught in the web of his power.

But it was not their suffering that tore through my heart like shattered glass.

It was the third figure.

Small, broken, stained red in the flickering light—

Hae.

A raw, helpless cry ripped from my chest. “Ah—!” Tears blurred my vision, falling faster than I could blink them away.
“HAE!”

I surged forward desperate to reach her before the fire did. But Gwi-ma’s power snapped through the air like chains, seizing my joints, locking them in place. My limbs froze, my body crushed beneath invisible hands, and he flung me beside Jinu like a discarded rag doll.

“FOOLS!” His voice detonated through Ji-ok, shaking the stone beneath us. The temple itself seemed to recoil, shadows shrinking against its walls.

“I birthed you,” he thundered, flames rising in response to his wrath. “I fed you. I gave you voices when no one else would listen. I carved your names from nothingness.
And this is how you repay me?”

His words stabbed deeper than any weapon. They rang through my skull, drowning reason in a flood of guilt and terror. My vision swam, my stomach turned.

And then, his gaze slid to Hae, his fire twisting into something worse than a smile.

“But who is this?”

“No!” I screamed, voice cracking under the weight of my fear. “Stay away from her!”

Aejeong, barely able to breathe through Gwi-ma’s crushing hold, gasped beside me, “She’s done nothing!”

Agi, straining against invisible restraints, cried out in agreement.

But Gwi-ma only laughed—a deep, guttural sound that vibrated through the very stone we knelt on.

“Oh, so she’s precious to you?” His voice dripped with mockery. “Let me show you what happens to your precious things.”

Then—

A sickening crack.

And her scream.

It tore through me like a dagger dipped in ice.

“Gwi-ma, we’ll do anything!” Jinu choked, his words tangled in blood. “We’ll hunt the demon slayers, we’ll spill oceans of blood—just don’t touch her. She was dragged into this by mistake.”

For a fleeting moment, Gwi-ma stilled. Silence fell, suffocating in its finality.

Then the fire smiled.

“Good. Maybe this will show you a lesson.”

And without warning—without mercy—he cast her down the black marble steps of his temple.

Her body tumbled, limp and broken, before he speared her abdomen with a jet of living fire.

Below, in the shadows, the demons stirred. Hungry. Waiting.

I screamed until my voice fractured.

Gwi-ma released us then, his cruel lesson complete.

And I flew—no, I fell toward her faster than I ever thought possible, faster than my demonic powers could carry me.

But even I knew, deep down—

I was too late.

“No… no… no, Hae.”

Her name fell from my lips like broken prayer beads, slipping through my grasp faster than I could string them back together. I gathered her into my arms, trembling, desperate to cradle her against the very world that had turned against us.

But already, she was slipping away.

Blood, thick and vibrant as burgundy wine, stained her lips—dripping like an offering spilt too soon upon an altar too cruel. The crimson crept down her chin, where it met the pale curve of her throat, stark against the fading light of her skin.

She lifted her head, painfully slow, the effort of the dying. And when her eyes met mine—those golden-ringed eyes where once the dawn had lived—I saw no mercy.

Only hatred.

A hatred so pure it was almost holy.

“You…” she rasped, her voice the crackling end of a burnt-out flame, soft and vicious all at once, “are selfish. Insecure. Demonic.”

Each word landed like a blade, slicing through sinew and bone, leaving me hollow.

Her breath trembled against my cheek, faint as silk threads unraveling in the wind. “You’re not my salvation. You’re a curse. A curse I dragged into my life- and I swear on all I’ve built, on every life I’ve lived and will live-”

But Gwi-ma, drunk on our tragedy, would not let her finish. His flame struck once more, tearing through her fragile body with a brutal finality, the heat so close it seared the air from my lungs.

She gasped, sharp and sudden, and her radiance began to die before my very eyes. The gold in her gaze dulled to tarnish, a once-sunlit sea now clouded and cold. Her skin lost its glow, paling into something spectral, almost unreal.

And yet, her hatred remained, fierce and undiminished, burning brighter than the fires that consumed her.

With the last of her strength, she forced her lips into a ghost of a smile, bitter and sharp.

“I’ll find you…” she whispered, the words spiraling like smoke against my ear, “I’ll find you… and kill you.”

And then—she crumbled.

Her body gave way, turning to dust in my hands, fine and gray like ash swept from a ruined temple. I tried to hold on—to grasp the pieces of her—but they slipped through my fingers, rising into the night air in a delicate, spiraling dance.

Up, up they drifted, into the black sky of Ji-ok, carried by winds that did not mourn her passing.

And soon, there was nothing left of her but memory and curse.

I knelt there, alone, the bitter air pressing against me as if the world itself blamed me for her death.

Guilt churned in my stomach like a slow, cruel blade.

I looked down at my bloodstained hands, at the place where her life had once burned so brightly, and whispered, broken and hollow,

“Hae…”

And in that moment, beneath the cold gaze of Gwi-ma and the indifferent stars, I finally understood what I was- what I became.

Not a lover. Not a savior.

A demon.

Nothing more.

Chapter Text

Time Period: Aftermath of the second Arc

How much time had slipped away from me? 

Minutes, hours, eternities? I can’t say. The clocks of men and gods held no dominion in this place of agony. 

I remained there, crumpled at the scorched base of Gwi-ma’s temple, my body frozen in the last embrace of someone long vanished, as if the imprint of her soul still rested in my arms.

I knelt, arms suspended mid-air, curved like a cradle that had lost its child. My palms, stained with the rusted glitter and dust of her fading life, trembled in ghostly remembrance. 

I stared at them, these traitorous hands, once filled with hunger, then love, and now nothing but absence.

The temple loomed above me, its cruel and endless stairs biting at the sullen sky, while the fires hissed and crackled like laughter from some distant, merciless god. Shadows played across the cracked stone steps, creeping toward me like silent mourners at a funeral no one had the courage to attend.

I did not move. I could not move.

It was as though grief itself had turned my blood to lead, filling my veins with something dense and suffocating. Even the act of breathing felt like swallowing shards of glass. Every rise and fall of my chest was a slow, reluctant surrender to life’s continuation without her.

I tried to speak, but my voice was lost somewhere between my ribs and my throat, tangled in thorns of regret and shame. 

What words were left to say, anyway? Who could I speak them to?

The others had drifted away—or perhaps they had remained, specters hovering at the edge of my agony, unsure whether to leave me in peace or pry me loose from it.

But I wanted no hands to touch me. No voices calling me back.

Let them go. Let them leave me in this hollow, ruined cathedral of my sorrow.

I wanted to be alone with it. With the torment that clawed at my chest. With the anger that spat against my ribs. With the jealousy that still, somehow, burned in the hollow where my heart had been.

And most of all, with the sadness, vast and cold and endless, that unfurled itself across my soul like an ocean without shore.

So I stayed there.

Kneeling in the ashes of what I had destroyed.

And perhaps I would remain there forever, locked in that perfect, unbearable stillness where time itself was too ashamed to move forward.

It was Sinbi who came to me, the first of the four, drifting toward my collapsed form like a ghost with a human heart. The world around us, Gwi-ma's temple, blackened and yawning like a wound in the Ji-ok, seemed to fall away until it was only the two of us, suspended in a space too tender for demons and too broken for gods.

His hand, soft and hesitant, rested on my shoulder. A touch so gentle it felt foreign here, in this landscape of violence and fire.

“Are you okay?” he asked, the words falling with the weight of porcelain. Fragile, breakable, and real.

For a moment, I said nothing. Because how do you answer that question when your soul is in shambles and your heart has slipped through your fingers like grains of ash?

But the guilt struck then. Sharp and sudden, like the crack of a whip across my back.

Because I had dragged them here.

I had dragged him here.

I had dragged her into death.

The tears came quietly, like unwelcome guests slipping through a door I could no longer hold shut. My hands found my face, hiding it, as if shame could be veiled by mere flesh. I curled further inward, folding myself into the smallest space possible, hoping to disappear.

Sinbi’s voice, so unlike his quiet and reserved tone, broke through the stillness with stability and concern.

“What are you crying about?” he asked softly, crouching beside me, his tone neither mocking nor cold, but simple—curious, even, in the way only he could be in a place like this.

I let my hands fall limp in my lap, too weary to hold them up any longer. And for the first time, I truly looked at him.

His hair- normally tangled and falling over his eyes like curtains drawn against the world- was tied half-up, the strands brushing softly against his jaw. And what was revealed beneath that once-hiding veil startled me more than any god’s wrath.

His skin, the same ashen gray as our cursed kind, bore the quiet texture of stone weathered by rain. Purple tattoos traced his cheek and jawline. But his eyes—his eyes—shone like captured suns. A bright, clear yellow, luminous and alive, twin stars against a colorless sky.

In the broken cathedral of my grief, his face was a thing of fragile beauty. Handsome, yes—but more than that, real. I wondered, absurdly, how long I had failed to notice.

And then the words broke from me like cracked glass falling from a window pane.

“I’m… sorry.”

It was all I could say. The apology of a man who knew no redemption. Tears slid down again, tracing the lines of my face like rivers carving out a canyon too deep to fill.

Sinbi, without hesitation, pulled me gently into a side embrace. There was nothing forced in the gesture, nothing showy. Just warmth, steady and human in a place where we were anything but.

“What are you sorry for?” he asked, his voice roughened by concern but softened by something else I couldn’t name.

“For everything,” I breathed. “For dragging you into my mess. For ruining our chance in Jeong-won. For waking Gwi-ma’s wrath. For Hae—”

He cut me off with a shake of his head, a small, almost amused wrinkle in his nose.

“Don’t be sorry for that,” he said, matter-of-factly, as if stating the color of the sky. “I mean… yes, it was terrifying. But we’re demons, Abby. Terror is stitched into our bones.”

And then, as if it were the simplest truth in all of Ji-ok, he added, “You four have been my family for as long as I’ve known what the word means. And whatever mess you drag us into next… I’ll follow without a second thought.”

It was too much kindness for me to bear.

I wiped my face clumsily, swallowing the gratitude like bitter wine, afraid that if I spoke it aloud, I’d fall apart all over again.

Then I looked down at my lap, at these cursed hands that held nothing but ruin, and retreated from his gaze, from his comfort, from myself.

Sinbi stood, brushing dust from his clothes with a slow, languid grace.

“I’ll leave you alone now,” he said, his voice light but edged with sadness. “The others are back at the house. So… whenever you’re ready.”

And just like that, he was gone.

Vanished in a shimmer of air, leaving me alone again beneath the weight of my mistakes.

Alone with the silence, and the guilt, and the ruin I had made of love.

It was in the long, colorless stretches of isolation—those hours that dragged on like the final breaths of a dying season—that I found myself compelled to remember. Not simply to pass the time, but to peel back the ruined pages of my existence and search, vainly, for meaning. 

For truth. 

Who had I been before this? 

Who was I beneath the heavy, clanking armor of Gwi-ma’s leash? And why- why- did the names Jinu and Hae burn against the back of my throat like a half-remembered prayer?

It made perfect sense now, didn’t it? Of course Gwi-ma stole my memories. What better way to mold a creature than to rip away its past, to leave it stumbling, blind and obedient, in the dark? I was a dog without a scent, a man without a face. A puppet whose strings stretched to the throne of Ji-ok.

Time passed, but whether it was hours or eternities I could not say. The sky above Gwi-ma’s temple never changed, hung like a cold silver mirror, reflecting nothing but my failures. My body remained folded in a shrine of grief: knees cracked, shoulders hunched, hands slack in my lap like broken things. I watched them as if they belonged to a stranger. Hands that once held her waist. Hands that let her slip through.

And then- a sound. A muffled shift in the air, soft as silk sliding from a goddess’ shoulder. The unmistakable hum of a teleportation warp.

But I did not stir.

“Abby,” came Agi’s voice, low but firm, breaking through the fog like a lighthouse beam. “What are you doing? Sitting here like this won’t fix anything.”

I flinched at the sharpness, but when I forced my gaze up to his, I saw no anger. Only something softer. Concern, carefully hidden beneath the veil of his usual bravado. He stood before me, haloed by the perpetual glow of Ji-ok’s fire, but somehow seemed distant, like a memory of someone I used to know.

“I want to be alone,” I croaked, the words brittle as old parchment.

“Two months, Abby,” Agi said, holding out two clawed fingers at me. “You’ve been gone two whole months.”

The words cracked against my ribs like a whip.

Two months. I had wasted two months rotting in this self-dug grave of regret.

My voice trembled, thin and threadbare. “Are you still mad at me?”

Agi blinked, then let out a laugh so dry it could’ve blown away in the wind. “Mad? I was never mad.”

I stared at him, not daring to believe. “Never?”

“You’re a demon,” he said, sitting beside me now, brushing the dust from his faded hanbok. “You’re supposed to feel anger. Jealousy. Regret. You nearly killed us, sure. But you didn’t. We’re alive.”

But she isn’t.

The thought slashed through me, sharp and cold.

Tears blurred my vision, spilling faster than I could wipe them away. I saw Agi tense beside me, watching helplessly as I unraveled in front of him. I knew he didn’t know what to do with this broken version of me. None of us did.

“You’re overthinking it,” he said softly. “You acted on instinct. And maybe... maybe I shouldn’t have pushed you. I wanted to see Jeong-won too. It’s partly my fault.” He rubbed the back of his neck. He then smiled- small and tired, but there- and shook my shoulder with that familiar teasing warmth. “I forgive you, Abby. I always will.”

I tried to smile back, but the effort was weak, trembling at the corners of my mouth like a dying flame. “What about the others?”

“Sinbi misses you.” Agi chuckled faintly, scratching the back of his neck. “Can’t stop singing that ridiculous sun goddess ballad...”

The mention of her title twisted my insides. I winced, and Agi immediately backpedaled, stumbling over his words.

“Anyway... Aejeong and Jinu... you’ll see. Come home, Abby.”

I shook my head, muscles stiff and aching from disuse. My bones protested like rusted hinges. “I can’t. I don’t want to.”

Agi rose slowly, dusting the ash from his clothes. His eyes, usually sharp and mischievous, softened with something close to pity. “Just... think about it. Don’t let this place swallow you whole.”

And with that, he was gone. Just a ripple in the air where he once stood.

Silence settled again, thick and suffocating.

Two months, I scoffed to myself. Time in Ji-ok stretched like taffy, sticky and meaningless. 

But what about Jeong-won? I wonder how long it would take Jeong-won for two months to pass.

I bowed my head once more, staring at those damned hands of mine. Hands that had built nothing, saved no one.

Hands that had destroyed her.

Here, in this wasteland, silence and guilt stretched on with an oppressive weight: an eternal pause broken only by the lazy drift of dirt carried by winds that had forgotten where they came from.

I could feel my body caving inward, a collapsing cathedral of flesh and bone. Exhaustion no longer hid behind the folds of my pride—it sprawled naked across my chest, heavy and suffocating. My vision blurred at the edges like an overexposed photograph, the world around me smearing into meaningless color. Even my hearing—once sharp as a blade in battle—dulled into the white noise of despair.

But I can still feel pain.

It arrived unannounced, sharp and sudden, as a vicious yank pulled my ear from its solitude.

“Hey!” I barked, whirling around with what little energy I had left, only to meet the familiar scowl of Aejeong, his pink hair catching the bleak light like a careless smear of color on a grey canvas.

“Get up,” he demanded, his voice clipped and cool as gin poured over cracked ice. He tugged again, and stars burst across my vision.

“Let me go, you bastard!” I hissed, swatting at him like a wounded cat, though he stood just beyond my reach, arms crossed and unimpressed.

“What the hell are you doing down here? You look like you’re praying,” he spat, each word soaked in irritation and something warmer, something perilously close to care.

“I look like I’m mourning,” I corrected, before another savage yank sent me sprawling face-first into the dirt, graceless and pathetic.

“You look pathetic,” Aejeong repeated flatly, as if I hadn’t proven his point already. “Now get up.”

I groaned, burying my head in my arms. “You’re cruel, Aejeong. Leave me to rot in peace.”

But Aejeong would have none of it. “Three months, Abby. Three goddamn months! What are you doing out here- composing a tragedy? You’ve been stewing in your own misery so long I thought you'd grown roots.”

I tried to speak, but he cut me off, his voice rising with frustration.

“I get it. She meant something to you. But six days, Abby- six days and suddenly we mean nothing? Just background noise in your sad love story?”

I winced. “She—”

“And let’s not forget how you dragged us into this whole mess. We almost died, remember?”

I curled in on myself, voice cracking like old glass. “I’m sorry you almost died. I’m sorry I dragged you all into this. I’m sorry you’re angry—”

But Aejeong only scoffed, shaking his head. “You think I’m mad?”

I blinked at him through salt-blurred lashes. “You’re... not?”

“No.” He pried my hands apart, his touch oddly gentle. “I was never mad. Your shit is my shit. If you’re drowning in it, I’ll be right there beside you, sinking too. That’s how this works. You’ve carried me before, Abby. Don’t think I’ve forgotten.”

I hummed softly, the closest thing I could manage to agreement.

“But what I am,” he continued, leveling me with that sharp pink stare, “is tired of seeing you wallow like this. It’s pitiful, Abby. She’s gone. Nothing will change that. But we’re still here. You need to be with us.”

He knelt beside me then, and the irritation faded from his face, replaced by something rawer, something harder to name. Concern, perhaps. Or loyalty. Or maybe the weary kind of love forged in shared war.

“You’re right,” I whispered, ashamed. “But I nearly killed you all. I’ve never carried so much shame.”

“And yet, here we are. Alive. Breathing. Regenerated and living.” He gave me a small shake. 

“You need to talk to Jinu.” He quickly shifted gears, his tone dropping. 

The name hit me like cold water down my spine. “Is he... mad?”

“I can’t tell you that.” Aejeong rose, brushing the dust from his hanbok with an impatient swipe. “Go find out for yourself, Wonsung-i.”

I cast a last, lingering glance at the ground where my grief had carved its altar, exhaling a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding since the moment she died. “Okay. Let’s go.”

I stood, unsteady but upright, the first movement in months, my body creaking like an old, forgotten ship finally setting sail again.

“Thanks for snapping me out of it,” I said, offering a smile so thin it could barely hold itself together.

Aejeong grinned, smug and triumphant. “I’ve never seen you like this before, and frankly, I hated it. Do you even remember what happened after she… after that day?”

The question felt like an ember pressed against my skin. 

All I remember is my whole world burning into ashes. Heavy tears and mountains of guilt consuming my vision to black.

“No... not really,” I confessed, the words tasting like ash.

“We waited, Abby. Stood there in the wreckage, waiting for you to move. To breathe. To say something. But you just... stared at your hands.” Aejeong sighed, running a hand through his disheveled pink hair, his gat slipping off in the process. “It was bad. Real bad. So we gave you your space.”

A hum escaped me, small and distant, as our battered home came into view on the horizon. The faint, melancholic strains of Jinu’s bipa drifted through the air like a ghost of better days.

“Go find him,” Aejeong said, clapping my shoulder once. “Before the others catch wind you’re back. He’s out in the courtyard.”

And with that, Aejeong vanished, leaving me alone with the dust and the dying echoes of my mistakes.

All right. I can do this. 

It was a simple task in theory: to speak to Jinu, to peel away the thorny pride lodged between us, but in practice, the weight of my mistakes clung to my ankles like lead.

I crossed the threshold to the back courtyard, where bloodied sky  painted everything in solemn shades of red and black, and there he was: Jinu, haloed in the fading light, the tranquil architect of his own quiet world. Beside him lounged his great blue tiger, its fur rippling like moonlight on water, and perched delicately nearby, as if it had been born of his stillness, was a small black crow whose feathers drank in the light.

There was such ease in the position he was in- fingers working steadily to stitch a miniature gat, maybe for the bird? 

He seems so in peace that I feel like an intruder breaking the sacred hush of a chapel.

I approached softly, the gravel beneath my feet whispering my guilt.

“Where’d you get the bird?” I asked, my voice quiet, threadbare, like I was afraid it might snap in the wind.

Jinu startled at first, his face cycling through the phases of recognition: first warmth, then weariness, and finally that familiar chill of resentment that settled like frost over his features. He turned away, shoulders drawn tight beneath the soft folds of his hanbok, his silence a fortress I wasn’t sure I could breach.

I dragged a chair beside him and sat, the distance between us still wide despite our proximity. I watched the crow hop curiously along the tiger’s massive head, the unlikely companions sharing a bond freer of conflict than we did.

“So... I suppose this is the part where I apologize,” I murmured, forcing out the words that had choked me for far too long.

When Jinu said nothing, I shifted closer, hesitantly draping an arm around his shoulder—a gesture that felt both familiar and foreign now, like a memory I wasn’t sure I deserved to reclaim.

“Listen, Jinu,” I began, my voice rough and uneven, “I regret what I said to you in Jeong-won. I let jealousy and fear drive me mad. I had no memory of my past life- no anchor- and the thought of you and Hae sharing something I couldn’t remember... it disgusted me. It scared me. I lashed out because it hurt.” I paused, swallowing down the bitterness. “It was wrong of me to accuse you. All of it was wrong.”

For a long, eternal moment, Jinu didn’t speak. He only stared at me, his brows knitted in quiet assessment, as though weighing my words on some invisible scale of truth and deception. I met his gaze and let him see it all: the remorse, the shame, the raw ache of loss that still bled beneath my skin.

And then, at last, a sigh escaped him, soft and tired, like a winter wind slipping through an old house. He set down the needle and thread, his hands finally still.

“It’s not all on you,” he said, voice low, steady. “I should’ve told you about your past life sooner. I should’ve given you that choice, that clarity. But I didn’t. I thought... I thought maybe you were better off without it. Safer, somehow. I never imagined you’d meet Hae again. That the gods would twist the threads of fate like this. The odds—” he shook his head, almost laughing in disbelief—“they shouldn’t even be possible.”

The weight between us loosened then, not vanished, but loosened—like dust rising in the warm evening breeze, scattering the tension that had bound us for too long.

And in that moment, beneath the tender hush Ji-ok’s sky and the soft rustle of feathers and fur, I remembered why we had been companions over demons. 

“Do you want to know a bit more about Hae?” Jinu asked suddenly, his voice breaking the hush like a soft crack in porcelain. “I’ve been reading dusty old scrolls, or half-forgotten epics- trying to piece together the ways of gods and goddesses...”

Part of me wanted to say no. 

No, because her name still burned on my tongue like a bitter draught. No, because knowledge could not reverse a death I had caused. But what did it matter now? What was one more splinter beneath my skin?

So I nodded, slow and hesitant, as though agreeing to swallow poison just to feel alive again.

“After Hae said that if a god kills her, she’ll have one mortal life left,” he began, fingers idly brushing the feathers of the crow perched beside him, “I started looking deeper into how gods work. How their endings begin.”

Before his thoughts could gather pace, a voice rang out, intrusive yet strangely comforting.

“What are you guys whispering about?” Agi leaned over our shoulders, his curiosity as careless as ever. Behind him came Sinbi, quiet as falling snow, and Aejeong, whose footsteps I had grown to know like a heartbeat.

“You want to join?” I offered, a faint smile playing at the corners of my mouth. “Jinu was just talking about gods and whatnot.”

Sinbi folded his long limbs beside me, a soft “yes” falling from his lips like silk. Amusingly, the crow decided his head was a suitable throne, ruffling its wings before settling atop his ash-grey hair. He didn’t even flinch. Somehow, it fit.

Once we were all seated,- a tangle of demons in worn-out hanboks, stitched together by fate and failure- Aejeong surveyed us with a grin too large for his face.

“Look at us,” he said, voice bright against the gloom. “Back together again. I told you: nothing in the three realms can split us apart.”

I chuckled, low and hollow but genuine. “Damn right.” A pause, and then the weight of my guilt found its voice. “Actually... I wanted to say something.” The words tumbled out with the clumsiness of sincerity. “I’m sorry. For almost killing you guys.”

Agi rolled his eyes so dramatically the heavens might have spun with him. “What did I tell you already?” he groaned. “Stop treating us like a circus of pity. We’re demons. If we died, it would’ve been your fault, but it also would’ve been Tuesday. So quit apologizing like you’re some tragic poet.”

I laughed, the final rocks of tension falling from my shoulders. “Fair enough.” I turned back to Jinu. “Go on.”

He hesitated, staring into a memory only he could see. For a moment, the flames of Ji-ok seemed to flicker softer, listening. “In my past life...” he began, then faltered, as if the images cut his voice in half. He cleared his throat, returning back to the present. “Human Hae looked just like she did in Jeong-won, except duller—no glitter, no halo—just those gold eyes of hers, burning quietly beneath it all.” He glanced at me. “You told me, back then, you found her passed out on the side of the road. She never told you where she came from. And then, six months later... she vanished. I remember attending her funeral.”

The word “funeral” fell like a stone into a still lake.

Jinu continued, voice softer now. “Do you remember your favorite ballad?”

I nodded, a faint ache swelling behind my ribs.

“That song—it’s a cycle. Every year, on the winter solstice, Hae dims her light and Lord Vishnu gets annoyed that she’s not fulfilling her duties, so he sends her down to Earth as ‘punishment’ . That’s how she was there when we were alive. But now—now that she’s been killed...”

He trailed off, the weight of it lingering in the smoke between us.

He cleared his throat, shifting gears. “I realized something else. Gwi-ma is a god too, but... he doesn’t follow the same laws as the ones in Jeong-won.”

“Yeah, I figured he was some kind of god,” Aejeong muttered, arms crossed, tapping his foot with a restless beat. “Didn’t know for sure, though.”

“That’s good news,” Agi chimed in. “If Hae could die, that means gods aren’t immortal. We saw it ourselves.”

I winced at the mention of her death, wishing for once they would just let her memory rest in peace.

“Exactly,” Jinu said, a sharp smile cutting across his face. “If we can figure out how to kill a god, we could finally end Gwi-ma’s tyranny.”

“Did you learn how?” Sinbi asked, his voice almost a whisper, yellow eyes wide and solemn beneath the crow’s quiet watch.

Jinu shook his head, frustration shadowing his face. “I searched every scroll and ruin in Ji-ok. Of course, Gwi-ma wouldn’t keep the secret where we could find it.”

I crossed my arms, fingers curling inward.

“One last thing.” Jinu looked at me then, his expression softening. “Hae won’t be reborn for some time. Her soul needs rest. When she does return, she’ll have no memory of Jeong-won. The gods wipe it clean. But she’ll know—deep in her bones—that this next life is her last.”

I scoffed, the bitterness returning sharp and uninvited. “You talk like I’ll meet her again. Like we’ll be free to walk the mortal world. We all know Gwi-ma won’t let us leave Ji-ok. Not for a long, long time.”

And in that moment, beneath the crumbling skies of hell, the weight of eternity settled on our shoulders like dust we could never brush away.

Chapter Text

God, today dragged me through the mud and left me there to dry beneath some wicked sun. 

It was my mistake. I was the one who hadn’t sang in a while… 

Today, every note pulled at my ribs like old piano wires snapping one by one. Even now, my vocal cords trembled at each breath, delicate, strained things that reminded me of my own neglect.

I sighed, a dry, rasping thing, as though my voice had aged centuries without my consent. I really ought to stop missing my weekly lessons. 

My teacher always said a throat left unattended was like a garden left unwatered. Now all I had were weeds.

With a groan, I forced myself up from the disheveled nest of sheets and tangled limbs where I had collapsed earlier. My room stretched around me in quiet anonymity, shapeless in the soft lamplight. The walls bore no allegiance to day or night, just a hollow neutrality, as if even time had abandoned this place.

I stumbled toward the bathroom, where no window gave away the hour. Perhaps it was midnight, perhaps dawn. I couldn’t tell anymore. Work had consumed the daylight and some of the dark; I had barely registered falling asleep, let alone waking.

The water from the sink was a bitter slap, cold and immediate. It coursed over my face in sharp contrast to the haze of exhaustion, stealing away what little warmth I had clung to in my sleep. I blinked hard, droplets clinging to my eyelashes like tiny beads of glass.

Then a sound, a soft clearing of the throat, pulled me back from the fog.

I wiped my face and turned. Leaning against my bedroom wall, hair dyed the soft blush of some forgotten spring, was my loyal pink haired friend, a lazy grin tilting their mouth in that way only they could manage.

“Why’re you stalking me, you weirdo?” I said, crossing my arms and trying to summon irritation through the sleep still coating my bones when all I could manage was a lazy smile back.

“Maybe because you’ve been out cold since the afternoon, and now it’s literally one in the morning?” they drawled, voice light but not without concern.

I groaned, stretching until my spine popped like cracking branches. “Today- I mean yesterday- was exhausting.” Then I paused, narrowing my eyes. “Why are you awake?”

They shrugged, the motion careless and strangely graceful, like they’d rehearsed apathy until it fit perfectly. “Couldn’t sleep. Been thinking about you guys, I guess.” There was something hidden in their voice—some melancholy tucked between the syllables like a secret.

Without waiting for an answer, my friend turned, their pink hair swishing my way with dull attitude, their figure slipping out of sight like a ghost who’d grown tired of haunting.

“Let’s go watch something,” their voice called back to me, soft and teasing as it echoed off the empty walls. “Just you and me, Hae.”

The dawn crept into the living room like an old friend returning uninvited- soft, golden, and slightly smug about the lateness of its arrival. Titanic’s closing credits spun across the television screen in ghostly silence, casting fractured light across Mira and me, tangled gracelessly upon the couch like marionettes discarded after a long and exhausting performance.

I might’ve stayed in that twilight limbo forever had it not been for the gentle stir of someone settling beside me, shaking my shoulder with the hesitant care of a child waking a sleeping bear.

“What? There was a movie night and you guys didn’t invite me?” a voice asked, half bemused, half rueful.

Mira  responded with the theatrical groan of a woman centuries wearied by life’s cruel jokes. In her effort to reposition herself, she rolled too far and met the floor face-first with a graceless thud that could have shattered empires. “Argh—!” she cried, muffled by the carpet.

Cracking open one eye to meet the morning, I found Zoey stifling a laugh behind her hand, her shoulders quaking like the leaves of some young tree in the breeze. “Morning, Zoey,” I croaked, voice as dry as an abandoned well.

“Hey, you two,” she smiled, stretching languidly across the couch to swipe the remote. With the flick of a thumb, the TV’s haunting glow vanished, leaving only the sun’s patient rays. “Whose turn is it to cook?”

From the floor, Mira groaned louder, as if the very suggestion of responsibility pained her soul, and sat upright, hair wild, face sleep-creased. “Mine,” she admitted, with the tragic resignation of a Greek hero fated to die.

Behind Zoey, the ever-laconic Rumi shuffled in, hands buried deep in her sweatpant pockets, a yawn stretching across her face like the fading curtain of night.

“Well, hey, it’s our roomie, Rumi,” I sang, voice bright despite my exhaustion. The pun hung in the air, feather-light and inevitable.

“You say that every morning,” Rumi deadpanned, collapsing beside us on the couch like a fallen monument. “Mira,” she turned to our pink-haired wonder, eyes wide with the sleepy desperation of a girl in need of salvation, “can you make your super awesome fluffy pancakes?”

Zoey  gasped theatrically at remembering how those pancakes tasted like and clasped her hands, pushing them pleadingly toward Mira’s unimpressed face. “Can you?! Puhleeeaaaase?” she whined, stretching the word into infinity. “They’re like the best pancakes ever.”

Zoey and Rumi aren’t wrong. Despite Mira’s otherwise.. average.. culinary skills—eggs that bordered on existential crises and toast forever teetering between golden perfection and cremation—her pancakes defied reason and science alike. They were literally gifts from Cheongug.

Quickly following Zoey’s actions, I clasped my hands beneath my chin, my most earnest expression painted across my face. “Please,” I whispered in the same tone, the word a sacred prayer.

Mira rolled her eyes so hard I feared they might fall from her head, swatted us both away as if brushing off a pair of particularly needy cats, and stood with a dramatic sigh. “Oh, fine. You guys ask me that every time.”

“Because they’re so good,” I grinned, stretching out across the couch as I watched her retreat into the kitchen, where the first clang of pans promised salvation.

Rumi straightened slightly, her voice firm enough to cut through the morning haze but still soft enough to carry a familiar tenderness. “Alright, guys—today’s our last show of the tour.”

“And then we get a break!” Zoey practically squealed, clapping her hands like a delighted child at a carnival.

“Don’t worry, Rumi. We’re going to crush it,” I said, offering my fist toward her like an old warrior swearing one final oath.

Rumi smiled, the kind of smile that spoke of sleepless nights and too many rehearsals, but also of trust. “I know that.”

From the kitchen, Mira’s voice rang out, warm with the comfort of routine. “Yeah, Rumi, we’ve done this like a hundred times before. Today’s not gonna be any different.”

The smell of pancake batter sizzling in the pan drifted toward us, mingling with the morning light. For a brief, beautiful moment, everything felt whole again.

Zoey rose from the couch with the kind of restless energy that belongs to people who’ve never learned how to sit still in silence. She turned to us: Rumi brushing her hair like an indifferent goddess, Mira lounging with a pancake half-devoured in hand, and me, adrift somewhere in the middle of my own head, and said with the earnestness of a child offering a treasure, “Yeah, and maybe after the show, we can help Hae find her parents?”

My parents. 

A phrase as distant and blurred as a half-remembered dream at dawn. I was born somewhere in the labyrinth of Seoul’s endless streets, where neon signs blink like indifferent stars and alleys breathe with the hushed secrets of strangers. My mother and father remain figments of someone else’s story: someone who left a newborn girl on the crumbling doorstep of the Starlight Sisters’ recording studio. 

It was Amelia who found me. The third Starlight Sister member. 

It was Amelia who took me in when the echoes of the spotlight faded and the final curtain fell on the Starlight Sisters’ golden age. She wasn’t my mother by blood, but she fed me lullabies and clothed me in melodies, teaching me to sing before I could even speak. 

She stitched my heart together with music and gave me my first family: Huntrix.

I turned to look at Rumi, her long, lavender hair cascading over her shoulder like silk smoke—as she combed it with absent-minded ease. Rumi had been my first friend in this strange, dazzling life, drawn to me like two weary souls sheltering from the same storm. We clung to each other when her mother, Miyeong, passed away, her grief a mirror of my own unanswered questions.

“Yeah, we can focus on Hae a little after the tour,” Mira said pragmatically, sliding plates of pancakes toward us like a benevolent queen dispensing her riches. They were soft and golden, like morning light you could eat.

Though I’d known Rumi the longest, Mira knew me best. She was the keeper of my most reckless thoughts, the one I texted at 3 a.m. about nothing and everything. How many times had we run off together on some demon killing mission only to spend the whole trip gossiping, our battles an afterthought to our laughter? If Cheongug even exists, it would be filled with the time I spend with her.

The kitchen erupted into sudden chaos as Zoey, who seemingly teleported from the couch to the kitche, seized the whipped cream bottle like a pirate claiming treasure. She shook it violently, popped the cap, and unleashed a monsoon of cream onto her pancakes until the plate resembled a snow-covered peak.

“H-Hey!” I cried, scrambling upright, half-laughing, half-outraged. “Leave some for me!” I lunged for the bottle, a pitiful attempt to salvage my rightful share.

Zoey was exactly the kind of companion life had forgotten to warn me about: dangerous in the kitchen but lifesaving in the dark. When shadows pressed against the corners of my mind, it was her laughter—bright, ridiculous, relentless—that pulled me back into the light. When Rumi brought her into our trio I immediately felt like I knew her forever. We started texting each other nonstop, our Snapstreaks hitting thousands… it ended because she forgot to charge her phone that day.

And yet, in the midst of all this warmth, a quiet truth sat heavy in my chest.

“I don’t know, guys…” I said softly, the words dragging behind me like a reluctant child. “I don’t really want to find my parents.”

A hush fell over the room. Mira’s mouth opened to protest, but Zoey gasped first, scandalized like a soap opera heroine caught in the rain.

“Why? Hasn’t that been your dream since forever?” Mira asked, brow furrowed, spatula forgotten.

I fumbled for the truth. “Well… yes. But… I’m happy where I am. I’ve got you guys. I’ve got Amelia. She may not be my birth mom, but she’s my mother in every way that counts.” My gaze drifted to the window, where the faint, ethereal blue strings of the honmoon danced like distant spirits against the pale morning sun. 

How strange it was to find home in people, not in blood.

“Alright then, that’s that.” Rumi’s voice cut through the moment, sharp and final. She fished for her phone, the blue light sparkling against her fair skin. “We meet Bobby at four, and the tour starts at eight.”

Mira, finishing her pancakes at an alarming speed—as if prison guards might snatch them away any second—stood and brushed invisible crumbs from her lap. “So what do we do until then?”

Zoey and I exchanged a look, a spark of chaos igniting between us like flint and steel. “Bathhouse?” we said in unison, grinning wide enough to split the morning.

“Omg, yes. Bathhouse,” Mira sighed, already dreaming of hot water and steam.

But Rumi shook her head, gentle but firm. “You guys go ahead. I… I wanted…” Her words faded as the honmoon shimmered suddenly, a flash of red streaking across the sky like a bloodstain on silk. Instinctively, we all froze, the air crackling around us.

Rumi met our eyes, searching for confirmation. We nodded: once, twice, and without another word, we slipped out the door, the morning waiting patiently for our return.

It wasn’t until we were halfway down the alley, morning light pooling like spilled milk at our feet, that I looked down and tragically realized that I was wearing my house slippers. Not boots, not the sleek combat shoes I’d so dramatically kicked into the corner of my bedroom, but soft, pitiful slippers lined with little pastel suns.

“Ughhhhh,” I groaned, dragging the word out like a requiem. “I can’t believe I forgot to wear my shoes.”

Mira gave a chuckle so dry it could’ve been mistaken for dust blowing across the Gobi desert. “Sucks to be you,” she said, with the indifferent charm of someone who, for once, wasn’t the idiot in the room.

With a sigh, I vaulted up onto the rooftop, slippers slapping indignantly against the shingles.

Below us, chaos unfolded like some bad painting. Five demons loitering by a convenience store, as red and ugly as sins written in permanent ink. Their skin was marked with jagged symbols, their mouths curled in grins that could sour milk. The neon lights of the store flickered behind them like the stage lights of some twisted cabaret.

I pressed my palm to the crumbling brick wall, and from the unseen threads of the Honmoon, my weapon materialized. A pastel scythe, as beautiful as it was deadly, bloomed into existence. Its candy-colored handle contrasted sharply with the gleaming, wicked curve of its blade: a deadly contradiction, like me.

To my right, Zoey and Mira had already drawn their weapons with the blitheness of seasoned performers preparing for their opening act. Mira’s weaponed glistened in the dim light, and Zoey twirled her daggers with a grin that suggested she considered this fight a mild inconvenience before brunch.

Rumi, in all her understated glory, pulled out her phone with a sigh. “Alright, what’s the soundtrack today?”

Zoey shrugged, her voice like windchimes on a careless breeze. “Honestly, these demons look super easy. We might as well just sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.”

She giggled and began humming the nursery rhyme, her daggers glowing faintly in time with the melody.

But our stage audience was less than amused.

“Well, look what we have here,” hissed one of the demons, his voice slithering out like a snake uncoiling in the dark. His forked tongue flicked between jagged teeth as he lunged straight for Zoey.

“Oh! Me first-” she smiled, a look of determination striking in her eyes as she hurled her daggers toward the demon, meeting his leap halfway with the elegance of a dancer taking a bow mid-flight.

I didn’t have much time to appreciate the choreography, though, because a mountain of muscle—an ogre of a demon with tusks the size of forearms—came barreling at me like an oncoming freight train. I barely had time to brace before he bodyslammed me into the asphalt, the air knocking from my lungs like coins from an overturned purse. He breathed hot air down my neck, causing my back hairs to stand up straight, practically saluting him.

I tried not to gag.

Disgusting.

I hate demons more than anything. They’re vile creatures who manipulate and feed because that’s the only thing they can do. They hunger for chaos while the world starves for peace.

I writhed out from under his grip, scythe in hand, and swung down in a silver-pink arc. But despite his size, the beast was quick, dodging the blade and retaliating with a club that whistled through the air like a falling star aimed for my skull.

“Holy shit,” I muttered, narrowly leaping back. Slippers skidding, I lashed out with a flying kick to his grotesque face, stunning him long enough to loop my scythe around his throat and pull—hard. He choked and staggered, and in a single, clean cut, I silenced him, his body collapsing into the dust like a felled oak.

I turned just in time to see Rumi leap gracefully over Zoey to strike down her opponent, her movement sharp and precise, like a hawk swooping for its prey. Mira, of course, appeared at my side, brushing an invisible speck from her shoulder, victorious.

“I killed two demons,” she announced smugly, holding up two fingers in a peace sign that was anything but peaceful.

I rolled my eyes, breath still catching in my throat. “Well I killed a big guy. So that counts as two, too!”

She laughed, the sound light and airy despite the blood and ruin surrounding us.

The others made quick work of the final demon, Zoey tossing her glowing daggers like confetti at a parade, and Rumi finishing with a yawn that suggested she’d rather be back in bed.

“That was fast,” Rumi said, stretching her arms overhead as if she’d just finished a morning jog. “Is it just me, or are they getting weaker?”

“No, yeah, I was totally thinking that too,” Zoey agreed, cracking her knuckles as her daggers evaporated into thin air like mist under morning sun.

“Or,” I said, tossing my scythe into the air and watching it dissolve back into Honmoon strings that fluttered away like strands of silk, “maybe we’re just getting stronger.”

Mira nodded, her grin stretching wide and easy across her face. “Hell yeah, I like that theory better.”

Zoey bumped her hips playfully against mine, then against Rumi’s, her arms slung behind her head as we strolled away from the battlefield like it was a sidewalk café. She hummed a tune we’d heard on the radio yesterday—some nameless pop song that clung to your mind like glitter. 

Hours later, beneath the hazy fluorescence of the dressing room, where perfume clung to the velvet chairs and discarded hairpins sparkled like forgotten stars on the floor, we sat poised in various stages of transformation—part mortal, part legend.

My reflection stared back at me from the mirror’s glassy abyss, my skin almost too radiant, as though I had borrowed the sun’s light and tucked it beneath my complexion.

It was then, without ceremony but with all the confidence of a man who considered himself the centerpiece of every room he entered, that Bobby burst through the double doors, his arrival announced by the thunderous bass-line of our own hit single blaring from his phone.

“Hello, girls!” he bellowed, slicing the air with a triumphant fist pump, as if personally responsible for every chart-topping note we ever sang.

“Hi Bobby!!” we chorused in unison, our voices lilting with the kind of affection reserved for overly enthusiastic uncles at family reunions.

Bobby strutted toward us in a suit so dazzlingly coordinated with our outfits it was almost criminal, the kind of ensemble that suggested he had either impeccable taste or no taste at all, and we loved him for both. He perched on the edge of the couch, legs crossed like a philosopher, arms outstretched like a cheerleader. “Are we ready to knock this final concert straight out of the park, ladies? Out of the atmosphere? Out of the known universe?”

Rumi, serene as always, glanced sideways at us as the stylist finished weaving a meticulous braid into her dark hair. “Of course. We’ve got this,” she said simply, her confidence effortless, like slipping on silk gloves.

At that moment, the hairstylist tending to me tapped my shoulder with the politeness of a church bell ringing at dusk. “Excuse me, miss?”

I smiled at her in the mirror’s reflection, my voice softer than my usual bravado. “Yes?”

“How would you like your hair today?” she asked, her tone professional, though her eyes flickered with curiosity.

I studied my reflection—the shimmer the makeup artist had so liberally sprayed across my shoulders caught the golden lights above, making me look like I’d been carved from sunlight and stage dust. My eyes, however, betrayed it all. Rimmed in ancient gold, they were the only foreign thing about me, eyes that had seen and experienced too much for a girl in a glittering two-piece.

“You know,” I said, tipping my chin thoughtfully, “I’d like it down today. Let’s keep it simple. Just… let it fall.”

The stylist nodded as though I had just handed her a riddle to solve, then turned back to her work.

I turned away from the glass and caught sight of Bobby in mid-gesture, dramatically reenacting how we should strike our final pose. “And then—BOOM—you hold the note, and the confetti drops, and the world remembers your names!” He spun on his heel and pointed at us like an over-caffeinated conductor.

Moments later, as we boarded the jet with all the casualness of boarding a commuter train, Bobby waved us off with the reckless abandon of a farewell scene in an old black-and-white movie. “You girls are gonna crush it! I’ll see you on the other side of glory!”

“Bye bye, Bobby! See you soon!” I called back, waving both hands as though we were sailing across the Atlantic rather than taxiing down a runway.

Stepping into the sleek belly of the jet, I was immediately greeted by the sight of silver trays piled with freshly prepared delicacies—fruit sliced into delicate crescents, artisan sandwiches stacked like edible architecture, and desserts so beautiful they looked stolen from the Louvre.

“Wow,” I whispered, barely containing the childish glee bubbling up in my chest. “All this food’s making me drool just looking at it.”

“For sure,” Mira agreed, collapsing beside me, already reaching for something wrapped in parchment and promise.

I glanced at the flight crew- who were buzzing about like caffeinated bees, their expressions tight, their movements frantic—as if the weight of our world tour rested solely on whether the croissants arrived before takeoff.

How strange they all seemed.

As the jet shuddered to life beneath us and climbed into the night, I pressed my hand to the window, watching the city lights fall away like dying stars.

Turning back to my friends, a mischievous grin tugged at the corners of my mouth. I gestured dramatically to the feast before us, my voice excited. “Happy fans?”

They finished with the sentence ardently. “Happy Honmoon!”

Chapter Text

“I WON!”

Aejeong’s voice shattered the stillness like a dropped glass on marble, leaping from his chair with such joy that the piece of furniture clattered backward and surrendered to gravity with a dramatic thud. His victory howl cut through the still, barren air of Ji-ok and echoed across the desolate rocks, bounding through that dusty land like a long-forgotten anthem of the absurd.

I blinked at the chessboard in front of me, its checkered field a battlefield of betrayal. My calculated arrangement of pawns and knights, once poised to deliver a glorious final blow, had somehow crumbled into a pitiful defeat. 

And Aejeong, with all the subtlety of a celebratory brass band, was prancing as if he’d just bested a war god in single combat.

“Ugh,” I tsked, dragging a palm down my face. “So what? You won once. I win every other damn time.”

Aejeong spun on his heel, wild-eyed and drunk on triumph. He pointed at me like an overzealous schoolboy who’d finally solved a riddle. “No way, you loser! You’re so stupid! Grow some brain cells!” he taunted, voice reaching octaves normally reserved for tortured wind instruments. His gat, poor thing, flew from his head in the chaos, landing with a mournful flop on the tatami mat.

“It was ONE game,” I barked, rising to my feet like an indignant king being challenged in his own court. Arms crossed, chin tilted- posture of a man who had never, not once, lost with grace. “Don’t let this get into your empty head.”

Aejeong leaned in, ready to volley back, his hands already gesturing wildly. But from across the room came the unmistakable voice of Agi, our blue-haired demon, groaning from his throne of pillows and blankets like a grumpy oracle.

“Yeah, yeah,” Agi waved a dismissive hand, not even opening his eyes. “We get it. You won one whole game. Abby probably let you win just so you’d stop crying every time you lost.”

That wasn’t the original plan, but if it meant salvaging my ego from the wreckage, I was happy to climb aboard.

“Exactly,” I added, running a hand through my head messily. “It was getting boring winning all the time. Thought I’d give the village idiot a little morale boost.”

Aejeong scoffed dramatically, placing a hand over his chest like I’d just pierced him with my scythe. “That’s a lie and you know it.”

I rolled my eyes and sauntered over to the fireplace, brushing invisible dust from my sleeve. “Doesn’t matter. You took, what- 200 years to checkmate me? I figured I’d save us both the osteoporosis and just fold.”

I bet he doesn’t even know what that means. 

“That’s not—!”

Just then, the door creaked open, breaking the rhythm of our bickering. Sinbi entered, quiet as moonlight, his pale gray skin cool against the harsh red glow of Ji-ok’s horizon. He looked vaguely amused, or perhaps vaguely disappointed, it was hard to tell with Sinbi. 

“Hey, Sinbi,” I called out with a lazy flick of my fingers, my voice drifting through the still air like smoke from a long-forgotten candle. “Come join us. Where’s Jinu?”

Sinbi, always the shadow to someone else’s sun, removed his gat with a quiet sigh and a troubled look that creased his otherwise unreadable face. He dropped down beside us with the weight of someone carrying more than just his own bones.

“I don’t... really know,” he said slowly, as though testing the truth in his own voice.

“You lost him?” Aejeong leaned in like a cat stretching toward a flame, resting his chin on one elegant hand, eyes narrowing in faux offense.

“N-No! Not like that.” Sinbi flushed, his composure unraveling by a thread. “He said he just... wanted to stay out a little longer.”

Agi scoffed, his body draped over the arm of a chair in that careless way of his—like a painting someone forgot to hang. His legs were tossed up comfortably, the heels of his boots pressing directly into my lap like he owned me. “You were out forever already,” he muttered, flipping lazily through the pages of a book he never reads. “What more does he want? He’s acting like he’s sick of us.”

In an act of tactical revenge, I made a grab for Agi’s shoes- knowing full well he’s shit scared of exposing his demonic toes to anyone. 

The moment my fingers brushed the laces, he shrieked- a high, musical sound like a violin string snapping- and tumbled from his chair in a mad scramble to rescue his dignity.

Aejeong let out a sharp, barked laugh, the kind of laugh that seemed to come from some unnameable place just below the ribs. He clutched his side, practically howling. 

“I mean, honestly,” I added with a grin, “Jinu’s got the right idea. I’m sick of all of you.”

And, as if summoned by the insult, Jinu walked in.

He entered with the quiet gravity of a storm, his blue bioluminescent tiger at his side, that beast of strange divinity peeling off to press against Sinbi with a low, satisfied growl. The beast shimmered like moonlight on black marble, a subtle reminder that none of us belonged fully to this world.

“Ay, Jinu,” Aejeong called, making wild gestures like an eager theater kid trying to beckon a reluctant lead actor onstage. “Get over here.”

But Jinu merely cast his eyes across our four entwined bodies: chairs too close, limbs overlapping, a mess of laughter and leftover arguments, and shook his head, slow and deliberate. “No. Not right now.” His voice was like the last note of a sad song, and before we could catch it, he vanished into his room.

We were left blinking.

“Well, that was weird,” Aejeong muttered. “Sinbi, nothing happened while you were out?”

Sinbi looked down, petting the tiger’s luminous fur with slow, thoughtful fingers. “He was just... quiet. Normally he goes on and on about anything—books, songs… and stuff like that. But today... I think I talked more than he did.”

And that said everything.

“I mean…” Agi started, then trailed off, uncharacteristically hesitant.

“What?” I nudged, sensing weight behind his silence.

“He had a nightmare. Last night.” Agi rubbed his temples. “I woke up to him standing in the middle of the hallway. Drenched. Like he’d run through a thunderstorm in his sleep. He looked right through me. I think... they’re getting worse.”

I furrowed my brows. Could this be Gwi-ma’s doing?

A hush fell over the room, heavy as velvet.

Then, like a harsh reminder of the universe’s cruelty, a shimmer cut across the ink-black sky outside the window: a wave of faint, gold strings that rippled across the clouds like spilled champagne on black silk. The honmoon. The ground shook  beneath us, subtle and cruel, and suddenly a sharp ache seized my chest. 

Across the room, the others were reacting the same way, clutching at their ribs, grimacing, stifling cries.

“Gwi-ma again,” I gasped, the words clawing out between my teeth. “His tantrums are getting worse. More manipulative. More... intimate.”

“He’s pissed the Hunters are winning,” Aejeong muttered, trying to adjust his gat with trembling fingers.

The tiger pressed closer to Sinbi, sensing something unseen.

I looked toward the hall where Jinu had disappeared, the weight of his absence tugging at my ribs like a tide.

“If he won’t come to us,” I said at last, standing, “then we go to him.”

Sinbi flinched. “What if he yells at us?”

“He won’t.” Aejeong stood beside me, voice lower now. “Something’s wrong. And I want to know who—or what—twisted him into this.”

The four of us exchanged glances. Waiting for someone to say something. Anything. But when we all kept quiet in our subtle agreement, we left. 

One by one we stood up, like phantoms climbing from the depths of our shared dusk, and padded quietly down the corridor toward Jinu’s room. There was something fragile in the air, like frost on glass that you dare not touch lest it crack and vanish.

The door, usually sealed like a vault, hung ajar. Just slightly. Enough to whisper, he wants us to come in, but doesn’t want to ask.

I knocked lightly, more out of habit than necessity, and pushed it open. 

The light inside was dim, hazy as if the room itself mourned with its occupant. Jinu knelt on the floor, a silhouette bathed in the harsh purple glow of his own fading bioluminescence, cradling his bipa like a relic from a ruined church. His head hung low. His hands trembled not from fear, but from something much older, much sadder.

Just like I had been when she died..

And all at once, understanding swept over me like a bitter tide.

“He’s mourning,” I murmured beneath my breath, crossing the room in three silent strides. I sank to the floor beside him, draping my arm over his shoulders the way one throws a coat over something precious left out in the rain.

He tsked under his breath, voice raw and thinned by grief. “Just leave me alone.” His words held no venom, only the quiet exhaustion of someone too tired to hold himself together, and too proud to ask others to do it for him.

Tears quivered at the edge of his lashes. It was a peculiar thing, to see a demon cry.

Agi followed behind, awkward in his own skin, fiddling with the hem of his sleeves. “Why now?” he asked. “Why are you mourning now?”

There was silence. Long, hollow, reverent.

And then Jinu’s voice, low and dry, like wind through a ruined chapel.

“The memories,” he said. “They’re worse now. They’re... sharper.” He exhaled, letting the words fall like ash. “I wish they’d go. I wish they’d just vanish. I don’t want to see my sister and mother…. Or see myself standing there, doing nothing. Over and over and over.”

He set his bipa aside gently, like it might shatter, and hid his face behind his clawed, demonic hands. He looked smaller than usual. Shrunken. A relic from a past life left to decay under the weight of recollection.

We sat with him in the hush. Consolation isn’t something demons are taught, much less master. We feel sorrow like music—we recognize the key, the rhythm, the grief behind it—but never quite know how to hum the right tune back.

I look at Aejeong, shifting the weight off my shoulders and onto him by motioning my head towards Jinu, a look of urgency on my face that says ‘Say something to make him feel better.’

Aejeong knitted his eyebrows, his hands showing his palms as he shrugged. ‘What the hell can I say?’ his expression speaks where words are not needed. 

I roll my eyes, tilting my head back towards Jinu with a sharper tug. 

He scowled, clearing his throat as he sits next to us. “Yeah, and I wish we could go back to the surface.”

What kind of comment is that?

Agi hummed his agreement like a man too tired to argue.

I chuckled, dry and brittle. “Ironically, I wish I had my memories back.”

Sinbi sat opposite us, cross-legged, hands in his lap, eyes fixed on the floor. “I wish we weren’t under Gwi-ma’s thumb. I wish we were free.”

And then, like a string being plucked too softly for music, I whispered, “What if… we overthrow Gwi-ma?”

The room froze.

A moment later, everyone except Jinu smacked me- not hard, but like siblings horrified by a sibling’s dare. 

Aejeong hissed, “Are you insane?” His voice low, sharp, coiled with fear. “How do you expect five demonic clowns- already collared by that fucker- to overthrow him?”

I scoffed, pushing my hair from my face. “We’ve outwitted him before.”

“And nearly got ourselves slaughtered,” Agi shot back, venom wrapped in sarcasm. “Yeah, that was brilliant.”

We sat in that half-light, shoulders touching, mourning not just a person, but a thousand memories we hadn’t asked to remember. Around us, the air of Ji-ok pulsed faintly, the walls whispering like old paper, the ceiling a cracked mirror of our own fractured minds.

And Jinu, still hiding behind his hands, said nothing at all.

But I knew he’d heard.

It was Jinu who finally broke the silence, his voice suddenly slicing through the still air like the opening note of a forgotten symphony.

“What if…” he said, lifting his head slowly, his gaze sweeping across each of us with that familiar mixture of desperation and brilliance, “Okay. Last time, we made Gwi-ma think we were committing treason to manipulate him. But what if this time, we make him believe we’re working for him?”

His eyes gleamed with some strange internal alchemy, half regret, half revelation. The room, dim with the golden tarnish of Ji-ok’s eerie twilight, seemed to hold its breath.

I raised an eyebrow, arms crossed like a tired aristocrat at the end of a long dinner party. “What are you plotting, Jinu?”

He exhaled, long and weary, like the thought itself had been caged in his lungs. “Just listen. We go to Gwi-ma, ask him to fulfill our wishes, and in return we kill the demon hunters. Then, we all get what we want, and can live in the surface world without any repercussions. He gets what he wants. We get what we want. Surface world. No strings attached.”

A beat passed.

Aejeong scoffed and leaned forward, folding his arms across his hanbok like a tired schoolboy preparing to dismantle someone’s science project. “He’s not going to just hand us the keys to paradise because we say we’ll kill his enemies.”

Agi nodded, feet kicked up lazily, eyes half-lidded but sharp. “Yeah, and how exactly are we taking out the hunters? Their voices alone could kill us now. They’ve grown strong enough to almost have the golden honmoon.”

Something in the air changed. I felt it as a shift in warmth, a tremor in the spine. My eyes met Aejeong’s. And wouldn’t you know it: he already had that look. The kind that always spells mischief and impending doom, both soaked in glitter.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he grinned, raising one smug eyebrow.

I couldn’t help it, I smiled right back, mirroring his expression with theatrical flair. “Demon boy band?”

He exploded upward with a cheer, nearly knocking over his chair in the process. “Demon boy band!”

The others stared at us like we’d grown extra limbs. Which, in this world, wasn’t entirely out of the question.

“What?” they said, deadpan and in perfect unison.

“Think about it-” Aejeong began, gesturing with operatic grandeur.

“If the demon hunters sing to strengthen themselves while fighting us,” I interrupted, purely to piss him off, “we can do the same. Win over the souls of the civilians. Seduce them with harmony. Nobody’s done it before, but maybe it’s time.”

There was a pause.

Jinu, of all people, nodded slowly. “That’s… an idea.”

Agi’s expression shifted from bewildered to amused acceptance. “I mean… it’s not a bad idea.” He turned toward Jinu, that familiar glimmer of provocation dancing in his voice. “You could even sing that one song you wrote. The one that drags Gwi-ma through the fire.”

Jinu gave a soft scoff, a shadow of a smile at last stretching across his worn face. “Which one?”

Sinbi, quiet and precise as always, tapped one of his tusks. “My favorite’s the one about extinguishing the flame. It’s got a kind of funeral rhythm to it. Feels… fitting.”

A pause. Then Sinbi looked up at Aejeong, as if giving permission for the chaos to continue. “Tell him what’s what.”

I laughed and clapped Sinbi gently on the shoulder. “Attaboy. That’s how you do it.” It was rare for him to speak up, and rarer still to speak like that. There was something rich in it, like an old book finally opened.

Jinu looked at us all. Really looked. As though this ridiculous idea—this ridiculous group—might just be the only good thing left in the ashes of his heart.

“You selfish, heartless demons…” he said softly, not without warmth, “you’d risk your lives for me? For my wish?”

Aejeong chuckled, arms stretched behind his head, the light pink hue his hair nearly glowing in the odd, dusky light. “Bit dramatic on the descriptors there. But yeah. We’ve almost died, what? Five times? What’s one more?”

I tilted my head toward him with an approving smirk. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Agi let out a theatrical groan, stretching like a cat before mischief. “Let’s go do something stupid.”

And Jinu stood, slowly, deliberately, as if he were finally rising from a grave dug with memory and regret. There was steel in his jaw, something electric in his spine. Grief still clung to him, but so did purpose.

He looked at us with solemn eyes, voice low and golden. “Then follow my lead.”

From where I stood,  off to the sides and camouflaged by the demon crowds standing both sides of the temple staircase, I saw Gwi-ma’s fire glowing menacingly at the top, illuminating red into the sky. 

Suddenly I heard music. Jinu’s music. I watched him descend from the air as if he were some weary seraph, bipa in hand, a song still shimmering in the broken silence behind him.

There was something holy in the way he landed. It was precise, soundless- almost reverent- and in that moment, I believed, despite the darkness, that we were right to have tried. Even if we die pulling this stunt.

But no flame ever burned in Ji-ok without the stench of ash following.

The fire that fueled Jinu’s voice, the ache that tethered him to a past he never asked to remember—just as mine chained me to a history I would give anything to recover—all of it, every torment, every dissonant note in our lives, stemmed from Gwi-ma. He crafted suffering like an artisan; we were only his twisted gallery.

“I let you keep that voice, Jinu,” Gwi-ma’s voice came not as thunder but as something older. More insidious. Like a cold wind that crawled down the spine and settled in the marrow. “And you dare mock me with it?”

The words didn’t echo. They didn’t need to. They carved themselves into the air and into our skin.

Jinu, bold or foolish, I couldn’t decide which, stood his ground. “I’m not here to mock you.”

Oh, shit.

Our cue.

My body moved before my brain could catch up. I exchanged one look, one solemn, burning glance, with Aejeong, then we all slipped into motion like parts of a silent clock. I took Jinu’s left. Sinbi drifted right in front of me like smoke. Aejeong, Agi to his left. 

“I’m here to help you,” Jinu said, with the sincerity of a dying priest giving last rites to the man who murdered him.

“It’s time for a new strategy.” He glides up the staircase and we follow. “We fight the hunters where they least expect it.” Jinu talked more but my hearing faded in and out of the fear that Gwi-ma would swallow us whole after sniffing out our plot.

“A demon boy band?” Gwi-ma repeated the phrase, and the fire curled crueler around him. Heat struck us like open palms, blistering, branding.

And then he laughed.

A sound so hideous, so cruel, it made me want to rip my own ears off just to stop the vibration. It was a laugh without mirth, a demon’s idea of amusement, carved from bone and sealed in hate.

My legs trembled. I wanted to run. I wanted to vanish. But there we were, burning under his gaze.

More dialogue was exchanged between the two, but I was too busy looking at Sinbi and wondering how a sturdy and dependable being like him was almost shaking like a leaf now. 

Jinu voice speared through my thoughts. “The memories. I want them erased.”

My throat closed. I stepped forward, heart thundering against my ribs like it wanted out.

“I want my memories back,” I said. My voice was hollow, fragile, but it was mine.

Aejeong joined in, steady and defiant. “If we kill the demon hunters, we want out. No more manipulation.”

Agi, his bravado slipping like cheap paint in the rain, added, “No ties. No strings.”

Then silence.

Not peace. Never peace. But the kind of silence that falls over a room just before the chandelier crashes.

Time did not pass. It simply paused to see if we would break first.

Finally, from the abyss, Gwi-ma’s answer floated down like an executioner’s breath:

“Very well. Kill the demon hunters, and your wishes will be granted. Fail—and you will cease to exist.”

I exhaled, shakily, as if I’d just been dragged from beneath a lake. But no sooner had relief set in than something black and sticky pressed against my thoughts, like tar poured into the folds of my brain.

You belong to me.

Whatever you're planning won't work.

Obey. Or die.

The voice, or perhaps something deeper than voice, twisted around my heart. Then it was gone. And I wanted to scream.

Jinu teleported first, flickering out of the space like flame devoured by wind. The rest of us followed instinctively, throwing ourselves after him like moths chasing a dying spark.

We found him on his knees, the faint blue glow of his tiger hovering behind him like a forgotten moon.

“You did it,” I said, but the words tasted dry, dusty with fear.

Jinu didn’t answer right away. Instead, he let out a breathless sound, a choked, guttural thing, and crumpled forward, trembling.

“Sheesh,” Agi muttered, trying, so obviously trying, to play it cool. “At least he didn’t, y’know, suspend us midair and nearly snap our necks this time.”

It was a weak joke. It didn’t land. But none of us had the heart to call him on it.

Jinu surged to his feet like something reborn, eyes wild and feverish. “We have to work. We have to work really, really hard. This isn’t like last time. This is the end. This is freedom… or damnation.”

I smirked bitterly, pressing a hand to his shoulder like a benediction. “We’ve already been damned.”

Aejeong stepped between us, gently removing my hand as though to temper the fire before it scorched the whole house down. “How are we going to kill Gwi-ma?” he asked, his voice quiet, almost apologetic.

Jinu’s mouth twitched. Not a smile. Not a frown. Just the ghost of a man caught in the terrible machinery of memory.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But first, we earn our freedom.”

And somewhere, behind us, the fire still burned.

It was a few slow hours later, the kind of hours that hang in the air like steam, where even the ticking of a clock feels exhausted. We were back home, lounging idly beneath the dimmed amber glow of our new lighting, soulless and buzzing like a gnat. The atmosphere felt humid with something unspoken.

And then something snapped in me.

Not pain, not even discomfort, just a strange uncoiling, like a silken cord stretched too tightly for too long and finally, with a graceful whisper, surrendering to the inevitable break. It was release. It was relief. It was a violin string breaking in the stillness of a concert hall.

Next to me, Sinbi stiffened, his book lowering with the dainty silence of someone slipping out of a dream. He turned to me with the hesitation of a child caught between waking and remembering.

Aejeong cracked his neck, a gesture that normally carried the bravado of a man trying to intimidate a mirror, but now seemed thoughtful, almost poetic. “Did you feel that?” he asked, quietly, as though afraid speaking would unravel whatever just happened.

“It felt like a bone snapped,” Agi murmured, approaching us from across the room with the loose swagger of a person trying very hard to look unimpressed. “But it didn’t hurt.”

“Yeah,” I said softly, placing my hand on the wall beside me, half-expecting to feel the world tremble in reply.

That’s when Jinu crashed through the door, eyes electric with knowing. “Did you feel that?” he blurted.

“Like a bone snapped but it didn’t hurt?” Agi repeated with an almost-smirk, glancing back at us with the air of someone who already knew the punchline.

Jinu nodded, breathless.

The gates had opened.

We were free.

We stared at each other—not with elation, not quite. There was something strange about the way the silence held between us, like someone holding out a rose to a starving man. A gift, yes. But cruel in its timing.

And then, I vanished.

With a rush of air and instinct, I teleported away from that house of gray stone and smoke, reaching, aching for the surface. Earth, our old flame, our forgotten ruin. I longed to feel sun on my skin that hadn’t seen anything but fire for centuries.

The brightness of day assaulted me as if it had waited two hundred years just to blind me. I staggered back beneath the wide sky—so blue it felt offensive—blinking against the shine that bounced off everything. The others appeared slowly around me, blinking just the same. Dazed. Unbelieving.

And oh, Korea.

The Korea we remembered had disappeared like a photograph burned in water. In its place rose towers, clean, cruel monoliths of glass and chrome that shimmered like spirits. Roads stretched out in black veins, smooth and soulless. Neon lights blinked at us with disingenuous smiles, selling things we couldn’t name in voices we didn’t recognize.

“What happened to Korea...?” Aejeong whispered. His voice was small, reverent. We were pilgrims on sacred ground that no longer remembered our names.

There were no stone lanterns. No warm clay walls. No gentle rattle of horse carts. The earth itself felt sterilized. Plastic trees lined the avenues. The wind carried the perfume of metal and exhaust.

We floated silently over the city, watching the people rush like ants in suits, faces glued to rectangles of glass. No one looked up. No one ever does anymore.

When the sun began its descent, we found a rooftop, high enough to see the city blink beneath us like circuitry. Agi groaned and let his legs dangle off the side. “I feel so old looking at this”

“Tell me about it,” I mumbled, sitting beside him. “Everything’s so... different.”

Jinu was already pacing, his mind whirring into formation. “We need to fit in,” he said, not unkindly. “We need to look like a boy band.”

Aejeong, ever theatrical, peeled off his hanbok and folded it like a flag at half-mast. “We don’t even have a name.”

Jinu furrowed his brow, distracted. “I thought... I mean, weren’t we just going to call ourselves...?”

Agi nearly choked on his laughter. “You actually thought our name was going to be Demon Boy Band?” He turned to me with exaggerated offense. “Abby.”

I tilted my head slightly, waiting. He had that mischievous glint again, the one that always ended in trouble or triumph.

“Remember when we went to Jeong-won as ‘gods’?” he said, air-quoting, that grin widening with memory.

A cold flush went down my spine—so brief, so sharp, I almost mistook it for wind. I cleared my throat. “I do.”

Of course I did.

“We all had matching tattoos,” Agi said as he pointed to he shoulder where the tattoo once was, his voice curling into the rooftop air like the tail end of a half-remembered story. There was a gleam in his eye, the mischievous kind, the sort that lit fires in crowded rooms and walked away whistling.

I snapped my fingers as memory clicked into place. “A lion,” I said, the syllables soft as silk.

“Exactly.” He cleared his throat and straightened up, his shoulders rising like he’d grown taller on the spot. “We become the Saja Boys,” he announced, as if unveiling a marble statue, lips pulled into a smug crescent. His demonic features didn’t lessen the grandeur—if anything, they made the grin feel carved from old myth.

“Oooh…” I nodded slowly, thoughtfully. It had weight. Teeth.

But Aejeong crossed his arms like a schoolteacher unimpressed by mischief. “Nah,” he muttered, his nose wrinkled. “I’m not buying it.”

Agi turned to him, a scoff caught somewhere between his throat and pride. “Do you have any better ideas?” he asked, then added under his breath, “Or any ideas at all?”

Aejeong didn’t flinch. His pink hair glowed like spun sugar in the moonlight as he cocked his head dramatically. “I was thinking... Romance and Co.”

The silence was immediate and violent.

I felt a vein in my forehead twitch before my hand shot out, smacking the back of his head like I was swatting a fly. “Are you serious?” I barked, incredulous. “We are not naming our group after your soap opera fantasy.”

Agi threw his head back with theatrical disgust. “That’s the worst name I’ve ever heard, and I live with a demon named Aejeong.”

Aejeong laughed as he ducked away, arms shielding his head. “Okay, okay! It was just an idea! Who do you all think you are?”

From his usual perch of quiet contemplation, Sinbi spoke, barely above the hum of wind. “I like Saja Boys,” he murmured, gaze cast down the edge of the rooftop to where cars rushed below like silver insects. He squinted at the neon blur of city life, the far-off pulse of a Korea reborn in chrome and glass.

That settled it.

Jinu clapped his hands once, sharp and decisive. “Then it’s settled. We’ll be the Saja Boys.” He started to pace, his hanbok flaring slightly with each step, his mind clearly accelerating far faster than his feet could carry him. “We have to go back to Ji-ok now.”

A collective groan rose from the group like a sigh from the Earth itself.

“But we just got here,” Sinbi said with the softest kind of protest, the kind that already knew it had lost.

Jinu shook his head, already spiraling. “I need to tell Gwi-ma... get him to start the advertising... and then we’ll need a single... choreography, branding,, oh my Gwi-ma...” He bit down on his knuckle, eyes going wide and glassy, the beginnings of panic etching across his face like cracks in porcelain. “There’s so much to do…”

“Okay, how about we breathe first,” Aejeong said, gently wrapping a hand around Jinu’s arm and steering him back to where the rest of us lounged. “Stress does terrible things to the skin.”

He acts as though our faces aren’t already smokey gray and littered with purple markings.

“I mean, what would we even sing about?” Agi mused aloud, twirling the tassels of his gat between two fingers. “Traditional pansori isn’t exactly going to win over people’s souls now. We need something new. Modern.”

Jinu’s eyes widened more in panic. It was clear Agi’s points weren’t helping his situation. 

“I don’t—” Jinu began, voice tight.

“Okay!” I cut in, stepping forward with as much authority as I could muster without collapsing under the absurdity of it all. I grabbed Jinu’s shoulders and gave him a little shake, not enough to hurt, just enough to realign his spirit. “Here’s the plan: you and Aejeong go tell Gwi-ma. Pitch the idea, charm him, maybe even flatter his ego while you’re at it. Meanwhile, Agi, Sinbi, and I will work on writing the song. Something catchy. We regroup in a few hours.”

Jinu looked at me like a drowning man spotting land on the horizon, wary but willing to swim. He swallowed, nodded once. “Okay. That works.”

A few moments later, with a blur of borrowed magic and fading light, Jinu and Aejeong vanished back to Ji-ok, leaving me stranded with two of the most absurd companions fate matched me with. Demons, yes, but their tarred souls stitched with boredom and mischief, lounging against the modern skyline as if they belonged to it.

“Alright,” I said, cracking my neck like a soldier preparing for war but dressed in irony instead of armor. “What should we sing about? Debut songs are everything. They’re the first sip, the first kiss, the first lie. It needs to be catchy, addictive- and definitely Popular.”

Agi shrugged with the sort of half-effort that might have insulted gravity itself. His expression was a mural of indifference, his eyes glassy beneath the brim of his crooked hat. Beside him, Sinbi stood like a gargoyle, unmoving ,his gaze fixed intently on the city’s pulse below.

“What have you been  looking at?” I asked, strolling over with casual curiosity, my boots making no sound against the ancient roof tiles repurposed into modern cement. I followed his stare and found a billboard, the kind that demands reverence from the skyline, lit up like a marquee in a theatre long past its prime.

Four girls. Four goddesses cast in LED.

The topmost towered with grace, her violet hair laced into a lone, intricate braid, each strand woven like fate itself. Her beauty was cold, classical, and designed to wound slowly. Beneath her stood a hot pink girl with pigtails draping down her back, her expression serious and blunt, her energy practically dripping off the screen. Next to her, a raven-haired girl beamed with the impish grin of someone born to start trouble and get away with it. Her twin buns framed her face like inked punctuation, every glance, a sentence you couldn’t finish. And then there was the last one: hair loose, effortless, shoulder-length and slick with something divine. Her eyes were rimmed in metallic gold- contacts, I assume- held a smugness that belonged in temples or courtrooms, not a billboard. She stared out like she’d already won.

Huntrix, read the neon title above their heads, bold and blinking like a siren song. A name meant to be screamed by crowds and whispered by critics. A name soaked in artifice, and yet, for Sinbi, something quite real.

Without a word, he glided down to the sign, floating as if drawn by invisible strings. His finger stretched out and landed delicately on the one with black hair and mischief coiled behind her lashes. “She’s… so pretty,” he murmured.

So soft. I almost didn’t hear it.

“HA!” I cackled, swooping after him with glee. “Sinbi’s got a cruuuush!” I rotate from jabbed at his shoulder and shaking him, delighted by the pink heat creeping up his neck despite the dark curtain of hair that usually hid him like a shadowed painting.

“Ew! A crush?!” Agi materialized beside us with practiced disgust, his face twisted like he'd swallowed a heart-shaped rock. “Focus, you demons!” He karate-chopped the air as if to sever the nonsense completely.

I gave Sinbi one last poke, and then, with a theatrical clearing of my throat, returned to business. “You’re right. We’ll never write a good song like this. Come on.” I landed softly on the pavement, the city stretching out like a dream deferred. “Let’s walk. Maybe the world will give us lyrics.”

And so we did. The three of us, out of time, out of place, walked the streets of Seoul like phantoms with popcorn for brains. We slithered unnoticed past people like ghosts between gears, invisible yet watching. Everything was new. The scent of fried sugar and hot metal. The strange music piped from doorways and headphones, loud and repetitive, all shimmering synths and over-pronounced syllables. 

We listened. 

We learned.

“K-pop,” I muttered. “The K is for Korean...”

“And the Pop’s for popular,” Agi chimed in, as if he'd just read it off the sky.

“Huh,” I replied flatly. “I’m not a fan of the name.”

Then suddenly, a gasp.

“Look!” Sinbi’s voice cracked with wonder, his body already teleporting forward with a rare kind of urgency.

Agi and I blinked at each other and followed, appearing at his side in a shimmer of displaced air. He stood before a glowing glass box, tall and humming, like a shrine for the tired and impulsive. It was filled with neat rows of chrome-colored cylinders, blinking like magic potions.

“A vend...ing machine?” Agi read slowly, squinting at the label as if it had the gall to insult his intelligence.

“What’s it vending?” I asked suspiciously, one eyebrow raised as I squinted at the contents within.

“Look,” Sinbi said again, breathless and oddly enthusiastic, as though pointing to the ruins of Troy. His finger, slender, pale, and sharp from his demonic nails, pressed against the glowing glass of the vending machine. There, nestled in the third row like a crown jewel in a treasure chest, was a can bearing the image of a girl.

The girl from the billboard.

The mischief-maker in twin buns whose grin had cracked Sinbi’s usual veil of stoicism like sunlight through a cathedral window. Her likeness beamed back from the aluminum like a blessing. The colors were loud and romantic, lilac and red with cursive script, bold as a confession.

“Soda… pop,” I read aloud, the words tasting foreign and foolish on my tongue.

And then, before I could blink, Sinbi phased his hand directly through the glass. No hesitation, no consideration for mortal laws or retail theft. He plucked the can from its holy slot like a man stealing fire from the heavens.

His mouth opened, agape in sheer reverence. I swore I saw stars reflect in his pupils as he rotated the can like an astronomer studying a new planet. He gave it a gentle shake, the liquid inside sloshing like a sea waiting to be sung about.

“Oh,” Agi said flatly, hands in his sleeves. “It’s a drink.”His voice had all the ceremony of a tax collector.

At the top of the can, a shiny metal tab waited to be pulled, like the tongue of a siren daring you to taste her song. Without thinking, I reached out and snatched the can from Sinbi’s grasp, determined to open it.

Big mistake.

A sound erupted from him- not quite human, not quite demonic either, but something primal. A growl. 

A growl. His face snapped toward me, and he tore the can from my hands with the fury of a dragon protecting its hoard.

“No!” he barked, “That’s my soda pop!”

There was a brief silence. Agi blinked once, slowly, as if recalibrating the meaning of life. “…My little soda pop,” he mused, stroking his chin. “Doesn’t that sound a little catchy?”

“Ah, like a romance song?” I nod slowly, crossing my arms as I occasionally glance at Sinbi who swallowed every drop in one go.

“Han mogeum-e, you hit the spot,” Agi muttered, his voice slipping into a rhythm, like the beginnings of a verse. It had that casual swagger, the kind you couldn’t fake. 

And just like that, a song began to build itself around us. Out of nothing but neon light, vending machines, and one demon’s ridiculous infatuation.

Sinbi, oblivious to the historic moment, had cracked open another can- with the same face- with a hiss. He drank like a man dehydrated from centuries of grief. One sip. Two. A third. His face lit up after each gulp, euphoric and unholy.

“I-It’s just… really tasty,” he sputtered, as he noticed how bewildered we looked while watching him. “Every sip makes me want more.”

It was around this time that red dust stirred at our feet, curling like incense smoke. Aejeong and Jinu blinked into existence beside us, stepping from Ji-ok’s grasp and into the soft blue wash of the late Seoul moon light.

Aejeong tilted his head slightly. “Have you demons,” he began slowly, “learned anything”

His gaze moved from me to Agi to Sinbi, who was now licking the aluminum rim like a lunatic on his fourth espresso. A long pause followed, heavy with judgment.

We looked ridiculous. 

Agi and I exchanged a look, one of those rare, perfectly synchronized expressions where a single glance conveyed paragraphs. I smiled. He smirked.

And together, with all the charm of swindlers pitching an empire, we turned toward our bewildered friends and said, in perfect harmony:

“Just hear us out.”

Chapter Text

“No, no, no,” Jinu clicked his tongue sharply, each syllable heavy with the disapproval of a disappointed demon. 

He stood at the edge of the ballroom-turned-prison, where sunlight spilled through the tiny window of fake freedom and dared to warm his ash-gray skin. The contrast was jarring: light against storm. With one hand he tore off his gat, wiping his sweat-slicked brow as if the sun itself had offended him.

“Agi,” he said, voice low but bristling with contempt. His eyes, narrow and silver, flashed like steel pulled from the furnace. “Your rap is off-beat. For Gwi-ma’s sake, I know you know the lyrics. But for the love of all demonic virtue, stay on beat.”

Agi blinked back at him, half-exhausted, half-unbothered, and entirely ready to implode. I could feel his anger boiling up to his mouth but quickly decided to not further instigate Jinu’s wrath. 

Ever since Agi and I had pitched the song idea, he seized control with the fervor of a man possessed. It wasn’t the kind of leadership one volunteers for, but rather the kind that commandeers: untouchable and absolute.

What had felt like a glamorous rebellion at first, setting up our “headquarters” at a banquet hall next to a hotel, quickly devolved into something far more brutal. Jinu transformed our dreamscape into a regime. For forty-eight hours straight, we sang, we danced, we gasped for air between routines like shipwrecked sailors drinking salt. 

Our legs had turned to pudding, our voices to gravel- and still, he demanded more.

Even the mirrors on the walls, once gilded and benevolent, now bore witness to our undoing. They reflected not youthful rebellion, but disheveled shadows stumbling through choreography like cursed marionettes. The room echoed with our faltered notes and missed steps, all of it met with Jinu’s relentless mantra: again, again, again.

It was familiar. Too familiar.

The last time he looked like this—rigid spine, clenched jaw, a mad gleam blooming in his eyes— was when we were practicing to manipulated Gwi-ma for the first time. Back then, his determination had tasted like purpose. Now it tasted like tyranny.

A dictator in a dance studio. Hilarious as that sounds. 

“Again,” he said, for the sixth time that hour, even as Agi slumped against a gilded column and muttered something sacrilegious under his breath.

Aejeong, ever dramatic, declared we had “sold our souls to the beat.” He said it with one shoe off and a melting ice pack on his ankle.

“You’d think we would be civilized despite being demons.” Agi grumbled, hurling a half-empty water bottle across the room. It missed Jinu by a glorious inch. 

But Jinu didn’t flinch. He stood at the mirrored wall, our false audience, his gaze on his own reflection as though daring it to fail him.

“We have to be perfect,” he muttered. “It has to mean something.”

It had to. Because if it didn’t then all of it- the rebellion, the bargaining, everything we’ve put out to hope for our freedom… would’ve been for nothing.

“I just don’t understand why you’re not hitting the beat,” Jinu huffed, his tone as sharp as the crease in his hanbok.

“Oh my Gods, Jinu.” Aejeong groaned as if his soul had finally withered into something papery and tragic. He dragged his hands down his face with theatrical defeat, fingers catching on the fabric of his hanbok. “We are following the beat. You just can’t see it through our goddamn stupid hanbok outfits” He scoffed at his clothes for the first time. 

And truthfully, he had a point. As noble as the hanbok was—its silk black sleeves and embroidered dignity swaying like prayer flags—it was not made for K-pop choreography. What had started as a symbol of unity had become a cotton sarcophagus, trapping our rhythm in pleats and high collars.

“You’re right,” Jinu finally muttered after a moment of silence. “If we want to be a boy band- not a demon boy band- we need to dress like one.”

“But I like these clothes…” Sinbi’s voice was soft, almost mournful. His hair was tied in a tidy man-bun, golden demon eyes flickering like twin candles in a breezy room. The folds of his robe fell around him like a melancholic painting, a monk exiled from fashion week.

“It’s not forever, Sinbi,” I said gently, adjusting my own sash, which had somehow come loose from my waist in the chaos of practice. “Think of it as a... temporary change.”

“But what do we even change into?” Agi asked his arms flailing in the air as he slumped on the floor. 

Suddenly Aejeong gasped, grinning like a sinner with a secret. He stumbled to where he’d tossed his hat hours ago. Beneath it was a glossy magazine, still warm from the human world. He opened it with the reverence of a priest revealing scripture.

“These guys,” he said, his voice practically trembling. He held up the page like Moses unveiling the tablets. “We base ourselves off of these men.”

The page revealed seven impossibly photogenic boys, draped in pastels and confidence, limbs angled with precise carelessness beneath three letters, boldly inked. 

“Bee… Tee… Ess?” Jinu read aloud, one brow raised, as if tasting each letter.

“…Stray Kids?” Sinbi blinked at the next page. “They don’t look like kids though.”

Aejeong laughed. “Exactly! Just look!” And then—like some glitched transformation scene from a comic strip—he changed. His demon complexion warmed to a boyish tan. His wild hair softened into a tamed light pink shade. The demonic yellow of his eyes melted into warm brown. Gone were the robes—replaced by a pastel yellow flannel and faded denim, cuffed at the ankle. 

He looked like a failed actor who’d finally made it on a music video set. I laugh to myself. 

“You look so ugly.” Agi said flatly, his face a portrait of betrayal.

Aejeong gasped, scandalized. “I look like a heartthrob! I am Romance, remember? That’s literally my name!” He gestured furiously at his face.

I couldn’t help it—I laughed. “Alright then.” With a snap of my fingers, I followed suit. My hanbok unraveled like a magician’s cloth, revealing a snug floral-patterned shirt and matching jeans. My skin changed into a soft tan glow, my hair now a cherry-red that glinted when I moved. I took my gat and morphed it into a mustard-yellow beanie perched cockily on my head.

“Holy hell, I look sick,” I admired aloud, flexing a little. The outfit hugged just right- accentuating my refined and perfect physique. My reflection winked back with approval.

Aejeong scoffed from behind me. “Now I know why your name is Abby- it’s your stupid abs.”

“You little—” I wheeled on him. He yelped, ducking behind Jinu as I lunged with mock vengeance. “That is not why I’m called that!”

“You’re just mad I’m naturally perfect,” I muttered, returning to the mirror, brushing imaginary lint from my collar.

Sinbi stood next. “Okay. My turn.” He stepped forward, hesitating. “But… I don’t like the way any of them look.”

“Then improvise,” Aejeong sniffed, arms folded like a skeptical fashion critic.

And improvise he did. He kept nearly everything the same—his lean frame, moonlit hair, and quiet aura—but morphed his tusks into regular human teeth. His robes shimmered away, replaced by a sleeveless violet-and-gold turtleneck with matching arm warmers. Somehow, it suited him. Elegant. Subtle. Like a prince who read too much poetry.

I strolled over, tapping one of his arm warmers with a teasing smirk. “What are these? Just wear sleeves.”

Before Sinbi could reply, Aejeong swatted at me. “Shut up, they’re fashionable!” 

“As if you know more about being human than me,” I hissed with the last ounce of self-respect I had left clinging to my tone, but Jinu, a tyrant cloaked in pastel peace, placed a hand on my shoulder. His touch, once razor-clawed and hell-born, now bore the benign smoothness of a suburban pianist. A human hand. Five fingers. No talons. No malice. Just... skin.

I glanced up and observed him. Objectively speaking, he looked striking. 

Not me-level striking, of course, but for someone who once snarled at moonlight and fed on fear, he’d done alright for himself. 

His hair was still the same midnight black, but now it shimmered beneath the cheap fluorescent banquet lighting like a freshly printed magazine spread. He wore small silver hoops in his ears and a crisp white flannel that clung just enough to suggest rather than declare. His jeans, a slightly darker wash than the rest of ours, held a quiet confidence.

“Not bad,” I muttered, deciding not to drag his already fragile ego through the mud.

Collectively, we turned to Agi, who lay splayed across the floor like a martyr refusing to renounce his god. His hanbok fanned around him like a stubborn banner of protest, arms crossed, scowl etched deep into his face.

He scanned us one by one, his judgment thicker than fog on the Han River. His lip curled.

“Oh fine,” he moaned, with the exaggerated despair of someone being asked to betray centuries of culture for fashion. He rose like a reluctant phoenix and snatched the magazine from Aejeong, flipping through it with the fury of a man flipping through rejection letters.

“I hate all of these, by the way,” he grumbled. “They suck.”

And with a begrudging snap, he transformed.

Hot pink. A sweater, checkered and loud, clung to his frame like it had been grown in a field of flamingos. His jeans were purple, unnecessarily purple. Finally, he looked at me with narrowed eyes, reached up, and twisted his beloved gat into a yellow beanie, almost like mine but a different shade and style. 

“Happy?” he spat.

The beanie sat crookedly on his head like a crown made for clowns. His cheeks—round and deceivingly innocent—puffed in defiance.

He had such a baby face. Such a baby face.

I snorted and patted him on the back. “You live up to your name.”

He frowned. His eyes—the color of exotic lagoons sparkling in the sun’s glow—gleamed with dramatic hopelessness and boredom. “Goo goo ga ga,” he deadpanned.

I shouldn’t have laughed. But I did. 

Jinu cleared his throat, and the atmosphere shriveled on cue. The air went cold, like someone had opened the door to Ji-ok.

“Alright,” he said, his voice a scalpel. “Now it’s even more necessary to practice as ourselves.”

He gestured broadly, dramatically, toward the four of us now clad in the garish glitter of modernity.

“This,” he announced, “is who we are now. Don’t. Break. Character.”

We all nodded, as if he’d handed us a royal decree. And in a way, he had. If we were to deceive all of South Korea then our façade had to be more than costume. 

Agi scratched his arm. “Ugh. These clothes are itchy.”

“Didn’t you pick them?” Jinu said crisply. He clapped twice, sharp, commanding, the sound echoing off the banquet hall walls like a gunshot. “Get into position. Let’s keep practicing.”

Many grueling hours later- hours in which time dripped by like honey off a dull spoon- Jinu finally, finally spoke the words we’d been dying to hear.

“That…” he exhaled, pinching the bridge of his nose and gazing over our crumpled bodies, “wasn’t half bad, actually.”

The banquet hall, now dimmed by sweat and dusk and sorrow, felt like the ruins of a civilization that had collapsed under the weight of one too many dance counts. The chandelier above us flickered as if even it were too tired to keep watching.

Sinbi, who had melted into the parquet floor like a forgotten candle, groaned. “My shoulders hurt so bad from doing that one arm step every twenty seconds.”

“Tell me about it,” Aejeong croaked, collapsing against the mirrored wall and glugging down water like he’d just crossed a desert. His bangs stuck to his face in damp strands, his shirt clinging to him with embarrassing intimacy.

As for me, my spine had adopted a permanent question mark shape, and I was beginning to suspect I might never walk upright again. I’d become a tragic hunchback, a creature of song and torment.

“I’m heading to bed,” Agi announced with the dignity of a man who had suffered enough. He collected his belongings—including, inexplicably, five crushed soda cans that used to belong to Sinbi—as if they were the fragments of his fractured soul.

“How?” I asked, genuinely baffled.

He shrugged with the nonchalance of a devil with nothing left to lose. “Go to a room, eat a soul, give the body to one of you two.” He pointed lazily at Sinbi and me.

I tsked, rolling my eyes. “You know I’m trying to get clean.”

He smirked. We both knew that was never going to happen. Addictions don't die in hell; they just become part of your routine.

Sinbi and Aejeong, still halfway folded like broken lawn chairs, followed Agi out of the hall without ceremony. Their groans echoed faintly through the ornate corridor as the heavy doors clicked shut behind them.

I lingered. Then, with a decisive grunt of pain, I pulled myself upright and shuffled—not toward the hotel like the others, but toward the side exit of the banquet hall.

“Where are you going?” Jinu’s voice called out from behind me, dry but laced with curiosity. He was toweling off his sweat-drenched hair, his shirt darkened at the collar and sticking to him like a second skin.

I shrugged, hooking my thumb through the belt loop of my jeans. “Dunno. Just… need to decompress. Or whatever people say now.”

I tilted my head toward the door- a subtle invitation. It had been a while since it was just the two of us, not arguing, not strategizing, not dragging each other through existential barbed wire. Something simple would be nice.

To my surprise, he nodded. Half a smile ghosted over his face as he slung the towel over his shoulders and joined me, holding the door open like some noble gentleman born in the wrong century.

Outside, the evening air was sharp and glossy, thick with the scent of wet pavement and car exhaust. The city shimmered in neon and glass, as if heaven had descended and been paved over by capitalism. Towering LED screens blinked advertisements at us in a dozen colors, and the street buzzed during golden hour.

“So,” I began, stuffing my other hand into my jean pocket. “Not to be a hater but…”

Jinu groaned. A full-body groan. He rolled his eyes dramatically just as we passed two girls loitering near a café awning, their eyes widening like they’d spotted the love of their lives- us obviously.

Just to mess with them, I winked at the one who was staring a little too hard. Her entire body seemed to short-circuit, stumbling back into her friend like someone had unplugged her nervous system.

“If you’re going to complain about practice—” Jinu started.

“Yes,” I interrupted. “Yes, I am going to complain about practice. Because you overworked us like dogs. Again. This is your whole thing.”

He rubbed his temple as we strolled down the glittering sidewalk, our footsteps barely audible over the murmuring city. “It’s not—ugh. Why are you blaming me? We have to be perfect. Our first performance is tomorrow.”

I stopped walking.

“…Tomorrow?” I blinked. “You never said it was tomorrow.”

A group of middle schoolers in matching uniforms passed by us, slowing their steps and whispering behind their hands. One girl tried to sneak a photo. The flash betrayed her. Jinu didn’t notice, but I gave the kid a knowing smirk, watching her run off red-faced and giggling.

Because, obviously, we were so handsome it was criminal.

Jinu continued walking without looking back. “Yes. Tomorrow. You know, the whole reason we’ve been torturing ourselves for days.”

I jogged to catch up. “You’re telling me we’ve been rehearsing this soul-killing routine without knowing the show’s tomorrow? That’s—”

“Don’t say it.”

“—psychotic,” I finished with flair.

“You’re dramatic,” he muttered.

“I’m right,” I corrected, proudly.

He didn’t respond, just shook his head and smiled into the wind like a man too tired to argue.

“No,” Jinu muttered, the word a brittle shard of air between his lips. “Gwi-ma said we’ve lingered in this world long enough. He wants results now. And you know what happens if we flop,” His voice turned sharp, venom curling at the edges of every syllable, “there are no second chances. We’re not some washed-up rookie group scrambling for fame—we’re his investment.”

I nodded with the sort of slow solemnity only exhaustion can birth. The city street shimmered under the warm glow of the setting sun, too bright and too artificial for a sky that no longer remembered stars. I crossed the road with a sigh, breaking away from the herd of slow-walkers clogging the sidewalk like molasses in winter.

“I think we’ll be fine,” I said, cocky as ever. “Our face cards are strong enough.”

Jinu furrowed his brow,”What are you talking…” He started but then someone walked in front of us.

A girl.

She stepped directly into our path like some nervous, windblown leaf blown off the page of a schoolboy’s romance. Her shoes tapped the pavement like she wasn’t sure they belonged to her. Brown hair cascaded past her shoulders, straight and obedient, parted with the kind of care only girls with too much hope and too little self-worth carry. Her uniform still creased at the seams. A schoolbag with far too many buttons. And a blush rising like red silk along her cheeks.

“H-Hello,” she stammered, fingers tangling in some ancient dance of nerves and delusion. “I was wondering if…” She looked between Jinu and I like a squirrel choosing which nut to steal from the vendor.

And then, of course, she chose Me.

“Can I have your number?” she asked, the words escaping her like a confession in the dark.

Ah. 

How cute.

Another human to grovel at me.

I smiled. The kind of smile you find on devils in paintings. 

My body drifted closer- closer than politeness permitted- until I towered over her. She looked up, startled, as my shadow fell across her like a velvet curtain. My gaze held hers in a way that said I could unmake you, and maybe, if I was bored enough, I would.

“Trust me,” I whispered, voice languid and soaked in mock affection. “You don’t want me to do that.”

There was a pause. A beat suspended in honey. Her lips parted slightly, eyes wide, the color draining from her face as though her soul had remembered something her body hadn’t.

Without waiting for her reply, I brushed past her shoulder, deliberately rough, like brushing off lint. I didn’t look back.

Beside me, Jinu exhaled through gritted teeth, his expression unreadable. “You could’ve taken her soul.”

“Then you do it,” I said with a shrug, rolling my shoulder until it cracked. “She was kinda cute.”

“You’re ridiculous,” he hissed, but his tone lacked conviction: half reprimand, half camaraderie.

I leaned against his shoulder with the easy intimacy of old war buddies walking home from a failed mission. “It takes one to know one.”

He didn’t argue. Just kept walking forward beneath the city lights, our shoes echoing against the concrete like a ticking clock.

We walked on without words, letting the sounds of the city in low daylight overtake our thoughts like a tide pulling at the mind, horns barking from impatient cars, hurried footsteps tapping out the rhythms of lives not ours to know, and the murmur of voices rising into the haze of heat and exhaust. The sun slanted through the towers above us, gilding their glass faces with fleeting halos, and I briefly wondered what it might feel like to belong to a world this loud, this busy, this human.

As we rounded a corner onto another stretch of cracked sidewalk lined with convenience stores and blinking cafés, something caught my eye- there, several stories up, shining like an idol in the heavens, was a screen mounted to a building’s side. Four girls posed across its surface with blinding charm, their expressions curated like museum pieces.

“Look,” I murmured, nudging Jinu as we came to a slow stop beneath the glow. “It’s that group—the one with the girl Sinbi’s obsessed with.”

The screen flickered slightly as it looped the same brief promotional clip—long legs, dramatic turns, smiles that could charm any man. A flash of purple hair, high pigtails bouncing like weaponry, twin buns framing a smirk that threatened and enticed in equal measure, and finally—her. The girl with loose, elegant hair and gold-rimmed contact lenses that glittered like sunlit coin. The way she looked into the camera with the intent to influence.

Jinu’s eyes narrowed. “Them?” he said, voice flat with recognition. “Those are the Demon Hunters.”

I knit my brows. “Seriously?” I took another look, closer this time, now with the knowledge of what lay beneath the glitter. The dazzle twisted into danger. The music faded into menace. “So we have to kill them.”

Jinu hummed low in his throat, something between a warning and a promise. “Find their weakness,” he said, “and extort it. That’ll weaken the honmoon faster than killing ever could.”

I turned to face him fully, arms crossed, a pulse tightening in my jaw. “Why drag this out? The faster we kill them the sooner we’re free. Wasn’t that the deal.”

“We could do that,” he said slowly, with the patience of someone tired of explaining war to children. “And we’d risk Gwi-ma betraying us. Risk being turned to ash. Or—” he tilted his head, eyes gleaming in the light of the screen, “we chip away at the honmoon, weaken the tether between them and their power. Let the lesser demons do the bleeding. We orchestrate the fall, and Gwi-ma owes us everything. No loopholes.”

His logic was cold and clean, sharpened like a scalpel. And, infuriatingly, correct.

I let out a sigh, dragged from the gut like smoke through broken glass. “Fine,” I muttered, as the screen above us continued its perfect loop of their practiced smiles and mortal charm. “Let’s play the long game.”

By the time we returned to the hotel, the city outside had begun to soften into dusk- its neon lights humming to life against the darkening horizon, flickering in and out of view like stars rehearsing for night. Inside, however, the madness of our arrangement remained beautifully intact.

Rather than occupying five separate rooms like rational beings might, the others had, of course, hijacked a single suite on the seventh floor. Their method of claiming it was as graceless as it was effective: the previous occupants were unceremoniously discarded after sucking their souls and thrown into the closet, locked inside with the delicate assistance of a broomstick jammed beneath the handle.

The suite itself was excessive in the way only expensive things without taste could be: two bedrooms, one bathroom, and a sprawling living room lacquered in soft gold lighting. There were three single beds scattered like mismatched cards in a magician’s palm and one broad couch that had somehow become the bed for Agi, Aejeong, and Sinbi. All three were slumped together in an unconscious knot of limbs and rumpled fabric, the television hissing low static across from them like a lullaby gone mad.

“Ugh. I live with clowns,” Jinu muttered, though a reluctant smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. With theatrical apathy, he leaned down and plucked Agi- blue-haired and wholly unaware- from the tangle, slinging him over a shoulder before flinging him onto one of the beds like a sack of slightly bewitched laundry.

Agi springed up, like a cat who got splashed with water. “What? Huh? What happened?” he stammered, eyes trying and failing to make sense of the room before promptly surrendering to sleep again, his fingers finding a pillow which he embraced with the loyalty of a long-lost lover.

“Nothing,” I whispered, amused, slipping the pillow closer. “Go back to sleep”

The suite itself had clearly once belonged to someone important- or someone trying very hard to seem like it. The living room was dressed in deep earth tones and ivory marble. A massive glass table curled through the space with a twisting elegance, like smoke made solid. A fridge sat under the cabinets humming low and was stocked with mismatched drinks: clear bottles of water, fizzy cans of soda, and curious cocktails trapped in jewel-colored glass.

To the left of the entrance, a bedroom boasted a king-size bed and a walk-in closet larger than most apartments. Its balcony opened out like a secret confession, wide and cinematic, casting golden light across the suite as the sun began its final descent. The bathroom, decadently oversized, shimmered with mirrored walls and soft orange light, the bathtub as wide as a garden pond and just as deep, the shower and toilet each with their own grand designs as though royalty had once bathed here and simply never returned.

Jinu stood at the edge of the balcony now, the wind lifting strands of his dark hair, the last light of day catching on his jawline. “Honestly,” he mused, folding his arms across his chest, “we could practice out here. Look at the space.”

He was right. The balcony stretched endlessly, as though pulled from some dream of liberty. From here, the city looked like it belonged to us alone. Below, headlights shimmered in waves across the avenues, a dance of movement and sound. But above, the sun fell perfectly between two towers, setting with the kind of divine geometry that makes you believe, briefly, in fate.

I joined him, drawn not just to the view but to the silence between us. That comfortable, unspoken truce. Together we watched the sky shift in streaks of lavender and vermillion.

Out of idle curiosity, I looked upward at the slow-moving clouds. And for a breath, a heartbeat, a flickering moment—I wondered how time had shaped Jeong-won in our absence. Whether the winds still rustled through the clouds the same way. Whether the gods still idled outside the gates.

But then again, what did it matter? Hae wasn’t there. She wasn’t here either.

She was dead.

And it was my fault.

I exhaled hard through my teeth, bitter air rising in my throat like smoke. “I’m off to sleep,” I said softly.

“Night,” Jinu replied, not turning to face me.

Inside, the television buzzed without meaning. As I reached to shut it off, I noticed a neatly folded stack of matching paired lounge clothes sitting untouched on the table—five sets in total, probably provided by the hotel’s misplaced generosity?

None of the others had changed into the clothes. Out of fatigue or sheer laziness- it doesn’t really matter.

But I wouldn’t sleep in these tight, suffocating clothes a second longer. In a blink, I exchanged fabric for comfort—soft cotton, loose fit, borrowed warmth—and lay down, hoping that sleep would come quick and thoughtless.

Morning arrived too soon.

At precisely six o’clock, long before the world had any business being awake, Jinu stormed across our suite like a madman in a silent film, clanging two metal pans together with the enthusiasm of a deranged chef. The sound reverberated through the marble-tiled room like war drums, pulling us each out of our dreams in various states of panic and existential crisis.

He stood there grinning, wholly unfazed, his black hair tousled and his face fresh for the day despite the time. 

“Wake up, idols!” he announced. “Today’s the day. Debut release- we also have a game show appearance tonight. No time for beauty sleep.”

“How did you even book that?” Aejeong grunted, squinting from beneath a decorative throw pillow.

“Connections,” Jinu said mysteriously, disappearing into the bathroom as if he were James Bond rather than a demon turned boyband manager.

Now, in theory, five efficient demons should take no more than thirty minutes to get ready. In practice, it took us three grueling hours. This was largely because Aejeong, the high-maintenance menace that he is, commandeered the shower like it was a royal spa.

I stood outside the bathroom door, my forehead against the wood, teeth clenched. “You’re such a high-maintenance asshole!” I barked, banging once, just once, out of both rage and etiquette.

Eventually, by some act of divine mercy, we were dressed and out the door, a neat little “Do Not Disturb” sign swinging behind us like a white flag of surrender. 

The city greeted us with a smoggy embrace and sunlight that glinted off glass buildings like jagged knives. Seoul was awake, and so were we—unfortunately.

“So,” Aejeong drawled, adjusting his pastel flannel as we turned down a narrower street, “what’s the plan?”

Jinu, walking like a general surveying enemy territory, stopped in front of what could only be described as a questionable doctor’s office—complete with a flickering sign and the faint smell of antiseptic and regret. “Some demons said they saw Huntrix enter through here,” he said, pointing to a rusted side door that yawned into a narrow alleyway. “They’ll exit through there, and then pass by the alleyway where we’ll be performing.”

“So let me get this straight,” Agi said, incredulous, “we’re going to bump into the Demon Hunters before we even debut?”

“Not exactly bump into,” Jinu clarified with the amused smile of someone planning war and calling it a prank. “Just let them see you. Let them feel you. I want them to watch us.”

He chuckled then, turning to us with a glint of mischief in his eyes. “Walk straight. Try not to trip, clowns.”

Sinbi sighed. “Sounds easy enough…”

He was still emotionally wounded from this morning, when I gently shattered his dreams by informing him that the girl he fancied was, in fact, trained to kill him. He had pouted for a bit before nodding solemnly, as if preparing himself for a noble death.

The sound of laughter—high-pitched and glittery—echoed from the alleyway.

“They’re here,” Aejeong whispered, a devilish grin creeping across his face. “Follow my lead.”

And so, in a synchronized choreography fit for the climax of a K-drama, we walked forward, our expressions carved in divine nonchalance. Not even the gods could look as unconcerned as we did.

There they stood—the girls from the billboard. 

Looking at them in real life, I noticed that they were much prettier face to face than what the billboards ever showed. Each of their sets of eyes had a different story behind them.

Aejeong flipped his hair with the delicacy of a shampoo commercial, his smile lazy and manufactured to inflict maximum damage. I knew my cue immediately. He nodded once at his shirt buttons, and I stretched my sore muscles dramatically, letting a perfectly timed button pop free and tumble to the sidewalk.

Another button.

And another.

By the time my shirt fluttered open, revealing the full majesty of my perfectly sculpted abs, all but one of the girls gasped audibly. The purple-haired one held her ground, but the others practically melted into giggles and whispers. I smiled then—not just a smile, but the smile. The one I reserve for breaking hearts and magazine covers.

Behind us, Jinu strolled casually into view, his expression distant until he “accidentally” bumped shoulders with the purple-haired girl. She stumbled slightly, and Jinu, that master manipulator of all things theatrical, pretended to catch her wrist as if it were choreographed. The girl blinked up at him, stunned.

I nearly choked on my laugh. “What a rotten move,” I muttered to Aejeong.

He didn’t miss a beat. “I don’t expect any less of him.”

We spilled out of the alleyway, the remnants of our petty triumph trailing behind us in the glow of neon and reputation. The city greeted us again with its usual din—the honk of passing cars, the hum of electric signs, the murmur of a hundred stories overlapping in the streets—but it was Agi’s grumbling that rose loudest among them.

“Didn’t Jinu tell you two to walk straight?” he hissed, stalking just behind us like a schoolteacher watching two class clowns celebrate a prank. “Not thirst trap them!”

Aejeong and I collapsed into laughter like kids after recess. I nearly doubled over from the effort of keeping my pride from bursting out of my chest again.

“Let loose, Agi,” Jinu said, unable to hide the grin stitched across his otherwise tired face. “Come on, you have to admit their expressions were priceless. The girl with the twin buns looked like she just met God.”

“You mean me,” I interjected, flashing a mockingly angelic smile.

“Aejeong, you monkey!” I laughed, grabbing the pink-haired demon by the collar and tousling his already disheveled hair until he squealed in protest. “You’re so dumb it’s genius! That whole button stunt? A masterpiece.”

He shoved me off with a shriek that was part dramatic, part genuine protest. I looked down then and noticed, to my dismay, my shirt hung open like a forgotten curtain.

“Damn it, My last button’s gone!” I groaned with all the tragedy of a Shakespearean prince, summoning two green buttons and a sewing kit out of thin air like a magician late to the party. “Nobody speak to me. I need to focus.”

I dropped to the pavement, cross-legged and bare-chested, hunched over my shirt with the determined gmotivation to finish in the little minutes we have before we start to preform. 

Around me, the others cackled.

“She was just… so pretty,” Sinbi sighed dreamily, his voice drifting like perfume across the sidewalk. His neck flushed crimson. We didn’t need him to specify which girl he was clearly eluding to.

“Oh, to be young and in love with a girl whose sole purpose is to murder you,” I muttered from my needlework.

“Tell you what,” Jinu said, patting Sinbi on the back like a father offering his son a pet goldfish. “When we have to kill them, You steal her soul and keep her. How’s that sound?”

Sinbi brightened immediately, nodding like a child handed an extra scoop of ice cream. “I’d like that.”

I tied off my last stitch with a flourish and buttoned the shirt with a dramatic spin. “Voilà! Beauty is restored.” I stood, flexing my newly repaired shirt like I’d just invented couture.

Agi, now checking a glowing timer with the severity of a military general, snapped his fingers. “We go live in twenty seconds.”

We fell silent. The air thickened around us- not with fear, but with expectation, like the moment before the curtain rises. We teleported, falling into formation like stars sliding into place in a perfectly timed constellation.

And as the final seconds ticked down, we stood at the edge of chaos and glory, boyband idols, ready to devour the spotlight.

Needless to say, we didn’t just do well, we shattered the very concept of modest success. We conquered. We devoured. We debuted like kings.

The crowd, swollen and shrieking, wrapped around the plaza like ivy growing wild and ungoverned. Glittering signs rose above the sun, and cellphones blinked like a thousand tiny lighthouses signaling to the gods of the algorithm. And by the time we exited- poofed out of the area like magicians- recordings had already begun its meteoric rise online, exploding across cyberspace like a firework show at Gatsby’s estate.

But the most delicious reward came not from the mortals in the audience, no, that belonged to the Demon Hunters.

Those divine, foolish girls.

There had been a moment, fleeting but unmistakable, when their eyes widened just slightly, recognition blooming like a poisonous orchid, and they knew. 

They knew exactly who we were.

Or rather, what.

Especially the fourth one. She with the gilded eyes and the simmering disdain. Her gaze locked with mine for a fraction of a second and boiled with such barely restrained fury that I could have sworn I heard it sizzle. Her scowl twisted like a blade, and her posture stiffened, elegant in its helpless rage. 

I grinned as I winked at her.

I’m still riding that wave- three hours later and the thrill is still bubbling beneath my skin like champagne.

Backstage in the night show’s dressing room, all white velvet walls and mirrors bordered in a constellation of exposed lightbulbs. 

Aejeong, the pink menace, flung himself dramatically onto my back. His arm snaked lazily over my shoulder like we were long-lost lovers reunited after a war.

“Didn’t one of the girls look familiar?” he mused, his voice sing-song with mischief.

“Not really,” I muttered, though I remembered them all. Every painted eyelid. Every smug smirk. Especially her. The girl with the eyes like Hae’s — but not. Hers were hardened, merciless. Not like the soft moonlight in Hae’s gaze.

I kept still as the hair stylist hovered behind me, transforming the bright cherry-red of my hair into a soft pastel pink, just a shade duskier than Aejeong’s. The dye smelled faintly of strawberries and chemicals.

“Hey, hey, we’re matching now!” Aejeong beamed, throwing me a thumbs-up before being whisked away by the makeup team. His pink shirt was half-buttoned, his cheeks naturally flushed from all the running and performing. He looked like a walking magazine cover. Unfortunately, he knew it.

Jinu’s voice cut clean through the air like a command from a marble throne. “Alright, demons,” he said — though he now wore a cotton-candy pink suit that would’ve made Cupid flinch. Somehow Aejeong convinced him to make pink the dominant color for us to match tonight. 

“You did fine out there,” Jinu continued, clasping his hands behind his back like a general inspecting his men. “Bit off on that jump- you know the one. Timing’s everything. But it’s fine. You pulled through.”

He paused, his gaze sharpening, and with a slight tilt of his head, the glow behind his irises pulsed a demonic yellow- just once, just long enough.

A silent code.

We understood. Huntrix was coming.

Somewhere out there in this glittering sea of city lights and press badges, of glass towers and music shows, they were lurking. Perhaps they were watching already.

“Just have fun tonight,” Jinu smiled smugly, though the weight behind it struck like an iron bell.

Fun. 

Sure.

Chapter Text

Never in my long, exhausting existence- not in Ji-ok’s endless screaming silence, or in the centuries of blood and bone- have I felt more spiritually and physically drained than I did sitting beneath the hot studio lights of this garish little stage, painted in colors too bright to be trusted.

Everything was coated in… too much glitter. Too much shine. The plastic grin of the host, the synthetic giggles from the audience, the manufactured warmth radiating from the floor-to-ceiling-to the stage wall behind us that proclaimed the show's name in epileptic bursts of color: Play Games With Us!

Speaking of the show’s name, who in the hell makes a game show called that? It sounded like something pulled from a third-rate variety hour in the depths of cable television. 

These stupid hosts of an even stupider show always asked us silly questions like “What inspired the song?” He blinked at us like a deer in makeup.

I wanted to grab his microphone and shove it down his throat.

What inspired the song? A goddamn soda pop. That’s what inspired it. That’s what we sang about — a carbonated drink that our dumbass comrade fell in love with, and we twisted the lyrics so that we can appeal to the audience in a sexual manner to. We repeat it fifteen times. It’s in the chorus. It is the chorus.

Instead, I tilted my head and offered a calculated chuckle. “We were inspired by the... simplicity of joy.”

Kill me.

These humans- this studio of unblinking sheep- lapped it up like cream. The irony, of course, is that while they clapped for us, their eyes watched like hawks. Not for admiration. For failure. For scandal. For a glimmer of something ugly to slap across a headline and suck us dry of dignity.

But we danced for them anyway.

Then there were the games. Fuck, I hate those games. 

Some cruel intern decided it’d be fun to test our “cuteness” with puppies. Nice. Another game? We had to guess the most common search terms for our names. Fascinating. Because nothing says musical integrity like knowing whether “Abs Abby shirtless” outranked “Saja Boys scandal.” And the last challenge? Chugging hot sauce. Not even for points. Just for fun.

I could’ve done it. Could’ve swallowed fire and smiled. But I didn’t want to. I was already scorched inside- the fake politeness, the plastic chairs, the screeching laughter piped through a speaker- it all burned more than any bottle could.

So I sat on the sidelines, my arms crossed and one foot lazily bouncing atop my knee, eyes half-lidded with contempt as Agi took the spotlight. At least one of us was willing to play clown for the mortals.

Beside me, Jinu sat like a marble statue in the process of cracking, his smile stretched too wide, his eyes tired even beneath the makeup. I leaned toward him, my voice a whisper laced with amusement.

“Jinu, you’re such a child. Can’t hold your spice, huh?”

He tsked, hissing through gritted teeth, “You were literally the first one to give up!”

I snorted, the only real emotion I’d felt all night. “Touché.”

Then came the cheering- Agi won the game. Good. Someone had to. I offered a half-hearted fist in the air, more out of muscle memory than passion.

But then... something changed.

It started as a breath. A phantom breath, right on the nape of my neck. A chill that crawled down my spine and made the false warmth of the studio feel like the mouth of a grave. My hearing sharpened — each sound a blade against my skull, but I couldn’t turn to face it. 

They were here.

Huntrix.

I didn’t even need to look at them to know it. The energy twisted the room like a funhouse mirror.

I glanced to my left, where Aejeong’s spine had stiffened, his lips parted in realization.

And then, Jinu- that clever rat- rose from his seat and took the microphone like a master of ceremonies preparing to pull back the curtain on a public execution.

“Why say goodbye,” he teased, voice smoother than silver, “when we have extra-special guests joining us?”

Jinu, what are you plotting now…?

His grin widened into something saccharine and poisonous. He lifted an arm with theatrical flair toward the shimmering backdrop behind us.

“Please welcome… Huntrix!”

A pivot. A camera shift. A thousand heads turning.

And there they were. The four of them. Smiling- stiffly, falsely- as they quickly hid their weapons from the camera. But in their eyes, under the lashes and blush and sparkle, there was a glint of recognition. Of disdain.

They stayed up behind the backdrop  like shadows cast from a fever dream. 

Four girls dressed in inky black leather that shimmered under the studio lights like oil on water. The sharp glint of their jewelry—steel, obsidian, tarnished silver—caught the beams and refracted menace in a thousand flickers.

Each of them wore their darkness differently, as if the night had chosen to dress them in four expressions of its mood.

The one with the twin pigtails stood to the far left- Pigtails, I decide to call her that now. Her posture defiant, her chin tilted just slightly upward as if daring the world to flinch first. Her hair, an almost radioactive pink, has black spikes at her hair ties, and her eyeliner, thick and winged, slashed a little bit down her cheekbone like war paint. There was nothing subtle about her, she was a symphony of riotous color clashing against gloom.

Next to her, the one I quietly dubbed Goldie was the epitome of weaponized elegance. Her eyes gleamed like coins heated in the sun- those unnatural gold contact lenses catching every light, rendering her gaze inhuman. Glittery black liner circled her eyes with chaotic precision, jagged like shattered glass artfully glued together again. She was beautiful in that dangerous way that made your neck feel exposed.

Then there was the third—the Purple one. I’m just going to call her Purple from now on. She wore restraint like a cloak. Her makeup was softer, less showy than the others, but her jewelry was ferocious: black steel rings like claws wrapped around her fingers, a choker that looked more like a shackle. She had the coldest composure of the four, and yet I found her the most difficult to read.

Finally, the one I now called Soda after our song and Sinbi’s obsession with her. Her eyeliner hooked upward at the corners, mirroring the jagged angle of my own eyebrows. Her gaze was sharp and a little amused, like a knife smiling before the plunge. She had that ghost of cruel curiosity some humans mistake for flirtation.

I flicked my gaze to Sinbi, curious to see his reaction. He was perched like a statue in profile—except for the blush. A bloom of pink was crawling across his porcelain cheeks, and his ears were so red they practically glowed under the stage lights.

Hilarious! 

I nudged him, just enough to jolt him out of his fevered trance. He snapped his head toward me, mouth agape with fluster. I raised a brow, smile growing as he looked away. 

In mild panic, Purple cleared her throat forward, raising a manicured hand in a weak wave, her smile the color of stale champagne.

“We just wanted to stop by and congratulate our hoobaes on their debut-” she began, voice syrupy, touched with false warmth and laced in poison.

From behind the cameras, Jinu gave us the nod. Just once. A small, imperceptible twitch, but it rang in my bones like a shot from a starter pistol.

“—and of course!” Jinu said smoothly, already stepping in, “Play Games With Us! Bring out the slides!”

As one, we scattered backstage like shadows slipping under a doorframe. Agi a demonic giggle erupting from him as he grabbed the paint. He scrawled “Huntrix” in a careless hand, each stroke bold and messy in a shade of purple so garish it mocked royalty itself.

“Did you see their reaction?” he hissed, more laughter spilling from his mouth like a sin too delicious to repent for.

We wheeled the contraption- four connected slides with a ballpit at the bottom- onto the main stage, our snickers barely masked by the cheers of the clueless human audience.

And then… Huntrix saw it.

The hesitation in their steps. The way their smiles trembled. The microsecond of primal awareness. They were prey in a room full of beasts, but the cameras were rolling, and so they smiled their butchered smiles and played along.

The slide awaited them like a guillotine covered in glitter.

They declined. Of course they did.

And then, as if summoned by our cruel delight, the audience began to chant. Clap. Urge them to slide into the ballpit and join us. 

And so they did. One by one. Their leather-clad figures awkwardly scraping against the polished plastic like feral cats dragged across linoleum. 

It was the most horrid sound imaginable.  A shriek not of the damned but of the stupid. My smile twitched. Agi covered his ears. Aejeong winced and shielded his mouth as if stifling vomit.

Then finally- finally- they landed.

There they sat. In a mess of plastic balls and ruined dignity. Fury written in every tight corner of their lips, every clenched muscle, every narrowing of those bright, hateful eyes.

I stared at them, one by one, letting my gaze linger just long enough to ignite.

They looked so small now. So petty. So… pathetic.

Jinu had overestimated them, I realized—but not by much. They had claws. But they were growing them for the first time.

They weren’t monsters. They weren’t even soldiers. They’re just girls.

Easy to provoke. Easier to punish. Easy to avoid

Aejeong leaned in and whispered something swift and low into Jinu’s ear, his lips barely moving beneath the shimmer of stage light, their silhouettes painted in the glinting afterglow of spectacle. The attention, fickle and warm like champagne bubbles, drifted back to Huntrix as the four girls gathered themselves off the ridiculous ballpit stage.

Jinu straightened, his face carved from marble and cool wit. He cleared his throat as if preparing to toast a crowd at Gatsby’s own garden party. “It was truly an honor to share the stage with you,” he said, voice like silk over steel.

In practiced harmony, he and Aejeong bowed low—an elegant choreography of humility wrapped in arrogance. Agi, Sinbi, and I followed suit a beat later, our bodies folding in one synchronous, boyish reverence, well-rehearsed and perfectly timed.

The audience swooned. A shriek erupted. Some girl declared, in all seriousness and sighs, how obvious our handsomeness was.

And then Purple spoke.“No, the honor is ours,” 

I scoffed under my breath, the smirk already forming. Now they wanted to match us?

“No- it’s ours.” We bowed deeper. More exaggerated. More absurd.

It became a battle of posture, an opera in etiquette, a comedy of courtesies. Until finally the curtain dropped, a velvet guillotine ending our show.

In a flash, Agi leapt onto my back with a cackle. “Giddyup, dumbass,” he hissed, arms looped around my neck as I bolted off-stage like a racehorse with a demon jockey.

“Oh shut up,” I barked, half-laughing, half-winded, and in one dramatic lurch I bounced him so hard he yelped, tightening his grip and unleashing a stream of the most colorful curses this side of hell.

Aejeong giggled, high-pitched and airy like a flapper drunk on bubbles, and we careened into the bathhouse, a steamy, echoing hall marbled in gray and green, smelling faintly of lotus blossoms and sulfur. The water demons loitering in the mist stiffened, then softened into their civilian masks the moment we entered, as if innocence were something you could slide into like a robe.

“Now,” Jinu began, voice steady but the gleam in his eye sharper than broken crystal, “we wait for them to come in—”

I leaned against him, arm against his shoulder, my blood buzzing, like the moment before lightning touches earth. It had been too long since I’d felt that cold, hot shiver of a fight about to bloom.

And right on cue, like fate heard the cue and pulled the curtain open again—bang. They barged in, drama first.

“Wow,” Jinu sighed theatrically, “did you really follow us in here?”

I let out a laugh, low and curling. “I knew they would. That one’s always looking at me.” I tilted my chin toward the one who always flushed red when caught staring. Predictable as a red moon.

Soda and Pigtails bristled, their faces flaring red like lanterns in a storm. Before they could unleash whatever retort was on their tongue, Goldie, regal and unsmiling, smacked them both with the weariness of an older sibling tired of tantrums.

Weapons were drawn. No ceremony, no speech. Just gleaming metal now caught in the bathhouse’s lazy steam, pointed like accusations in the candlelight.

“You think we’re just gonna let you steal our fans?” Purple’s voice slithered out, low and lethal. Her expression was a slow prowl, a lioness ready to sink her teeth in.

Jinu didn’t flinch. He chuckled instead, raising a hand like he was presenting a birthday cake. “Get rid of the hunters,” he said to the room, “and you can eat all the souls you want.”

And just like that, the bathhouse shifted. Steam curled around new shadows. The civilians dissolved, replaced by our kind: demonic grins beneath dripping hair and bare chests.

The girls of Huntrix turned, surrounded.

It was the chaos we needed. While they fended off claws and grins and blades from every angle, we slipped out like smoke through cracks.

Jinu stayed behind a second too long, of course—always the dramatist. I heard him laugh, a final jab flung back like a goodbye rose, before he skidded beside me, almost falling on the polished tile as we sprinted away.

The other three had ran away, tails in between their legs as a mockery of the stunt we just made. I barely had time to turn toward the sound of Jinu’s laughter, which had curdled into a startled yelp, when the world lurched sideways.

A boot, sharp and deliberate, slammed against my cheek with the velocity of a grudge, and I was flung backward, crashing through drywall and decorative molding. I landed in a private bath room, dimly lit, with velvet curtains stirring in some phantom breeze.

“Ugh—” My fingers gripped at my face, trying to steady the room that spun around me like a cracked carousel. My vision blurred in strokes of moonlight and crimson haze, but then it locked, for one awful second, on the glowing pastel hue of a weapon I knew too well.

Goldie.

Her weapon shimmered in her hands like candy-wrapped death, impossibly dainty and absolutely lethal.

She let out a scream—not the kind born of panic, but one guttural and rich with something old. 

Fury.

Hurt. 

Maybe something deeper, something personal. It ripped from her throat like it had been waiting its whole life to be heard.

She swung the weapon at me again.

Too close.

Again.

Too close.

The third time she carved a button clean off my shirt, and I blinked at it—momentarily dazed by the absurdity of violence and fashion colliding in midair. 

The button bounced once, twice, before disappearing to the corner of the room.

“Holy hell—” I muttered.

“You piece of shit!” she spat, her voice cracking on the final word as she lunged, brass knuckles flashing like stained jewelry. The punch came fast, aimed with the precision of someone who’d been waiting to land it for a long time.

"Piece of shit?" A laugh, half mocking, half serious, escaped my lips. 

In a surge of rage and reflex, my hands shifted, elongating into demonic claws, my teeth sharpening into fangs as lethal as the secrets whispered behind the closed doors of the elite. 

Catching her arm in a grip of iron, I twisted her around, slamming her back against the wall with the force of a tempest battering the cliffs of a desolate shore. "What did I do?" I growled, my voice laced with the echoes of hungry snake, poison dripping form my words.

I pinned her there, my body a cage as unyielding as the bars that imprisoned the damned within the underworld's darkest cells, a rush of pleasure coursing through me as she writhed in my grasp, struggling to break free from my demonic embrace. 

"You're sick, vile, and deserving of eternal damnation in the depths of hell itself," she hissed, the hilt of her weapon jabbing sharply beneath my ribs, forcing me back with the precision of a surgeon's scalpel.

I huffed in displeasure, irritation flaring, the realization that I could have ended her life in that moment if not for her desperate escape.

"You're right about everything," I snarled, my words lathered with the bitterness of a fallen angel, "considering I've already rotted in Ji-ok for an eternity." Before she could summon a retort, I lunged, a force of nature unleashed, slamming her into the damp concrete floor with the brutality of a landslide obliterating a moonlit reverie. The throat of her scythe pressed against her neck pinning her in place. 

But then, a flicker of fear danced in her golden irises, as fleeting as the last spark of a dying star. Vulnerability etched in the lines of her face for the briefest of instants. 

Something within me fractured, a fault line splitting the bedrock of my resolve. 

Pity? 

Guilt? 

Realization? 

The questions swirled like leaves in a maelstrom, and unconsciously, my grip loosened. In that moment of hesitation, she seized her chance, slipping from beneath me with the agility of a serpent shedding its skin.

In a frantic, almost desperate motion, she grabbed a bucket, dipping it into the steaming waters of the jacuzzi. In her survival panic, she hurled the scalding contents at my face, searing my skin and blinding me, the world dissolving into a blur of pain and chaos for a seeming eternity. 

By the time I regained my sight, wiping away the droplets that clung like bitter tears, she had vanished. 

Probably running back to her group. 

What a low fucking blow, 

I scoffed, my gaze falling to my soaked clothes that clung to my form like a second skin. 

Furious, I stormed from the bathhouse, each step a thunderous echo in the hollow silence, the tension of the battle dissipating like mist at dawn, leaving only the bitter aftertaste of conflict and the lingering shadows of doubt.

“There you are!”

Aejeong burst toward me with the breathless flair of someone who’d just won a game he had no business playing. The double doors behind me swung open with a sigh, and the cold Seoul night greeted me like a slap. Sharp and intimate, threading along the nape of my soaked neck with fingers of winter breath. 

The moon hung low and spectral above the skyline, gilding the rooftops with a metallic sheen, as if even the gods in Jeong-won wanted to watch what happened next.

Aejeong’s arms opened wide, full of warmth and manic mischief, ready to clasp me in a half-hug of fraternal relief, but the moment his fingers touched the drenched fabric of my shirt, he recoiled with a theatrical shriek.

“Ack! What the hell—what happened to you?”

I didn’t answer at first. Instead, I turned toward the granite wall beside us, cool, expressionless, and drove my fist into it with a sound that cracked like fireworks in winter air. The sharp sting of pain was nothing compared to the volcanic rush of humiliation boiling inside me.

“One of the girls,” I snarled, the words burning in my throat like scalding tea, “caught me off-guard. Just before I killed her, she threw boiling water. Straight to the face.”

Steam still ghosted off the shoulders of my shirt. My breath formed in thick puffs, rising to join the city’s haze.

There was a gentle rustle beside me, the sound of fabric being gathered with care.

Sinbi stood there, quiet and glasslike as ever. His white shirt was immaculately pressed, his pink sweater vest slung neatly over his arm like something from a boarding school dream. He didn’t say anything at first. 

He just offered it to me—his vest, soft and warm, smelling faintly of lilac and ozone.

“Here,” he said quietly. “You can wear this.”

The gesture stilled something feral inside me. I took the vest with a half-smile, shrugging off my ruined shirt and letting the chill air bite at my bare chest before pulling the vest over me. The fabric wrapped around my ribs like mercy. I patted his back gently, voice low. “What would I do without you?”

He smiled softly—Sinbi always did. There was something innocent and dangerous about him, a paradox that I embraced without a thought.

Agi clicked his tongue, standing nearby with arms crossed and eyebrows arched. “What a dirty move,” he muttered, like he was judging the choreography of a street fight. “Sheesh. Where’s Jinu?”

I thought he was with you guys..

“Where is Jinu?” I asked aloud, scanning the shadows around us.

Then, as if conjured by the thought, he stepped out of the wall, phasing through it quietly, like mist congealing into form. His eyes were wide, not with fear, but with the kind of thought that made silence taste metallic.

“Uh… hello?” Agi waved a hand in front of Jinu’s dazed face like a bored child trying to summon a ghost.

Jinu blinked once, then again. Whatever spell he’d been under broke like glass.

“Oh. Hey.” He glanced around, taking stock. His eyes lingered on me, brow rising ever so slightly when he noticed the wet hair dripping down my forehead and the unbuttoned state of my chest beneath Sinbi’s vest.

“I got attacked,” I said flatly, not bothering to dramatize it. “I guess you did too?”

Jinu hesitated. A flicker of something dark crossed his face. He looked back at the wall he had emerged from like it might open its mouth again and whisper things better left unsaid.

“Yeah,” he replied. Nothing more.

Aejeong yawned theatrically, cracking his neck and stretching his limbs like a cat too long asleep. “Well,” he declared, “we had a very good day today. We danced, we dazzled, we didn’t kill any humans, which is honestly a miracle. I’m tired. Let’s go back to the hotel and pretend we love this species a little longer.”

He was already turning toward the sidewalk, his laughter trailing behind him like perfume.

But just as I took a step to follow—

I felt it.

A pull—not physical, but spiritual. A hand made not of flesh but of law, ancient and binding, curling inside my chest and yanking. My vision collapsed inward, everything folding like origami. Darkness swallowed the skyline, the cold vanished, and a whisper of sulfur and fate took its place.

The stars above blinked out.

And the next thing I saw was the yawning black sky of Ji-ok.

Gwi-ma had called.

The boyband costumes vanished from our bodies. In their place, the long, flowing silhouettes of hanbok reemerged, regal and ghostlike, dyed in the colors of blood, smoke, and ink. My gat settled upon my head with the weight of old memory, its brim shadowing eyes that no longer sparkled under concert lights, but glowed with something darker. Truer.

The human mask, so effortlessly fixed upon me hours ago, peeled back to reveal the familiar architecture of my true form—demonic, terrible, and oddly comforting. I hadn’t realized how utterly exhausting it was to use my powers to keep up this look.

The crowd of demons burst into applause, their claws clapping, their mouths wide in cheer, though I felt too drained to care. Somewhere beneath the sound, Gwi-ma and Jinu were exchanging words that floated above me like smoke. 

I turned to look at the others. My annoying mates in glamour and in damnation.

Each of them hunched over like aging spirits, hunched under the weight of divinity played as celebrity. Their skin had turned that pallid, ashen gray that only demons wear, but beneath the hollowness, their tattoos glowed with a pulsing, vibrant purple. 

“I look so ugly…” Aejeong moaned faintly, lifting a cracked mirror that a fan had handed him, a mirror that now reflected more truth than flattery. His voice, usually syrupy and full of calculated charm, was now thin and shaking.

“We look tired,” Agi corrected, collapsing into himself with a sigh so deep it seemed to suck the heat from the air. “I’m so exhausted…” The rasp in his throat sounded like something ancient had curled up and died there.

Jinu appeared in front of us with that signature flourish, though this time his laugh caught in his throat the moment he saw us. We must have looked like something from a ruined painting—half-formed, fraying at the edges.

“Oh, shut up,” I muttered, batting his face away with the back of my hand, as if I could wipe away his amusement. I didn’t wait for Gwi-ma’s voice to call me. I didn’t need the eyes of a tyrant following me like smoke. I slipped from the underworld without so much as a glance backward.

Back at the hotel, with the lights dimmed low and the rooms carrying the scent of lavender linen and city smog, I shrugged off the hanbok and returned Sinbi’s pink sweater vest like an old promise fulfilled. My body pulsed, shifting again, this time more gently, into the human shape the world expected of me. The purple markings remained, etched like bruises across my skin, a quiet rebellion against hiding who I really was.

Funny how Ji-ok could strip us bare in a moment. Could drain our strength, wring our bones, and return us to the reality of just how much we’d overworked the divine inside us. But here, up here in the realm of music and mirrors and fleeting adoration, we thrived. Our powers stretched long like shadows in streetlight, and the pain numbed away beneath the applause.

Because Gwi-ma wasn’t here.

And where he isn’t, we are free.

I wandered out to the living room area, where the others had sunk into the couch like molasses, transfixed by a horror movie flickering across the TV. The sound of distant screams and low synth haunted the room, but no one flinched. I was delighted to see everyone wore the matching lounge wear like I did. Made it seem like this was our hanbok, just… more casual.

But just past the haze of warm lamplight, I saw Jinu on the balcony, alone. His silhouette framed against the neon shimmer of Seoul’s skyline. He crouched low, contemplative, the tips of his fingers trailing across the marble railing. His tiger vanished silently into a spiraling portal at his feet.

Curious, I stepped out to join him.

The air outside was crisp and brimming with the perfume of night—wet pavement, cherry blossoms, gasoline. It felt like something was about to happen.

“You okay?” I asked as I leaned beside him. He stood slowly, brushing dust from his palms like he was waking from a dream.

“Uh… yeah,” he said, though his eyes told a different story. They weren’t really looking at me, they were focused far off into the midnight, as though the skyline itself was split with choices. Each light a road. Each shadow a consequence.

Then, abruptly, he cleared his throat. “I have to go. For a walk,” he added, voice tight and practiced.

A lie. But a harmless one.

I could have pressed. Could have asked what was wrong. But tonight had been long, and I was already growing tired of honesty.

“Fine,” I said with a lazy grin, hands in my pockets. “But you better be home by the time I wake up tomorrow, or else I’m killing everyone in the room and then myself.”

He cracked a smile at that—soft, distracted, fading almost as soon as it formed. Then, without another word, he teleported, leaving me alone in the balcony.

As I started to make my way back to the luxurious embrace of the couch and others, I was pulled by a sudden, nauseating growl that emanated from the depths of my stomach, a primal demand that eclipsed all other thoughts. 

My mind, surrendering to the relentless onslaught of need, flickered into a state of autopilot. The instincts of survival overriding the civility that I wore like a threadbare coat.

In less than an instant, my teeth sharpened into razor points, the transformation as swift as the flash of a camera bulb in a sea of darkness. A headache, fierce as the pounding of war drums, pierced through my thoughts like a dagger seeking the heart of its victim. 

Really? Now, of all moments? 

I needed meat with a ferocity that was both terrifying and all-consuming, a craving that rivaled the desperate yearnings of the lost souls who wandered the gilded halls of forgotten mansions, forever seeking solace in the dregs of crumbling dreams.

Barely cognizant of my actions, I leaped from the balcony, the rush of air whipping past me like the frantic whispers of scandalized partygoers, my body in free fall until I managed to grasp a tenuous thread of control, arresting my descent and soaring in a random direction, carried by the winds of an insatiable hunger. It took mere moments to find myself in a part of the city where the streets were not only sparsely populated but also barely lit, the shadows here as deep and impenetrable.

I plucked the nearest man to me, an unsuspecting figure whose soul I extracted with the practiced ease of a master thief filching a priceless gem, forcing it to dissipate in my stomach rather than throwing it up like usual in these situations. 

After, and with a swift, merciless motion, I ripped off his arm, peeling away the fabric that clothed him like the skin of a ripe fruit, before sinking my teeth into the flesh: my first true taste of sustenance. 

The wave of blood that danced upon my tongue was an ambrosia that soothed my ever-growing hunger, a temporary respite that served only to highlight the depths of my need. 

Within minutes, I had devoured the skin and flesh, discarding the shredded remnants of his attire and the bones to the darkest recesses of the alleyway, a macabre offering to the gods of the night.

A sense of filth rotted in my veins as I cringed at the speed with which I had consumed my prey. I glanced back at the pathetic heap of bones, cursing the never-ending hunger for flesh that plagued me whenever I went days without eating flesh. 

I groaned, exiting the alleyway with my hands shoved deep into my pockets, cursing at the night and maybe even a little bit- Hae. 

Sinbi’s way of fighting with his addiction was simple: he didn't fight it at all. He chose instead to indulge his cravings for meat at least once a day. But I don’t want to be like that- no hate on Sinbi though. I try to combat it by going on extensive gaps of fasting until my body controls what my brain desperately fights against for.

As I strolled through the rooftop terraces that overlooked the glittering expanse of the city beneath me,  I caught a glimpse of the unmistakable white and pastel hues of a Honmoon weapon- a telltale sign that a demon hunter was killing demons nearby.

Teleporting closer to the scene of the fight, driven by an insatiable curiosity, I recognized the same distinctive shade of hair and the sleek, black leather attire that had seared themselves into my memory during our first meeting at the bathhouse.

It was Goldie, her presence slowly becoming a beacon that draw me in like a moth to the searing flame of her indomitable spirit.

I clenched my fists, jaw stiffening as a familiar spike of anger ignited in my veins- hot and sudden, like a struck match in a liquor-soaked room. 

There was something unforgivable in the way she had escaped. Not clever—cowardly. 

A splash of scalding water to the face and she’d fled like a thief in the night. No ceremony. No final blow. Just a petulant exit that left my pride in tatters and my clothes soaked through with humiliation.

She should’ve died with grace beneath my claws. 

She should’ve understood the beauty in a proper defeat.

But no. She ran.

Now I drifted along the velvet seams of shadow, trailing her like a jealous ghost through alleyways still weeping with the scent of summer. 

Seoul at night had an elegance to it: towering glass monoliths glowing with secrets, gutters running slick with rainwater and low sins, and neon reflections smeared like lipstick on the pavement. I watched her from the darkness, each of her movements flaring against my vision like fireworks over still water.

She moved with the grace of someone running out of time- yet has too much to deal with it.

Her scythe carved through a red demon in one fluid, irritable motion, a grunt of effort slipping past her lips, sharp and unpolished like a cracked ruby. Her face was still marked from our earlier encounter: bruises smudged across her skin like shadows on porcelain, a cut along the hairline that dripped rhythmically into her lashes. Yet her eyes, those furious, golden eyes, burned with something almost incandescent. They were defiant. Untamed. Beautiful, in that awful, doomed way.

She exhaled like she had fought the night itself, flicking her blade once to remove the blood from the previous demon.

As she sheathed her weapon, its edges dissolving into glowing Honmoon thread, she dropped to one knee to retie her boots. 

But then... she stopped. 

Froze, like a candle’s flame caught in a sudden gust. No breath. No motion.

She was listening.

For me.

I pressed myself further into the fabric of shadow, dissolving every sound, even the memory of breath. I became nothing. A ripple in the dark. A breath that never left.

“These damn demons,” she muttered, voice low and bitter like aged whiskey, before vaulting up onto a rooftop. Her silhouette sprinted across the skyline, a smear of defiance fleeing into the ink of night.

I watched her go.

And for a moment- just a moment- I almost let her.

I could have turned away. Returned to the quiet sanctuary of the hotel. My body begged for rest, for the cool lull of cotton sheets and the distant murmur of those goddamn clowns’ laughter in the living room. My stomach was sated; my hunger silenced. The day had already been carved into my bones.

But I didn’t turn away.

Instead, I followed.

Like a tiger padding silently through tall grass, I trailed her over rooftops and neon-lit ledges, never announcing my presence. 

Only watching, always watching. 

She moved with purpose, unaware of the eyes that hunted from above. Eventually, she reached a building, a towering glass palace rising out of the city’s electric chaos. Huntrix. The name stood bold near the top, illuminated like a brand.

I hovered midair, suspended in the hush between breaths, and watched her step into the elevator, a transparent box lifting her like a prayer into the heart of her home. 

The girls were there, all four of them, laughing now, sighing, speaking in low, familiar tones. And there was a man. Short, round, exuding the kind of enthusiasm that’s equal parts manager and fanatic. His hands flailed as he spoke, the enthusiasm of a proud father sprinkled all over his tone

Father .

The word curled bitterly on my tongue.

I watched him longer than I meant to- his warmth, his cheer, his ridiculous humanness- and found myself caught in a peculiar ache. 

Now that I think about it- pathetic as it is- Gwi-ma’s the only figure I can ever call my father.

Jinu told me he never met or heard me talk about my father in my past life, so I doubt he was ever present at all. 

Gwi-ma. 

That was the name I grew up under. That was the voice of judgment. Of fear. Of command. Not affection, but authority.

The closest thing to fatherhood I’ve ever known wore horns and fire and never once said my name with softness. Other than to manipulate me into becoming his dog in the first place. 

The girls inside squealed suddenly, laughter rising like birds startled from a rooftop. One by one they scattered, each retreating into their rooms like pearls rolling across a velvet floor. And still, I lingered.

I drifted to Goldie’s window, and just as I prepared to peer inside, a flicker of motion caught my eye.

Purple.

She leapt from her balcony like a secret. Silent. Intent. 

Why would she leave through there and not the front door…? 

Whatever. It didn’t matter.

She wasn't my focus tonight.

I ducked beneath the terrace’s edge, the dim light from the room flickering across my face in cold streaks. The city pulsed behind me. My hands itched.

And somewhere inside, she was breathing.

She was close.

I approached her room with a slowness born of appetite rather than hesitation, my hands folded behind my back like a gentleman at a gallery, admiring the frame before desecrating the canvas. The hallway air was sterile, humming faintly with electric stillness, and the carpet beneath my feet absorbed each step like a conspirator sworn to secrecy.

Inside, she moved with a kind of careless grace, one leg swinging behind the other, hair bobbing like punctuation as she closed the door with her heel and wandered into darkness. No lights. Only moonlight, streaming in silver ribbons through the glass wall, bathing her bedroom in a soft, ancient glow.

Her amusement lingered on her lips, something she’d carried in from the hallway like perfume. That satisfied little smile. 

What was it about people who smiled when no one was around? It felt like a lie meant for themselves.

Her silhouette drifted through the room like music. I observed the quiet shrine around her: action figures frozen mid-battle, vinyls pinned like constellations across the wall, toys tucked between shelves and oddities. 

But none of that mattered. None of that mattered except what hung, reverently and violently, above her bed: a scythe. Not the soft, ceremonial kind. No, this was steel and instinct, the kind that remembered blood and forgot names. Suspended on two black hooks, it gleamed like a secret promise.

The television hissed with chaotic sound, muted only by distance—if the walls were soundproof, and I now suspected they were, then I had entered a pocket of silence nestled inside the chaos of the world. A cocoon. 

She kicked off her boots without thinking, rolling her ankles in little circles, and for a moment… she seemed peaceful. Not just safe, but deliciously at ease, the way a deer might look grazing before the wind changes.

I waited until her back turned to the window, and as her shoulders dipped ever so slightly, I moved.

I didn’t walk. I glided through the glass and into the room with a silence that should not belong to something living. My feet did not disturb the carpet, my breath did not trouble the air. Even the moonlight seemed unaware of me.

She stood upright again, distracted by a row of mismatched shoes she was lining up against the wall- 

And that was when I seized her.

My left arm curled around her waist with the swiftness of instinct, the right hand pressing firm and final over her mouth. Her shriek was immediate and primal, a sound not meant to be performed but pulled from some inner, untouched part of the soul, and it cracked the still air, loud and brittle like a dropped champagne glass.

Her body stiffened, every muscle vibrating against me in futile protest. My eyes flicked to the door—waiting, expecting Pigtails or Soda to come rushing in, righteous and panicked.

But nothing.

Not a footfall. Not a knock.

The silence held.

So. The room was soundproof.

She thrashed against me, muffling some combination of curses and questions into the meat of my palm. Her scent—something warm, something sharp like sun-dried citrus and salt—rushed into my nose and made my throat burn.

“Shhh,” I whispered, my lips near her temple, the word soft and poisonous. “I didn’t come here to kill you.”

And I hadn’t. Not tonight. I wasn’t sure why. Not yet.

She froze.

I saw her turn her gaze toward the full-length mirror across the room. It reflected both of us: her, wide-eyed and breathless; me, monstrous and wrong in all the ways that felt most true. My eyes, demonic yellow and gleaming in the dark. The lower half of my face still streaked in a man’s blood— I guess I had forgotten to wipe it off after feeding. And my skin… still mostly human, yes, but the violent, thorny purple markings were etched across my cheeks and down my neck like the bloom of an ancient curse.

I looked like death dressed in gray sweats.

And yet I hadn’t come to kill her.

Not tonight.

She looked at me in the mirror as if trying to recognize someone she'd only met… whatever.

I loosened my grip, just enough for her breath to come easier. I slid my hand from her mouth, resting it instead across her collarbones, the space where her pulse beat like the wing of a bird.

She didn’t scream again.

And neither of us moved.

“What the hell do you want?” she asked, voice low but laced with the bitter bite of defiance. Her gaze- reflected in the mirror- met mine, unflinching but glimmering with the faintest thread of fear, like a frayed ribbon coming loose at the edge of a dress.

“Revenge,” I murmured, the word curling out of me like smoke. “For what you did to me at the bathhouse.”

My grip on her waist tightened, deliberate and brutal. A sharp squeal slipped from her throat and folded into the stillness like silk dropped on marble. Delicious.

“I didn’t do anything…” she began, but I wasn’t in the mood for lies.

I crushed her to me for a second—one fleeting second, but just enough to press the breath from her lungs. Her body convulsed like a marionette with tangled strings, her chest gasping forward as she fought for air.

“Okay!” she hissed, voice trembling as she twisted in my arms like a flame refusing to die. “Let me go, you fucker.”

Her nails dug into my skin with an admirable desperation. They raked through flesh, drawing blood in crescent moons. The sting didn’t matter. But the audacity for her to do that? That stung.

“You know I’m stronger than you,” I said, my voice suddenly cold and precise, like a scalpel. “We’ve already established that. Quit moving before I snap your spine and use it to create music for my next song.”

The words landed like thunder, sharp and absolute.

She froze.

But that wasn't enough. Fear alone never is.

“Say it,” I whispered, beginning to drag her slowly backward with me, deeper into the moonlight, deeper into our little glass coffin of a room.

“Say what?” she snapped, bravado still clinging to her teeth like dried blood.

I laughed. A dark, gnarled thing. “Say that I’m stronger than you.”

It wasn’t about the truth. I already knew the truth. It was about hearing it from her lips. This girl, this beauty of discipline and fury, trained to destroy my kind, now shackled in my arms. 

The sound of her surrender would taste sweeter than blood. Sweeter than any flesh, even.

It’s divine.

For a while she said nothing. Her silence was more infuriating than any insult. I turned us toward the mirror and moved in front of it, letting her see the full picture: her flushed cheeks, her eyes burning with impotent rage, my arms wound around her like ivy around stone.

“Look at you. Look at me,” I purred, my voice dipped in something syrupy and venomous. “You’re in no position to hold your head high.”

A tremble passed through her body, and though she didn’t cry, didn’t flinch, I could hear the fray in her voice when she finally whispered, “You’re stronger than me…”

I smiled. Not with joy, but with possession.

“Uh huh.” I reached up with one hand, the pads of my fingers tracing along the gentle line of her throat, nails grazing over the fragile cords and veins like an artist studying the canvas before the first brushstroke. “You pissed me off with that stupid water bucket trick. Next time you do it, I’ll—”

Knock knock.

The sound cut through the tension like a blade dipped in ice. My eyes snapped toward the door, every instinct lighting up like firecrackers in my head.

“Hey girl,” came a voice, lazy and unsuspecting, as the door creaked open an inch. “I can’t sleep and I was wondering if you wanted to… talk?”

Goldie stiffened, turning her head an inch toward the sound. Her gaze flicked to the mirror—straight at me, though not quite into my eyes.

I tilted my head, raised an eyebrow, and mouthed, Spill and you die.

“Uh—sure! I’ll be there in a second…” she called out, her voice only just steady.

The door began to open wider—too wide.

In a heartbeat, I vanished. Phased into the air like a sin never spoken aloud, slipping back out through the glass as quietly as I had entered.

From my perch just outside the window, I watched Pigtails step inside and flick on the light.

“Oh my god, girl, what happened?” she gasped.

Red specks—tiny, damning kisses of blood—decorated the floor, her arms, the corner of the mirror. The ghosts of my fingers.

“Nothing-” Goldie replied too fast, eyes skating across the wreckage of the moment. “I was… I was trying to fix something and cut myself…”

Liar.  

Clever, frightened little liar.

Her gaze drifted once more to the window—to me—though she didn’t look for me. Not really. Maybe she knew I was there, maybe she didn’t. Maybe she just felt me. The way prey feels the eyes of the predator before the pounce.

I left when she did, folding myself back into the velvet hush of Seoul’s skyline, the city glittering like a lie too beautiful to correct.

As I flew back to the hotel, I only thought about how strange she was. 

About how strange I was. 

My entire body sang with the remnants of power and blood, my chest still rising with the echo of her panic. And yet it wasn’t destruction I craved tonight. Not fully. It was something more intimate. More poisonous.

The way her defiance wilted beneath my strength…

That. That’s the cure. That’s what will free me from this addiction.

That’s what I need. Not to feed.

But to own.

The hotel shimmered in the near distance, a quiet monument of flickering lights and drawn curtains against the ink-black Seoul skyline. I had just begun to descend when a movement caught my eye. A small figure, not unlike a moth drawn to flame, arced through the air and landed softly on our balcony from the opposite direction.

Pacing.

Lost in thought.

“Jinu?” I called, my voice slicing through the stillness like a ripple across a moonlit pond. My feet touched down on the cool concrete of the balcony, its chill biting faintly through the last remnants of adrenaline that still hummed in my veins.

He jumped. Genuinely startled, like a child caught in the pantry at midnight. His eyes widened, then settled into a too-quick, too-bright smile. The kind meant to divert, not comfort.

“Oh!” he blurted, stiffly straightening, his voice laced with the same strained cheer that fills an empty ballroom. His eyes flicked across my appearance—the telltale glint of my human skin still clinging from my demon form, like smoke that refused to lift after a fire. Blood speckled all over my clothes.

“Where were you?” he asked, almost reflexively. Like a mirror thrown back at me.

I hesitated, just long enough for the silence to feel full.

“I—I went for a walk… and grew hungry,” I said, stumbling over the words like a drunk on a piano key. Which.. technically wasn’t a lie..! 

Jinu nodded. Too fast. Too eager. “Yeah,” he said. “S-So did I.”

There was something ghostly in his tone. Hollowed out. Maybe it was real. Maybe it was rehearsed. Maybe it didn’t matter.

Neither of us pressed the other. We didn’t trade smirks or ask more questions. We simply stood for a moment, two creatures with stained hands and sidelong glances, caught in the strange silence that only happens at night when the world has forgotten to look.

We slipped through the balcony doors and back into the quiet warmth of the hotel.

We didn’t talk about this for the rest of the night. 




________________________________________________________

I really tried my best to fit this scene SOMEHOW in this chapter but I just couldn't without deviating the plot of the chapter from Abby's POV. 

Here comes SAJA BOYS BLOOPERS!!
(When Jinu and Abby went on their little escapades)

Aejeong lounged on the couch with the air of a sultan exiled to a college dormitory. He tilted his head back against a pillow that did not belong to him, sighing heavily: 

“Agi” He cooed, a lazily smile trying to win over the blue haired demon's affection. "Can you get the blankets on your way back?"

Agi, who had already done no fewer than five tasks for this demon diva (including, but not limited to, lighting a candle, extinguishing that candle, finding Aejeong’s sock, losing Aejeong’s sock, and then finding it again), froze mid-step. Something ancient and fragile inside him finally snapped.

“NO, YOU GET IT!” he bellowed, flipping Aejeong off with the fury of a thousand unpaid interns.
Sinbi, who had up until this point been watching the TV quietly on his side of the couch, rose without hesitation.

“I’ll get it,” he said gently, almost apologetically, as he padded toward the bed. 

“No! Sinbi, no!” Agi lunged like a bodyguard in a soap opera, arms outstretched in tragic resistance. “Let that lazy, sorry excused of a FUCKER get it for himself!”

Sinbi paused mid-step, caught in a moral dilemma of unprecedented stakes. His eyes bounced between the two demons like a tennis ball of guilt.

“Oh…” he said, almost tearfully, “...sorry, Aejeong.”

Aejeong’s demon eyes narrowed onto the two demons. Daring them to defy him again. 

When they didn't move, Aejeong hissed. “You’re all useless. Useless!” hauling his lanky form from the ground. He stomped toward the bed and yanked the blanket as if it had personally wronged him.

Behind him, Agi beamed with the smug satisfaction as he clapped Sinbi warmly on the back.

“Our rebellion,” he declared, “was successful.”

Chapter Text

By some quiet mercy of fate there were no events set for us the next day- Jinu didn’t plan anything crazy. 

 In fact, we were awarded something that I didn’t even know was in Jinu’s vocabulary: a day off. A whole, uninterrupted day of nothing.

It was Sinbi who stirred first, roused not by alarms or obligation, but by something more natural—an instinct, perhaps, or the gentle pull of sunlight creeping between the gauzy hotel curtains. 

We had drawn straws, not formally but through temperament and stubbornness, to decide the sleeping arrangements. There were three beds, and five of us: Aejeong refused to share with “savages” at night knowing full well he was one too, Agi didn’t like sleeping with anyone, period, and Jinu- that dumbass- slept with the restless velocity of a spinning top. And so Sinbi and I took the couch- two halves of a blanket-bound truce, his back to mine, his legs stretching dangerously near my head.

When he rolled over, still somewhere between dreaming and waking, his foot landed squarely on my face. It wasn’t violent- it was the kind of soft, dazed kick that felt more like a memory than an impact—but it startled me awake with a grunt nonetheless.

“Sinbi…” I groaned, though my irritation evaporated the moment it was born. I couldn’t bring myself to yell at him: he looked so peaceful, too much like a child caught in the act of dreaming.

“Sorry!” he whispered hastily, recoiling with the elegance of someone trying not to wake a sleeping world.

Outside, morning had already arrived and staked its claim. A warm ribbon of gold unfurled through the window, sliding over the floor, the couch, our faces. It was the kind of light that made everything look more beautiful than it truly was. Stained walls softened, cluttered nightstands redeemed by shadow. The room glowed as if dipped in honey.

The others still slept with the abandon of the overworked and emotionally exhausted. Aejeong lay draped like royalty across his bed, a free sleep mask, tacky and slightly torn, shielding his eyes like a crown of defiance. Agi had curled into himself with the strange grace of a feral housecat, an extra pillow cradled tightly in his arms. And Jinu… Jinu snored lightly, limbs scattered across his mattress, one leg dangling dramatically over the side like some marble statue posed for effect.

Sinbi sat up beside me, the blanket slipping off his shoulders, replaced by the shy warmth of the sun. He turned to face me, his voice barely louder than a breath.

“Are you awake?”

I was- entirely because of him- but I said, “Yeah…” while stretching out like a cartoon of sleep itself, arms above my head, mouth open in a long, theatrical yawn. “Why do you ask?”

“Can we go out?”

“Now?” I blinked, rubbing my eyes and reaching lazily for Agi’s phone. He’s the only one out of all of us who tackled on the monstrous endeavor of learning how modern day devices worked.  

The screen lit up. 10:13 a.m. Not early by any stretch, but the weight of stillness in the room made it feel like dawn.

Behind us, Aejeong muttered something unintelligible about Agi pulling his hair, then promptly returned to his dramatically gentle snoring. The quiet was so complete that even whispers seemed impolite.

Sinbi only nodded, rising with a silent determination that startled me. There was something solemn in the way he moved- an eagerness, yes, but also a strange reverence, like he was stepping into a chapel rather than onto a balcony.

“Fine…” I said, though my voice had softened. I rolled my eyes for show, but stood up and followed, still clinging to the fragile calm of morning.

We passed through the glass, our bodies phasing out like smoke, and stepped onto the balcony. The wind greeted us, cool and refreshing, threading its fingers through our hair. The city below still wore its early light: buildings kissed by gold, the air tasting of fresh dew and exhaust and faint sweetness, like powdered sugar had been sprinkled on steel.

It was peaceful in a way that made me ache a little. Maybe it was the lingering euphoria from the night before—or maybe it was just the kind of morning that made you believe, even if only for a second, that the world could be soft. That everything’s fine.

“Where did you two disappear to last night?” Sinbi’s voice was light, curious in the way a feather might be curious about gravity. He ran a hand through his hair and gathered it up into a manbun, the motion fluid, almost ceremonial. His lavender-tinted human eyes, which seemed to glow like pressed lilacs beneath morning light, gazed out upon the waking city of Seoul below. The skyline sparkled with its usual opulence, as if the glass towers had freshly bathed in sunlight and expensive cologne.

“Hm?” I drifted lazily to his side, elbow resting against the cool ledge, eyes following the motion of a bus weaving between people with places to be. “What are you talking about?”

He didn’t look at me. “You and Jinu. You came back late. Where’d you go?”

This is the part where I lie. Where I should lie. But the thing is, Sinbi didn’t strike me as the type to judge. He wasn’t Aejeong, who held every piece of information above my head and used it as blackmail whenever I pissed him off. Sinbi was softer, more forgiving.

So I told the truth.

“Well,” I began, clearing my throat as if preparing to recite Hamlet. “I had a meat craving. So naturally, I ate a guy.”

He blinked. No reaction. He does it every day, so of course it wouldn’t bother him.

I pressed on, as if confessing a mundane lapse in diet. “On my way back, I ran into one of the Huntrix members.”

That caught his attention. His whole body perked up like a love-struck cartoon deer. 

“Not… Soda” I add quickly as I watch his purple eyes sparkle. 

He tilted his head and asked, too innocently, like a child asking if Santa remembered them this year. “…Soda?” 

I grinned and gave him a nudge. “Your girl.”

He flushed in a way demons weren’t meant to. His smile unfurled like a blooming camellia. “Oh, her…” he murmured, half-lost in reverie. “I—I still don’t know her name. I’ve been calling her Banjjak in my head.”

 I nearly choked from my sudden laughter, leaning my arm against his shoulder I add, “You’re so cheesy, man.”

He hummed, proud of it. His shoulders relaxed as he waited patiently for the rest of my tale, like a priest awaiting a particularly spicy confession.

“It was the one with the gold contacts-”

“How do you know they’re contacts?” he interrupted- innocently though, so it didn’t bother me.

I hesitated to answer…

He had a point. 

“Well, gold isn’t exactly a normal human eye color.”

He tilted his head in that slow, theatrical way he always did when thinking too deeply. “Wait… but my eyes—”

“Yours are fine. They’ll just assume it’s part of the costume or something… plus, people can’t see your eyes in the first place. You’re safe.”

He nodded solemnly. 

“Anyway, Goldie was there. And I was still pissed about the whole boiling-water-to-the-face thing.” My tone turned bitter, clearly remembering the event. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that. 

Sinbi scowled, his eyebrows knitting together. “Yeah, that was not cool. It was cheap.” 

“Exactly,” I sneered, remembering the fear on her face when I caged her in my arms. “So I followed her home. Scared the hell out of her. Cornered her in her room- real demon shit. Very cathartic.”

Sinbi’s face twisted in surprise. “I see.”

“Couldn’t stay long, though. One of her friends showed up and wanted to talk about feelings or some shit.”

I ran a hand through my hair, more dramatically than necessary, pretending to carry the weight of the entire late night escapade like a tragic war hero. Sinbi merely blinked, waiting for me to continue.

“And what was Jinu doing?” he asked.

I paused.

What was Jinu doing?

“I don’t… actually know. He told me he went for a walk.” My voice quieted, almost lost to the breeze. “But ever since we ran into the Huntrix at the bathhouse, he’s been acting... different.”

“Strange.” Sinbi lowered his eyes again, watching the ants below us—people crossing intersections like clockwork, cab doors swinging open like secrets being whispered to the wind.

We fell into silence, the kind that didn’t need fixing. We just stood there, demons in borrowed bodies, staring out over a city that would never understand us, yet somehow felt familiar all the same.

Somewhere behind us, Aejeong stirred. I glanced back just in time to catch him swatting at the air, muttering something about Agi stealing his satin pillow again. Then came the gentle sigh of his return to dreams.

He’s so annoying. Like a brother. A very stupid one. 

As the wind brushed past my ears, I couldn’t help but wonder: what had Goldie done after I left her there? Had she cried? Raged? Picked up the phone and try to ruin my life?

I groaned and pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes, suddenly tired again.

Suddenly, the television flared to life with the shrill, officious clamor of morning news, a trumpet blast that shattered the delicate hush Sinbi and I had been enjoying like porcelain. 

Our moment of reflection dispersed like steam from a tea kettle. Inside, Agi was lounging on the arm of the couch like a bored sultan, the remote dangling between his fingers as if he were the conductor of chaos itself.

“Agi, you piece of shit…” Aejeong stirred beneath his throw blanket, his voice like velvet soaked in venom. He seized the nearest pillow—a limp, decorative thing—and hurled it with aristocratic contempt toward Agi’s smirking face.

From the far bed, Jinu was already awake, staring at the ceiling with a fury that belonged in Greek myth, his jaw set, his expression carved from thunderclouds.

“Yeah, yeah, you guys hate me,” Agi yawned, grin unwavering as he turned the volume down by the tiniest of notches- just enough to be petty. 

Sinbi waved brightly as we entered back into the hotel room. “Good morning.”

Grumbles rolled in like storm clouds from the rest of them. Mornings are not our natural hour.

Eventually, after showers, brushing teeth, and enough accidental elbows to start a brawl, we found ourselves crammed onto the couch like an ill-organized portrait, brushing knees and egos. Aejeong continued brushing out his hair with the dramatic sighs of a movie star in exile, and I swatted at his elbow when it nearly collided with my face again.

“Hey—watch it, Monkey!” I growled.

A knock rattled the door. Instantly, the room hushed. You could feel the tension: a roomful of demons frozen in a slice of domestic suspense.

Jinu, the ever-reluctant leader, rose slowly and peered through the peephole. A beat. Then…

“Oh. It’s just the newspaper,” he exhaled, relief coloring his tone. The door opened, and he plucked the day’s edition as if it might bite him.

“We should just—” Agi began, but Jinu cut him off with a voice that rang out like a war drum.

“Wait—listen to this.”

He straightened the paper and read aloud, the words catching the air like a broadcast from a lost century:

“This year marks the sixth consecutive season of the highly coveted Idol Awards—an annual affair that crowns the nation’s supreme musical act with fame, prestige, and cultural dominance. Previous years have seen the undefeated reign of Huntrix, the nation’s sweetheart K-pop group adored by fans and media alike. But tides may be shifting. Enter: the Saja Boys. Following a stunning debut and rapid rise in popularity, sources speculate they may be worthy challengers to the reigning champions. With just two weeks to the live event, fans are aflame with anticipation.”

He looked up. I was already zoning out, the cadence of newsprint soothing as a lullaby. But Agi was squinting like he’d been handed an ancient riddle.

“Okay... and what does that even mean?” he asked, deadpan.

Jinu folded the paper with the same precision one might use to sheath a sword. “It means this: our next strike- the final, glorious blow in our campaign to win the hearts of every soul in Korea- is to win that award. When we beat Huntrix, we claim everything. We’ll be unstoppable.”

Aejeong raised a brow, snatching the paper. “When is it?”

Agi scoffed, hitting the back of Aejeong’s head sharply. “Weren’t you listening? He literally just said it.”

“Two weeks from now,” I murmured, scanning the text with half-interest.

“Are we going to be performing Soda Pop?” Sinbi asked, his eyes gleaming as he leaned over Aejeong’s shoulder.

“No.” Jinu had already begun pacing again, a general on the eve of war. “We need something better. Something new. The Idol Awards demand perfection.”

And so,  the next ten days passed like a fever dream. We worked—not like musicians, but like salesmen hawking their souls to an indifferent public. We partnered with modeling agencies that dressed us like art projects, contorted ourselves into “natural poses” that defied the limits of both physics and pride, and performed for photographers who somehow took forty-seven minutes to adjust a single light.

But it paid off.

Billboards changed. The city changed. The moment we’d landed in Seoul, Huntrix's faces had watched us with plastic perfection from every subway station and skyscraper. But now it was us. Our name, our faces. 

Our brand.

Then came the victory: Top Song of the Week, with Soda Pop. The girls from Huntrix watched us from their table, smiles stretched too tightly, eyes glittering with venom disguised as civility. They clapped, as they were expected to. The press lapped it up. And I, grinning like a devil in Versace, knew I wanted more.

And yet, she wouldn’t look at me- Goldie. Not once. No eye contact. Just a glance in my general direction, as if I were a bird perched on a distant rooftop.

Amusing, really. Had I scared her that badly?

The following week, Huntrix won Top Song of the Year, and Jinu’s calm unraveled like a cheap hem. His footsteps paced the sidewalk too fast, his brows drawn in stormy deliberation as we walked beneath the watercolor glow of the Korean sunset.

“Calm down, Jinu,” Sinbi said softly, catching his arm.

“Yeah,” added Agi, hands tucked in his pockets. “It’s just one week. We’ve got the Idol Awards in two days. Focus on that.”

I listened distantly, half enthralled by the hum of my companions’ voices while my gaze meandered across the lacquered streets of Seoul,  glittering as if varnished in champagne. The lamplight cascaded in golden ribbons down the sleek roofs of taxis and the pearlescent curve of storefronts. There was a sense of late-night languor in the air, the kind that whispered of secrets and mischief, of things best done beneath the moon's gaze.

Then, sharply and almost melodiously,  Aejeong gasped, his voice cutting through the indolence like a violin string snapping in the quiet.

“Hey, hey!” he cried, clutching my arm with theatrical urgency.

I turned just in time to follow the direction of his wide-eyed stare. Pasted onto the brick facade of a café was a poster bearing the immaculate, cruelly perfect faces of Huntrix, their faces downed in eyeliner and glitter. 

Below their logo, in a font that screamed manufactured enthusiasm:
FAN SIGNING EVENT

Tomorrow morning.

Aejeong didn’t need to say anything. The glint in his eyes, childish and maniacal, told me everything. And perhaps my own sly and growing smile answered for me. 

Without hesitation, he peeled the poster from the wall- not so much stealing it as claiming it, like some medieval banner from a rival house- and twirled on his heel.

“Jinu!!” he called, voice operatic, laughter trailing behind him like perfume in a ballroom. “Look what we’ve found!”

Jinu, ever the cynic, looked up with the exhaustion of someone who’d read too many bad reviews. But as his gaze lingered on the poster.  As the weight of its implications dawned on him,  I saw the transformation. 

That infernal flicker of idea caught fire behind his golden eyes.

“Let’s spoil their event,” he said coolly, as if proposing an afternoon luncheon.

Agi, never one to be left out of the scheming, snatched the poster mid-air and frowned, his dark brows knitting. “But if it’s tomorrow morning… how are we going to beat all of the fans to it?”

For a moment, our brilliant plan stalled in the air, dangling like a chandelier on a single thread.

But then Jinu twitched, an involuntary jerk of genius, and straightened up. “Remember when we performed Soda Pop again? At that one studio? The one with first-come-first-serve tickets?”

I couldn’t help but chuckle, recalling the horde of trembling fans camped like starving poets on the pavement, some armed with blankets, others with desperation.

“Oh no,” I muttered as realization struck, the smile draining from my lips. “You’re not actually saying…”

“Oh yes,” Jinu replied, smug and merciless.

Our collective expressions wilted in synchronized dread. Sinbi clutched at his vest like a housewife hearing thunder. “B-but what will we sleep on? People will recognize us if we go like this” He motioned down at his sparkling stagewear.

“We’ll get sleeping bags and masks,” Aejeong piped up with boyish glee, as if describing a picnic in the Alps. “Like we’re camping.”

“You absolute idiot,” I said dryly. “We’ve never camped.”

“Details,” Aejeong replied with a grin, brushing off the insult like lint.

Jinu cleared his throat, the universal signal for shut up and listen. “Agi, Abby,” he commanded with princely assurance, “you two get the sleeping bags. The rest of us are heading straight to the event location to claim the first spot.”

His lips curled into something nearly unholy. “Or just eat whoever got there first.”

I laughed, unable to hide the thrill coursing through me like a shot of absinthe. Agi stepped up beside me, nodding solemnly as if we were off to buy supplies for war.

Then, in a crackle of stardust and bravado, the other three vanished, teleporting with all the elegance and recklessness of boys who had nothing to lose and everything to prove.

“All right,” I murmured, turning to Agi, who wore the expression of a bored aristocrat in a drawing room, as if someone had just asked him to attend a charity ball in the middle of July. “How do we get sleeping bags?”

“I know how to shop,” he replied dryly, tilting his head toward the city as though the answer had been etched into the skyline. “Let’s go to a mall.”

Before I could object, he took my arm and, in a blink he teleported. 

We stood before a towering glass palace of commerce. It gleamed in the night like some temple of indulgence, reaching so high into the sky and was so wide it reminded me of the gates in Jeong-won.

“Holy shit…” I muttered under my breath, the lights reflecting in my wide eyes.

With the casual grace of a petty thief, Agi plucked a pair of glasses from a stall- not so much stealing them as borrowing them from someone who wasn’t using them properly- and tossed me a pair in a soft pink hue. He ripped off the tag like a gentleman removing a woman’s corsage.

“Here,” he said.

“What’s this for?” I slid them on and blinked. The world blushed in rose-tinted euphoria. It was like stepping into a fever dream curated by some lovesick film director. “Whoa… what are these?”

“Sunglasses,” he said, his oceanic eyes lifting with pride as he wore his own. “Cool, right?”

“Hell yeah.”

Together we strode into the mall like we owned not just the building, but the concept of capitalism. We were arrogant, ridiculous, and gliding, like two debutantes on their first night out.

As we walked beneath the chandeliered ceilings and glass skylights, I glanced sideways at Agi. He seemed utterly at home in his human form, lounging in it now like a worn leather chair. And that’s when it hit me: we hadn’t spent time together, just the two of us, in ages.

“Agi,” I said, leaning my arm on his shoulder with playful familiarity.

He sighed like a man already regretting every decision that led him to this moment. “What do you want?”

“Nothing!” I insisted, all innocent charm. “What are you thinking about?”

“Where you and Jinu disappeared to.” His voice turned from satin to stone, eyes ahead.

We passed by a billboard- our own faces plastered ten feet high, shilling soda with empty smiles. I had already forgotten the brand. I wondered vaguely if any of us even drank it.

Did the others really notice our absence? Was I the only one not fussed about Jinu vanishing for a few hours?

“I got hungry,” I shrugged. “Since Sinbi already ate all the meat in the closet, I just—” and I launched into my night’s exploits. Goldie, the scare, the adrenaline. A beautifully stupid decision.

Agi listened in patient silence. Then, when I finished, he sucked air between his teeth like a disappointed therapist. “Abby… isn’t that, well- how you treated Hae?”

A sharp little dagger lodged in my chest. It was the kind of pain that annoyed more than it hurt. “What?”

“You literally ate her flesh to quench your thirst,” he said, gesturing dramatically. “Now you’re scaring this new girl for a high. Are we seeing a pattern here?”

I clicked my tongue. “You’re overanalyzing it. I’m a demon, remember? Terrorizing’s kind of our thing.”

At that, Agi grinned, slow and sly. “No, you’re right. Please. Continue being a menace to society.” His sarcasm was warm, like old wine and bad advice.

I scoffed, but we turned a corner and the moment was broken as Agi picked up four sleeping bags, all rolled in dark-blue.

I tilted my head. “Four?”

He rolled his eyes. “Aejeong doesn’t deserve one.”

I barked out a laugh, slapping him on the back so hard his knees nearly buckled. “Good one!” I wheezed between chuckles as he turned to glare at me with the smoldering dignity of a kicked cat.

Still, when I saw he actually had no intention of getting one for Aejeong, I grabbed an extra and tucked it under my arm. Someone in this godforsaken group had to be the responsible adult, I supposed.

As we strolled out of the store, the theft alarms sang like sirens behind us, and several employees rushed toward the entrance, waving their arms in confusion and fury.

Thank Gwi-ma we could slip from the human gaze whenever we pleased. Otherwise we’d probably be on the evening news by now.

“Wait—wait!” Agi veered off-course like a child catching sight of a toy shop. “I have to show you something.”

He dragged me into a glowing cavern of glass and gadgetry: a tech store where rows of sleek tablets and computers glimmered like artifacts in a museum for futuristic wealth.

“Look!” He tapped one of the tablets, pulling up a game where a tiny cartoon man sprinted through a crumbling temple, chased by something monstrous. “Temple Run,” the screen read, moments before he began furiously swiping in all directions.

I leaned over his shoulder, mesmerized by the silly little game and how invested Agi looked. “We should take it. It looks pretty cool”

Agi smiled like a boy caught in the cookie jar, then promptly took the tablet and waltzed out of the store with the casual authority of someone who had always owned it.

When we returned to the others, the sky had already already fallen, the stars barely peeking through the streetlamp haze.

Aejeong was talking, or rather ranting, for Sinbi, who nodded solemnly like an overworked therapist with a clipboard. Pink hair flounced with every dramatic flick of Aejeong’s wrist.

Jinu sat nearby, eyes half-lidded, staring off into a middle-distance like a poet with too many regrets and not enough coffee. He’s been in his thoughts most of today.

Agi and I exchanged glances. It felt good to have the group together again, even if we were gone for just a few hours.

“We’re here!” I declared with theatrical triumph, hurling a sleeping bag in Aejeong’s direction like a sailor tossing a rope to dock.

It struck him squarely in the chest. “Ack—!” he yelped, a sound sharp and boyish, arms flailing in a last-second catch that saved his dignity but not his balance.

“Nice job,” Jinu murmured with coolness, legs crossed on what could only be described as a throne masquerading as a lawn chair—gleaming aluminum, absurdly high-backed, and entirely unnecessary.

Agi, ever the practical sibling in this circus, passed out the remaining bags like rations in wartime. We each took ours with varying degrees of gratitude and annoyance, and he tucked the final one under his arm like a man who had planned for this moment all his life.

Agi plopped down on one side of Aejeong, who was now theatrically sulking, and I nestled between him and Jinu, already zipped into my sleeping bag like a hermit crab reclaiming its shell.

But something struck me. I squinted at Jinu, sprawled in regal repose, one leg flung over the side of his perch. “Wait a minute…” I said slowly, the seed of revolution blooming in my tone. “Why do you have a chair, and the rest of us are sleeping like roadside hobos?”

Aejeong sat up as if struck by lightning, eyes flaring wide. “Yeah!” he echoed indignantly, scrambling to his feet and pointing as though Jinu had committed high treason. “Where’s my chair?”

Jinu tsked once—audibly, dramatically, and with the kind of finality that comes only from someone who believes wholeheartedly in his divine right to comfort. “I’m the leader,” he said, adjusting his posture like a king overseeing a coup. “I get the only chair.”

The air thickened.

Aejeong marched over, seized Jinu by the collar, and stared into his eyes with all the righteous fury of a man denied a basic human right.

Jinu’s eyes shifted—no, transformed—into a glowing shade of molten yellow, chilling and unblinking. It was the kind of look that promised ruin or redemption, depending on how you answered his next question.

Silence loomed.

Aejeong clicked his tongue and let go, mumbling a petulant, “Fine,” as he retreated, wounded in ego but not in spirit.

Agi muttered something under his breath about the absurdity of the whole affair. Something about how chairs, floors, leaders, followers didn’t matter when the only real throne was the cold concrete beneath our bones. He sat cross-legged and, with the weary grace of a father trying to tune out a tantrum, pulled out his iPad.

Without a word, I leaned into him, resting my head against his shoulder. He launched a game- Angry Birds, of all things. The screen lit up with colorful bird and trajectories. It looked stupid and childish, yet there was something spellbinding in it: the arc, the aim, the crash.

Soon, Sinbi and Aejeong huddled close together, toppling on top of Agi to see what he was doing on the screen.

And there we were- four fools in a row, hunched over a glowing screen like monks before a holy relic, bound not by blood but by the strange comfort of shared absurdity.

It wasn’t until I woke up the morning after that I realized I fell asleep right there.

When I awoke the next morning, it was not to birdsong or golden rays dancing on my skin, but to a far less romantic truth: pain. Pain of the oldest kind, the kind that settles into your bones like an unpaid debt, stretching from the curve of your shoulders down to the aching roots of your calves.

My body was an orchestra of groans. I tried turning over, but the attempt sent a throb through my core like a warning shot. It was then, through the haze of sleep and soreness, that I noticed the spectacle behind us: a snaking line of humans, hundreds, maybe thousands, curved along the block like a silk ribbon fluttering in the breeze.

So early? 

I gasped and jerked upright, yanking my hood down to obscure my face like a celebrity dodging the tabloids.

Beside me, Agi stirred like a cocooned caterpillar waking in the wrong season. He groaned- a long, pitiful sound- and attempted uprightness with the grace of an injured poet.

I mouthed the words, Look behind, tilting my head discreetly toward the scene of mass fandom. He followed my gaze and blinked, startled, as though he were just now realizing we’d slept on a battlefield.

“Everything hurts…” Aejeong moaned as he, too, began to rouse from his human tangle. He had been using our shoulders as pillows, the way a child curls against warmth in winter, and our movement now left him exposed and groggy.

“I know,” Agi agreed solemnly, leaning back against the brick wall as though it might offer support or forgiveness.

Aejeong, hair matted, face creased, looked like a rat that had crossed a thousand miles of desert and returned to civilization only to discover water had been outlawed. If that was how he looked, I could only imagine what I resembled. I chose not to. Instead, I snapped my fingers dramatically near my face, reshaping it with illusion magic until my reflection would’ve made a camera weep with gratitude.

“Do you remember when the event starts?” Aejeong whispered in a hush that felt conspiratorial.

“Eight-fifteen,” came Jinu’s voice, crisp and well-rested, like a man who had slept upon clouds. He was still perched on that chair, his infernal throne of smugness. “The event starts at eight-thirty.”

The three of us turned to look at him with murder in our eyes and sleep in our bones.

“What?” he blinked, defensive already. “Why are you all—oh.” He sighed deeply. “Still mad about the chair?”

“Duh,” Agi muttered, twisting his back with a sickening symphony of cracks that echoed through the sidewalk like firecrackers at a funeral. “We’re so unbelievably sore.”

“Fine, fine…” Jinu relented, performing the sigh of a man who’s about to be martyred. “When we get back to the hotel, I’ll sleep on the floor. You can all have the bed.”

Aejeong raised an eyebrow theatrically, waiting for council. He turned to Agi, who turned to me. We were a carousel of glances, a triangle of silent democracy. They were waiting for my reaction. My opinion. 

I gave them a nod.

“Deal,” Aejeong declared, his voice noble, his posture fixing, his face magically resetting from “death warmed over” to “camera-ready heartthrob.”

Still nestled near us was Sinbi, the softest of our demons, sleeping soundly, limbs curled and purple hair fanned across the pavement like rose petals in a ruined garden.

“Someone’s gotta wake him up,” I said, nudging Agi.

With a glint in his eye, Agi pulled out his tablet, summoning a blaring alarm from a devilish app. He placed it beside Sinbi’s ear and cranked the volume to a level only the cruel would call humane.

Within seconds, Sinbi sat up with a gasp, eyes wild, mouth forming a delicate “o” of betrayal.

Agi chuckled like a misbehaving older brother. “Get up, weirdo. You looked like the only one who enjoyed sleeping on concrete.”

Sinbi yawned, a long, heartfelt sound, and shook his hair out of his eyes. “Wouldn’t be the first time,” he muttered, rubbing his neck. “Though I admit… my shoulders hurt like anything..”

“That’s what I said” I laughed, stretching as much as my battered frame would allow.

“I’m never going camping again,” Aejeong groaned, his voice haunted.

Agi rolled his eyes. “We didn’t go camping, dumbass.”

Before Aejeong could retort, the sound of boots on concrete interrupted our revelry. Security guards, all crisp uniforms and clipped voices, began removing the velvet bands separating the mob from their goal.

“You may enter now,” one called out.

Jinu stood and straightened his jacket. “Clean up,” he whispered, brushing imaginary lint from his sleeves. “Look alive.” Then, with a grin sharper than any knife: “Let’s ruin an event.”

And so, we shuffled forward, five absurd demons wrapped in sleeping bags, limping like caterpillars freshly hatched, preparing to make the morning news for all the wrong reasons.

The signing hall greeted us like a ballroom stripped bare:one long table stretched across the front of the room like a stage waiting for a scandal. Behind it sat Huntrix. 

The overhead lights bathed them in soft studio white, as if even the heavens had RSVP’d to this fan event.

At the far left, with the kind of studied nonchalance only achieved by the naturally charismatic, sat Pigtails. Half of her hot pink hair was parted in perfect symmetry and tied into twin tails that bounced when she so much as breathed. She wore a black graphic tee, ironic and oversized, and it somehow made her look cooler than anyone else in the room. She was lounging back in her chair, chin resting lazily in her palm, but her smile… her smile was real. It wasn’t the smile of a trained idol or a manufactured PR darling. It was soft, sweet, delighted to be there. To be with the fans. 

Beside her sat Goldie. Today robed in a light pink floral jumpsuit so perfectly tailored it must have been sewn by angels with extremely good taste. 

Kinda like my shirt but pink. 

Funny. 

Her vibrant gold eyes—only now they weren’t gold, were they? They were now a soft brown now that her usual contacts weren’t in place. Brown like molasses, like old books, like secrets you only whisper to someone you trust not to laugh.

So the gold eyes were contacts.

My smile curled at the edge with the satisfaction of a trick revealed. I knew everything. Of course I did.

Goldie’s face was aglow, her smile so earnest it bordered on endearing naïveté. She leaned toward Soda, her hands fluttering like sparrows as she spoke. Soda, ever the livewire, was practically bouncing in her seat, her entire body punctuating every word she said. She looked like someone who had never known a dull moment. Her hair- silky like the night sky- moved with her in their buns, catching the light as she laughed mid-sentence. The two of them together were like a firework display set to jazz.

And at the far right sat Purple, the enigma. Her violet hair was tightly styled into a single French braid, her lashes long- yet still elegant- enough to dust the heavens. She fiddled with her marker, uncapping and recapping it with a restless rhythm, eyes not on the crowd but somewhere far away, lost in thought. She had the look of someone deep in a novel she’d never tell you the title of. She looked like Jinu. 

We approached quickly, like conspirators to a coup.

“Single file! No pushing, one at a time please!” came the familiar bark of their manager- the man from last night.

I stood just behind Jinu, grinning like a thief in a museum. This was ludicrous. Stupid, even. But that made it art. The plan wasn’t just genius, it was fun.

“To your biggest fans…” Jinu began smoothly, his voice all velvet and venom.

And then, on cue, we moved as one: sleeping bags fell to the floor like cloaks at a duel, and we struck our poses, mock-serious, ridiculously dramatic. I arched just enough to look angelic, despite the demonic ache drilling through my shoulders.

Gasps erupted. Actual, honest-to-God shrieks. The sound of disbelief and dopamine filled the hall.

But I didn’t care about them. I only cared about her.

Goldie’s eyes found mine across the table, and in that moment, the universe cracked open. Her smile didn’t just fall, it disintegrated- So satisfyingly. Her entire expression hardened like sugar turned to glass. Anger, pure and nuclear, lit her features until she radiated something terrifyingly elegant.

Her marker broke in her hand with a small snap, ink bleeding onto her fingers like warpaint.

I smiled wider, an unbearable, wicked thing, and winked at her. A wink so flirtatious, I nearly swooned from the heat of it.

“Saja Boys!” the manager squeaked, practically vibrating with reverence. His knees buckled into a bow. “It is an honor! Table, now!” he barked, and minions flew in like ants to sugar, dragging a spare table with the urgency of war medics.

At the announcement of a joint signing, the crowd split like Moses had just entered the rooms. Fans pivoted, gasped, reassembled, suddenly unsure which side they belonged to.

Purple’s eyes widened. For the first time all morning, she looked. A flicker of panic, so brief it could’ve been imagined, passed over her face. She stood abruptly, hands slapping the table like cymbals.

“The Saja Boys will sit with us!” she declared, her smile held together with invisible thread.

Immediately, the split crowd re-fused into a single organism, buzzing and brimming with electric curiosity.

Jinu looked back at us—slow, calm, teeth gleaming, yellow flashing faintly in his eyes.

His smile said it all.

Everything was working to plan.

First came Aejeong, who moved like a prince in exile, lounging dangerously close to Pigtails, one arm flung carelessly across the back of her chair like he’d lived there his whole life.

“Hmm…” he drawled, voice low and syrupy, the corner of his lips tugging into that annoying heartthrob smirk. “We keep meeting like this.”

His eyes—those heavy-lidded dreamer eyes that had started wars in comment sections—gazed at her with practiced seduction, and the tension between them thickened to the point I felt secondhand sweat.

Pigtails, however, was immune. She scoffed, face scrunching in theatrical disgust, and with both feet she shoved his chair an entire foot away.

“Get the hell away from me, you demon,” she hissed through her teeth, her whisper sharp enough to cut diamonds.

“Hey now,” Aejeong crooned with a wounded smile, scooting his chair right back so the sides of their chairs touched, nearly overlapping. “Let’s be a little nice… for the camera.” His eyes flicked down, and then back up. “And me.”

She gawked at him like he’d grown a second head. “You are the most irritating—”

Click. A camera shutter snapped somewhere nearby.

“Smile,” Aejeong whispered, turning to the fan’s camera with a face of innocent delight, while Pigtails looked two seconds away from committing a felony.

I laughed into my fist as I tried to cover my amusement. Aejeong always operated at “flirt or die,” but the way he turned the charm into a personal offense was almost artful.

Meanwhile, chaos bloomed on the opposite end of the table.

“I am not sitting with no Saja Boy!” Soda huffed, arms crossed so tightly they looked fused to her torso. Her foot tapped violently beneath the table like she was telegraphing morse code for ‘Help me.’

Agi, beside her, looked monumentally bored. He slouched so far back in his chair it was a miracle he hadn’t fallen through the floor.

Then, Sinbi sat down.

And suddenly, Soda straightened so fast she gave herself whiplash. She giggled, genuinely giggled, like a Disney side character. “What’s up?” Her voice cracked mid-sentence, dropping into an accidental bassline. She cleared her throat, cheeks blooming bright red.

Sinbi offered her a shy smile, the kind that barely lifts the lips but screams panic behind the eyes. He said nothing, but his neck told on him, turning pink, then red, then a deep, apocalyptic crimson, all perfectly hidden by his turtle neck.

So that’s why he wore it.

But his stoic little expression betrayed him. I could feel the invisible tail wagging behind him like a metronome on overdrive.

Real smooth, Sinbi.

As for Jinu, he made a show of sitting beside Purple, his posture the dictionary definition of intimacy: hunched in, shoulder brushing shoulder, his voice lowered to a murmur.

But what startled me was Purple’s reaction—she didn’t freeze up. She didn’t threaten to stab him. She just gave him a tight smile, acting as though she hated who just sat next to her. But form afar I saw something else: her eyes sparkled. 

I blinked.

When did that happen?

When did they get so close?

I was still trying to unravel that mystery when my turn came.

I strutted over to Goldie like I owned the table and the entire industry it sat in. Her body stiffened the moment I sat beside her. Her fists were clenched so tightly her knuckles were three shades whiter, her signature on a fan poster wobbling from sheer force.

She didn’t even look at me. Which, to be fair, was smart.

But I wasn’t going to let her off that easy.

“What’s wrong?” I leaned in slowly, my arm sliding around her shoulders with a grace that felt criminal. She froze like I’d poured ice down her spine. “What’d I do to deserve this royal treatment?”

She didn’t reply. Her jaw clenched tighter, and the poor pen in her hand looked seconds away from joining the graveyard of broken utensils.

I tsked dramatically and snatched the poster from her hands. “You missed a spot.”

Then, slowly- deliberately- I signed it myself. But not just a signature. No. I traced over the illustration of me, specifically the abs, adding extra lines, dramatic shading, and a tiny heart near the navel.

It was theatrical. It was petty. It was absolutely my finest work.

Goldie’s face twisted. Her nose scrunched. Her lip curled. Her entire soul recoiled. She stared at me like I had just set fire to her childhood home.

I grinned.

“Murder is illegal, y’know,” I whispered. “Even if you’re very, very tempted.”

She responded by slamming the next fan poster on the table so hard the pen tip split.

Perfect.

Goldie yanked another fan’s poster toward her with the grace of someone filing a police report. Her pen scratched across the glossy paper like it owed her money. Her smile, mechanical andbitter at the corners, was aimed somewhere in the vague direction of the crowd, but never at me.

“How dare you come to my home and threaten me?” She muttered venomously under her breath. 

My smile only grew wider, remembering the events that happened that day. “You have to admit.. It was kinda funny." 

“Thank you so much!” the fan squeaked as she got her poster back. “You guys look perfect together!”

Goldie gasped before she forced a smile. “We’re… not together!”

“Oh,” the fan blinked, awkward. 

I asked, rolling my eyes. “Now we don’t know if that’s true yet. She’s just shy.” I turn to her, my voice dropping seductively low. "Marry me." 

Goldie elbowed me with the anger of a thousand suns. “No!" She strained out a laugh before speaking through gritted teeth. "We. Aren’t. Together!”

She didn’t hurt me.

When the fan left I leaned closer, the edge of my shoulder brushing against hers like a whisper. “What is the issue here? You act as though I scared you shitless in your own bedroom.” I added a thoughtful pause. “But I didn’t do any of that.”

Before she could reply, a nearby staff member cleared their throat. “Photos?”

Goldie immediately sat up straight, her lips twitching into a dazzling smile like she hadn’t just committed symbolic murder with a Sharpie. I followed suit, sliding closer- too close- so our shoulders touched. The click of a camera shutter sounded.

Her voice was barely a breath: “Move one inch closer and I’ll staple your face to the table.”

“I like this side of you,” I whispered, raising an eyebrow as I use my hand to turn her face to look at mine. “It’s aggressive. Like you honestly think you could fight me and win.” 

Finally- finally- her defiant eyes met my smug ones. “You’re a fucking creep. A disgusting creature that I will fight you and win.” 

I gasp dramatically, taking a fan poster and etching my abs on it. “How am I a creep? You showed me your home, I just.. self invited.” 

She nearly shattered the marker in her hand. The plastic creaked in protest, ink pooling near the tip like a weapon poised to bleed.

“Is this your form of revenge?” she hissed—low and restrained, as if the fury in her voice might explode if allowed even one decibel more.

Her eyes flashed like fire dimmed under stained glass.

I leaned back in my chair with a shrug that was more performance than indifference. “One of them,” I murmured. The words floated between us, deceptively light, like confetti fluttering through the air after a bomb.

I let my gaze trail slowly over her face, both lustfully, and  methodically, like a painter returning to a half-finished canvas he once dared not complete. My eyes lingered where they always did: those irises, once golden as dusk-kissed honey. Now? Dull. Earthly. Brown.

But not truly.

“Why do you always wear gold contacts,” I asked, the question coiling from my mouth like smoke, “but for a fan event... you took them off?”

She laughed, a sharp, incredulous note that was too hollow to be joyful and too sharp to be casual.

“What? No,” she said, almost amused by the idea. “My eyes are naturally golden. I wore contacts today because brown matched the jumpsuit better.”

Just like that the world stopped. The buzz of fans, the rustling of paper, the click of camera shutters- every sound evaporated into a void of unhearing. The air around me thickened with stillness. Even time seemed to pause, curious.

I leaned forward, slowly, almost reverently. I peered deeper into her irises, those warm umber lies. And I saw it.

The thin, artificial glaze. A veneer of brown. The faintest halo of gold struggling to break through, like sunlight trapped under floodwater. She wasn’t lying. Not about that, at least.

Her eyes were golden.

But they weren’t supposed to be.

Not here.

Not now.

Not her.

A chill crept over my spine and coiled tightly at the base of my skull. My stomach turned as if something ancient and primal had just been awakened and recognized her before I could.

Could it be…?

No. No, that wasn’t possible. She couldn’t be—

Before I could ask, before I could dig into the grave I had suddenly found myself standing on, a fan appeared at the table, clutching a glossy poster of Huntrix mid-performance like it was scripture.

“Can you guys sign this together?” they asked, beaming.

Goldie took it first. Calm. Efficient. Like nothing in the world had just shifted on its axis. She scribbled her name in the corner with the fluid elegance of someone who’s done this a thousand times, handed it to me without a glance.

My hand moved of its own accord, fingers curling around the pen like it weighed a thousand pounds. I wasn’t even looking at where I signed. I was too busy watching her. Watching it. Watching the unraveling.

But then my eyes dropped to the corner of the poster. To her signature.

To the name.

Written in large, feminine cursive, like a girl signing a yearbook and not setting fire to a secret, was a single word. Three letters. A name I hadn’t heard- hadn't uttered- in centuries.

Hae.

Chapter Text

Hae.

That’s what her signature read: elegant, looping, and unmistakable.

A name scrawled in the glamour of cursive, but to me, it struck like thunder behind stained-glass windows. 

Hae. 

My vision swam slightly, as if the word itself had reached out and struck me across the face. I looked again at her, really looked again, and saw it. 

Not just the name, but the eyes. Her face. Her demeanor. Fractions of her 200 years ago. 

It was uncanny. Impossible.

And yet it was her.

“Hae-” I breathed her name, as if saying it aloud would steady the world again. I reached for her shoulder instinctively, with the kind of familiarity that could only be born from memory.

She recoiled as if I were a flame. With a look of undiluted disgust, she slapped my hand away.

“Don’t touch me,” she hissed through gritted teeth, her voice like shattered ice. “Who do you think you are?”

I frowned, confusion and hurt twining around my throat.

“Hae, what are you doing?” I murmured, voice barely audible under the chaotic buzz of fans and camera shutters. “Why didn’t you tell me you were… you? It’s me. Abby-”

She turned toward me fully then, and the light in her golden eyes turned hard as metal. “Why are you suddenly talking to me like this?” she spat, like the very sound of my voice was a joke she wasn’t in on. “Stop talking to me so informally. I’ve never met you before this whole mess.”

She pivoted seamlessly to the next fan in line, the warmth of her smile returning like stage lighting, instant and artificial. Her pen glided across a T-shirt with practiced grace, as if the moment with me had never occurred.

What the hell?

I blinked again, shaken. This couldn’t be Hae. Not my Hae.

Next to her, Sinbi was deep in conversation with Soda, lost in a private world of flirtatious smiles and flickering glances. They looked like they were rehearsing a romance no one else had been invited to. I didn’t have the heart to interrupt.

Agi sat at the far end, eyes half-lidded, his signature a lazy scratch across glossy paper. He wore a smirk so detached it almost felt like performance art.

I sank slightly into my seat, leaning toward the one person who might understand.

“Baby,” I whispered. His blue hair gleamed like mischief in motion. “Stage name,” I added under my breath, reminding him we were still performing beneath the gaze of a hundred eager phones.

His head snapped toward me with unnerving speed- demon reflexes, sharp and precise.

“What?” he mouthed.

I motioned toward Hae discreetly, fingers curling like secrets. “Name,” I mouthed back.

He glanced down at the freshly signed poster on the table, squinting slightly—then froze. His lips parted.

“What…?” he said aloud, the disbelief hitching his breath like a record skip.

Before I could process his shock, I felt the pointed jab of an elbow collide with the soft space beneath my ribs.

“Pay attention,” Hae murmured with venom-soaked nonchalance. “A fan’s here.”

I turned stiffly, eyes still echoing with her name, as a girl approached. She beamed so brightly it felt like a second sun had entered the room.

“I’ve been SUCH a big fan of you!” she squealed, her words tumbling over each other like clumsy shoes on marble. “I love your voice and your looks and-” She kept talking, her voice faster than my thoughts. I tried to follow, I did, but the air around me felt thick with unreality, like I was submerged beneath it all.

And still, I could only think of the girl beside me.

Could she be her? 

No way. 

Not her.

This one’s too sharp. Too cold.

Not the Hae I remembered, the soft-spoken one, the girl who once treated silence like scripture. 

This girl next to me could start wars with a smile.

The fan inhaled dramatically, her monologue still ongoing. “...Basically what I’m trying to say is—”

And that’s when I felt it: the hairline fracture in my idol grin. A twitch. A slip. The illusion faltering.

I could hear Hae, her laugh crisp, like a champagne cork popping.

“You have to get used to that,” she said with a sweetness that was suddenly unfamiliar. It was laced with empathy, for a moment. A flicker of warmth. Then, without missing a beat, her smile twisted, cruel and theatrical. “Just smile and wave, pretty boy.”

Before I could reply, the fan practically sang, “Can I take a selfie with you?? You’re just so-!”

I took her phone with a practiced hand, smiled with the practiced charm, and clicked. The fan squealed and melted away into the crowd, her voice trailing behind her like perfume in a warm room.

And as I sat there, camera flashes popping like champagne bubbles, laughter echoing around me like a jazz hall filled with ghosts, I felt something inside me fracture. Quietly. But definitively.

Because she signed her name Hae.

And her eyes were golden.

And that could only mean one thing.

I turned toward Hae once more, unable to help myself, as if some gravitational thread drew my eyes back to her, again and again, regardless of the sharpness with which she met them. Her lips, normally plush with laughter or cruelty or some exquisite in-between, had thinned into a flat, indifferent line. There was no poetry there. No invitation. Only severity.

“Why are you staring?” she asked, not softly, but like someone pressing their heel to the throat of sentiment.

I laughed- too lightly, too falsely, the sound like a cracked glass balancing on its rim. In a moment of foolish bravado, I slipped my arm around her shoulders again, desperate to retrieve some old rhythm, some echo of what once was, or what I had once imagined to be.

Is she playing with me?

Or perhaps she didn’t recognize me at all. Not in this borrowed skin, not in this new life or city or disguise. Maybe she only saw the illusion of me, the glittering surface and not the threadbare ghost beneath it.

“You’re just so beautiful,” I said, each word slow and deliberate, my voice honeyed with memory. “It’s like I’ve met you in your past lives.”

I searched her face- studied the angle of her cheekbone, the slight twitch at the corner of her mouth- watching, waiting for something to shift. Some crack in the marble.

Her brow furrowed, as if the sound of my voice repulsed her. She turned her face away with a fury that felt ancient. Her eyes gleamed not with tears, but with contempt, lit with the kind of fire that doesn’t warm, only consumes.