Archive of Our Own ^beta

It was a morning like any other. I went out to do my thing—no rush, no real motivation—phone in one hand, my thoughts looping like a remix of anxiety and lack of caffeine. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary... until I heard the music. Pop. Bright. As sugary as cotton candy melted in unicorn juice. I only looked up because the air shifted. Like someone had just turned on a blender full of euphoria.

A group of guys was dancing and singing in the middle of the street. No DJ. No stage. Just a ridiculous number of people drooling around them. They called themselves the Saja Boys. Five of them. Each one styled like a walking billboard for “we’re sexy and we know it.” Their moves were so synchronized you’d think they were born dancing. The song? “Soda Pop.” The kind of tune that makes you cringe if you’ve got more than two brain cells. And me—with my two and a half—I stood there, watching them from the curb. Out of curiosity. Out of boredom. Nothing else.

“This looks like it came out of a gummy bear factory,” I muttered, leaning against a rusted streetlamp.

It’s not that I can’t recognize talent. They danced like the fate of the world depended on each step triggering a chain reaction to save the universe. But there was something… off. A flicker in the air. Shadows that didn’t match the light source. A faint violet shimmer around their movements, like threads weaving into patterns not of this world. Took me a few seconds longer than usual to realize what I was seeing. These weren’t light tricks. No fancy effects hiding in their sleeves. Just patterns—violet, subtle, unsettling.

Demons. And major ones, by the look of it.

But I didn’t say anything. Why would I? Not my problem. Never is, never was, unless they’re close enough for me to stab and send them back to their realm.

One of them saw me. The one with obsidian hair and big-leader energy. Jinu, if the squealing girls on my left were to be believed. The same group that practically fainted when the pink-haired one sent them a flying heart. He locked eyes with me like he expected me to melt on the spot. I just raised an eyebrow.

I smiled. One of those empty, purely decorative smiles. Then turned on my heel. I didn’t have time for demons disguised as idols. Let them have their moment. Their music sucked anyway. I heard them wrap up, announcing some TV performance later that night. The crowd noise spiked as they disappeared… or so I felt.

I took my usual shortcut home. A long alley, lined with graffiti-covered walls and trash bags doubling as accidental urban decor. I turned the corner—and there they were. All five. Standing. Waiting? Their backs to me. Walking slowly, silently. No chatting, no celebrating their “big” debut. I walked faster, eyes glued to my phone. Ten steps. Just ten, and I’d be free of this idol hellscape.

But luck was clearly on vacation. As I passed them, one of them bumped my shoulder, making me stumble. The youngest-looking one, mint-green hair, licking a lollipop like life bored him to death... which, honestly, probably true. He turned around. They all did. Staring.

That kind of stare that scans, waits. For an apology? A scream? Maybe tears?

I gathered myself as quickly as I could. “Sorry,” I muttered, still glued to my phone, head down.

I heard footsteps behind me. One, then another. Then more. Way too close for comfort. Curiosity got the better of me—I turned.

Same black-haired guy. The leader that I assumed so well. Tension crackled in the air like a snapped wire. "Seemed like you weren’t too impressed by our debut,” he said. His voice matched his singing—intense.

“Not a fan of candy-coated K-pop,” I replied, flatly.

His four backup demons gathered around him. Stylish, weird, and painfully unoriginal. Two with pink hair? Try a different bottle next time. The heart-headed one tilted his head like he was trying to read my mind.

“Maybe give us the benefit of the doubt?” Jinu again.

The tall one with the strong arms chuckled and rested one over Jinu’s shoulder. He scanned me. I scanned back. That shirt did him no favors color-wise, but those pecs? Definitely eye candy. I’m not blind. I can admit when a body looks damn good. Still didn’t mean I was going to fall for them. Clearly, each member had a persona—some soft, some bold. If that was their strategy, well... good for them.

If I had to say, the two quieter ones—the one with hair in his face and the mint guy—drew more attention by being dead silent. Watching me like they were searching under my skin.

“I’m hard to impress,” I said, without energy.

And I kept walking. No running. No trembling. But my pulse was tapping out a beat I didn’t sign up for. I planned to leave this boy band in the dust. No interest in seeing them again—not even on TV.

Of course, luck’s never fully on my side. Sometimes it likes to play cute little tricks.

Night fell. I didn’t feel like grocery shopping, but my pantry was basically air. Living alone could be a drag, but I didn’t complain. I love solitude… when demons aren’t around to ruin it. But hey, nothing a knife to the face can’t fix. The walk to the store wasn’t long, just annoying. If I wanted to be under my blankets by midnight, I had to take the grossest shortcut in town: the alley behind the men’s bathhouse. It smelled like old moisture and expired soap. Every time I passed, I quickened my steps, careful not to draw male attention—inside or out. Being a twenty-year-old girl walking the streets of Seoul at night? Not the safest.

Store trip was short but efficient. Got everything I needed—plus a couple of ice creams from the same freezer stocked with Soda Pop. I choked back a gag. That song still gave me chills. Awful.I left the store as fast as possible, phone in hand, head down. Distracted but alert. Always alert. If I sped up, I’d be home in five minutes. One more pass through the bathhouse alley. This time, the stench was worse—though only ten minutes had passed. My body tensed before my brain caught up. Something had changed. Whatever it was, it was coming from the bathhouse.

The back door burst open like it had been kicked. Five figures sprinted out. Impeccable. Not wet. Not naked. Clothes intact. Quick steps. Heavy breathing. They were running. From what? No idea. But they clearly weren’t expecting me.

“Holy fuck!” I jumped at the bang.

Because of course. Of course I’d run into the idol boy band again. Twice in one day. From a bathhouse, no less. Scandalous. Didn’t they have a live appearance right now? Not that I had a TV to confirm. Wouldn’t have bothered anyway. Probably a fan chased them in—regardless of gender.

Jinu stopped cold. The others followed.

“You again?” said the buff one.

“Don’t worry, I’m not thrilled to see you either.” I gripped my grocery bags and kept walking. And then—time slowed.

I saw him. The old man, seated on a stone bench inside, scrubbing his back. And behind him, like a shadow made of water, a lesser demon began to emerge. It hovered behind him, opening its mouth, sucking the old man’s soul like it was a buffet. My palms went ice cold. I was close, but not close enough. If I lunged, the guys would notice. I’d raise suspicion—inside the bathhouse and in the alley. I couldn’t save the old man. I just had to watch.

I wanted to leave. Pretend I saw nothing. But the Saja Boys noticed. They saw the tension in my body. The shift in my gaze.

“Something wrong?” Jinu asked, stepping closer.

“Just not a great look for a young lady to be surrounded by five guys at night, don’t you think?”

I gripped my bags tighter and turned to leave. But they didn’t let me. Jinu was in front of me in a blink—probably teleportation. The others boxed me in from behind.

Why does everything have to be so damn complicated?

“You gonna let me go, or are we about to break into a musical number? ‘Cause if it’s the latter, I don’t know your choreography.”

“What an… interesting creature,” said the lavender-haired one, calm and collected.

“Oh, so you do speak,” I muttered. Keeping my composure was hard, but I wasn’t here to fight. I didn’t have the gear for it.

Jinu stepped closer, shrinking the gap, suffocating the air between us. This was getting on my nerves. A lot.

Remember what I said? I don’t mess with demons unless they get in my personal space? Well, they were begging for a lesson.

No hesitation. No wasted second. I flicked my wrist, dropped the grocery bags, and the collapsible baton snapped out of my sleeve with a metallic click—sweetest sound in the world. I slammed it into Jinu’s balls with surgical precision. He collapsed, choking out a sound between agony and outrage. It was art. Pure art. “If I were you, I’d rethink the whole ‘intimidating women in alleys’ thing.

I crouched down, picked up my phone—miraculously intact—and the bags. One of them was soaked, reeking of peach. A shattered soju bottle. The one I was looking forward to all week. Dead. Among the eggs and instant ramyeon. Perfect.

I turned to give them a final warning—but I didn’t speak.

Because I felt it.

Behind me. That slimy, hot, rotten presence. The water demon. Now focused on me. I didn’t need to look. I haven’t needed to for a decade. I moved fast. Drew the dagger from my boot and, without turning, flung it backward—right into its face. It hit the ground with a wet thud. Violet and pink particles burst into the air. Just me and the Saja Boys again, in that disgusting alley.

Note to self: never walk this way again.

I picked up the last fallen bag. All contents safe. The five demons—half beautiful, half boring to my eyes—stared like I’d grown a second head.

“Watch yourself” I muttered, and walked off like I hadn’t just murdered a cross-dimensional entity.

Life went back to its most monotonous version after the alley incident. Or so I wanted to think. My days passed between dusty bookcases, customers who didn’t know how to use a computer, and my attempts to ignore the fact that, for about a week, something had been… different.

The first time was subtle. A window slightly open when I could swear I’d closed it before leaving. Drafts, I thought, even though my apartment had exactly zero drafts. The second time was harder to ignore: a new pillow on the couch. Red, with golden edges and a tag from a store I’d never set foot in. I touched it with a finger, like it was radioactive. It had a smell. Not the “this came from a cheap bazaar” kind of smell, but that intense cologne idols wear to cover up the fact they smell like effort and regret.

The third time was worse.

It was three something in the morning. I knew it without checking the clock because my body only wakes up at that time when something’s wrong. When something in the world is out of place. I tossed and turned in bed, mouth dry and head pounding like someone had taken out my soul and shoved it back in badly folded. Thirst won. I walked to the kitchen in silence, dragging my feet with the resignation of someone who doesn’t want to face life… or a demonic presence in the kitchen. One of the two.

I opened the fridge. Nothing. Closed it. Poured water from the filter. When I looked up to check the kitchen clock, my eyes landed on something that shouldn’t have been there.

A flower.

In a clear glass, placed right in front of the mirror I have on the wall to reflect some natural light during the day. A black flower. Perfect. Too fresh to have been there long. In fact, there was still a drop sliding down the stem. I approached it like I was defusing a bomb. I didn’t touch the glass, or the flower, or the mirror. But I recognized it instantly.

A black dahlia.

It wasn’t romantic. It wasn’t sweet. It wasn’t the typical flower a psychotic fan leaves because they think they love you. It wasn’t the kind of flower a normal person gives as a gift out of love. No. Black dahlias aren’t gifted. They’re left. They’re placed. They’re elegant, yes, but loaded with everything you don’t want to hear in a poem. Black dahlias have a much more interesting reputation. They symbolize betrayal, warning, silent death. Poisoned elegance. A “I see you” disguised as a floral arrangement. A silent message that someone knows who you are, where you are, and that even if they don’t do anything today, they could tomorrow.

I didn’t need proof. The certainty burned at the pit of my stomach: it was them. Those five maniacs with synchronized choreos and way-too-observant eyes. The way they looked at me in that alley… knewing I wasn’t a fan, not even a curious onlooker. They now knew I was something else. Something they hadn’t quite figured out yet.

“How thoughtful” I muttered, turning to head back to my room. “Just what I needed. Demonic florist delivery.”

But something stopped me. Not a sound. Not a shadow. A scent. The aroma was thick, masculine, and so damn expensive I almost wanted to burn down the apartment out of spite. I had never smelled it before. And that, in a 40-square-meter space that only I inhabited, was a red flag the size of Korea.

“This isn’t normal” I said aloud, leaning against the counter “Not even for me.”

I looked at the flower again. There was no note. No signature. Just that mute presence, as if it was watching me from the mirror’s reflection. And for an instant—just one—I saw myself reflected differently. More rigid. Like the mirror wasn’t showing who I was, but what I was about to become if I kept letting these bastards into my life so easily.

Next time they’ll leave a bouquet and a ring, I’m sure.

I poured another glass of water just to have something to do with my hands, and went to my room without looking back. But that night, I slept with the collapsible baton under my pillow and the dagger in the nightstand drawer. Because if what they were doing was marking territory… then I was already at war.

And even so, I didn’t confront them. Not out of fear, or lack of weapons. Because if I opened the door to them, I opened the door to everything else. And frankly, it was enough having to replace the library’s printer every two weeks because teenagers insisted on printing TikToks. I convinced myself that if I ignored them, they’d get bored. Demon or not, they were idols. They had the attention span of a glitter-coated goldfish.

Spoiler: it didn’t work.

I slept just enough to not die.

The next day I went back to work as if nothing had happened. Sorted books, argued with a fifteen-year-old kid who thought “Napoleon was a marketing invention,” and drank five coffees just to stay human. I didn’t mention the flower. I didn’t bring up the perfume. I stored everything in a mental box labeled “not now, not yet.”

That week, things that shouldn’t have repeated… did. A new pillow that I obviously, and again, hadn’t bought, appeared on the couch. Wine-colored. Expensive. I burned it in the bathtub. A shirt of mine folded differently. And the perfume. Always that damn perfume. As if the presence insisted on leaving marks without breaking anything, without full invasion. Just hinting. Just watching. Just provoking.

A week after that fateful and not-so-quiet first encounter, I knew before I saw him.

It was 2:45 a.m. I woke up with a knot in my chest. Something was off. Everything was silent, but that silence had an edge. I went to the kitchen, again, in the dark. The atmosphere had that kind of darkness that isn’t total but is still annoying. A distant streetlight slipped through the blinds, drawing crooked lines on the counter. I didn’t turn on the light, I already knew someone was there. Everything seemed normal at a glance, except the obvious: the silhouette standing with vomit-worthy calm right next to the microwave. I felt him before entering: that scent. His scent. Impeccably unbearable. I had to swallow before speaking.

“Want me to order you a coffee, or are you going to stand there all night staring at me like a psychopath?” I asked, voice rough from just waking up, eyes locked on the silhouette leaning against the counter. Jinu didn’t flinch.

He stepped out from the folds of darkness like he’d been there all along, like it was his own apartment. The dim glow barely outlined his slanted eyes and the neat lines of his clothes. Not a wrinkle. Of course. With that neutral, elegant expression that made me want to chuck the microwave at his head.

“I thought you’d attack me the moment you sensed me” - he said, like that was a greeting. His voice was deeper than I remembered.

"And does that disappoint you?”

“A little.” His eyes glinted briefly, though his expression stayed that same sophisticated void that made me want to break his nose.

My heart was in my throat, but I refused to show it. I walked slowly until I leaned my back against the fridge door, crossing my arms. The cold metal helped keep me from grabbing the knife in the cabinet. “Are you going to explain why the hell you’re in my kitchen at this hour? Or is this part of some demonic marketing campaign?”

He stepped closer. One step. No sound. The wooden floor always creaked when I walked. But not under him. Another step. Not threatening, but with the calm only those who think they own the space have. “You can see them” he said. “All of them. Even the ones who hide well. And you know how to kill them. But you’re not a hunter per se. Why?”

Silence. The air felt thicker suddenly. Took me a second to realize it wasn’t the room—it was my body, tense from head to toe. The kitchen was small and his deep voice echoed against the walls like it was bigger than it was. I wanted to open the window. I wanted to kick him out.

I stared at him, long and hard. That question wasn’t asked like that. Not so casually. “Not your business” I replied, not breaking eye contact. “And I don’t owe you any explanations, nor do I want to play your little game.”

“But you kill demons.”

“I kill the ones who cross my path. The ones who fuck around. Not the ones who dance in the center like K-pop stars. I live my life. And if something threatens it, I eliminate it. Period.”

He tilted his head, slowly. “Then why didn’t you kill us when you had the chance?”

My stomach turned. A pause. A breath.

A stupid memory: the texture of the demon’s skin as I stabbed it without looking, how it disintegrated in the air, and the silence that followed. Then, an even stupider memory: the previous night, and that stupid perfume scent lingering in my house. His question burned in my throat.

“I still ask myself that” I spat. “Maybe I got distracted by your shiny pants” Jinu didn’t smile. That was the weirdest part: he seemed to be there with a real purpose.

He looked at me like he was trying to read me, like behind my eyes was a classified file he needed to open at any cost. Like he needed to know. “You’re not like the others. You don’t vibrate like them. There’s something in you—”

“Finish that sentence and I swear I’ll stab you in the liver with a spoon.” He tensed for the first time. Subtle. Like he wasn’t used to being interrupted with domestic threats. And yet, he had the audacity to smile. Bastard.

“You’re right. That was presumptuous.”

“What was presumptuous was leaving me a flower like that, with no context.”

He blinked. Didn’t see that one coming. His smile didn’t fade, though. It stayed there, intact. Menacing. “Did you like it?”

“It made me want to exorcise my house. Does that count?”

Jinu straightened, back to “elegant idol with a face that never gets it wrong” mode. “I was hoping for a clearer response.”

“And I was hoping not to find you in my kitchen at midnight like some Turkish drama character with stalker issues. But hey, hope dies.”

A long silence fell between us. The air was still thick, too much, almost vulnerable. Like something else was breathing between us. And that made it worse.

“You’re on no list” he murmured. “You’re not in any record of known hunters. Not among humans. Not even among marked descendants. You’re a black hole. And yet… you know things you shouldn’t.”

My throat tightened. The floor seemed to tilt. “And do you know that sneaking into people’s homes can end with a chair to the head?”

His gaze never left mine. He was searching. Not with lust or sympathy. With a need for information. Like I was an unsolved equation. He nodded once, as if closing a conversation that never really began.

“I expected something else.”

“You expected wrong.” For a second, we both fell silent. He breathed normally. I didn’t. The clock ticked annoyingly on the wall.

“We’ll see each other soon.”

“God, I hope not.”

And with that, Jinu vanished. He didn’t leave through the door. No smoke trick. He just wasn’t there anymore. Like the air had swallowed him.

I stayed there, standing in the kitchen, my heartbeat out of rhythm, and that fucking black dahlia floating in my reflection from the mirror. Muscles tense like violin strings, and the metallic taste of a fear I didn’t want to name. It wasn’t fear of him. It was fear of not knowing what he wanted. What he was looking for. And more than anything, why his search had started with me.

Darkness swallowed the rest.

-----------------------------------

The week passed with a forced sense of normality, like when you trip on the sidewalk and try to keep walking like your knee doesn’t hurt. Nothing exploded. No one else snuck into my kitchen. No demons sucking souls in the corners either. Just routine.

I woke up at seven, tied my hair up any which way, drank burnt drip coffee, and left with my backpack, the same old playlist I already knew by heart playing in my ears. The subway smelled like confinement and sweat. The train car was a human oven with tired eyes. Sometimes I wondered if anyone else could see what I did. Some weird symbol above the doors. Some guy with the wrong kind of shadow. I never knew. And I didn’t plan to ask.

My job as a librarian was the most sane part of my life. A world where everything had order: books went with books, the Dewey codes organized the chaos, and people spoke in whispers. Relative peace. Routine. Silence. I spent most of the day between tall shelves and the smell of old paper. Sorting donations, labeling volumes, answering ridiculous last-minute questions from desperate students. Everything was predictable. Even Mr. Kim’s visits every Wednesday to read the newspaper with a giant magnifying glass and ask me if “the demons had already taken over the government.” He had no idea how close he was.

Sometimes, when I had free time, I’d get lost in books about Eastern mythology or ancient treatises on exorcisms. They were usually full of mistakes. It was fascinating to see how humans tried to name what they didn’t understand. Language as weapon. As shield. It was hard to find texts with truly informative sources. I’d come across one or two in my life, but they were short and deeply unsatisfying. I always came home a little more tired. Always with the feeling that something was following me half a block behind, but when I turned around, there was only garbage and maybe a stray cat.

That Friday, I got home with my head scrambled, my earbuds tangled, and a cup of cold coffee in my hand. I dropped everything on the kitchen table, kicked off my sneakers with my feet, and collapsed into a chair with a long sigh.

That’s when I saw it.

A rigid, gold card, with embossed edges. Impossible for it to have been there before. I didn’t remember touching it that morning, or even brushing against it when I dropped my stuff just now. And yet, there it was: perfectly centered, like someone had measured it with a ruler.

I picked it up with two fingers.

EXCLUSIVE VIP MEET & GREET ACCESS Admit One – Plus+ Experience Private Photo – Front Row – Backstage Access

The “Backstage Access” part had a little drawing on it—what looked like a lion plagiarizing The Lion King symbol, stamped in black ink. It wasn’t exactly a simple symbol. It was Their symbol. The kind no one should touch without gloves. The card smelled way too intense. I recognized the same fragrance I’d noticed on the back of my couch three days ago. Something between incense and ego. I stared at it for a long while, jaw clenched.

“Go to hell” I told the card. I opened the trash can and threw it in. But when I straightened up, something moved in the corner of my eye. It wasn’t a shadow. Not a reflection. It was... blue. Something blue. And fuzzy.

I froze.

No. Not again. Not in my house.

I turned slowly, a kitchen knife in hand. And there it was. A huge, blue, fluffy mass taking up half the hallway, with wide round eyes fixed on me and pointed ears twitching like they had emotional GPS.

“No” I pointed the knife at it. “I don’t want anything to do with you” The plush tiger with a killer aura tilted its head. And smiled. In the most un-animal-like way possible.

“I mean it” I insisted, holding the knife like it could actually hurt it. “One more step and I swear I’ll turn you into the warmest coat I’ve ever owned.”

The tiger sat down. Just like that. The hallway trembled a little under its weight. And even though it didn’t say a word (because obviously it didn’t have a mouth or vocal cords, right?), I could feel it mocking me silently. “Great. A giant cat with passive-aggressive attitude. Just what I needed”

Carefully, I opened the lid of the trash can to reveal the invitation sticking out from the edge. “This. This is a no. You see? You understand? I don’t want this. I want nothing to do with your owner, or his little group, or his street-exploding fanservice. Got it?”

The tiger tilted its head. Took three steps closer. No—four. Each one softer than I expected from a creature the size of a double-door fridge. I stood still while it sniffed the hand pointing the card.

“Don’t you dare drool on me” I warned. The bastard licked my palm. I jumped back and slammed into the fridge. “Gross!”

He licked his lips smugly, like he’d just won an argument. Then, with terrifying calm, he walked into the living room. Moved through the furniture like it was his own home, sniffing the couch, checking my plants. He stopped in front of the shelf where I kept a single half-melted scented candle. 

“Go back to your master. Out. Shoo—” I waved my hands like I was channeling some vague cat memory. He turned to me, crouched down, and flopped onto the floor like he weighed a ton. Then, without warning, he locked eyes with me and started wagging his tail.

“No. Don’t you dare…” But it was already too late. In one absurd motion, he ran at me, knocked me to the floor, and curled up on top of me like I was his favorite blankie. “YOU WEIGH A TON!” I shouted, crushed to the floor. “You’re on top of me! You’re literally a furry ruin with paws!” The tiger purred.

PURRED.

The sound was so deep it echoed through my ribs. I tried to push him off, but my arms barely moved. All I could do was sigh.

“You’re doing this under orders from your master, aren’t you?” I murmured, my voice muffled by his furry belly in my face. “How pathetic. So obvious. You send your pet to pester me because you can’t handle being told no.”

The purring continued, like a machine waiting for its prey to surrender. “I’m not a fan, okay? I don’t care about your fame, your muscles, your shiny anime eyes… damn, why are you so warm!?”

The tiger made a sound I couldn’t classify. Something between a proud snort and a silent laugh. He started kneading me like dough.

“You’re using a giant beast to emotionally harass me? This is plushie emotional terrorism.”

The tiger tilted its head, then, with calculated slowness, he climbed off me, walked to the trash can, knocked it over with one paw like it was no big deal, took the invitation in his teeth with absurd delicacy, walked back to me… and dropped it right on my chest.

“You bastard” I whispered. He licked my forehead and trotted out onto the balcony, like he’d come just to fulfill a diplomatic mission. 

It took me a full minute to get up. My clothes were wrinkled, my pride flattened, and the invitation card lay on my sternum like a personalized insult. I sighed. Dragged myself to the table. Stared at the card for long seconds. I even tried to tear it, but I couldn’t. The ink reacted to my skin—it was sealed with their mark. There was no way to dodge this materialistic invitation.

“This isn’t an invitation,” I murmured. “It’s a trap.”

But in the end, as always, I gave in to the inertia of the inevitable. That’s why, the next morning, there I was.

Standing in front of a massive building. No banners on the entrance, nothing indicating anything special happening inside… except for the people who had their tickets and knew. So I stayed across the street, wearing a black leather vest, my hair down and swept to one side, and my phone vibrating every two seconds from fan notifications. There was a line two blocks long, full of people screaming and taking photos, holding neon signs and shiny headbands.

And me.

Alone. Motionless. With the VIP card in my coat pocket and a twisted expression on my face that was neither a smile nor resignation. Just exhaustion.

I didn’t know if I was going to go in. But I was there. Outside.

Waiting.

I ended up outside the venue like a total idiot. Long story short… I went to the wrong place. The amphitheater I was supposed to be at was two blocks away from where I was standing. I had seen the fan line going in the wrong direction. Good job, me.

I literally walked under the sun, reluctantly, until I got to the beginning of the line—or at least the entrance to the actual venue. Outside, there were some banners hanging up, advertising the M&G. I didn’t think much of them, because finally, there it was...

Standing in front of the entrance to the most ridiculous event I’d ever even considered attending—and that includes the time I snuck into a sound catharsis exhibit for cats with anxiety—with that crumpled VIP ticket in hand and a “I really don’t want to be here” look practically tattooed across my forehead.

I was pacing back and forth. In and out of the main doors without fully entering. Circling around like I was waiting for a divine sign to drop from the sky with LED lights that said, “Don’t do it, sweetie.” But nothing dropped—except the suspicious look of a security guard who’d already seen me pass by three times. The guy, tall, with the kind of face that looked like he’d lived too many lives, frowned at me.

“You going in, or should I politely escort you out?” I didn’t know what annoyed me more: the awful pseudo-joke, or the fact that he said it while wearing a Bluetooth headset like it was 2009. I clenched my teeth and held out my ticket like someone offering up a dagger: reluctantly and with bad vibes.

“I have this ticket” He didn’t answer. He scanned the ticket with his little machine, which beeped like I’d just unlocked the secret level of hell.

“You have priority access. This way.”

Priority, my ovaries.

Before I could say no, the guy pushed me—respectfully, but with zero choice—straight to the front of the line. I felt the stares burning into the back of my neck. People with glittery eye makeup, rainbow headbands, and shirts that said things like “I love you SAJA BOYS” were staring at me like I had just kicked a puppy live on TikTok.

One girl muttered, “Why is she going in before us?” and I saw her grip her lightstick like she was about to turn it into a spear. I swallowed hard. I wanted to scream, but instead I took a deep breath, counted to ten, and let myself be dragged down the carpeted hallway into some kind of side room. The guy pulled open a black curtain—because of course, black curtains always mean “safe space”—and pushed me into a white room lit with soft lights and filled with promo banners of the k-pop girl band Huntr/x. The energy in there was so intense I immediately wanted to turn around. Again. And maybe vomit. But they didn’t let me.

If someone fainted and died in that room, I swear no one would’ve noticed. Everything sparkled like it had been cleaned with unicorn tears blessed by Buddhist virgins. At the far end of the amphitheater, a table barely big enough for ten people sat there, chairs on both sides, with just enough personal space to breathe. But today? That wasn’t happening.

Because there they were. All five of them, like they’d just fallen off a stage lit by fireworks. With those effortlessly casual poses that were choreographed down to the last strand of hair. And the auras… they literally glowed. Like paper lanterns. And worst of all, they knew they looked good. You could see it in the way they looked at you—like they already knew you’d be writing them a love letter on Instagram in five minutes.

But they weren’t alone.

They were seated alongside the group Huntr/x. And that confused me. Wasn’t the meet and greet only for the boys? Did I get the wrong day? Or were the boys just here to mess with this group... which honestly seemed to be the case, judging by the dagger eyes. Something was off.

From left to right, as if someone had lined them up with a ruler, there was Romance—more slouched than seated, with a smile that said, “I know exactly what you dreamed about last night”—and Abby, chewing gum like he couldn’t care less… leaving one of the Huntr/x girls between them, looking completely irritated, like she was one second away from punching them.

Girl, I feel you.

Mystery was tapping the table with his fingers like a kid waiting for candy—calm and quiet, as he always seemed. The girl with the black pigtails was staring at him like she was in a trance, trying to hide a smile while awkwardly attempting small talk. And Baby… Baby was drinking something milky from a... baby bottle? Was I really watching a full-grown demon sipping from a bottle? I don’t even want to imagine what was going through his head. He probably felt humiliated.

Continuing down the line, after Baby there was a suspiciously empty space, no chair, just a crack in the symmetry. And next to that gap was Jinu. Elbows on the table, fingers intertwined, and eyes locked onto me so intensely I felt like he was scanning me from the soul down to the ripped tights no one could see. Next to him, I assumed, was the leader of Huntr/x—hair tied in a massive braid that made me jealous of her neck strength. She looked even more uncomfortable than the girl on the opposite end, subtly edging away from Jinu like he carried some kind of social disease.

I don’t know how long I stood there. But long enough for one of the assistants to give me a little nudge. One of those fake-nice shoves that really mean, move it, sweetheart, or we’ll move you ourselves. The guard gave me a curt nod, clearly annoyed I was wasting time, and pushed me forward. Again.

I walked.

My steps echoed on the marble floor like I was heading to my own funeral. No music. No voices. Just the sound of my sneakers. And the stares. Oh, the stares. The boys looked at me like they knew something I didn’t—like every one of those demons was waiting to see what the hell I was going to do. The girls were grinning from ear to ear, thrilled someone had broken the awkward bubble they were trapped in with the Saja Boys. And the fans… they looked ready to rip me to shreds.

When I reached the end of the line, no one said a word—not a fan, not an assistant. Nothing. I found myself standing directly in front of Jinu and the girl with the massive braid. Perfect. All I needed was background music and rose petals falling from the ceiling. She gave me a sideways glance, pen in hand, about to sign a poster for their new album.

“Did you get the special ticket?” she asked, with a smile that was way too warm for my taste. “It must’ve been expensive. I’d love to know how long you’ve been a fan.”

I stared at her for a second. Then another. My mouth slightly open, searching for the right answer. I didn’t care if I looked like a nervous fan, but lying convincingly without sarcasm was hard with so many people watching.

Another second passed, and my eyes shifted to Jinu, who was looking at me with that smug, knowing smile. Of course he had set this up. Why? No clue. What I did know, was that I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of engaging—or even hinting that the people who gave me the ticket… were them.

“Uh… my cousin. Distant cousin… very distant. Like… barely exists. He gave me the ticket, told me to get out of the house once in a while. I don’t know much about this stuff, or about you… or the boys. I just know you dance, you shine… and sing things.”

The way she looked at me… it was like I had completely knocked her out of her comfort zone. She was perplexed, but I still noticed a certain sweetness in her eyes, that very human kind of glow...

Until I saw a pattern peek out from her sleeve and collar. It wasn’t entirely visible, but it was there, like suspended in the air. I glanced at the other two girls. Neither of them had visible patterns, and they were showing more skin. She was the only one with those patterns… her and the boys, obviously. She also had a calming presence. She didn’t smell like a demon—or at least not a full one.

I looked at Jinu again, hoping for an answer, something that would confirm my suspicions. But I got nothing. He just stared at me with this mix of interest, mockery, and… curiosity? Then he did something that completely threw me off—me, and every other human being in the room.

He stood up. And that one movement made every muscle in my body tense, walked slowly aroudn the table—passing behind all the other boys, without any of them flinching—and stopped at an empty chair. The one placed clearly out of reach for anyone unauthorized. Without saying a word, he picked it up and carried it over to the empty spot between himself and Baby. Once he set it down, he dragged it back a little, making an awful screech against the marble, then nodded toward it.

“Here,” he said. His voice was low, deep. But it thundered like a storm. “You’ll be more comfortable sitting than standing.” He pointed at the empty chair and fixed his gaze on me. Waiting.

Comfortable, my ass.

My feet were ready to bolt, but my legs refused to move. The air had gone thick. The fans were whispering. The boys were watching me. The Huntr/x girls looked ready to jump in at any second. I looked at him. Then at the chair. Then back at him.

“Seriously?” I blurted out.

“Very much,” he replied, letting a warm smile form on his face. A smile meant for the world, for his fans. But it was fake—we both knew it. And judging by the expression on the girl next to him, so did she.

I looked at him one last time before circling the table and walking with as much confidence as I could fake toward the chair. I passed behind him and the girl with the braid, catching a glimpse over her shoulder of some signed posters with the names Rumi, Mira, and Zoey.

Great. New names I was going to have to memorize.

I reached the chair, glanced at Jinu one last time, and let my body drop with all the help gravity could offer. I sat like someone being wheeled into surgery without anesthesia. Back tense, legs crossed, soul curled up in a ball.

To my right, Baby was smiling—seemingly harmless—with the pinkest sweater I had ever seen in my life. He looked cozy, way too warm for this time of year. To my left, Jinu, silently still like some mythological statue. His scent made me tense even more—it was the same smell that had been following me around my own apartment.

“You gonna interrogate me or ask for a selfie?” I asked through clenched teeth. If there was one thing I couldn’t stand—besides having my personal space invaded—it was being stared at for too long.

“Both,” he replied, smiling, without blinking.

I saw Mira’s jaw tighten. Mystery cracked a tiny smile, like he found it amusing. Romance actually let out a low laugh.

That’s when I knew I had just stepped into the dead center of a storm. And I was smack in the middle. Again. Like the universe just couldn’t get over its obsession with throwing me between two sides that clearly hated each other.

I wanted to leave, but my masochistic side refused to let me. If my very distant, nearly imaginary cousin did exist, he’d tell me the same lie I had just told… that I needed to get out more. And at the same time, it felt like the world was starting to shift, little by little, and if I had to go through all this mess to finally figure out what the hell was going on between these two bands—and then finally get out of their lives—so be it.

Because, let’s be honest: I was already screwed. And if I was going to get burned, I at least wanted to see up close what kind of fire this was.

In front of me, the amphitheater was packed with fans trembling like leaves in front of an emotional fan. Some were crying, others were whispering theories. The phone cameras had been recording since before I walked in, and now they were pointed right at me like I was some kind of Marian apparition on the verge of a breakdown. I tried not to look at anyone. Not at them, not at the fans. But it was impossible not to listen.

The first fan walked straight up to Romance, holding a handwritten letter tied with a ribbon.

“For you!” she said, floating in sweetness.

Romance accepted it like someone had handed him a puppy. He touched her hand, smiled gently. Whispered a thank-you so subtle it was almost inaudible. The fan melted. Literally. I think they had to scrape her off the floor.

Next came Mira. A girl approached her with headphones on and a sign that read “THANK YOU FOR SAVING ME.”

“Thank you for existing,” she whispered, eyes downcast. Mira didn’t smile. She crouched slightly, looked at her like she was seeing something invisible.

—“You’re still here. That’s already a win,” she said softly. The girl broke down in tears. The whole group clapped. I sank even deeper into my chair, wishing I could turn into a garbage bag.

Next to her, Abby was making photocopies of his abs using sheets of paper and several pencils. He handed them out like souvenirs from a luxury vacation. It was so cringe I had to cover my face with my hands. The ladies who got his “autograph” walked away grinning ear to ear, giggling. Abby winked at them from across the room. And I nearly threw up.

Mystery was a poem without words. A fan brought him a handmade shadow puppet, and he simply took it and used the light to project it onto the wall, making the entire audience hold their breath. Not a single word. Just dancing shapes. It was so mystical that even Baby placed a hand over his chest, visibly moved.

Zoey was more direct. A girl asked her for love advice. Zoey grabbed her phone, read the last message from her ex, and said:

“Block him. And if you unblock him, make it to tell him you’re better without him. Because you are.”

The stands erupted. It was like she’d sparked a feminist revolution with one sentence.

To my left, I could feel a silent war unfolding, slow and painful. Between the shouting, footsteps, and faint music playing, I couldn’t hear a word of what Jinu and… was it Rumi?—what they were saying. But I could feel the table wobble slightly every now and then. I stretched my neck and peeked under it.

They were kicking each other’s feet. Clearly not on the best terms… and here I was in the middle of an all-out turf war.

And then, of course, she showed up, the fan who was going to ruin my entire day.

She had the aura of a true believer. Glitter on her cheeks. Nails sharp as blades. A white T-shirt with pink letters that read “SODA POP IN MY BLOOD” and the energy of a wannabe witch who hadn’t grown out of her horoscope phase.

“Hiiiii guys!” she greeted everyone in a voice three octaves higher than any normal voice. If dogs could hear her, they’d cover their ears with their paws. It was almost painful to listen to. “Um… I wanted to know how you came up with the lyrics for Soda Pop. Because it's so deep… like, so sexy. But also… poetic, right?”

Jinu looked at her. Nodded with a faint smile, but didn’t say a word. That impeccable ego and that smile that said everything and nothing at once. Baby was in full observer mode, fingers clasped, one eyebrow slightly raised. Romance adjusted in his seat as if about to speak… but then I let out a small, mocking laugh before he could get a single word out.

And that’s when the girl turned to me. I realized I’d made a grave mistake. All eyes were on me.

“Did I say something funny?” she asked, staring daggers through me.

Part of me—the part well-trained by years of dealing with both underworld creatures and passive-aggressive people in libraries—knew I shouldn’t respond. That I should fake a smile, say something neutral, play dumb, maybe even apologize for interrupting. But another part—the one running on bad sleep and breakfast rage—opened my mouth before I could stop it.

“Theoretically no, but I find it funny that you’d consider that song poetic,” I blurted out, word after word, not stopping to consider whether this would destroy her day… or mine. I leaned forward slightly, like I was sharing a secret. “It just seems a little childish to compare the person you want to a carbonated drink.”

The girl blinked. Jinu blinked. Everyone blinked.

“Huh?” I heard someone mutter in the crowd.

It was like the world had gone silent, and the only thing making a sound was my ribcage waiting for a response.

“What would you have said?” the fan asked, a mix of genuine curiosity and passive-aggressive challenge.

I stayed quiet for a second. Not because I didn’t have an answer—but because I was embarrassed to say it. Not normal embarrassment, but that raw kind when a vulnerable part of yourself slips out, and everyone’s watching.

“I don’t know,” I said at first, dodging. But her eyes stayed fixed on mine… and something on her chest—something shone. Like she genuinely wanted an honest answer.

Damn it.

I sighed, letting my weight sink back a bit, as if there were an invisible backrest to hold me up.

“I guess if you’re going to sing about someone you supposedly long for, you can’t compare them to soda,” I began, less sarcastic now, softer. “You’d… court them, I guess. Want to be at their feet, on their mind, all the time. It should be someone who haunts you even when you’re alone. Like an echo, or a shadow that doesn’t bother you... something new.”

The fan stared at me, stunned. Not moving, like her feet were sinking into the floor, growing roots, and my words were watering them. And I kept going. I couldn’t stop myself.

“That kind of desire—to be with them all the time—makes your chest ache when you can’t have them physically, and all you’ve got is thoughts. Reading something they wrote, hearing their voice in a voicemail… and somehow that’s enough to make you feel okay. Because the person you’re singing about… they should be your refuge. Your sanctuary.”

Silence.

Heavy. Sharp. Alive.

The girl looked at me like I’d just revealed the meaning of life and stolen her soul at the same time.

And then, I saw it. A string. Red and bright, like a heartbeat of light—blinding, almost beautiful to the human eye. That flash became a glowing thread escaping from the fan’s chest, dissolving into the air like an invisible exhale, rising toward a textured field above us. Some of the shimmer hung in the air, like concert confetti.

My fingers tensed instinctively. I looked around. The fans were frozen. You could hear only my breath and my hammering heartbeat. I turned, hoping someone would break the silence. But all I saw were the same stunned faces—some looking at me, others, like Jinu and Rumi, looking up toward the ceiling, where the shimmer had vanished.

I watched Jinu straighten up slightly. He didn’t look at me—but at the audience. The air had changed completely. There was no going back now. Something inside the crowd… the fans… had reacted to something inside me.

Slowly, the murmur started to return. First a whisper, then louder conversations, even a few howls.

Little by little, what had just happened was getting smothered under a thin layer of fake normalcy… the kind you only find in an event that’s anything but normal.

And all I wanted was to get up and leave before something like that happened again.

The meet & greet didn’t last much longer after that. A few more fans walked up—some crying, others laughing, some snapping selfies with filters that couldn’t do justice to how weird the whole thing felt. The idols did what they knew: pose, bow, sign, smile—with that detached air, like they were never quite fully there.

And still, I could feel that tension. So thin, so heavy, it could’ve been cut with a snap of fingers. All eyes were still on me, or at least it felt that way—my brain and anxiety were in full agreement on that.

A small girl pulled me out of my spiral. Fragile, slightly hunched, standing in front of the table—right before Rumi and Jinu. She held a sheet of paper in her tiny hands and handed it to none other than Jinu. Just a drawing. Childlike, obviously. But sweet nonetheless.

“Maybe, listen to these voices instead of the ones in your head,” came a soft, gentle whisper from Rumi.

Jinu had a relaxed expression… soft. Strange, coming from someone who had been borderline stalking me the past few days.

Bouquets of roses flew through the air, landing in the arms of each of the Saja boys. My eyes darted from rose to rose and to every thunderous round of applause. Even Mira seemed weirded out by the scene. One rose was flung toward me, landing in my lap.

I grabbed it and joined in the clapping, silently begging for the whole thing to finally, mercifully end.

When the last fan bowed with a half-hearted curtsy and skipped away, one of the staff—no clue from which group—grabbed the mic and made the closing announcement. The overhead lights started turning off one by one, until only a single spotlight remained, shining right over our table.

I stood up quietly, letting the bouquet fall to the floor, forgetting about it, tired, and I wasn’t the only one. The rest did too, as if we’d all been holding our breath. I walked as fast as I could toward the side hallway, ready to sneak away—not out of discomfort anymore, but something worse. Anticipation.

But before I could even make it halfway, someone stepped into my path. Someone with black boots, braided hair, and a smiling expression. And behind her, like a carefully arranged fan, waiting and watching, were Mira and Zoey.

“Hey,” Rumi said first, her voice soft, almost intimate. “We didn’t get a proper chance to introduce ourselves.”

“There’s a lot of energy at these kinds of events, are you feeling okay?” Zoey chimed in, hands clasped behind her back, smiling ear to ear.

“Depends. Is this the interrogation part?” She laughed. It didn’t sound forced, but it didn’t feel entirely natural either. Like someone who had trained themselves to sound warm without actually getting involved.

“No, no, nothing like that.” I felt Rumi’s eyes locked onto mine, so I turned toward her.

“We understand it was a lot. Especially with those… boys.” Her gaze narrowed slightly, like she thought I wouldn’t notice. She was wrong.

“You could say that,” I replied.

And speaking of them—they were still just standing there. Some sitting on the table, others leaning against a wall. Mystery was the only one who remained standing, quietly observing the scene in front of him.

Rumi tilted her head slightly, pulling my attention back.

“What you said earlier caught my attention. About the sanctuary.”

“Oh, really?”

“It was very… visceral.” I don’t think “visceral” is the right word, but hey, I’m not the lyricist here.

“I guess I have a thing for poetry.” I ran a hand along my neck, feeling sweat gathering at the base. Maybe from the lights, or maybe from the eight pairs of eyes that had been analyzing me for almost an hour now.

“Your cousin… is he a fan? I mean, he did give you that ticket.” Right. Changing the subject that suddenly is never a good sign. I swallowed, hoping the next lie would sound natural. But I was running out of ideas.

“I really don’t know. Like I said, very distant cousin.” I was getting impatient, and my lying game was wearing thin.

Mira’s turn. She gave me a once-over, head to toe, as if she could see I wasn’t being honest. Honestly? I was probably screaming it. But they were trying to find why.

“I see you get along well with the boys back there,” Mira said, and her voice—low and heavy—nearly split me in half. I locked eyes with her, then with the guys, who were now smirking like this was some sort of game.

Bastards. Every last one of them. I shot them a glare, no longer hiding the rage and discomfort boiling inside me.

“Well… they’re a bit annoying.” I didn’t dodge the comment. I was being honest—with them and with myself. “And the truth is, I don’t like receiving things I didn’t ask for.”

It was quick. Barely perceptible. But I saw both reactions.

Four golden eyes glowed in a blink—five, if I counted Mystery. A provocation, and an invitation. A temptation to keep playing their twisted game. And then a pale blue shimmer on the girls’ hands—weapons, visible yet not, glowing faintly, waiting for the right moment to strike.

Ah. That solves all my doubts.

How ironic. Huntr/x. Real hunters.

Shit.So this was what Jinu wanted.

He wanted to know which side I’d pick.

“The ticket wasn’t from your cousin, was it?” Okay, I guess the masks were off now.

“So you can do basic math.”

My mood had hit rock bottom when I arrived—now I was already six feet under. The atmosphere shifted. Cold. Dense. On edge. Ready to strike. From either side. Demons or hunters. And me in the middle… as always.

“We saw the thread,” Rumi stated, trying to mediate civilly. My blood was starting to boil. Slowly, she stepped closer to me, like she was searching for an answer to the question in her head. “It dissipated into the Honmoon.”

I watched her like one watches a predator about to pounce. And the real question here was: which role was I playing? Predator or prey? I took a step back. Then another. Eyes still locked on Rumi—and her patterns. The irony, once again, was rich. A half-demon hunter. How delicious.

“We could work together,” Zoey chirped, reaching for my eyes and my hands. I stepped away from her without thinking.

“I’m not interested.”

And just like that, I turned toward the door, walking with firm, steady steps. The girls followed close behind, trying to catch up.

“But they—” Rumi’s voice broke through, desperate, pleading for my participation.

And that’s exactly what she got—just not the kind she wanted. I spun around, standing only inches from her face. My eyes locked onto her neck, where a pattern twirled faintly across her skin, just peeking out from the top of her outfit. I saw it glow for a millisecond before it vanished again.

“Don’t talk to me about them when you can’t even talk about your own patterns, Rumi.” All I got back was a blink and a completely stunned expression.

Maybe that was too low of a blow. A complete stranger who could see patterns, who could see demons—and more importantly, who could see the flashes of the Honmoon—had just outed her biggest secret without breaking a sweat. A worldwide scandal that could easily destroy Huntr/x from the inside out.

“You could stay with us at the Huntr/x complex. It’s big…” Zoey’s voice was full-on desperation now, reaching for my gaze with all she had.

“I really don’t want to be part of this,” I said firmly. Not yelling, but loud enough for my voice to echo through the nearly empty auditorium.

My tone was the sharp edge of a blade—cutting and hurting everything in its path. Maybe my reaction was cruel, but I had to react somehow. And it had to be strong enough, clear enough… So they’d finally stop messing with the rest of my existence.

And then I felt it. A breath at the back of my neck. Cold. Foul. The fifth one since the Saja Boys made their debut. This was starting to seriously piss me off. Irritate me…Make me angry.

The silence shatters like glass. The Huntr/x girls’ eyes go wide. Rumi raises a hand, instinctively. Zoey takes a step. Mira tries to circle around me.

“Watch out!” someone yells—I don’t know who.

The lesser demon is already on me, too close. I can feel it slithering, lurking, waiting for a single moment of weakness. The ogre’s hands grabbed my leather jacket, pulling me back slightly. But I was faster. Faster than him. Faster than anyone in that room. I lunged forward, letting my jacket be torn by his claws, the back shredded completely. My elbow slammed into his red face, sending him flying back just a few feet. With a swift motion, I drew my hidden daggers from my pants.

Both glowed with a deep red light, leaving behind a trail of sparks—like a streak of light that a camera couldn’t quite catch in time. The first dagger struck his face, making him stumble and fall to his knees. The second—more precise—sank into his sternum, cutting downward toward where his guts should have been, like a butcher’s blade through the spine of prey. His energy dissolved with a dull, sickening sound.

And then—nothing. Silence again.

Behind me, the silence carried a different weight now—thick, sticky, like everyone had swallowed their breath at once. I turned slightly to regain my balance and looked at the stunned audience. My leather jacket slipped off my shoulders, obviously destroyed beyond repair.

The crop top I had picked that day—light, loose, barely brushing my navel—was lifted just enough by sweat and movement to reveal part of my back. Just enough for everyone to see it clearly.

To see it clearly.

The tattoo. A red lotus flower, etched into my skin like a living scar, glowed with a soft, pulsing light—vibrant, as if it had been waiting for this moment to show itself.

I didn’t need to look at it. I could feel it, beating like a second spine.

I didn’t say anything. There was no need. I looked at Rumi one last time. At Jinu, frozen in place. Even Romance looked like he’d forgotten how to breathe. And I decided to do the one sensible thing I could: Turn around—and walk away.

I walked slowly, calmly, as if my back wasn’t lit up like a fucking starlight, as if no one was staring at me, as if I were a normal person. I stepped out the door without looking back, and it closed behind me with a sharp thud that echoed in my ribs. It felt like I’d been holding my breath since the moment I walked in. The outside air wasn’t cleaner, but at least it wasn’t saturated with false promises or velvet-gloved stares that flay you alive.

I kept walking, never hurrying my steps—hurrying would’ve meant giving someone the satisfaction. I didn’t know who, not yet. But I knew I was being watched. It felt like the whole world was watching me—deciding what to do with me. When I reached the corner, I leaned against the wall for a second. My fingers trembled—not from fear. I hadn’t felt fear in years.

It was something else. Something had awakened, something that had been sleeping under my skin for a long time, waiting for exactly this kind of moment to stretch, to yawn, and to say:

Oh. We’re doing this again.

I was so screwed. And they knew it.

And for the first time in a long time, I whispered under my breath:

“I’m fucked.”

And for just a second, the world went still.

There was something beating inside me that wasn’t my heart.

I knew because my heart was exactly where it was supposed to be, pumping its quiet poison into my chest like always. But this… this other thing was beating higher, further back. I felt it right between my shoulder blades, as if instead of muscle I had a ceremonial drum buried under my skin. It was rhythmic, relentless. And the worst part was that it didn’t hurt, itch, or burn. It wasn’t alarming. It was just constant—like when an appliance is left plugged in, humming in the background, the kind of noise nobody else notices, but it leaves your skull buzzing.

I walked among the crowd with my hands shoved in my pockets, chin low, as if that could hide me. I had no destination, no mood, no anything. Just this foreign pulse, insisting on reminding me that something back there was waking up—something I hadn’t asked for, didn’t want, and probably couldn’t control. Each step fed it. Every sound, every glance, every shift in the light seemed to sharpen it, as if the world itself was pressing me against myself.

I adjusted my jacket, but it didn’t help. The leather rubbed against my back with a sticky discomfort, as if the air itself recognized me.

Then, a shop window appeared too close to ignore—a perfect excuse to stop without looking suspicious. I planted myself in front of the dirty glass of an old instrument shop. Cellos, flutes, a bipa that looked like it had witnessed a war. But I didn’t look at any of that—I looked at me. Or rather, I inspected myself.

The image staring back at me was exactly what I didn’t want to see. The sour expression, the eye bags in 4K, the stray lock of hair pointing upward like a cursed antenna. And there it was, just below the jacket’s collar, between the black seams and the worn fabric of my T-shirt. A glow. A glow that hadn’t even existed a few days ago—one that sometimes kept me from sleeping, and that only I could see. A tiny red flicker, pulsing erratically, like a firefly desperate to be caught—except this one was under my skin.

I swallowed hard at the ghost in the glass and stepped away. I couldn’t just stand there like an idiot, waiting for someone else to notice I was a fucking demon flashlight. I needed to move, breathe, put one foot in front of the other, and pretend I had control.

So I walked. Fast. Down no street in particular—just away from the madness. But at a corner, with my gaze dropped to avoid eye contact with anyone, something in my back tensed. A physical jolt, like a tug. As if the tattoo—or what I liked to call the atrophic mark—had sensed something. And when I looked up to steady myself, I saw, in the distance, a pair I really didn’t want to see. Jinu and Rumi, standing side by side at the highest point of a staircase with uneven, treacherous steps even on a normal day.

I watched them talking—tense, but the conversation flowed, with the occasional laugh. Fake, I guessed. The image felt unnatural, yet… familiar isn’t the right word, but I couldn’t think of a better one. And the worst part was, I couldn’t care less about seeing them. It felt like I was intruding on the little privacy they probably had in their day-to-day lives.

Then the thought came—automatic, impulsive, childish, and absolutely necessary: Nope. Not my circus, not my monkeys.

I spun on my heel. I didn’t want to see more. I shouldn’t see more. I turned so sharply I almost tripped over the first shadow in front of me. I opened my mouth to curse, or apologize, or both—but didn’t manage either, because I collided head-on, literally, with someone.

Someone who I knew damn well hadn’t been there a second ago. Their presence hit me before their voice did.

“Wow,” said a soft, unmistakably mocking voice. “If you wanted to hug me, you could’ve just asked first.”

The impact was light, like bumping into a velvet-covered wall, but it still knocked the breath from me for a moment. I looked up—and of course, my luck wasn’t about to improve, even if I fell to my knees and begged the old gods.

Romance was there, standing like the world belonged to him, as if he hadn’t just materialized in front of me courtesy of some cosmic joke. And, as if responding to his presence, the red glow on my back faded, along with the pulses—calming suddenly, almost obediently.

The first feeling to hit me was pure hatred. Hatred because he hadn’t been there seconds ago, because he appeared like a well-dressed ghost, because he looked at me with those golden demon eyes that said he didn’t need to chase his prey—he already had it pacing in circles.

And that hatred only deepened when I realized something in me—something stupid, traitorous, and crimson—recognized his presence as a relief.

I straightened, stepping back to put a comfortable distance between me and this idiotic idol, my face set in my best “touch me and I bite” expression.

The stone path felt narrower than it was, as if he’d claimed it without asking. Romance’s head was tilted slightly, the hood of his sweatshirt casting a shadow across his face, but not enough to hide the curve of his lips—too practiced to be casual, too dangerous to be innocent. Pale skin peeked out from under his collar, a contrast that had no right to look so deliberate. And yet, there he was, looking at me like he’d been waiting all along.

“You’re gonna have to tell me if this is a habit of yours… or if I’m the only one lucky enough to see you crash into people like this.”

His words hung in the air, but I wasn’t about to let him have the last one. I gave him a sideways glance as I shoved my hands back into my jacket pockets, willing my fingers not to betray the tension in them. Romance stayed still, like the whole sidewalk had been staged for him. Even the light seemed to fall just right on him. There was something infuriating about the calm way he breathed, about how his shoulders didn’t move an inch too much, as if he had an internal metronome keeping time. The hood hid part of his gaze, but not enough—I knew he was sizing me up, not just listening to what I said, but to everything I didn’t.

“You know it’s rude to stand behind people so they bump into you, right?” I snapped, the bite in my tone obvious even to me.

He tilted his head, as if finding the perfect angle to answer. “Then you should thank me for letting you find me.”

I rolled my eyes in a slow, exaggerated motion, making it clear I wasn’t going to waste another drop of energy on him. The air smelled of damp grass and expensive cologne, and for some reason that annoyed me more than his words. I tugged my jacket tighter over my shoulders, turned on my heel, and walked down the path without looking at him again. My steps weren’t rushed, but they weren’t staying either—just that urgent need to put distance between my skin and his shadow. I could feel his gaze behind me, like an invisible thread stretching with every step I took. I didn’t hear him move at first, but then… that barely audible sound of his boots on gravel began to match mine, as if my escape were nothing but another invitation.

The path opened between perfectly trimmed ivy bushes, as if someone had tried to tame even nature itself. The question slipped out dry, more from impulse than from any real interest.

“Do you care?” I asked, without slowing down. I heard his steps shorten until he was beside me, his shadow crossing mine. I didn’t look at him as I spoke; I simply kept my eyes forward, following the uneven line of stones, feeling his constant presence behind me.

“Very much” he replied, without a hint of hesitation, as if the word had been ready before I even said it.

I didn’t turn to look at him. I kept walking, letting the scent of wet earth and jasmine fill my nose, trying to mask the lingering trace of his perfume. My voice came out lower, almost dragged down by the weight of the phrase.

“I mean, do you care enough to leave me alone.”

Romance didn’t rush his answer; he let it sit just long enough for the silence to start feeling uncomfortable. “If that were the case… I wouldn’t still be walking beside you.”

The stones crunched under my boots as we skirted a small stone wall that hid yet another mess of stairs. I felt him far too close—the kind of closeness that doesn’t quite touch you but still manages to invade.

“Without an invitation?” I asked again, letting irony drip from every syllable.

Romance quickened his pace to match mine. He didn’t answer at first, but he tilted his face slightly toward me, and in that small motion the light filtered through the tree leaves, sketching a faint golden sheen over his lips—as if there was something dangerously tempting in whatever he was about to say.

“You don’t need an invitation to places where you already belong.”

“And who told you, you belong to…” I paused—partly symbolic, partly loaded with disdain—raising an eyebrow without looking at him, “…whatever it is you think I have.”

“There are people who simply… fit,” he replied, tilting his head. “You don’t fit, but you still belong.”

“How poetic,” I muttered, dripping sarcasm.

“How in denial” he shot back, with that half-smile that irritated me. “Running away isn’t very ladylike.”

“I’m not running away” I said flatly, refusing to slow my pace. “I’m… walking with purpose.”

He tilted his head, weighing my words as if they were a riddle. “Purpose of evasion?”

“Purpose of getting you out of my way”

“Sounds boring” he said, with a smile that never reached his eyes. He stepped closer—just enough for me to catch that faint scent, something sweet yet spiced. “If you were running from me, I’d catch you anyway.”

“I’m not running” I repeated, keeping my gaze locked ahead, deliberately ignoring the sound of his steps in sync with mine.

“Sure. And I’m a monk.”

“You’re anything but.

He smiled sideways—that kind of smile that isn’t friendly but rather a warning wrapped in charm.

“Then I suppose you won’t mind this walk,” he said, stepping ahead with the calm of someone who knew exactly which buttons to push. "We’re going on a date.”

“Excuse me?” I arched a brow but didn’t slow down.

“Well, technically, a formal outing. Don’t look at me like that.” His eyes glinted with something far from innocent. “It’s for… official reasons.”

“An interrogation with flowers in the background?” I shot back with a crooked half-smile. “Didn’t you have more comfortable torture rooms?”

“This is more fun,” he said, taking me by the elbow with a completely fake gentleness. “Come on, I know a nice aquarium nearby.” He tugged at my jacket sleeve, not waiting for an answer.

I tried to pull away, but he held me with that kind of strength you don’t need to flaunt, and he just looked at me—as if he knew I’d give in eventually, whether from exhaustion or curiosity. Or because, honestly, I wanted to know why the hell he had shown up right now.

We walked through a quieter area of this pseudo-natural landscape, far from the tourist traffic, where the sidewalks widened and the trees formed a green tunnel overhead. In the distance, birds chirped, as if the world didn’t know hell was seeping through the cracks.

He whistled softly. I stayed silent. Every now and then I checked my phone as if I had something urgent to do—but I didn’t. The grassy, shrub-lined path stretched ahead, much longer than I remembered from walks years ago, as if every step lengthened the space just to keep us in this strange limbo, until it reached the edge of a discreet garden—overflowing with flowers to the point of exhaustion.

“Do you like the silence, or are you just plotting how to kill me without leaving a trace?” he asked after a while.

“Do I have to pick one?”

He laughed—pleased. Detestable. We turned down a side street into a small urban garden that looked like it belonged on a postcard: stone paths, painted wooden benches, old-fashioned lampposts that didn’t actually light anything but looked pretty on Instagram. Romance let go of my arm only to turn and walk backward in front of me, watching me as I moved.

“I like your honesty. It makes me feel… at home.”

I rolled my eyes and kept walking. The garden was almost empty, except for a woman with a dog and a couple of kids taking pictures of flowers.

“Don’t even think I’m going to an aquarium with you,” I growled.

Romance chuckled—a low, arrogant, infuriatingly charismatic sound. The distant murmur of people entering the supposedly famous aquarium drifted through, muffled by the foliage. The sunlight fell in fragments over our coats, and for a moment, I thought that to someone watching from afar, this might look like an ordinary date.

He kept his hands in his pockets, walking at my pace, never touching me but close enough for his shadow to brush mine now and then. He turned his head just enough for his voice to reach me low, measured, with that cadence that wrapped words in velvet.

“Do you always run from what intrigues you… or is this a privilege you’re giving only me?”

I felt my steps grow heavier, as if the path wanted to anchor me there until I answered. I didn’t look at him right away; I preferred to keep my eyes on the play of light and shadow over the stones, as if that could shield me from his tone.

“Are you interrogating me?” I asked, measuring the acidity in my voice.

He let out a faint smile — the kind of gesture that never quite reached his eyes. “If I were… you’d already have answered more than you think.”

The air between us thickened, as if every word we let slip added an invisible weight that lingered, pressing against the skin. The distant noise of the street seemed to fade, as though the world itself stepped aside to leave only that strip of tension. I allowed myself a brief, almost imperceptible smile without looking at him, before throwing out my line.

“You give yourself too much credit.”

Romance tilted his head slightly, as if savoring the reply before dropping it, his voice low but with a hidden edge. “Only the credit I earn.”

“And who said you’re earning mine?” my voice came out deeper, laced with a challenge that wasn’t looking for a quick answer but a reaction I could read in his eyes.

He didn’t look away for even a second. He let the silence stretch until it brushed up against uncomfortable, and in that space, his lips curved slightly — not quite a smile. It felt more like a warning that what he’d just heard didn’t stop him, but pushed him further.

“I don’t need you to say it… I can see it.”

“Okay, then I’ll leave you to your modern Romeo delusions,” I said, letting mockery sharpen my voice. I turned on my heel, hearing the crunch of gravel under my boots, and stepped off the path without hurry, as if the decision had been made long before he opened his mouth.

Dry leaves crumpled under my steps, and the charged air between us began to thin with every meter, though I could still feel his gaze on me like an invisible rope tugging at my back. But I’d barely taken three steps when I heard his boots closing the distance faster than I expected. Before I could react, his silhouette was once again planted in front of mine, cutting off my path with that studied calm that made him seem like he owned the moment. The hood shifted slightly with the breeze, revealing a gaze so direct it made me stop.

“I’m not Romeo,” he said, his voice both velvety and dangerous, each word falling like a caress with an edge. “He never knew when to stay.”

The distant murmur of water from a nearby pond mixed with my own breathing, a steady pulse marking the silence between us. For a second I considered sidestepping him, slipping past like avoiding a trap, but his eyes stayed fixed on me, intense, as if something in my words had dared him to stay even closer.

“I’m not a fan of romantic literature,” I replied, tilting my head slightly, the shadow of an ironic smile curving my lips.

He let a slow, calculated half-smile escape, one that wasn’t meant to please but to warn. “Luckily… I don’t read it either. I prefer to write it.”

He scoffed under his breath, and the way he said it made the phrase sound less like a confession and more like a promise. My stomach tightened with immediate rejection, a thick sensation climbing up my throat before I could hide it. His smile didn’t fade, but his eyes — those restless, pink-tinted browns — caught the shift as if he could smell the discomfort in the air.

“Ah…” he murmured, lowering his tone slightly, a new edge in his voice, “so that’s your face when something disgusts you.”

I felt the weight of his comment hanging between us, but I didn’t move. I kept my eyes on him, letting my reply come out with the same coldness that spread over my skin. “I’d apologize… but that would be a lie.”

He didn’t look away; the half-smile sharpened slightly, as if he’d gotten exactly the reaction he wanted.

“Then don’t. I like it better this way.” The garden seemed to fall silent, as if even the city’s murmur had decided to wait for his answer.

“Why?” I asked, one eyebrow barely raised. He held my gaze without blinking.

“Because the truth, even when it cuts, is always prettier than a lie wrapped in flowers.”

The scent of jasmine, which had been quietly creeping into the air a few steps ago, was now denser, as if trying to dress up the roughness of the moment.

“Don’t feed me pity wrapped in poetic phrases. It doesn’t suit you.” I didn’t lower my voice even a bit; I wanted the line to hit him whole. A brief, almost silent laugh escaped from the corner of his lips.

“It’s not pity…” he said, leaning in slightly, “it’s curiosity in nice clothes.”

My eyes dropped for an instant, taking in the perfectly placed pale pink sweatshirt, the impeccable drape of the fabric — even the frayed holes artfully designed in all the right spots — before looking back at him with a smirk that never reached a smile.

“You think your clothes are nice?” Romance raised an eyebrow, as if he’d expected that to be the question.

“No. I think I know how to wear them so you don’t notice what I’m really looking at.”

The air thickened for a second, as if the whole garden was holding its breath with me.

“And that is…?” I asked, without looking away from him.

The silence after my question seemed to swallow the rest of the sounds. The crunch of stones under our feet stopped, and even the pond’s murmur became a distant echo. Romance didn’t answer right away; instead, his eyes traced my face as if sketching an invisible map, slow and deliberate. The light filtering through the branches fell in fragments across his dark coat and the clean line of his jaw, giving him an almost unreal air. He let the pause linger just long enough for my patience to start to stretch, and then, with a slight lean toward me, he finally spoke, his voice carrying that velvety weight that clings to the skin:

“The way you try not to look at me… and fail.”

I didn’t say anything. I just stood there, still, watching him, following with my eyes as something began to shift beneath his skin. Between the shadow of the sweatshirt and the dappled light filtering through the leaves, violet patterns began to slowly bloom across his neck, like ink waking up with the heat. The contrast against his pale skin was hypnotic, and for a moment, I forgot I was trying to keep my distance.

He didn’t move, but his lips curved just slightly.

“I saw your back glowing earlier,” he commented, his voice low but laced with something I couldn’t decide was curiosity or provocation.

“That must have been your ego reflecting off my jacket,” I shot back with a sideways half-smile, letting sarcasm drip from every syllable.

“No,” he let out a short laugh, so low it barely stirred the air between us, leaning forward just slightly. “This was… more interesting. More alive.”

“Maybe because I move… and breathe, and I'm alive” I replied, keeping my eyes locked on him, as if a single blink might give him the upper hand.

The air felt even heavier — if that was possible — as though the garden had decided to close an invisible circle around us. I could smell the mix of jasmine and Romance’s subtle yet persistent scent, the kind of aroma designed to linger in memory more than on fabric. His eyes stayed fixed on me, and the light filtering through the leaves highlighted the violet patterns still crawling subtly up his neck. His stance hadn’t changed — controlled, immaculate — yet there was a tense stillness in his body, as if something beneath the surface wanted to take one more step forward. Romance tilted his head slightly, as if tasting the irony before handing it back.

“That’s not it. There are things that breathe… and are still dead.”

“Are you describing yourself?” I asked, feeling the edge in my voice slice through the air between us.

He didn’t flinch; the slight lift of his eyebrow was the only sign the remark had landed. The light trapped in his eyes gave off a fleeting glint before he replied. “If I were… you wouldn’t have to ask.”

A pause followed, the distant murmur of the city mixing with the occasional crunch of stones under passing feet. People walked by, wrapped up in their own conversations, not paying us any attention — as if we were two figures painted in a scene no one bothered to stop and look at. The breeze tugged faintly at the edges of my jacket, but he remained unmoving, a fixed point in the middle of the human flow.

In that shared silence, Romance stepped toward one of the ponds that bordered the garden, and in the path of our slow walk. Floating on its surface was a spiral-shaped plant, which he pretended to examine.

“This reminds me of your tattoo,” he said with feigned indifference, not even sparing me a glance. “It’s a lotus, isn’t it?”

I didn’t bother answering right away, and he took that as a sign to continue.

“We all saw it. Well… all of us who were there when you walked out the back door like some action star. With your own light and everything.”

“You should stop mocking me” I whispered, not backing away an inch.

“I’m not mocking you. I’m interested in you. Is that illegal?”

“That depends. Did your leader tell you to be interested?” My question came out sharp, without losing control.

He didn’t answer immediately; instead, he looked up at the sky, as if searching for shelter in a cloud that wasn’t there. “Maybe. Maybe not. But I’m the one standing here, and between us… Jinu doesn’t have this charm.” He curved his lips into an insolent smile.

“You want me to tell you the truth?” I asked, a touch exasperated, doing everything I could to avoid that overly smooth comment. He turned his head toward me as if I’d just asked him for the recipe to a forbidden wish.

“Please, surprise me,” he murmured, an enchanted gleam in his eyes, as though we were one step away from crossing a dangerous line.

I leaned in just enough to breach his space; his pupils widened, waiting. “Pink looks terrible on you.”

He burst out laughing — loud, alive — startling a pair of birds into flight from a nearby bush.

“That hurt. Although… technically this is coral,” he defended himself, pointing to the sweatshirt with the confidence of a model presenting a new product.

“Oh, of course. My bad, I take it all back. You’re just a misunderstood fashion icon.”

We kept walking — him still amused by my remark, me trying not to think about what he’d said about the tattoo. I knew he’d noticed. I knew they had all seen it that day. And I also knew that sooner or later, one of them would ask the question I didn’t want to answer.

“What do you want, Romance?” I finally asked, keeping my gaze steady. He tilted his head just slightly, as if the question was a gift wrapped in paper he intended to open with care.

“To see how long it takes before you tell me what you really think.”

“I think you’re really getting on my nerves,” I shot back, sugarcoating nothing.

The reply didn’t startle him, didn’t move him; on the contrary, an almost amused spark flashed in his eyes, turning them golden, as if he’d just heard a confession instead of an insult.

“Then…” he murmured, with that infuriating calm that hurt more than any shout, “I guess I’m on the right track.”

“And I guess demons are experts at dodging the truth,” I countered, tilting my head slightly, as if assessing him.

Romance didn’t smile this time; instead, his eyes narrowed, and a light appeared in them that had nothing to do with the sun.

“No,” he articulated slowly, his voice bathed in a dangerous softness, “not as much as you.”

I felt my expression harden, as if my features were sharpening under an invisible weight and the shadow of his words had cloaked my face. The golden warmth of sunlight that had been touching my cheeks turned colder, filtered through the leaves; the line of my mouth tightened without me meaning to, leaving my face in a dimness that fit too well with what I felt inside. I didn’t have to see myself to know my eyes had narrowed, fixed on him with a mix of suspicion and defiance.

The air between us thickened, and under my jacket, right between my shoulder blades, the tattoo awoke with a new intensity — a deep, dense beat pounding between my scapulae as if trying to push its way through the fabric. The pulse was warm, stubborn, and felt like it was responding more to him than to me. Each throb was like a miniature drum pressing against my skin, setting a rhythm I couldn’t ignore. Every beat carried a growing heat, almost feverish, rising up my spine in small waves. It didn’t hurt, but the pressure was so real it felt like my skin was stretching to contain it. The leather of my jacket grew heavy, and the sensation of being trapped inside my own back made me clench my fists without realizing it.

“Are you here because you want to know something, or because Jinu told you to?” I asked, my voice lower than necessary, letting each word weigh more than the last.

Romance held my gaze without blinking, the golden light in his eyes only slightly tempered by a practiced calm.

“If I were following orders…” he began slowly, as if picking each syllable, “I wouldn’t be spending this much time talking to you.”

“Forgive me if I doubt that” I snapped, my tone sharpened to create distance, even though my feet didn’t move.

The sky, once clear, now seemed a little grayer — or maybe it was my own shadow staining everything. I felt his gaze locked on me, heavy, as if he wanted to pierce through every layer of skin and thought. The air smelled of something electric, that pre-storm charge that raises the hairs on your arms, and his figure outlined against the path was almost motionless, except for the slight sway of his hoodie in the breeze.

“You can doubt all you want,” he finally said, his voice low and steady. “But don’t mistake your doubts for my intent.”

Before I could even open my mouth to answer, a cluster of high-pitched, rushed voices burst into the air. I turned my head slightly and saw five girls walking down the path, loaded with merch bags, headbands with glittery ears, and rolled-up posters under their arms. They moved like a single mass, laughing, bumping into each other, with that unmeasured enthusiasm that seemed incapable of restraint.

“I can’t believe I saw them that close!” one squealed, and the others erupted into a chorus of “Yesss!” like they were reliving the moment.

“Did you see how Mystery smiled at me?” another burst out, pressing her hands to her cheeks. “He looked straight at me!”

“And Jinu! Oh my God, Jinu was so—” she cut herself off with a squeal and a little jump.

“Romance looked incredible,” added the tallest one, eyes shining. “That yellow shirt… he looked like something out of a dream.”

Their voices dropped for a moment, as if they were sharing a secret not meant to be overheard, but their “whisper” was as loud as the rest of their chatter.

“And did you see the girl who was with them?” one asked, her tone a mix of curiosity and excitement that seemed to hum in the air.

“Yes…” another answered, biting her lip. “I don’t know who she was, but… oh my God. The way she talked…”

“Exactly!” said the one with pink ears. “It was… fresh, you know? She didn’t sound like the typical girls who swoon over them.”

“And those lines she said…” the shortest one hugged herself, as if she were reliving it. “It was like… poetry, but the kind that hits you right in the chest. I could’ve died right there.”

“I swear, if they post a video of that, I’m going to memorize it” another added, and the rest laughed — not mockingly, but with that spark in their eyes that only comes when you find an unexpected new idol.

Their laughter rose again, and they kept walking without noticing us — except for one, the last to pass. A dark-haired girl with an intense gaze turned back for a second longer than necessary, scanning me from head to toe and smiling as if she’d stumbled upon a hidden treasure in the middle of the street. Then she ran to catch up with her friends, leaving behind a glint of bright crimson red, fading with each passing millisecond.

Romance didn’t move an inch as the girls passed, but his posture had tightened slightly, as if bracing himself against the excess of eyes. Only when their voices had vanished into the distance did he look at me again, his expression impossible to read.

“I’m leaving,” I said, giving him no space to react first.

I took a step, feeling the crunch of gravel under my boots as I walked away from the spot where we’d been rooted. The air still carried the echo of the girls’ laughter and shouts, like a sweet perfume reluctant to fade. I knew Romance was still there, unmoving, but I could feel the weight of his gaze following me, as if he was trying to set my pace even from a distance.

“Leaving so soon?” he asked, that half-smile sliding back onto his lips. “Without a goodbye kiss?”

He said it in that velvety tone that sounded like a joke, but hid temptation perfectly masked. His golden eyes stayed fixed on mine, reading every micro-expression, as if he wanted to capture my reaction before I even thought to answer.

“Tell Jinu to send someone with better manners next time,” I shot back, not softening my tone in the slightest.

Romance’s smile didn’t fade; if anything, it sharpened — like a silk thread drawn tight before it snaps. “I’ll tell him…” he murmured, taking a slow step back, “that you’ve got more sharp edges than all of us put together.”

I walked without looking back — because I had to. Because if I stayed one second longer, if I let him see me tremble, if he heard a single more word out of me… I would break. And I don’t break in front of them. I can’t.

I felt the weight of his golden eyes on my back, a tension building with every step I took forward, and a silence that swelled, alive and strong, pressing against my ears and through my body — that specific silence that comes when someone is about to say something and chooses not to. It pressed into my back like a dull knife, but I didn’t slow down.

The garden stretched around me, green, orderly, full of false life planted in perfect lines to make humans feel calm within the noise of human life — but that illusion never worked on me. The city doesn’t know how to disguise its noise. There were car horns in the distance, a couple laughing on the grass, a dog barking at a pigeon. Everything went on as usual, and there I was, with both my heart and the tattoo pounding in my back.

Because that’s what was happening… the tattoo was no longer a dormant presence — it was alive, very much present. I could feel every pulse as if something inside me was claiming its place, as if my body was about to reconfigure itself or bend in two to make way for a new me.

I caught my reflection in one of those dead advertising screens on the side of the garden. It wasn’t a flattering figure staring back, but it was me. Beneath the jacket, right where the fabric opened, the red glow was still there — a pulsing flicker, and an uncertain but imminent future. Dangerous.

I swallowed hard.

The air felt denser, thicker, as if the world had realized I was walking outside the role I was supposed to play. As if the universe were telling me that my time was running out — that the moderately normal life I’d been leading for a while was coming to an end. The tension built with each step, and the feeling of his gaze still burning into my back only confirmed it.

Romance’s voice kept replaying in my head — that way of asking without asking, of looking at me like he knew everything and nothing at the same time.

One of the worlds around me was trying to uncover me, like that dust that lives in your house, behind a bookshelf, and you don’t notice it until you move it. I could smell the crack of that discovery racing against the clock. And if there was one thing that could never happen, it was that.

Because if they discovered what I am… they wouldn’t be able to control it. And neither would I.

So I walked, and walked, and didn’t stop until I reached somewhere I could call mine. Even though my heart was beating in my back. Even though I could feel something in me changing forever.

---------------------------------------------------

I crossed half the city without looking at anyone. Took the subway without paying attention to the announcements or the voices. Climbed stairs like an automaton.

The lock clicked when I pushed my apartment door open with my hip, not bothering to turn on the light. I knew every corner of this place by heart; I could walk blind through the shadows without tripping once. I slipped inside like a ghost, dragging my feet across the silent wood floor, shoulders weighed down by the invisible burden of an afternoon that had been far too long — and a demon far too charming. Or far too idiotic. Or both.

The apartment was heavy with an oppressive silence that hit me like an unwanted embrace. I closed the door behind me and stayed there, leaning against the wood, staring at the living room as if I didn’t recognize it.

I walked to the kitchen and gripped the counter as if I needed to anchor myself to the cold marble. The tattoo had stopped glowing, but I could still feel it — not physically, not on the skin. In my blood. I shrugged off my jacket, not caring where it landed, and the same happened with the flimsy excuse for a t-shirt I wore underneath, leaving only a sports bra.

I walked to the hallway mirror and turned around, fully exposing the mark that carried my heritage since birth. There it was — a lotus flower perfectly etched between my shoulder blades and across part of my back, crimson red, each petal and stem perfectly aligned with my body as if it had grown to fit my spine. No line was out of place, no shade of color wrong. It wasn’t a simple tattoo — it was the seal of a lineage far older than this cursed city itself.

I let out a long sigh as I traced one petal’s line with my finger, feeling it throb beneath the tip. It had no texture, yet it didn’t feel like part of my skin. And I, still unwilling to face the truth that mark carried, stepped away from the mirror and turned my head toward the window. I needed to breathe, to scrub Romance off my skin and Jinu out of my head — but the bastards were making it difficult.

Always Jinu, pulsing somewhere in the background, like the tattoo.

But when I approached the glass, the air froze in my lungs. The streets in the distance, like multiple colors of thick ink, were slashed by red lines. Cracks. Fractures. The Honmoon was breaking — not in one or two places, but in multiple weak points. I counted at least seven fissures visible to the naked eye from my window, one of them far too close. Just a few train stops away. Maybe less.

A pressure closed around my chest — not fear, but recognition. As if something in me, something ancient and silent, had always known this would happen eventually. That, as I’d said, the quiet days were just a joke of fate, and they would inevitably end.

The tattoo on my back burned faintly, like a heart beating to a rhythm not my own.

I stood there, frozen, watching the ground as if it might dissolve. For an instant, I wondered if the boys — and Huntr/x, for that matter — had noticed. If Jinu was watching the same thing from some rooftop, or wherever they hid from the public eye and the huntresses, his gaze lit with Gwi-Ma’s flames, proud of how many souls they had harvest. If Romance was leaning against a wall somewhere, that stupid half-smile on his face, convincing himself his plan was going smoothly.

I turned and headed for the couch without turning on the light. The reddish glow pouring through the window was enough to see where I was going, painting the walls as if they’d been splashed with blood.

But I didn’t make it to sit down.

There, right in the center of the couch, was something that shouldn’t have been there. A lotus flower. Perfect. Too perfect. Not wilted, not artificial, but perfectly alive — its petals, white as freshly washed bone, had a pink edge so delicate it looked hand-painted, at its heart, gold shimmered like a sunrise trapped in place. Every bead of dew caught the red light from the window, and for an instant, I could have sworn they shone like liquid blood. The stem stood straight and firm, showing no sign of having been cut, as if it were still drinking from invisible water.

Beneath it lay a thick ivory envelope, sealed with a circular stamp of black wax. The seal hadn’t been pressed the usual way — it was clean, perfect, almost cold to the touch, as if it had never passed through fire. Inside was a sheet of coarse fiber paper, lightly scented with incense. I opened it carefully, revealing handwriting that seemed pulled from another century — firm, elegant strokes, as though each letter had been painted with a black-ink brush and centuries of practice.

“Romance insisted on giving you this flower. I hope he wasn’t too intrusive.”

At the bottom, beneath the final line, was Jinu’s personal seal — a flawless mark with a barely perceptible emboss, as if it had been heated just enough not to warp the paper.

The flower still sat there, unmoving, but its presence weighed in the air. For a moment I had the absurd sense it was alive… not like a plant, but like something watching me. And when I looked toward the window, the red fissures in the Honmoon flickered, as if answering to it.

I closed my eyes, pressing my fingers to my temples, but the images had already burned into my retinas. And I knew — with the bitter certainty of instinct — that I wouldn’t sleep tonight.

And that the days to come would be worse.

It felt like a slow collapse. Nothing exploded all at once, no alarms blared, no stampede of humans. But if you knew how to look, the ruin was everywhere.

First came the shadows. They grew longer, even at noon. Moved when nothing touched them. I saw them creep beneath parked cars, cling to the heels of rushing executives, and climb walls like starving ivy. Most people noticed nothing. They kept sipping coffee and checking their phones while the darkness licked at their ankles.

One night, leaving a bookstore in Hongdae, I saw a lesser demon stalking a young couple laughing quietly on the sidewalk. It blended with the lampposts, hunched like a caricature of itself, jaw dislocated, eyes glassy with hunger. It took me less than a second to sink a dagger into its neck — what was hard was walking away like nothing had happened. Keeping my neutral smile, pocketing the weapon, resisting the urge to check if the couple had noticed the creature evaporating into the air.

Another afternoon, outside Mangwon station, a specter tried to drag an elderly woman toward the subway entrance. It had a human shape, but its hands were too many — each finger multiplied, dripping black ink. I slammed it into an advertising board so hard the metal frame bent, and sent it back to its realm with three blades flicked from my fingers in one smooth, unseen motion.

I slept little and ate less. The burn in my back had become constant, as if the tattoo knew what it had to do.

The news was only just beginning to suspect. They spoke of “strange events,” “psychotic episodes,” “unexplainable occurrences,” “multiple disappearances across the capital.”

Then, one dawn, I saw them.

It was on a corner in the financial district, near the old power plant. I’d been following a trail of rotten energy leaking from a ventilation grate, and when I turned the street, I found them. Their eyes were fixed on something I couldn’t see from my angle — but I was sure they were already handling it. I stayed in the shadows, barely breathing, until they vanished from sight.

Each night, the Honmoon’s fissures spread like cracks in a windshield about to shatter. And I… I was becoming, without entirely meaning to, another shadow among the shadows. Not a huntress, not fully human either. But with each creature I killed, each soul I saved without anyone knowing, the weight in my chest grew.

Then, one morning, with the sun painting the city in that magic-hour blend of gold and pink, I heard the screech of a train in the distance. The air smelled of old electricity, as if the world were holding its breath before releasing something terrible. From where I stood, I could see the tracks stretching like open scars through the weeds. In the distance, the train crawled lazily along, accustomed to its near-imperceptible speed, packed with passengers carrying the same lethargy.

I had no reason to be there. I could have been home, keeping to my role as an observer — the role I’d lived in for years — with my conscience half-asleep, eyes fixed on something meaningless. But something burned in my back: a sharp, dull heat, pulsing like an omen.

I ran — at a speed only professional athletes trained their whole lives could reach — crouching in the shadows of the metal framework, rusted beams creaking under my boots. From my elevated position, I saw movement on the train’s roofs: thin, almost translucent shapes crawling over the wagons like starving insects. I didn’t need to see their markings to know they were pale-faced demons. I recognized them by the way they moved — with a tremulous urgency, as if hunger were hollowing them out from within.

I didn’t wait for a train to stop.

I lunged forward, three quick steps for momentum, and jumped without a second thought. The air cut my skin like a blade, my heart slammed against my ribs, and I landed hard on the third wagon’s roof. I stayed low, one hand flat on the hot metal, the other ready on the handle of my collapsible baton. The roof vibrated beneath me — muffled screams, blows, chaos. Chaos that, to the human eye, would never be seen. Inside, passengers were lost in their daily lives, unaware that the hunt had already begun and that they were the next prey.

I moved silently toward the wagon’s end. The wind whipped my face, tangled my hair, but I didn’t care. I tightened my grip on the baton, ready for impact.

One of them — back arched like a broken insect — turned its head as if it had smelled something out of place. It lifted its chin, sniffing the air, and let out a high-pitched screech that tore through the wind like an old alarm. I rose in one fluid motion, weapon sparking as it caught the damp air.

The nearest demon lunged, but never reached me — a sharp twist and I broke its neck in one strike. The limp body rolled off the roof and into the void with a dull thud. Another came crawling on all fours, impossibly fast, already in attack stance. This one wouldn’t drop so easily.

One of them roared from a distance, and in a second it was on me. I swung the baton with both hands, aiming straight for its jaw. The crunch of bone was sharp, revolting, like snapping a rotten branch. It stumbled back, but didn’t stop. It latched onto my legs, claws raking the side of my thigh before I could kick it away with all my strength.

I shouted — not from pain, but from rage. Blood ran hot down my leg, sticking to my pants. Another demon seized the moment and leapt from the next wagon. I ducked purely on instinct, feeling the air slice as it passed overhead. I rolled across the metal roof, scraping my back on rivets, and came to my feet just in time to drive a short blade into the base of the neck of the one closing in behind me.

It thrashed like a fish out of water. I shoved it back with my forearm, yanking the knife free. Its figure dissolved into reddish-violet particles, blinding me for a second — and whether from city smog or adrenaline, I didn’t see the next one until it slammed into my stomach with its shoulder.

I hit the roof hard, the air knocked out of me. It clambered on top, shrieking like a pig set alight. I shielded my face as it tried to bite me — its fangs clashed against my leather-wrapped forearm, but the weight of its body pinned me.

With a desperate move, I pulled a second dagger from my boot and slid the blade between its ribs from the side, exploiting my lower position. It screeched — or maybe it whined — pulling back just enough for me to roll it over, straddle its chest, and drive the dagger down again and again until it stopped moving and vanished. My arms shook.

I staggered to my feet, breathing through my mouth, nose full of iron, blood, and soot. My clothes were torn in several places. I felt the sharp sting of scratches and the throb of an open wound in my hip that pulsed with every heartbeat. My right leg faltered slightly, but held.

I straightened just as two more demons launched themselves at me. They didn’t think — they only attacked — and I had the distinct feeling they had no intention of letting me leave that train alive.

One of them lunged from the side, using the slope’s angle to its advantage. It was fast—much faster than I expected. It had me pinned against the wagon, its hot breath spilling from its open mouth, that black tongue dripping spit and hate. Its right arm was hooked around my neck, claws ready to pierce my side.

I braced on my left knee, twisted my hips, and drove the knife straight into the space between its ribs. I felt the cartilage snap. It screamed—a sharp, guttural shriek, equal parts rage and surprise. I shoved my boot into its chest, kicking it backward. It fell like a sack of meat before vanishing, and I dropped into the space its body should have occupied.

I rolled quickly, blood running down my pants and hip. Everything hurt. My shoulder hung loose, and my left eyebrow burned from a cut I hadn’t realized I’d taken. Clenching my jaw, I ran toward the others.

The first I dodged with a sidestep; its claw barely grazed my side, leaving a superficial slash that burned like fire. The second caught my wrist and slammed me into the metal wall. The impact shot through my back like dry lightning, knocking out the little air I’d managed to gather. But I didn’t let go of the knife—I slashed its throat instead.

I dropped to my knees, my palms hitting the hot metal. I felt the fetid breath of one behind me, brushing the back of my neck. I spun with what little I had left, blade in hand, and sliced it from stomach to chest. It gurgled something strange, coating my face with its damp, rancid breath.

I stayed still, kneeling, weapons trembling in my hands.

And then I heard it—a sharp metallic crack, like something huge being cut by something even sharper. Through glassy eyes, I saw a head roll. In the middle of that filthy hell, I saw them.

The first to appear was Zoey, hurling her shin-kal one after another after another. She split a demon’s skull in a single hit, vanishing it instantly. Mira came next—always clever, but faster now. She leapt from one wagon roof to the next like a ninja, landing with both feet on a demon’s back and driving her Gok-Do—wide-bladed and almost elegant in her hands—through the back of its neck. She turned and saw me. Nodded. Her face was as expressionless as at the meet & greet, but now she was slick with sweat.

And last—Rumi.

She didn’t walk—she ran. She ran across bodies with an irritating grace, like a macabre fashion show runway. In her hands was an iridescent sword, glinting in shades of violet and lilac—everything about it screamed Rumi, perfectly her. She drove it straight into the chest of the largest demon, the one still thrashing a few meters from me. One, two, three quick thrusts, and the demon screamed until it couldn’t anymore.

Rumi looked at me once the threat was gone, the train’s metallic vibration still humming under my feet like the fight’s echo. Her eyes scanned me head to toe in a swift but deliberate movement, like searching for cracks in armor. Her furrowed brow tightened her forehead, but under that hardness, a flicker of concern seeped through—a warm glint in the deep brown of her irises that contrasted with the sweat streaked across her cheek.

“You’re hurt,” she said, her voice lower than usual, tilting her head toward my hip where the torn fabric exposed reddened skin and the dark shine of blood.

“No shit, Sherlock,” I muttered, feeling cold sweat slide down my neck.

“Stay still,” Mira ordered, already closing in with short, firm steps—the sound of her boots against the metal floor like a metronome in the tense silence after the fight. She crouched beside me. Her face was streaked with sweat, mixed with the exhaustion and concern I could feel radiating off her.

“I’ll be fine.” I raised the knife to put it back in my boot. The air in the wagon smelled of iron and ozone—danger just dispersed. I could feel the tattoo on my back pounding like a drum, each dull beat synced with the quick pulse in my temples, as if something inside me wanted to answer a call I didn’t understand.

The train was littered with smoke and particle residue, the last demon corpses dissolving into countless specks across the rails and sheet metal, while my arms shook from the effort. I leaned against one of the metal columns, breathing deep, feeling the sting where one of the bastards had caught me. My muscles still buzzed with adrenaline. Everything hurt.

“You jumped straight from the roof into the wagon. You knew they were here,” Rumi said—each word measured, that controlled tone of someone holding a bomb and knowing any jolt could set it off.

I didn’t answer. The air still vibrated with the fight’s echo and the distant clatter of another train pulling away. I rested my head against the cold, rough metal frame, its texture scraping my skin like it wanted to remind me I was still alive through discomfort. I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to ignore her, letting the wind cool the sticky sweat on my forehead. I wasn’t in the mood for conversation—least of all hers.

“Not your damn business,” I shot back without looking at her, my voice low but sharp, like a freshly honed blade.

I heard her boots scrape against the gravel as we disembarked from the stopped train. All the former passengers were gone. Each step was deliberate, dry, until she stopped close—so close I could feel her heat even in the cool night.

“You stick your nose where it doesn’t belong—but with surgical precision,” she said, her tone now colder, more probing than concerned, like a scalpel peeling back layers of skin.

“And why the hell do you care?” I fired back, opening my eyes just enough to pin her with a dry glare as I turned my face toward her. The look I gave her wasn’t seeking answers—it was staking territory.

Her face was streaked with pinkish tints, hair tousled from sweat and fighting, yet she still wore that expression of absolute control. Zoey stood a few meters away, scanning the area, not intervening, while Mira pressed an improvised bandage to my wound.

“Why don’t you want to help us?” Rumi asked, her tone still level but edged—like a rope pulled so taut it could snap. “Why avoid joining us fully if you’re fighting anyway?”

“Because I’m not interested in playing at being the cool huntresses with a squad name ripped from a K-pop group,” I spat through clenched teeth, tasting the metallic tang of blood—part split lip, part contained anger.

Rumi didn’t react. Her features didn’t move, though her eyes kept dissecting me, reading every shift. She stayed silent for a few seconds that felt longer than they should, filled only by the whistle of wind through the metal and the uneven throb of my tattoo.

“Then why fight?” she pressed, her voice lower now but carrying a curiosity that wasn’t simple.

I finally looked at her, narrowing my eyes, feeling the tension in my shoulders harden like stone.

“I fight because if I don’t, my back kills me like it’s a second consciousness,” I said, each word heavy, sinking into the air like lead. “I don’t do it for you. I don’t do it for the world. I fight because I can’t look away.”

“That doesn’t explain how you know so much. How you move. How you knew about the train.”

“I’m not an idiot,” I snapped, crossing my arms despite the pain in my hip. “The Honmoon’s cracks are everywhere. There’s one near my house. You want some demon strolling into my place?”

Rumi’s frown deepened, a sharp crease forming between her brows, but her voice stayed calm—so calm it hurt. “You could help us. We want to protect this world too—it’s our duty,” she said, and in her voice was that practiced calm that sounded more like strategy than sincerity.

“What are you?” I let out half a laugh, half a sigh—the sound rough with the exhaustion weighing down my shoulders. “Some high-morality club with ornamental daggers?” I tilted my head, locking eyes with her. “Why the hell should I trust you?”

“Because we’re on the same side!” she replied, this time with a firmness that landed like a blunt strike against the metal under our feet.

My laugh came out heavier, without a drop of humor—a hollow sound lost to the wind and the scent of rust.

“We’re not on the same side.”

“Then whose side are you on?” she asked, her eyes narrowing into two dark blades aiming to cut off any escape.

I didn’t answer right away. The silence between us thickened, heavy, like cold smoke clinging to skin. A knot formed in my throat—one that had nothing to do with the fight, or the wounds, or the metallic taste of dried blood on my lips.

“I’m not on your kind’s side” I spat finally, my voice lower now but sharp enough to imagine it sinking into her. Rumi tilted her head, eyes fixed on mine. She said nothing, but the tension between us was like a rope stretched to breaking.

She stepped closer, closing the distance until I could feel the warmth of her breath against my cheek—still speaking in that soft voice that, rather than soothing, drilled into my temple like a hammer wrapped in velvet. “I didn’t come here to fight you. I want to understand you.”

I crossed my arms, the motion more about shielding myself than asserting dominance, still feeling the constant burn of the cut on my shoulder, as if every heartbeat kept it open.

“There’s nothing to understand” I spat, my jaw clenched so tight my muscles ached.

“But you’re not a huntress. Why do you care what happens to the civilians?”

“And what do you know about what I care about?” I shot back through my teeth, the sound more warning than annoyance. I turned to put distance between us, but I heard her footsteps behind me—following like a stubborn shadow. Of course.

“Because I know there’s something in you,” she said, her words seeping into the air like slow poison, “something that doesn’t match what you pretend to be. And I’m not here to judge you—I’m here to ask you to fight with us.”

“I won’t—”

“Why not?!” she pressed again, this time her voice cracking at the edge of a shout, vibrating in the air like a contained gunshot, shattering the thick silence around us.

And something broke in me. I felt my blood boil in my veins, my knuckles aching from clenching too hard.

“Because I’m not going to get involved with the ones who killed my mother!” I shouted.

The world seemed to stop. The street went mute. Even the echoes of the recent fight vanished, swallowed by the intensity of the moment. Rumi stepped back, her face undone, as if I’d slapped her with a truth she didn’t want to hear.

“The olders huntresses,” I spat. “The ones who were supposed to protect humanity. They killed her like she was just another demon. Like she was nothing.”

Rumi opened her mouth, but no words came out.

“We’re hybrids,” I went on, unable to stop. “The balance you people never understood. She wasn’t a threat. But her blood was half huntress, half demon. And that was enough.”

Rumi swallowed. Her eyes glistened, but she didn’t move. Barely a whisper escaped her: “I didn’t know…”

“Nobody knows!” I cut her off, my chest ready to burst. “Nobody dares say it. Easier to pretend we never existed, right? That we’re mistakes. That we deserved to die.”

A long silence followed, broken only by the wind shifting charred scraps of paper along the street. Then she stepped forward. Her face had changed—no more arrogance, no strategy in her voice. Just need.

“I…” she began, hesitating, her lower lip trembling. “I can’t apologize for something I didn’t do. But… we need your help. I don’t care where you come from. I saw you on that train. I saw you fight. There’s something in you that could make the difference.”

I turned, intent on leaving.

“Please!” she yelled. “The Honmoon is failing. It’s not just one crack—it’s multiple fissures. If we don’t act now, it’s going to be a massacre.”

“And what do you expect me to do?”

“Your presence could slow what’s coming. You said yourself—you’re part of the balance.”

I stopped. I could feel my pulse in my temples, in the tattoo burning like a promise I never asked for. I stayed with my back to her, staring at nothing, my breathing uneven. The adrenaline from the fight was starting to drain, but what it left behind was worse.

Emptiness.

No. Not emptiness. Pain.

Of course this day would come. I’d always known it—from the first time I felt the tattoo throb beneath my skin like it had a heart of its own. From when my mother told me about the three worlds and the role no other bloodline could take—because none could understand all three without going mad. From when I saw her die—not at a demon’s hands, but at the hands of a huntress. One of them. One of hers.

Rage had always been my lifeline. A cold, solid fury. It gave me direction. It gave me reasons not to get involved. Not to look back. To keep walking like nothing could touch me.

But now… now everything was touching me. The spirit world, the infernal, the human. All of them were screaming through those cracks. And I was still here, pretending I didn’t care. Pretending I could keep avoiding the destiny in my blood.

I heard Rumi gasp—exhausted, as if she’d finally let her arms fall. As if she understood she had no arguments left. Only begging. Only desperation. My mother would never have accepted a huntress on her knees. Neither would I.

But this wasn’t for Rumi. It wasn’t for them. It was because the damned universe was asking me to—because even fate itself was interfering, calling me.

I stayed there, unmoving, while Rumi’s words lingered like ghostly echoes. I didn’t turn around. I just listened to her shaky breathing, almost like a strangled whisper.

“If I have to kneel, I will. If I have to beg, I will. Not for me. For everyone who’s going to die if we don’t act now. They’ll all be at the Idol Awards. It’s the only chance we have to stop them before it’s too late.”

My jaw trembled. My throat tightened, but this time it wasn’t from anger.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. Closed my eyes. I didn’t want to. God, I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to be part of this again. I didn’t want to open the gates of the bloodline again. I didn’t want my name spoken in the middle of battles as if I were some magic solution. I didn’t want to accept that I was.

But I also knew what happened when I wasn’t there.

And something—whether it was the night, the warm blood still running down my leg, or the tremor in Rumi’s voice—something made the anger loosen its grip just a little. It didn’t vanish. But it gave way to something else.

Doubt.

And in that hollow of doubt—where I would normally have said something cruel, something sarcastic, something that would let me walk away without looking back—something cracked.

I turned, just enough to see her. To see how she was looking at me. Without pride. Without armor. Only with that stubborn certainty that I mattered.

Not for who I am, but for what I carry inside. I turned just enough, catching her in the corner of my eye. And then, without knowing exactly why, or for whom, or for what purpose, I spoke:

“What do you need?”

Not as a promise. Not as a pact.

I said it like someone resigning themselves to look into the abyss.

The Huntr/x Tower common room felt like it was holding on to the echo of a day that had gone on far too long, as if the walls had soaked up voices, hurried footsteps, and the scrape of metal as weapons were put away—and were now giving it all back as muffled whispers. The air was warm, threaded with that smell of metal and dust and an old perfume that belonged to no one and to everyone at once, like the place’s collective memory. Woven through it was a faint trace of ozone, a leftover charge from the fight, still caught in the curtains and the upholstery.

Evening light came in at a slant through the tall, narrow windows, pushing through the city’s thick haze. It didn’t so much illuminate as wash the surfaces in a tired orange that bled into purples as the sun sank behind the buildings. Dust hung in the air, catching those colors and holding them for a heartbeat before letting them drop—as if even the light had run out of steam.

From my spot, leaning against the mezzanine rail, I could see them below, grouped around the central table. Zoey, hair yanked into some kind of knot, had her elbows dug into the wood and her forehead so close it looked like she was propping the day up with the furniture. Mira—always upright, always composed—was, for the first time since I’d met her, bent over; her laced fingers seemed to be holding on to something invisible, a rope she refused to let slip.

And Rumi… Rumi clutched her coffee mug like an anchor, bandaged fingertips peeking from under her sleeves. Her gaze slid between Zoey and Mira with that deceptive calm of hers, but in the way she held the cup there was a barely-there tremor, like it wasn’t just the coffee she was trying to keep steady.

“We can’t just pick anything,” Zoey murmured, lifting her eyes only a fraction, as if every millimeter took measured effort. Her voice was rough, worn thin, edged like someone who’s cried herself dry in silence.

“No,” Mira agreed. One syllable, but it landed heavy, dragging the whole day behind it. Not just agreement—a reminder of what they’d opened up minutes ago and what it had cost to pry those parts of themselves loose.

Rumi eased the mug onto the table with a gentle motion that still thudded in the quiet. She looked at Zoey, then at Mira, and they all said at the same time:

“Golden.”

The word hung there like a glint that doesn’t blind, just warms.

The silence that followed wasn’t doubtful—it was reverent. As if the three of them needed to feel out what that choice meant before saying anything else. Golden wasn’t just a song; it was a mirror where the three of them could see themselves at once without distortion, and a bridge sturdy enough to carry them to the people watching from below the stage.

Zoey let out the smallest laugh, brief and cracked, the sound of someone who’s just found something she didn’t know she was looking for. Mira didn’t laugh; she closed her eyes for a second and nodded slowly, like sealing an invisible pact that wouldn’t break without drawing blood.

“It’s us,” Rumi said, her eyes bright with an honest, unhidden sheen. There was no shame in showing it; the kind of vulnerability that doesn’t weaken you—tempers you.

“And it’ll bring our people together,” Mira added, voice steady, though a fine tremor snagged the last word, as if emotion had found a hairline fracture in her discipline.

“It’s our best weapon,” Rumi finished, and that last word hit the table like a muted blow, the sound hanging in the air between them.

I stayed in my corner, still as a pinned butterfly, taking it in the way you study a painting you know you’ll never hang on your own wall. There was heat in their gestures, a current running between them, a vibration that recognized itself—and hadn’t quite reached me. Not exclusion, exactly, but that quiet border between people who share a wound and those who’ve only seen it from a distance.

Even so, I couldn’t look away. There was something hypnotic about that silent pact—something… enviable.

Rumi turned her head toward me, and for a moment our eyes locked. She smiled—barely, just a small curve of her mouth—loaded with something you couldn’t fully parse but that read like a question floating in the air: Are you okay? She dropped her gaze for a second before looking back, eyes more tired now but warm—an invitation braided with a thin warning wire, as if the look itself said come closer… and think it through.

I stayed put on that invisible pedestal I’d already started to root into, meeting her look with the same weariness she’d given me at the train station. Getting up these grand penthouse stairs had hurt, and I didn’t have it in me to go back down—much less to walk over to a little cluster already throwing off sparkles and hearts. For all the emotional drag, they looked more in sync than ever.

Rumi didn’t say anything after that last look. She stood, set the empty mug on the table, and instead of slipping off down the hall like I expected, she started up the stairs to the mezzanine. Her steps were steady, unhurried—like she had all the time in the world to reach me.

She stopped in front of me and just watched me for a beat, the kind of quiet that doesn’t make you squirm but doesn’t let you dodge it either. “Come with me,” she said at last, voice low.

It wasn’t a question so much as a suggestion wrapped around an order.

I trailed after her, shuffling over the carpet, down the side corridor toward the private rooms. The air shifted with every step—warmer, cleaner—threaded with a faint scent I knew was hers, a barely sweet trace that drifted in her wake.

Her room was meticulously kept, everything stowed away, as if the outside chaos didn’t have clearance to step in here. The light was warm, pooling from a low lamp that washed the wide bed and thick blankets in gold. On a shelf: a few framed photos and personal things, nothing more. A space that spoke of control, of discipline… and of refuge.

She tipped her chin toward the bed, and I sat on the edge. The wood gave a small creak under my weight while she crossed the room in silence. She opened a tall wardrobe and pulled out a first-aid kit arranged with military neatness—every bandage, gauze, and bottle lined up just so. No dust, no hurry. Everything exactly where it belonged.

She came back and knelt in front of me, hair falling to one side, veiling part of her face. “You could’ve cracked something out there,” she said as she prepped the disinfectant.

“I’ve been through worse.”

“This isn’t a competition,” she shot back, finally meeting my eyes with the kind of seriousness that makes any excuse sound foolish. That look strips even the kindest lie to the bone.

Her hands were sure, precise—none of the tremor I’d seen back in the common room. The hush stretched for a few seconds before she broke it.

“I’m sorry about your mother,” she whispered at last, so soft it almost blended with the rasp of gauze on my skin. “I mean it… I’m sorry.”

The air got heavier, as if the memory had spilled across the room and soaked into the walls, the light, even the bite of antiseptic. “You said it with so much anger,” she went on, eyes still on her work, “for a second… it felt like I’d killed her myself.”

It wasn’t accusation or apology—just an uncomfortable fact, the kind of truth you don’t go looking for but find anyway.

“That kind of pain… I know it too well,” she added, and this time she did look at me, something dull and shining at once in her eyes. She didn’t say it like a confession, but like someone holding out a hand so you can cross a bridge. “Sometimes I think…” she sighed, setting the bandage with surgical precision “that being half demon isn’t what marks us most. It’s what we’ve lost because of it.”

She wasn’t fishing for comfort; she knew I understood without footnotes. I held her gaze. No point pretending I didn’t get it.

The quiet that followed wasn’t awkward; it was the kind of pause when two people accept there aren’t enough words for what they share. Rumi finished securing the wrap on my leg with a clean, firm knot. Her fingers lingered a beat on my skin, as if checking my temperature—or making sure I wouldn’t fall apart in the next second. Her eyes stayed on mine longer than casual, weighing whether to say what was on her mind.

“Do you know who your father is?” she asked finally. It wasn’t tossed off; the words came weighted, like each one had to push its way through her throat.

My breathing slowed. I shook my head, dropped my eyes for a moment, then made myself meet hers again. When I opened my mouth, my chest felt heavy, like something invisible had settled across my ribs. The sentence formed slowly, dense, dragging years of silence behind it.

“No…” my voice snagged and I had to force it through “I never knew.”

The words left a hollow in their wake, a cold space spreading through my stomach. Not pure grief, not straight rage—just that uneasy exposure of admitting something that isn’t your fault and still leaves you bare.

Rumi looked away, fixing on a point on the floor no one else could see. Her shoulders—always squared—dipped a fraction, as if she’d finally set down something she’d been carrying too long. “Me neither,” she said, lower now, rougher. “And… I don’t think I ever will.”

Our hands were close enough that I noticed hers had gone still, suspended mid-motion with the gauze still between her fingers. Her words hung there, heavy. I watched her, tracking the uneven line peeking from under her sleeve.

“Your marks…” I began, eyes on the pattern at her wrist.

“Yeah,” she cut in, catching the question before it landed, a short breath slipping out through her nose. “I can’t hide them.”

There was no complaint and no pride in her tone—just that old resignation you learn after telling yourself, over and over, there isn’t another way. I pictured the cost of living like that, your origin forced into hiding for fear of being pointed at before anyone bothers to ask a single question. So alike—and still not the same.

“Are you going to tell Mira and Zoey?” I asked, leaning in a little.

Rumi glanced aside and let the silence spool out. Her fingers, mid-adjustment on the bandage, went still—as if the question had frozen the motion. “I don’t know,” she admitted at last, a small sigh she barely let herself release. “It’s not that I don’t trust them… but once you say it, you can’t take it back.”

“You can’t build a bond on lies, Rumi,” I said—sharper than I meant to on that last word.

Her eyes snapped back to mine. There was a spark of defiance there, and something asking me not to keep pushing. “Yeah,” she said slowly, voice dropping a shade. “I could say the same.”

Her hands, which had been moving with faultless precision, stilled for a beat—as if even the bandage needed a moment to take in what had just been said.

That was when something shifted in the darkest corner of the room, and my attention broke away from her eyes to the slow, silent mass padding toward the bed. A broad-pawed feline outline, eyes glowing an impossible gold, loosened itself from the half-light. The blue tiger slipped out without a sound, its coat catching the lamp like liquid, as if it were spun from water and light. Of course I recognized him—who could forget a furball like that… a warm, purring mountain of one. And if he was here, it meant one thing: Rumi had seen Jinu—maybe had even been with him more recently than she wanted to admit.

He went up to Rumi, rubbing his head against her leg. She didn’t start. She didn’t try to sell me a story about why a spirit was in her room, either. She just let her hand sink into his fur with the ease of greeting an old friend.

I kept quiet. I only tracked the tiger’s prowl with my eyes, noticing how he flicked me a sideways look before circling back to curl up at her side. There was a silent understanding between them that made me uneasy, though I couldn’t have said why.

“All set,” she whispered at last, drawing her hands away. “Get some rest. I’ll assign you a guest room for the night.”

The quiet that settled between us seemed to take possession of the room, clinging to the walls like invisible damp. I nodded and stood; the soft creak under my boots sounded louder than it should. She rose behind me, tugging her sleeve down to hide the last of her marks. She didn’t add anything; she just opened the door and motioned me out.

The hallway was too bright, lit by a double row of sconces throwing a warm, gentle glow—and somehow I’d never felt light this cold. The echo of our steps braided with the far-off murmur of cars drifting in through the big window. I could feel her presence just ahead of me, steady, setting my pace—as if any rush or lag might tip some fragile balance.

At the end of the hall she stopped at a dark wooden door. It swung open with a small squeak, letting the room’s light spill out. Night air was already slipping in, carrying the city’s metallic tang and the distant wash of traffic.

The room unfolded with an almost unreal calm, a counterpoint to the dim corridor we’d come from. Pale walls held a soft light filtered through blue-tinted curtains, and the air smelled of clean wood and something subtler, like wet leaves. A wide, low bed wore gray sheets and a muted green coverlet, topped with two violet velvet pillows.

A pair of worn-leather armchairs sat in one corner beside a tall lamp that cast a mild halo, careful not to bully the room’s cool palette. Under my boots, a deep-blue rug swallowed my steps.

A wall-to-wall window opened onto a covered balcony, dark wood underfoot setting off metal rails wrapped in safety mesh. A row of sea-green and violet cushions lined a built-in bench, an open invite to sit and take in the city. Outside, the buildings cut the horizon; farther out, the lights were flicking on, throwing blue-ish echoes across the glass.

The whole thing gave off a cool, quiet order—almost clinical—but with enough texture and dulled color to keep it from feeling impersonal… if still a shade distant.

“You’ll be fine here,” Rumi murmured from the doorway. “Rest.” Her tone was neutral, but there was a shadow in it I couldn’t read.

I nodded, unsure if thanking her would crack whatever fragile balance we’d managed a few minutes ago. No more words. She closed the door, and with that small sound it felt like most of the tension from her room stayed on the other side… though not all of it. I let myself drop onto the bed, the mattress giving under me, that leftover charge still riding my shoulders despite the room’s cool calm. I had barely stretched my legs out when two soft knocks tapped at the door.

“Yeah?” I called, straightening a little.

The door opened just enough for Zoey’s easy, wide grin to slip through—Mira behind her, posture as straight as ever. Zoey came in without waiting to be asked, moving with that light, fizzy energy that seemed to fill any room, while Mira closed the door with her usual measured grace.

“Are we interrupting?” Zoey asked.

“No,” I said, shifting to the edge of the bed.

Zoey flopped into one of the armchairs like it belonged to her, crossing one leg over the other and studying me with open curiosity. “We came to check on you,” she said—no pomp, just a simple warmth, the kind you use when you actually want the answer.

“Better than I expected,” I admitted.

Mira nodded where she stood, arms loose at her sides. “It was a long day,” she said. Plain words, but her tone carried recognition—the kind that understands exactly what that kind of tired costs.

Zoey, for her part, seemed determined not to let the mood turn heavy. “Look, the important thing is it’s over. And if you need coffee in bed tomorrow… I’m not making promises, but I’ll think about it.”

I couldn’t help a short laugh. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

The quiet that followed was easy. Outside, city lights tinted the balcony and walls in blues and violets, like the night was inching in to wrap everything up.

Zoey leaned back, jiggling her foot as if she could shake off nerves. “Tomorrow’s gonna be an astronomical train wreck,” she said with a crooked smile—half joke, half truth. “And I can’t tell if I’m more hyped or more terrified.”

“Tomorrow we face them,” Mira added, no detours. “There’s no room for mixed signals.”

Zoey looked straight at me, dropping her voice a notch. “And this time, you’re with us.”

I sat quiet for a second, weighing the heft of that. “I’m not sure it’s a great idea to lean on me this much...”

“You’re kidding, right?” Zoey arched a brow. “What you pulled off on the train made it pretty clear you can handle this.”

Mira stepped in, more sober. “It isn’t only about fighting. It’s about ending this threat at the root. If we blow it tomorrow, we won’t get another shot anytime soon.”

The room seemed to cool by a few degrees. The city’s hush slipped through the window, as if even out there they knew what was coming.

Zoey pushed up from the chair with an exaggerated sigh and a wink. “Get some rest… whatever you can,” she said as Mira swung the door open.

“See you in the morning,” the last one added, with a small nod.

The door clicked shut and the room filled with quiet again, broken only by the muffled echo of their steps fading down the hall. I stayed on the bed for a while, watching the last bluish glow slip behind the curtains. Eventually I got up and walked out to the balcony. Night air met me with a light chill that smelled like far-off rain and wet metal.

Something shifted along the rail. The blue tiger was there, sitting as if he’d been waiting for me. His coat picked up the city glow in liquid shimmers, and his eyes— a little out of phase with reality—stared without blinking. Even with that otherworldly look, he gave off a watchful calm, as if he were guarding an invisible perimeter that included me.

“Planning to keep an eye on me tonight too?” I asked, half-joking.

No answer, obviously, but he tilted his head a fraction, as if he’d caught the meaning.

A gentle flutter cut in. A black magpie—bigger than normal—landed on the rail beside the tiger. Its eyes were half-lidded, all of them, gleaming with a yellow flash and an obsidian dot at the center, and it wore a tiny gat hat that looked absurdly dapper on a bird.

“Well, look at you…” I murmured, reaching out to stroke it—and every one of its six eyes snapped open at once.

The tiger flicked his head his way. The magpie regarded me with all six eyes at once—unsettling and mesmerizing—then let out a low croak and dipped toward me in what passed for a greeting.

We stood like that for a few minutes: me on my feet, the two of them like living statues, staring out at the city in silence. Bit by bit, the night thickened and the distant traffic hush dimmed. I sank down until I was sitting on the floor, back to the wall, legs crossed. The tiger settled beside me, his warmth seeping through my clothes. The magpie, curious, hop-stepped along the rail until he faced me. I offered a hand and, after a heartbeat’s doubt, he tapped my fingers with hid beak.

“You don’t sleep much either, do you?” I murmured.

I closed my eyes, listening to the tiger’s steady breath and the soft scrape of the magpie’s claws on metal. For the first time all day, I felt my guard let down. I stayed on the balcony even after the magpie slipped into the dark and the tiger stretched out, then poured himself flat across the floorboards. Cold air brushed my face, carrying that metallic, damp scent the city wears on quiet nights, when it feels like everything’s holding its breath halfway.

I curled up against the tiger, arms around my knees, and let my gaze get lost in the weave of lights and shadows spreading to the horizon. From up here, the world looked distant, almost unreal—like tomorrow’s problems belonged to another life, not mine.

But I knew better. Every face, every threat, every name… still there, waiting. There’d be no slipping out of it tomorrow.

My fingers still held the tiger’s warmth, and that calm look of his kept circling back through my head—like he knew something I didn’t. I sighed, feeling that invisible weight settle in my chest the way it does when silence runs too long. “Tomorrow…” I whispered to myself, as if saying it out loud could line up what was coming.

I didn’t move. The wind tangled my hair and made me squint, but I didn’t care. Clinging to the balcony’s chill was easier than facing the bed’s warmth. The room behind me had gone fully dark, lit only by the city’s blue wash. When the clock nudged toward midnight, the tiger rose in one fluid motion and slipped away through a bluish ward along the balcony’s side wall. I was alone again, with the sense that his leaving was some kind of signal. Then..the subtlest change in the air, the telltale vibration that always arrived before he did.

A silent shiver that prickled my skin and pushed me to my feet. The city’s murmur seemed to drop a notch. Even the wind slowed, as if the night itself were holding its breath. Then came the whisper of fabric, a muted step, and his shadow slid across the balcony doorway.

“Well,” Jinu said, a half smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “And here I thought I was the only insomniac.”

I turned slowly. The city’s blue light cut his silhouette, outlining the edges of his jacket and leaving half his face in shadow. His gaze dropped from my face to the bandages at my hip and thigh—and stayed there longer than I liked. He didn’t skim past them; he counted them, like tallying injuries might let him reconstruct what I’d been through.

“I’m guessing I’m not making the best impression,” I said, trying for light.

“You’re a wreck,” he answered, voice low and breaking the hush as he stepped in closer.

“I could say you’re exaggerating,” I snorted—more at myself than at him—“but I’d be lying.”

He didn’t smile. He closed the distance until that faint mix of leather and incense he always carried finally reached me. There was something in his eyes—worry, yes, but also the tightened edge of someone who knows he shouldn’t be here.

He let out a short huff, almost a laugh he swallowed, and leaned against the rail. “I suppose I should congratulate you on still being in one piece.”

Silence slipped between us, not awkward—more like we were both measuring how much we were willing to say. I met his eyes.

“What are you doing here, Jinu? This is the Huntr/x Tower. Not exactly your safest option.”

His smile faded, though his calm didn’t. “I could ask you the same.”

I felt the pull to look away—but didn’t. “I’m not getting into that,” I said, quicker than I meant to, holding his gaze a few seconds before letting it drift to the far lights. Those simple words landed with a dull click. His breathing slowed, grew heavier, and the softness between us started to tighten.

“Right,” he murmured, eyes still on me. “Same as always.”

His certainty needled me, like he’d memorized every dodge before I even reached for one. I folded my arms, feeling the pressure of the wraps. “I didn’t come here to fight.”

The balcony breathed in cold tones: the city below a mosaic of washed-out blues, violets, and greens; the wind carrying the tang of wet metal. I braced against the rail at my back, reminding myself there wasn’t much room left to retreat, the bandage at my hip peeking out like a pale ribbon under my jacket.

Jinu didn’t move, but his presence filled the balcony—dense, alert—as if he were weighing every word before I even said it. I slid a step sideways to make room; he matched it, and I took another, until the cold rail caught my hip and my shoulder bumped the wall—the corner where the railing met the concrete. No more room, that was as far as I could go.

“You said you were fine,” he said. The volume didn’t rise, but the weight did.

“I’m on my feet.”

“That’s not the same thing.” He held my gaze for a heartbeat, then his hand came down—direct, clinical—settling over the bandage at my hip. The fabric crackled under his fingers and the metal hummed lightly against my back.

“This isn’t a scratch,” he pronounced.

He didn’t pull back. He added a fraction more pressure—just enough for the pain to light up like a tight wire running up my side—and with it, something else: a dense heat trapped between his palm and my skin. The air thickened. My stomach tightened on reflex; breath broke into short halves; my pulse pushed against the wrap, the rail bit into the palm I was bracing with. Wind climbed up from the street, flipped my jacket, and left a bubble of cold caught between his hand and my skin. I felt the thud of my heartbeat answering from under the bandage, trying to find a rhythm that wasn’t quite mine. I counted two, three, four seconds that didn’t seem to end; the city’s murmur stepped back, like the ground took a moment to return.

The metal thrummed again and my fingers clamped harder on the rail. He kept the pressure steady, knuckles tight, eyes fixed. Tension flared through every cut—arm, brow, thigh.

“Don’t make a fuss,” I managed, without loosening my grip.

He didn’t answer. I saw the faintest draw of breath and, without lifting his palm, felt something open in his hand: a dull vibration first, then a strange, living heat that didn’t burn like fire but like freshly tempered metal. His fingers didn’t shake.

The energy threaded through the bandage like a needle of light, slipping into the wound with a low hum. Pain shot upward in a clean, fine line and I arched against the railing.

“Hold still,” he murmured.

The heat shifted color under my skin—from stinging red to a deep magenta that tugged the edges of the wound and pulled them together. I felt my hip beat against his palm, beat through the wrap, beat in the pit of my stomach. I tipped a hair into the rail—just enough to register exactly how close he was. The wind lifted my jacket; the cold stayed trapped under his hand, ratcheting the tension up another notch. No caress—just micro-adjustments, not even half an inch of pressure that felt like inches inside me.

Tiny, internal clicks, like invisible threads knotting. My breath turned rough; my jaw locked. He held his pressure, the pulse of his energy marking a tempo my body couldn’t ignore.

The burn ebbed. The heat thinned into a warmth that drained the pain and left it as an echo. The floor came back, the avenue’s noise rolled up again like a shutter lifting.

His palm stayed a second longer—just a second—but enough for my pulse to settle under the dressing. The residual warmth kept beating there when he finally drew back, but he didn’t step away fully. The air between us had weight: a warm column in the balcony’s cold.

His thumb hovered at my hip, still close, as if his body hadn’t fully processed the order to retreat. My back sank further into the rail; he leaned in a fraction, just enough for his shadow to fold over mine. I felt his breath graze my cheek before the wind did.

“This is a bad idea,” I whispered, not moving.

“It always was,” he said.

He brushed a strand of hair aside with his knuckles—a neat, almost clumsy precision that left a heated trail. My body tightened; I watched his do the same. Seeing him that close felt like staring at a pane about to fog over—one more breath would do it.

He set his hand on the rail beside mine, not touching. Our fingers were a finger-width apart. The metal quivered in the wind, and the tremor ran through us like it was coming from inside. His forehead dipped by a degree, not quite meeting me. We stayed there, breathing in sync, measuring the gap like a taut rope.

“Now you are,” he said—no triumph in it—“on your feet.”

The air between us still weighed heavy—visceral—as if the fall had been one thought away and he’d dragged it back to the edge just so I could feel it. The pull under the bandage stopped, the warmth he’d left behind stayed, a pulse not entirely my own. Jinu peeled his hand off the rail inch by inch without breaking eye contact. I didn’t move. The night carried on around us like nothing had happened, but the tension—that rope—stayed strung tight between us, vibrating faintly, like the next breath might set it singing.

The city rose in volume, as if someone cracked a valve on the noise. My throat felt raw, the taste of metal stuck to my tongue.

“Using that here,” I rasped into the quiet, “is playing with fire. If someone senses it…”

Jinu tipped his head a fraction; he didn’t step in or back. A muscle ticked along his cheekbone.

“They won’t sense it,” he cut in, flat. “Not like that.”

I gripped the rail until my knuckles blanched. The skin—freshly sealed—throbbed once at my side, not from pain but from the punch of his words. My breath split into short draws, my shoulders rose that one millimeter and stayed put.

His eyes locked—cold, unadorned. He straightened just enough, as if bracing the weight before driving the next sentence home. “What kind of demons were they?” The question came out clean, honed—knife-fresh off the stone.

“It doesn’t matter,” I snapped, voice dry and sharp, “they don’t exist anymore.”

Jinu didn’t blink. He leaned in, like he was measuring every false step I might make. The tendons in his neck stood out, his right thumb tapped a dull rhythm on the rail, then went still. He shifted his weight to his heels, his shoulder notched tighter.

“Tomorrow…” he said, dragging the pause, lips pressed like he was chewing the line. “If you’re getting involved, don’t do it somewhere I’m flying blind.”

The air turned thick and tacky, pressing on my chest. I folded my arms over the wound, holding it, even knowing this wasn’t about the physical ache. “I don’t owe you a report.”

His jaw edged into a hard line. He inhaled through his nose, controlled. “And I don’t play guessing games,” he said, patience tightened like a string, the calm of someone holding himself just short of yelling. “You’re in their tower. You’re bandaged. You won’t say why—” his gaze ran down and up me, slow, an inventory that wouldn’t balance “—and all you give me is ‘I’m fine.’”

Heat flared under my shirt as if the wound wanted to answer for me. The rail’s cold held my back, but his voice—that near-breaking string—kept me pinned. I lifted my chin half an inch; just enough not to give ground. He held my stare without raising his voice, the strain sat in his shoulders, in fingers close to closing, in the stillness of a body that had reached its limit.

“What I do here is not of your hell damn business” It slipped out like a flat blow. My chest burned, my back still against the rail, teetering on the edge of something that could snap.

“As hell it is”

His tone didn’t climb, but his posture did. Shoulders squared, chin tipped just enough to mark distance, his eyes, dark in the city’s wash, fixed on a point in my face that pinned me harder than any threat.

“I’m going to ask once,” he said, low, with a weight that didn’t need volume. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”

“No.”

The silence that followed was dense, electric. Jinu nodded once, like arriving at an inevitable conclusion. No surprise in it; no relief. The kind of nod that closes a chapter, not one that opens the next.

Then the night rushed back in, as if it had been bottled up—engine hum on the avenue, a far siren, wind shouldering the cloudbank along. I felt the ground’s weight under my feet again, even while I kept floating in that awkward void he always left when he held back more than he said.

“Then don’t ask what I’m doing here,” he finished. His voice was a controlled door-slam—no need to shout; he’d already decided where every word landed.

He didn’t leave. He didn’t step closer, either. We stayed like that, the metal breathing between us and the sky pouring blue over concrete—as if the city could hold this exchange without taking sides. A minimal curve tugged at his mouth—more fatigue than humor. At last he eased back two steps; the cold flooded the space his body left, like water filling a mold, and he vanished, shedding a faint slip of violet smoke and dust.

The balcony found its size again. Night spread evenly over the concrete. I stayed with my back to the wall, my hip to the rail, feeling the pulse under the wrap with no pain now, only alert, as if my whole body had learned a new frequency.

Tomorrow, I thought. And the thought rang like a blade.

--------------------------------------------------

The stadium breathed like a giant lung. From the catwalk railing high above the stage, the crowd was a tide of lit screens rising and falling with the sub-bass. I crouched low, the combat rig Mira had lent me fitting exactly where it needed to—reinforced knees and hip, thin gloves, boots that didn’t make a sound. Fine pyro dust and cold smoke clung to the metal under my hands.

“Ten,” a production voice crackled. “Nine… eight…”

The stage pulsed gold and white in bursts. A countdown ran on the center screen while the light cannons combed the haze like they were writing lines in the air. The audience’s murmur drew to a single point, right before “Golden.”

I wasn’t here for the light show. I glued myself to the high rail, tucked into the lattice of beams and cabling. From the north, the air shifted first: a warm breath rising from the service walkways. Below, techs were sprinting last-minute lines—a DMX check here, fresh batteries on an in-ear pack there. Two camera drones steadied over the pit. An operator glanced up, swept the dome, and missed me. No one could spot me from down there.

The crowd roared in waves that broke against the stage. I recognized that particular hush-before-the-song—the stadium going quiet on the inside while it kept screaming on the outside. I moved two yards along the catwalk, staying with the line of the rail; the iron vibrated with music that hadn’t even started. In my view, each sector was a marked rectangle, each one, a possible ingress. None of them opened.

“Seven… six…”

I tightened my grip until I could feel the grit through the glove. I didn’t power anything up. We do this quiet, not bright. The smell of ozone off the beams, burnt gel from the fixtures, the press of bodies below—everything simmered into a thick broth. Anything out of place should’ve popped, but it didn’t.

“Five… four…”

A tech snapped a case shut; another laid down spike tape behind a panel. A guard spoke into a radio and pointed toward the west corridor. I shifted a degree and tracked his line of sight. Credential swap. Nothing.

“Three… two…”

I went still. Muscles coiled for torque, weight spread through the soles, focus pinned forward. If something came, I’d see it.

The scene lifted in a bloom of light and the stadium leaned forward as one animal. The first notes cracked the chest of the place. I didn’t move. I kept counting breaths in the cold updraft, eyes fixed on the seams where an entry could bloom, waiting for any cue. As long as nothing shook loose, no one out there would ever know that, above that ocean of light, someone was making sure the water didn’t break.

Below, Huntr/x hit their mark: Zoey smiled into the turbulent sea; Mira set herself—fixed, cardinal; Rumi took one measured breath, and the venue went molten gold. The whole thing locked in like it was meant to. The crowd stopped being noise and turned into a single pulse.

“Golden” slipped into people’s ears and I realized it had been living in my body already. I’d heard it in the supermarket, sneaking past aisles of detergent; in the street, bleeding out of a car with the windows down; in someone’s headphones on the subway, thinned to treble; in a corner gym, throwing back off tile. I caught myself tapping the hi-hat on the rail without thinking.

I leaned back a touch, hands clamped tight enough not to pitch into the void, and watched the performance like the stadium was a lit model. Low fog traced paths; gold beams rose and fell like breaths. Their voices came in clean, each with its own temperature, and the chorus traveled from far off—as always—and still landed close.

I hummed first, low, to keep from breaking the silence in my quadrant. Then I opened my mouth and sang half-voice. It fit. Rumi hit the same part, and I felt that swell of air a crowd makes when it recognizes the hook; I rode it from underneath, where no one could hear me… except her.

“You know together we’re glowing Gonna be, gonna be golden”

The golden hoop slid up onto the stage, climbing the side and cutting across center on a slow diagonal. Rumi caught it with a clean hook, like the gold recognized her, and the spot drew a warm halo around her. She rose in my direction, quarter-turning—and at the apex, she lifted her face.

She found me.

It wasn’t a big move. Just her eyes holding mine a second longer than normal, the hoop hanging half a beat, the spotlight pulling color up out of her skin. I tracked the chorus with my lips, exact, and she held it like we were a meter apart instead of half a dome. The stadium roared, but in that pocket of light there was something else: alignment. Like the song—already living in the city—had come looking for the two of us so it could sing itself whole.

Rumi tipped, the hoop dropped through its curve, and dragged her back to center. I stayed caught on the last syllable, hanging there a second longer, then let the air go. I swept the north seams out of habit—still clean—and came back to the music. From my high rail, “Golden” kept burning in phones, in throats, in the ceiling. I heard it like it was new and, at the same time, like it had walked me through my whole life. And for the first time all night, I let myself just watch, warm with the certainty that—for this song at least—nothing and no one was going to break that water.

...

The gold was still floating when the arena cut to black—hard. One massive shout, then an intrusive track bled in: industrial scrape, warped laughter, a crooked siren that sandpapered your ears. The crowd took it as part of the show—at first. Then they weren’t so sure.

Two figures came in from the wings. The audience roared in relief: Mira and Zoey hit the frame, ready to start a second song that I was very sure hadn’t been on the set list. Maybe it was their smiles, or the red lights washing them, or the way they steered Rumi without a single choreo mark to follow that tightened my focus.

They were them, in body, sure—but not entirely. The weight was wrong when their feet landed; their breathing didn’t grind air; their shadows arrived a beat late; LED reflections bounced off their skin in a way that wasn’t right. I watched them encircle her soft, like friends—then too close to the jacket’s fabric; fingers feeling for seams; smiles held too still, without the micro-tremors. They weren’t moving in for a hug. They were moving in to expose her.

I pressed closer to the rail. The stadium smelled like cold smoke and hot cables. Up on my catwalk the metal thrummed with something that wasn’t sound—heavy footsteps, off the beat. Right side first: a thud, a pause, another. The iron answered with a low drone. Left side, its twin: same weight, same spacing. Ogres. Two.

I didn’t look. I listened. Felt the structure take their mass. Then I risked a quick side glance. On the right: backs like asphalt, shoulders brushing cables, quarry-wet skin; on the left: the mirror copy. The air carried wet earth and something rancid, old. They’d climbed the maintenance stairs without anyone below catching a thing.

I snapped out the collapsible baton. A dry click, and the telescopic tube locked long in my hand. I kept it low, tight to my thigh. With the other hand I checked the daggers’ weight—one in reverse grip, one standard—hilts cool and tempered.

The right one reached me first, taking up more walkway than it had to give. He ducked under a beam and that was my cue. I stepped in half a pace—which at this height is a message—and tagged the radial nerve in his forearm. It sounded hollow. His hand opened without meaning to. Second strike to the outside knee, just before his weight committed. The metal under us sang; the ogre buckled and charged for my center in a clumsy lunge. I dropped off the edge on the harness, pivoted on the rail and swung back: baton to the Achilles heel. He skated, the beast hit its knees, gulping air it didn’t know how to bite.

I used the crowd’s roar—the screens had just cut to a close-up of “Zoey”—to sink the short blade into the notch between clavicle and trapezius. Shallow—just enough to kill momentum, not him. Out. He sagged into the handrail, breathing wrong. A nod, then I put him down with the baton, tucked him behind a beam, cinched to a cable tie.

The left one was already coming. Bigger. He was dragging a safety chain with his foot and the jangle set my tempo. He opened with a swat that would’ve ended me on a floor, but this was height: I flattened to the rail, let the arm pass, and dumped his elbow with the baton tip. A low crunch. I drove my knee into his thigh and felt the fiber give, the dagger etched a new line across the inner hamstring—his body understood it couldn’t stand. When he toppled into me, I leaned off to send him full-bore into the grating. Two more short chops to the side of the neck.

Down below, “Zoey” had an arm around Rumi’s waist—photo-perfect; the so-called “Zoey” smiled with teeth that didn’t belong to that mouth. The camera drone found the angle, courtesy of someone piloting from elsewhere. Rumi’s left sleeve gave under a move staged to look like choreo, the fabric slid to her elbow. From above it was like watching a tide roll in: shadow on skin first, then the ink lifting from underneath, patterns climbing her arm, collarbone, base of the throat. A sea of phones lit at once, hypnotized.

Rumi half-turned to hide herself in the spotlight’s plane. “Mira” corrected her with a hand to the back—soft, insistent—and nudged her one light forward. They wanted no shadows so they could peel the other sleeve and leave her fully exposed.

“A demon with no feelings don’t deserve to live.”

The words cut straight through me. Not a physical hit—more like a whipcrack to the sternum. The arm holding my dagger wavered just enough for the blade to hang a handspan from that thing’s throat. The demon snarled, but I barely heard it; that line kept booming, over and over, louder than any roar.

My jaw locked until it hurt. A sour heat rose in my throat—anger braided with disappointment—like the air had suddenly decided I didn’t belong in it. But freezing wasn’t an option, not now. The demon slashed; instinct snapped me back into my body, I turned, buried the blade in its side, and let it drop. The sentence still drilled every breath, but my hands didn’t stop.

The stadium kept buying it as part of the show. I didn’t—and I ran to shut it down.

I flowed along the catwalk and ghosted onto the service stairs. The baton cracked out again. A lesser imp—oil-slick skin, marble eyes—peeked over a tread: I met it with a short tap to the bridge of the nose, snapped my wrist, and dropped a second shot to the side of the neck. It came apart without drama and its sparks hung from the rail on a zip tie that didn’t ask permission.

I kept going. On the landing, two more were crawling the cabling, drawn by the heat of the panels. I let the crowd’s roar cover the first hit, and the warped siren of the sabotage cover the second. Short blade into the shoulder notch, baton to the tendon, knee to nowhere. They slipped behind the black drape, dragged by their own weight, invisible to the stalls.

Boots on backstage concrete, and the smell shifted: hot rubber, cold smoke, burnt gels. I wove through flight cases and battens. Two child-sized shadows sprinted for the pit—they were going to climb the fence and get hands on the crowd. I cut them off. Low sweep with the baton—legs out; the second went to bite and found the back of my dagger. They slid on, harmless lumps behind a speaker cab.

I looked back to stage. “Zoey” and “Mira” were gone. A perfect hole where they should’ve been. Rumi, alone, hands doing a terrible job of covering her—emergency lighting tracing patterns along her collarbone and neck.

I came in from stage right, under the dead angle of an LED panel. The sheen on the polished deck gave away two more shadows closing on Rumi from behind. I didn’t give them my back: I cut the diagonal—short step, baton to the first one’s calf, blade to the second’s forearm, hip turn to spin them out of the fans’ sightline. Emergency lights gifted me shadow where I needed it. The crowd screamed, reading it as choreography. They swallowed both of them like they’d never existed.

The music cut—hard.

I took Rumi by the wrist—firm, low, exact. I didn’t talk; there was nothing to say over that roar. She felt the tug and threw one reflex—only one, the kind where you’re still deciding between bolt or follow—looked at me for a beat, recognized, yielded. I slid her on a diagonal, edge of light to edge of light, using cold smoke as a curtain and confetti as cover, and pulled her toward the backstage dark.

“This way,” I said without words—shoulder angled, force directed.

Behind us, the phone-city kept filming glorious nothing: an empty stage for a heartbeat, then techs jogging in laggy blocks. Ahead, a guard tried to cut us off in the corridor; his eyes hit the patterns on Rumi and stuck there like everyone else’s. We slipped past.

Inside the corridor the light went sick-green, the stadium’s noise reached us padded, like someone had shoved us underwater. Rumi let me haul her for two steps, then kicked in and ran at my pace. Sweat haloed the skin where the ink still stood up; the patterns didn’t hide, but the dark ate them inch by inch.

Fire door. I shouldered through. Backstage air swallowed us whole. We shut it and the stadium’s roar flattened against the metal like a badly pasted poster.

Only then did I let go. Not because I wanted to—because we were finally off camera. Rumi blinked twice, breath still high. She lowered her forearm like someone trying to switch off a light that won’t obey. I moved her away from the edge, away from any lens. Outside, the crowd was still singing. Inside, the metal stopped vibrating. And for the first time since the blackout, I knew I’d gotten her out—not safe-safe, but out of frame. The only win on offer tonight.

Rumi took the stairs down without watching her feet, breath shot to pieces, hair a snarl. Full shock. I wanted to steady her, but she wouldn’t let me touch her again; my hand just hovered in the hollow of her back as we cleared the last steps. The patterns flickered with each breath, lilac against the pale at her collarbone and neck, like ink hunting for somewhere to live.

Zoey and Mira were ahead, so still they could’ve been carved from stone. They didn’t even blink; the only movement was the faint tremor in their fingers, clenched around nothing, like they were reaching for a handhold the universe refused to give. The air between the three of them was thick, live—one spark away from catching. Their eyes were locked on the patterns shivering across Rumi’s skin, bright with a life of their own, snaking in shapes you couldn’t pretend not to see.

“How do you… have patterns, Rumi?” Zoey broke the silence, but her voice snapped on the last word, like she’d stepped off a ledge. The sound bounced off the walls and came back smaller, fragile.

Rumi wrapped her arms around herself, digging her fingers into her own skin as if she could claw the truth out of it. Her shoulders shook; every inhale came rough, irregular. “They were supposed to fade…” she murmured, voice in ribbons. “This… should never have been here.”

Mira edged one step closer, face unstrung. Her lips looked so dry the words barely peeled free. “Have you been hiding this from us…?” she breathed—more air than sound. “All this time?”

She shot Rumi a look of sheer contempt, sharp enough to cut the air between us. Her mouth flattened to a hard line before she swung toward me. “Did you know about this?” she spat, every syllable dripping poison. “About her?” It wasn’t a question looking for answers. It was a verdict.

I drew a deep breath—more to keep from snapping back than to answer. I didn’t lift my eyes from the floor, like it could be a refuge where I didn’t have to pick a side, and still the words came out steady.

“Yes.” The sigh scraped my throat raw. “From the start… I saw her hidden patterns.”

The silence that followed wasn’t empty; it landed like a dull blow in all our chests. Zoey blinked, stunned, eyes red; Mira held my gaze the way you do when you’re waiting for the world to collapse on a single confirmation.

Between them, Rumi folded in on herself, the patterns flaring brighter, like her own skin knew there was nothing left to hide. I edged half a step toward the corridor on reflex. On the other side, the crowd was still screaming, sneakers pounding, a tech swearing over a cable that wouldn’t latch. Another scene burned out there. In here, the fuse wouldn’t catch.

“Jinu was supposed to…” Rumi stammered, words tripping over themselves, more sob than voice.

I turned to her despite myself, eyes locking—half surprise, half bitter certainty: of course they’d crossed paths, I knew it already, but the purpose of their close interactions…was what eluded me.

“Jinu?” Zoey barely got it out. Her voice snapped into a register too high, a shiver that hurt like breaking glass. “You’re working with him?”

“NO!” Rumi shouted, the shake in her hands spilling over into desperation. “No, no, no… I was using him!”

The last words blew apart in the room like a broken plea. They didn’t sound like strategy, or confession; they sounded like someone trying to convince herself as much as anyone else. The air thickened with betrayal, disbelief—and something worse: that sharp sting when the pieces don’t fit, and maybe never will.

By that logic, he was using you too, sweetheart.

“To fix all this, to fix me!” Rumi clung to her own words like wreckage in open water. “So we could all do our duty! We could all be strong!” Her voice cracked on the last breath. “Be together.”

“How could we be together if we can’t tell your lies from the truth, Rumi?!” Zoey burst, every syllable edged, resentment trembling in her throat.

Rumi lifted her eyes a fraction, drowned in tears, they begged in a language that didn’t need words: believe me, just one last time. But the hardness in her friends’ faces was a wall you couldn’t walk through. The scene was a wreck, it felt like watching a family portrait on fire; every gesture, every breath, was collapsing. Three girls at war, and it wasn’t the battlefield bleeding—it was what they’d built together.

“I can still fix it!” Rumi cried—and in that instant the Honmoon shuddered, throwing a shock of magenta light across the room. The air trembled with the echo of her desperation, like her own body was yelling enough, like that energy wanted nothing but release.

They didn’t read it that way. They saw an attack. They felt a threat.

Mira and Zoey fell back, doubt and grief in their eyes as they watched their leader turned into… this. Mira raised her weapon first, hands shaking, eyes bright with tears.

“Put that down!” I snapped.

She didn’t hear me. Zoey mirrored her; a tear slid down her cheek as she lifted a fan of blades—both of them ready to strike if they had to. Rumi looked at her with a heart already in pieces, choked on a sound—and bolted for anywhere-but-here. In her wake, the Honmoon kept vibrating, cracking, and magenta motes hung in the air far too long.

They stood there in front of me, weapons still in hand but lowered, eyes shining with an ugly mix: regret, fear, and something like shame. The room smelled of iron and sweat and that post-fight electricity.

“Are you out of your minds?!” I cut in, voice sharpened to a blade. “She was in shock—scared—desperate! She was asking for help!”

Zoey swallowed so hard I heard it. She finally lowered fully her blades, wrist trembling like she wasn’t sure she should let go. “You saw how the Honmoon—” her voice broke, higher than usual “we didn’t know if she was going to—”

“To what?” I stepped in, the floor thudding under my boot. “You really think she would’ve attacked you? Put it away. You too!”

Mira folded her Gok-Do with a dry clack that sounded more like apology than metal. She didn’t meet my eyes. Couldn’t. “She lied to us,” she tried—thin, like the word was too heavy on her tongue.

“She protected you,” I spat. “Fucking idiots"

The insult hung between us like a slap neither of them dared return.

I hit the hall without waiting for an answer. Took the props corridor—black drape on both sides, a ribbon of light ahead. I ran until I could hear her footsteps, ran until they stopped. I had no idea where she’d gone; it was like hunting a needle in a haystack—if the haystack seethed with demon energy and fog thick enough to blur which corridor I’d taken and which one I was in.

Footfalls echoed hollow. I swung into the maintenance passage and dropped three concrete steps. The air tasted like fine dust and old metal. A transformer’s low hum set the tempo. Far ahead, a magenta trail was fading slow enough to give me time to follow it before it vanished for good.

“I LEFT THEM!” A visceral scream tore the distance.

It led me into a kind of pre-stage antechamber, empty, choked with haze—whatever dirty trick some demon had pulled to get home-field advantage. Dead fixtures threw long shadows across black-clad walls, coiled thick cables lay like sleeping snakes on the concrete, and far-off footsteps ricocheted around the hollow space. The transformer tone droned underneath, a note no one had asked for. I kept to the wall until voices cut across the smell of hot rubber from the blind angle.

I tucked in behind a scaffold: cold tubing, fine dust, a carabiner chiming once. Baton still in my grip, tight to my chest, I eased a look through two crossbars.

Rumi stood five yards away, back to the wall, the marks on her neck half-dim, breathing under the skin. Jinu faced her, three-quarters turned, carved by the green wash of an emergency light. I hadn’t caught the beginning; only the fallout.

“Listen to yourself. Is it working?” His voice was so low it sounded like it dragged along the scaffold, reverberating metallic, like every word could rust the air.

The cold iron behind me threw my own breath back in my face, fogging my mouth like I was locked in an invisible cell. Rumi swallowed—small, just a tremor in her throat, but enough to show the words cut deeper than any blade. She didn’t step back, though every muscle in her body begged for it.

Jinu tilted his head a fraction, like he was hearing a whisper no one else could—as if something in him was dictating sentence. His eyes didn’t leave her, fixed, inhumanly calm.

“All we’ve got to do is live with our pain… our misery,” he said—verdict-clean, with no seam for comfort. “That’s all we deserve.”

The silence that followed wasn’t a lack of noise; it was a weight so heavy it flattened your lungs. Rumi shook, and still held, like not breaking in front of him was the last thing she had left. He held her stare for one more heartbeat—and vanished.

Rumi stayed frozen, hands open, breath short. I didn’t step out. I felt the scaffold’s chill through my back, grit on my teeth, and waited there, counting her inhales until I could move without sounding like an ambush.

She dropped her head, visibly wrecked, and drifted toward the wing curtain. As she left, the air got heavier, like she’d taken all the noise and tension with her and left the gravity behind. Only a dense hush remained, cut now and then by the whine of some forgotten unit still on. Jinu was gone, sure—but I could feel him ghosting the room.

“That was cruel,” I whispered into the empty, stepping out and looking to where he’d disappeared. “And petty.”

The air shifted—a shadow staking claim behind me, and when I turned my head a fraction, I saw him, standing there, motionless, face blank, eyes fixed on some point past me—as if he wasn’t seeing me at all, but something only he could make out in the distance. His posture was rigid, hands loose at his sides, and the low light sketched a rough edge across his features.

“That’s what you think?” he said, voice low, drained of anything like feeling. “That I was cruel… and petty.”

“I think plenty of things.” I held his stare. A few of his patterns were still showing.

Jinu’s gaze, distant a second ago, sharpened like a shard of glass suddenly catching light. His shoulders tightened and he stepped in, closing the distance without so much as a blink.

“Now you decide to get involved?” he snapped, a dry edge in his voice.

“Even I know there’s a line to cruelty.” I toyed with my baton behind my back, rolling it slow between my fingers, the cold metal brushing my palm before I tucked it out of sight again. My shoulders stayed loose; my eyes didn’t break from his.

Jinu cocked his head, watching the motion with a hunter’s focus—like he couldn’t decide whether to come closer or let the prey walk into him. A shadow of a smile tugged at one corner of his mouth, not warm—more like the fissure before an earthquake.

“You?” He let out a short, brittle laugh that never reached his eyes. “What would you know about cruelty?”

“I can be plenty cruel when the person in front of me deserves it”

The air thickened—every word dropping like a stone into still water. Jinu’s eyes narrowed, measuring my stance, my tone, like he was looking for hairline cracks in my resolve. His body tipped forward a fraction, enough for his shadow to spill over mine in the dim light.

“What do you know about ‘deserving’?” His voice came out low and scraped, like each word had to force its way up his throat. Not a shout—worse. A flat, heavy blow that hung there between us.

“That’s your answer?” My tone drip-fed poison, calmer than any scream—and it hurt worse. “Not even a sarcastic quip from you…?” I clicked my tongue, shook my head. “Tsk. Disappointing.”

A raw heat climbed my chest—not anger, exactly, but the sting a misplaced silence leaves behind. The backstage air felt denser, the dust and cable-metal smell mixing with something invisible that tightened around my throat. A prickle crept up my nape—the kind that warns you the tension’s about to snap—and still I kept my chin up.

Jinu’s brow knit, his stare going flatter, colder. “It’s unpleasant watching you act like you know what you’re talking about,” he fired back, blade-cold.

“I know more than you’d like.” The quiet after that stretched like a rope drawn to its limit, one breath away from breaking.

I could feel my pulse thud against my ribs—slow, electric—reminding me I wasn’t going to back down. His eyes, dark and deep, dug into mine, hunting for answers I wasn’t about to hand over. It was a stare-down, and neither of us wanted to blink first. His breathing barely showed—metered, like he was counting out the air he let go. There was a taut calm in his frame—the kind that comes right before a clean hit; shoulders easy, chin dipped a shade—and still every line of him radiated control and a veiled threat.

Heat pooled under my skin—not shame, not fear, but that fire that catches when someone thinks they can size you down. I’d hit a nerve; he wouldn’t admit it, but I could feel it. That only steadied my voice—sharper, steadier.

“Go on then. Enlighten me,” he said, gravel low, thick with disbelief.

I lifted slowly my free hand, fingers spread like I might count something trivial, even if the tremor in my voice gave away the stakes.

“One: you’re old. Too old.” I tilted my head, holding his eyes. “I clocked it from your handwriting—and the way you sealed the letter with the lotus the other night. If I had to guess… at least four hundred years on you.”

I raised another finger. The baton in my other hand nudged my grip, but it gave the count a certain flourish. I enjoyed the way his jaw tightened.

“Two: you’ve got a blue tiger—and a magpie with too many eyes—like pets.” I arched a brow. “Nice touch with the tiny hat, by the way.”

Third finger. I took a step closer this time, daring the distance.

“Three: from what I picked up in your argument with Rumi, you’ve metting before. Twice… maybe three times.”

He didn’t move, but something more darker passed through his eyes.

“Four: you hear voices.” My smile curved, bitter. “And judging by that wrecked look on your face, I’m going to go ahead and assume Gwi-Ma’s the one pulling the strings.”

Fifth finger, like closing out an inventory.

“Five: from what I heard, you left someone.” I dropped my voice, stabbing with words. “Someone you cared about. Put that with the last point… and I’m guessing it’s those people your demon king uses to twist the knife.”

I closed my fist slowly, let it fall to my side. The silence after my list pounded like a drum in my chest, each beat barking against bone. He didn’t react right off, he just watched me with a stillness so perfect the quiet got almost unbearable. He stood there, intact—but the hard line in his jaw said every word had landed, it jumped once, like he was holding back a reply that wanted out. His stare—fixed a moment ago—settled heavier, like each thing I’d said was another hit he’d absorb without breaking eye contact.

His breathing slowed, measured—and in that small shift something else flickered: recognition, the kind that brushes a truth you don’t speak out loud. I watched him one heartbeat longer, reading everything he didn’t say.

“So if I piece it all together…” I let the tone turn surgical—like a scalpel that already knows where to cut. “You’re an old soul. North of four hundred.”

His eyes narrowed a fraction; his shoulders told on him.

“You lived under the Joseon dinasty” I stepped in half a pace—not to crowd him, but to make sure my voice had nowhere to go but through. “Poor. No father to keep the house afloat… so it fell to you to bring home the food.”

His jaw set, and his hands—still until then—tightened into almost-invisible fists. “Given your music chops… maybe the only thing you could do was play an instrument. A buk or a bipa… I’m leaning toward the latter.”

His lashes cast a shadow over his golden eyes, hiding a slice of them—but not the flash that slipped through. “Tired of that life, you struck a deal with Gwi-Ma.” I let the pause land, heavy. “And it paid off at the palace gates.”

The corner of his mouth twitched—not toward a smile, but something bitter. “But you couldn’t bring your family. Why would you? You were just a musician, a commoner. Bottom rung of society, and of the imperial order.”

The slight flare of his nostrils told me I’d hit something he preferred untouched. “So… the shame you’re wearing is not being able to keep them at your side while you ate better and slept warm.”

His face didn’t move as I spoke, but something lit in his eyes—a brief spark that couldn’t decide whether it was anger, shock, or the reflection of something he’d buried centuries ago. Each detail I’d laid out hit like a far drum. He stood straight, but the hardening in his stare gave him away: my words had landed.

At last he let out a slow breath—almost a laugh with no sound—before saying, low and cutting, “You think you’re full of yourself.”

“Oh, I know I’m full of myself,” I shot back with a half-smile that never reached my eyes. “This brain? The gears spin twenty-four seven; there’s no off switch.” I tapped my temple, heat building behind my eyes. “Why do you think I’m a librarian? I need silence to shut the voices up.”

His stare bored through me; I could feel his shadow spill over mine. “You think silence saves you?” Jinu answered, bitter and heavy. “Silence is where those voices get louder—and you know it.”

“You think those voices are real?” My words snapped like a whip. “You know damn well Gwi-Ma plays your weak spots.”

He reacted with the slightest tilt of his head—just enough for the light to sketch a sharp line along his jaw. “And what would you know about my weaknesses?” he said, clipped. “You have no idea what I’ve carried.”

“Oh, poor pretty boy,” my tone turned acid, “who got the chance to live better.”

His nostrils flared a split second before his voice blew. “I LEFT MY SISTER AND MOTHER!!”

“YOU SURVIVED!” I yelled so hard the girders seemed to tremble somewhere. A crimson sheen flared around us and bled away just as fast. “And that’s more than most in your time got to do.”

He bared his teeth; the words came out like a roar dragging centuries behind it. “And what good did it do?! Surviving didn’t erase what I did!”

“Grow the fuck up!” The shout raked my throat raw. I stepped in, baton half-raised, knuckles white and aching. The air went stiff, one spark away from catching.

“Don’t ask me to pity you!” My chest heaved on each word, pushed more by fury than air. “I watched my mother get butchered in front of me! No one gave me a choice! Who gave her one?!”

His eyes burned—not just with rage; there was a wet red glint beneath it, like anger was the only thing holding the rest back. His jaw looked carved from stone.

“I don’t need your damn pity!” he spat, stepping in, shoulders strung tight like one wrong move would break him. “I’m the one who left them!”

His fury slammed into me like a physical hit, hot against my skin; his eyes were too wide, like he wanted to punch straight through me with them.

“That´s the best you’ve got?” I said, low and sharp. “I can feel you dying to say something worse.”

Jinu let out a dry, hollow laugh that didn’t touch his eyes. It wasn’t spontaneous—he let it slip like a blade being honed. His gaze ran down and back up me, not rushed—hunting the deepest place to sink the knife.

“You want worse?” His voice tightened to a wire that could snap any second.

I didn’t look away, but his stare pressed like a hand to my chest. “You’re alone in this miserable world,” he went on, each word cutting cleaner than the last, “and you’re going to die alone, with no one to remember you.”

I watched his throat tense as he said it, the last line landing with a small jut of his chin—a final jab meant to knock the air out of me, as he leaned in.

“Who would?” he added, calm enough to hurt more than a shout. “Who’s going to waste time remembering a little noone who can’t get over her mother’s death?”

My temples hammered like war drums, beating time against my skull. My shoulders locked; my breath went ragged, heat burning under my skin. The baton was still a weapon in my hand, but I held it like an anchor to keep from closing the distance and ending this the bad way. My tongue tasted like iron—not only from fury, but from the dry knot that comes when everything tries to force its way out at once. I realized I was smiling, just barely—not from pleasure, but from the poisonous satisfaction of knowing that, after all that, he was still on the defensive.

Inside, I was a snarl—rage, pride, a shard of old pain I refused to name—and that spark of defiance that wouldn’t let me back down, even with the air about to split.

“You know what really makes me laugh?” I said at last—voice loaded, steady all the same.

He watched me with those golden eyes that seemed to swallow the light, tension running along his jaw and mapping every muscle under the skin. His lips pressed into a hard line, and the faint tremor there told me the line I’d thrown had cut deeper than he wanted to admit. He didn’t blink; it was like he was trying to drill through me with his stare, freezing every twitch, filing it away to take apart later. His chest rose a little—slow but heavy, like the air had started charging him interest.

His fingers flexed and tightened again, a small, almost invisible tell that he was holding something back—something he didn’t want me to see. And still, that calculated stillness—that way of staying perfectly in place while his eyes burned—felt more dangerous than any step forward.

“I’m the one who tore off your mask,” I said, not looking away, “and you won’t even come close to mine.”

His pupils narrowed, and the shine in them stopped being just anger; there was a dare in it, like my words had invited him someplace we both knew was a bad idea. He tipped his chin down a notch, hardening his expression; the shadow cut half his face, leaving the other half lit by a harsh strip that sharpened every line in his frown.

He didn’t come closer, but it felt like he had; his presence pushed out, filling the space between us without a single step. His shoulders stayed tight, his back a straight wall I wasn’t getting through. When he spoke, it came lower, a contained growl that vibrated in the air.

“You think that performance equals knowing me?” he said, calm in a way that was scarier than a shout. “You haven’t even scratched the surface… and if you did, you wouldn’t live to tell it.”

I felt the pull across my neck into my jaw as I spit the next words out. “I know you can’t stand your own rancid truth—how you’ve built your whole persona on something that happened centuries ago.”

He drew in a slow breath; his shoulders spread, like he needed extra air to cage what was about to come out. Skin tightened over his cheekbones, a darker shadow pooled under his eyes, giving him something almost spectral. His hands finally closed into fists, knuckles blanching.

When he spoke, it was thick with poison, each word thrown like a rock. “And you’re so pathetic you have to hang on to my scars because you don’t have anything of your own.” His voice dropped lower, without losing the edge. “If it weren’t for me, you’d have nothing to say—because your life isn’t worth shit even to you.”

I leaned in, heat banking between us, and packed the next line with venom that had been fermenting for years. “The only thing you are…” I paused, letting the quiet tighten, “is a boy who won’t own his shitties screwups.”

His eyes flashed sharp; the muscle in his jaw jumped so hard I could almost hear the grind of his teeth. He stepped into me fast enough that the baton tightened in my grip on reflex, his breath hitting my face like a blow.

“You’re nothing but a broken girl—” his voice cracked open, all control gone “—who hides behind her damn stick because she’s scared to face what she is.”

His hands shook a little—not from fear, from fury. He moved another foot, our foreheads a breath from touching.

“All you are is a coward who can’t stand his own reflection.”

My shoulders locked until they hurt; my heart slammed against my ribs, but I didn’t back off. His breath ran hot into mine, and every nerve screamed I was half a second from swinging.

His pupils blew wide, swallowing the color; his breathing rasped, chest punching forward in short, hard pushes; a nerve started to throb at his temple. When he spoke again, he forced it through clenched teeth. “Shut up,” he growled, stepping in until the space between us shrank to a sigh.

I held his eyes and let a venomous half-smile curl. “Or what? Run again, like you have before?”

“Shut the hell up before I shut you up.”

My pulse hammered in my throat, but the defiance kept me upright. “I’m not shutting up because you can’t stand what you’re hearing!”

His breath snapped—almost a roar. “Shut! Up!” The vibration of it hit my chest like a physical punch.

“You’re not going to tell me—”

I didn’t finish. He moved so fast that all I felt was shadow breaking over me and his hands clamping around my arms. Heat rolled off him; before I could shape another word, his mouth crashed into mine.

The kiss was a collision—brutal, rough, loaded with all the rage and pent-up want we’d been stockpiling. No room for tenderness; it was a discharge, two forces that had shoved each other for too long finally slamming into the same flame.

It lasted seconds, and it still took my breath clean out. When he pulled back, it was only by a few inches—enough for a ribbon of cold air to slide between us, not enough to relieve the pressure of him. My chest heaved; the heat of his breath burned my skin like banked fire. His eyes stayed on mine—dark, tight—pinning me in place without laying a finger on me.

He didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to.

Instead, he dipped in again—quick, almost feral—as if something inside him had finally snapped. The second kiss hit before I could think, before my body could tense. It was a grab-and-take: his mouth rougher, more demanding, like he meant to wipe every line of our fight off my tongue. His hands framed my face now, palms hot on my cheeks, holding me with equal parts fierce grip and something close to reverence.

The collapsible baton slipped from my hand and hit the floor with a hollow clack that drowned in the tension. My hands—meant to shove him off—stayed where he’d caught me, and instead of pushing him away I wound up holding on, like I needed that grip to keep from coming apart. I could feel every line of his fingers on me, every notch of pressure, and—against my will—my body answered with an urgency I hated admitting.

I meant to shove him, to tell him to let go, to spit the words in his face. What came out was a strangled sound into his mouth. My chest dragged for air, and every time I turned my head he followed, leaning in, deepening the kiss until it turned wild, desperate, harder.

Then he moved me. Not brutal, but quick—no room to resist. My back hit the wall, the cold, rough concrete ran through my jacket like a live wire. He had me boxed in, holding me there as if the world had shrunk to that rectangle of shadow. His mouth kept crushing mine, rough, like he meant to rip my voice out with my breath.

And the worst part was, I couldn’t bring myself to hate him entirely.

I hated his strength, the way he’d cornered me, the feeling of being an object against that wall… but something in the desperate way he kissed me tore something else loose: a pulse under my skin, heat rising in my throat, a tremor waking in my fingers. His mouth continued to devour mine with a desperate hunger, a mixture of rage, desire and need that shook me from the inside out. The kiss had become a clash of mouths that no longer sought to dominate me but to devour me completely. His breath broke against mine; the heat of his chest pressed into me; his hands left no easy way out.

The jolt in my spine stopped hurting and became a reminder there was nowhere to go. The grip tightened. One hand locked at my waist, the other at my nape, he pressed me closer against the wall, as if he wanted to fuse me with the concrete, as if he feared that if he gave me an inch of freedom I would vanish between his fingers.

And I felt it: the fury was still there, throbbing inside me like an open wound, but it was mixed with an electric current that ran through my body, a vertigo that made me lose my balance even when I was leaning against that fucking wall.

Silence wouldn’t hold. He was so close I could barely move, and still my hands found him—grabbing his shirt, yanking him in, hauling him closer. My nails bit through fabric and I met him head-on, giving back what he gave, every surge answered—steel for steel. My teeth grazed his lower lip; our breaths tangled in short bursts; the wall between us—both of them—cracked with an invisible snap.

He growled into my mouth, surprised by the force, and didn’t back off. If anything, he crowded me harder, bracing me there, taking and taking like my defiance fed him, like he needed me as much as I couldn’t stand him. The scrape of teeth skated the edge of pain, and there was still no space to stop. The kiss turned into a battleground—messy, off-beat, a tug-of-war neither of us meant to win because both of us were done pretending we didn’t want to let go.

I leaned forward, seeking more, and felt his lips part wider, more aggressively, to the point where our breaths became choked gasps, mingled, hot. My tongue tangled with his in a frantic, wet duel that was anything but gentle: it was pure hunger, rage, need.

Everything narrowed to the clash of mouths, to the choked sounds we ripped out of each other, tongues interwining in a fierce battle, to that low noise he let slip now and then—as if something inside him were coming apart and the only way to hold it together was to keep going. That vibration in his throat that entered mine and made my knees feel weak even though I was braced against the wall.

Then it snapped.

His fingers at my nape clamped down, tugging hard enough to sting my scalp, dragging me in and pinning my mouth to his. The rough scrape of his teeth on my lip pulled a broken sound from me—he swallowed it with a deep, guttural growl that vibrated between us. His other hand, locked at my waist, cinched tighter until the wall creaked behind me. Teeth knocked, breath hitched, and his mouth moved on mine, wet, invasive, as if seeking to tear away the last thing left of me.

The world shrank to that collision—mouth against mouth, the ragged give-and-take, the low rumble in his throat, as if he was falling apart form the inside and the only way to sustain himself was to continue devouring me

There was no pause, no control, no air. Only heat, climbing and climbing, so violent that there was no room for anything else.

Suddenly, the hand holding me by the waist descended with brutal urgency, hungrily, sinking into my thigh. Before I could resist—or help him—he violently lifted my leg and placed it over his waist, pressing me even further against the wall. A jolt run trhough me, my breath shaky between gritted teeth, and he stole what little was left. He pressed in harder, crowding me into the wall, and the pressure pinned me in a circle I couldn’t—and didn’t want to—step out of. One leg shook under me, but he kept me up, nailed in place, as if the wall and his hold were the only real things left.

His hips moved against mine with a rhythmic thrust, growing stronger by the second, and I felt the wall drill into my back as he pounded into me with a frenzy that didn't ask for permission. The pressure of his body trapped me in a cage I couldn't and wouldn't escape. My other leg trembled under the weight of holding me up, but he held me, pinned in his embrace, as if the wall and its strength were the only reality.

The push of him, the way he drove me back into the concrete, turned my head light—I was drowning on him, high on him. Each hard press said he wasn’t letting go, that in that second I was his in the most undeniable way. And still my body answered—shaking between anger, ache, and that electric current running me like a sentence.

The friction was raw. I felt it in every fiber, every pull of muscle straining against his grip. His hand on my thigh branded heat through cloth, and with every press of his hips a moan slipped out of me—strangled between teeth and tongues that wouldn’t stop clashing. I was breaking and I hated it. I was burning and I reached for more. The rhythm he set was a savage pulse that didn’t leave room to think—only to react, to dig my nails into his shoulders and give back the fire he’d lit in me.

Then he stopped.

Not gentle—he tore himself free like air had run out on him too, like the fire had eaten through faster than he’d planned. The contact broke clean, leaving my mouth stung and my breath in pieces.

He didn’t go far. Just enough for a blade of cold to slide between us, so I could feel the emptiness where his mouth had been. Even so, his body continued to push me against the wall, solid, immovable, as if he still couldn't—or wouldn't—quite let go.

I looked up—anger in my eyes, and something else I refused to name—and met his stare. His pupils were blown dark, want and fury braided tight. His chest lifted hard; each breath hit my skin hot.

He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. He just watched me, like he was hunting for a tell in my face—a crack that would give away what had just happened. And that silence hung heavier than any word, heavier than any insult, heavier than everything we’d hurled at each other before.

Then, without warning, he was gone. The heat, the weight at the nape of my neck—snuffed out in an instant—leaving me alone in a silence that sat on me like lead. The baton still lay on the floor, a mute witness to something that felt like it could split the world, and my own pulse was the only sound left in the room.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

I could still feel his mouth on mine like a fire badly put out. The kiss had been abrupt, almost violent—as if Jinu had tried to drive in something more than want: a truth he couldn’t bear. He left me there in that makeshift backstage antechamber, narrow walls, stuttering lights barely keeping the dark at bay. He didn’t even give me a breath—just one last flash of his gaze—dark, urgent, broken—before he slipped into the shadows.

I stayed frozen, a statue with an off-beat heart, lips still parted, shaking against my own pride. Rumi’s betrayal, the sabotage on stage, the kiss… it all spun together in my head like a storm I couldn’t sort. The air was soaked with smoke and the dead echo of music cut mid-pulse, like the arena itself had realized something monstrous had happened.

Then I heard voices. Human voices—terribly ordinary—yanking me out of it. Techs, assistants, floor crew. They pounded down the nearby corridor, barking orders:

“Lights are down!” “Who signed off on that cut?” “Lock the access—now!”

Their footfalls drummed off the concrete, urging me to move. If they found me here, I’d have to invent excuses I didn’t have, and the last thing I needed was attention. My breath rasped in my throat, as if the air itself didn’t want in. I swallowed, wiped my mouth like I could erase Jinu’s trace, and forced my legs to work.

The room felt too small, almost airless, every step toward the exit like dragging invisible chains. On the other side of the wall the arena thudded in bursts—confused crowd noise, camera flashes, the crackle of dying power. Everything vibrated with a chaotic charge that set my teeth on edge.

The second I cleared the door, Seoul’s air landed on me with a weight I couldn’t name. At first I blamed it on exhaustion, the kiss, the confusion. No. This was something else. Something in the air itself was wrong.

I felt it before I saw it: a crawl across my skin, like current running up my arms and lifting every hair. The sky was a mess of artificial light—billboards, screens, signage flickering out of sync as if the city had been unplugged from its usual pulse. And under the glitter of Idol-world chaos, the Honmoon was cracking.

The barrier—the veil the human eye can’t name, the thing that’s kept our worlds in their lanes for centuries—was bleeding. Fissures were spreading everywhere: in the air, along building edges, at the corners of the street. Red seams ran across the surface like open scars, humming with a glow that looked ready to burst. It was like staring up at a pane of glass about to shatter over your head, knowing there was no way to dodge the shards.

I dragged air in like it hurt, as if the whole city had run out of oxygen. Heat rolled off the breaks and tangled with the night chill, an impossible mix—stifling and cold at once. I pressed a hand to my chest, trying to steady the gallop in my heart. Useless.

The air had the heavy feel that comes before a storm—but there were no clouds, no wind, no rain. Just pressure, pushing my ribs inward and stealing my voice. The crowd, though, trailed out oblivious to the cliff edge in front of them. Fans leaving the arena griped about the show cut, the sound failures, the lights dropping mid-set. Confused murmurs braided with nervous laughs and the bark of street vendors trying to salvage sales. They only caught the fallout: screens glitching out, streetlamps popping with sparks, neon stuttering in erratic patterns.

Instinct kicked in—I started scanning for Rumi in the churn. I turned my head every which way, shouldering through bodies, slipping past shoves, throat cinched tight with anxiety. “Rumi!” I shouted, knowing full well no one would hear me in that racket.

She wasn’t there.

Every face I hit was a pissed-off fan, an exasperated guard, an exhausted crew hand. None of them were her. The crowd was a noisy swarm pushing me forward, making me feel even more lost.

The city’s chaos crested. Car horns blared because the lights had frozen in a stutter, unable to choose between red and green. Ad screens looped the same frozen frame until it seared the eyes—Huntr/x with fixed smiles, warped by pixel drift. The pavement thrummed under my boots with a low hum, like something huge was breathing beneath the surface.

I touched the nape of my neck, where the echo of my tattoo burned hot and sharp, and realized it wasn’t just the city cracking. The balance itself was. I tried to yell, but what came out was a hitch of breath. The air felt thick as liquid; every inhale was work.

Then, like someone had timed it, the murmur became a roar—phones vibrating all at once. Thousands of screens lifted like artificial fireflies, washing the street in cold blue. Mine buzzed in my jacket pocket too—insistent.

For a second I hesitated. Instinct screamed don’t, that whatever was on that screen would only confirm what my skin already knew. I checked it anyway. The notification burned red, like the screen had caught the Honmoon’s glow.

[URGENT] VENUE CHANGE: SAJA BOYS → NAMSAN TOWER, TONIGHT. Exclusive access. Global stream.

It wasn’t from any official app. Not an email, not a promoter’s blast. It was like my phone had been hijacked, and the only thing it would show was that damned alert and an animatic of the Saja Boys beckoning me to Namsan Tower. The type was just slightly skewed, too crisp to be real—as if it had been stamped on my retinas instead of the glass. Every blink made the letters pulse in sync with the fire burning at my nape.

I swallowed, and it stuck.

I looked up, the reaction was instant. Fans screaming, sprinting toward subway entrances; taxis skidding with a shriek of tires; vendors abandoning carts to follow the tide. Everyone had gotten the same ping, and the worst part… nobody questioned it. Nobody asked how a canceled show had magically respawned at the most iconic spot in the city. Nobody doubted a switch that abrupt.

I stood still in the middle of the overflow like a rock in a flood. Everyone ran, everyone shouted, everyone got swept. I didn’t. The phone kicked in my hand again, harder, almost angry, the alert had changed:

[ATTEND]

Just that. One word. An order.

Heat at my nape sharpened into a knifing pain. The tattoo throbbed like an exposed heart pumping lava. I staggered sideways to a wall, bracing so I wouldn’t go down.

I lifted my eyes to the skyline. Between towers and the sea of light, Namsan’s silhouette cut clean—a beacon in the dark—now dressed in violet and magenta, cold and knife-bright, like blades driven into the sky. The night had never looked this black. Around its base, streets boiled with people streaming uphill like ants answering a single call.

I had no intention of following the herd, but my feet disagreed. My body moved on its own, dragged by something invisible sluicing through my bones, pushing one step after the next.

At first I fought it. I planted myself on the corner and watched the human river overrun the avenue. Girls with signs, boys with cameras, adults in last-minute merch. Screams, laughter, hysterical crying. The crowd crackled with the promise of a show, and I… I just felt like I was walking into a trap.

The air was loaded. Not just with collective hype—something denser threaded the neon and digital ads, like a smoke you couldn’t see. Every breath snagged in my lungs with a metallic taste I couldn’t name.

I kept moving, though each step got heavier. I crossed packed streets as cabs fought for inches. Food stalls lay tipped on the curb, abandoned mid-sale—skewers still stuck in odeng, steam bleeding into the cold. It was like the city had poured itself toward the tower and left a trail of neglect behind.

I slipped off the main drag and cut through a brace of narrow alleys that snaked uphill between shuttered restaurants and dim souvenir shops, each step snapped too loud on the wet pavement, every shadow stretched too long. The higher I climbed, the heavier the air got. The crowd noise fell behind and stranger sounds took its place: branches creaking, a low murmur that didn’t sound human, the rasp of something moving too fast in the dark.

“You’ll always end up alone”

I stopped short, head whipping toward the black. Nothing. Just a cat rummaging in trash and the far-off echo of a drum.

“Not even your mother wanted you”

My heart hammered. I clapped my hands over my ears, but the voices crawled in anyway, slipping under the skull. Each line dropped like lead, dragging me down into an invisible pit. I stumbled into a wall and leaned there, panting, forehead against cold concrete.

“You’re weak. Useless. Nothing.”

My nails bit my palms—and before I could talk myself out of it, I pulled the small knife from my coat pocket.

I cut.

A clean, fast slice across the inside of my hand. Pain snapped bright; warm blood slid across my fingers.

The voices stopped. The silence hit so hard I almost cried with relief.

I stayed there, trembling, breathing deep while blood pattered onto the alley floor. The brand at my nape still burned, but the words had gone, as if the wound had opened a breach strong enough to force them out. I slashed a strip from my pant leg, tore it free, and wrapped my hand tight to staunch the bleeding. It burned, but it nailed me back to earth, gave me the control I’d almost lost.

I breathed in—one, two, three—and carried on. The climb turned steep, and every step made the cut throb in time with the tattoo’s blaze. It wasn’t heat anymore; it was pain, like someone dragging a hot needle across my skin. Each breath felt like inhaling the smoke that needle left behind. Stopping wasn’t a luxury I had.

The path zigzagged through concrete trees and tourist signs. The horde moved in a block, an endless column of light sticks held high recording nothing useful; sometimes someone chirped about the “surprise event” with borrowed, kid-bright excitement; sometimes they just breathed in time with some idiot influencer’s portable speaker. The Honmoon kept spidering open around me—dark-red veins along metal railings, across the glass of cable cars, riding the pockets of wind. They burned my vision like coals.

I clamped my wrapped hand harder. Pain cleared my head each time Gwi-Ma tried to slip back in with his whispering—like a witch tapping the window with it's nails. Not today, I thought, and took the last flight up to the tower’s plaza.

The front was orderly chaos: metal barricades, security in hi-vis vests, a coordinator on comms calling beats, and a folding table stacked with “VIP” wristbands that looked like glossy candy. If I wanted in through the main doors, I’d have to play fan—smile, pretend I couldn’t smell the sulfur hiding under perfume and hairspray. I searched for the route every venue really runs on: the service path. Load-in. Logistics. Trash. That’s where the show actually breathes.

I found it along the side path—tucked behind a heart-shaped hedge that now seemed to bleed red fissures through its leaves. A half-height service gate opened onto the load-in corridor; two crew guys were smoking, one snorting at something on his phone. The smoke reached me menthol-sharp with a hint of hot can. I waited—one flicked his butt and went in, the other drifted into a call. Perfect. I glued myself to the wall and slid across on one breath—knee, shoulder, shadow. The gate didn’t even squeak. I was in.

Inside hit with its own microclimate: AC cranked to frost, floor cleaner and hot cable in the air. Tube lights fluttered on an off-beat, like the tower was breathing wrong. The Honmoon’s cracks clung to concrete ceilings and rails like lichen made of light, shrinking back as I passed—shy, almost mocking.

I went against the arrows stenciled on the floor—“STAGE,” “DRESSING,” “CATERING”—skipping any protocol that would slow me down. I ghosted past gear cages, black road cases with airport stickers, a line of industrial fans blowing air so clean it smelled clinical. From an open door came a squirt of compressed sound: a drum sample, a metronome click, a tech counting “one-two-three” like he’d rather be anywhere else. The show was about to start—or had already started for the people who make it run.

Each step on the non-slip lino knocked hollow: tuk, tuk, tuk. I picked up the pace. The hallways narrowed; someone had scrawled hearts and a snaggle-toothed cat over one stretch. I laughed under my breath. Humans leave marks because they can’t stand the void. Demons leave silence.

The air shifted to hairspray and fixative, makeup brawling with heat. I blew past the dressing-room corridor. The crowd’s murmur rolled in like slow-motion surf—not screams yet, just vibration: thousands of chests breathing at once, thousands of feet settling. The Honmoon was roof and floor at the same time—red cracks slipping through air vents and vanishing, like the tower absorbed them, like the building itself was hungry. Or, more likely, like someone inside was steering it to their advantage.

I cut toward STAGE LEFT. I knew it by the smell: metal, curtain dust, the candy-sweet of fog machines. Also by the living sounds: a bass testing, the zip of a cable, a stifled laugh from nowhere. I flattened to the wall and edged up to the black drape that marks the mouth of the stage. I peered just enough, the sight hit hard.

The platform opened like a modern altar: LED walls breathing cold color, side catwalks like blades ready to slice the air.

Where the hell are you, coward? I thought—and Gwi-Ma squeezed the edge of that thought, trying to turn it into a weapon.

“He'll betray you, like he did with his family”

I flipped him off with the pain in my hand. It bought me a sliver.

On from stage left sprawled a tangle of corridors ending in double doors with mag-locks; to the right, a metal stair climbed to the grid and catwalks; below, the security pit stacked with photographers and people who think a laminate is a shield. I took the maze: slipped behind a side drape, ducked under a truss resting on saw horses, crossed a gap where someone had ditched a black studded jacket that was absolutely not crew issue. I put it on without asking. It covered the blood and the street-smell. Sometimes surviving is just stealing well.

On a folding table, an iPad showed the multicam feed: four live quads—backstage, runway, wide crowd, hands close-up. Upper left, I caught Romance adjusting something just out of frame, Baby rolling his neck, Abby hefting—hard to see; a tech cut through. I looked for Mystery and didn’t see him on any tile. Bad sign. When monsters make themselves scarce, it’s because they’ve already decided to be a problem.

“I need that cable, now!” a stage boss barked. His voice ricocheted through my hide and rattled the metal.

I used the noise—two steps, door, breath, another door. The corridor tightened, hooks lining the walls with instruments still in their cases. One room sat open: wood smell, a rectangular case etched with travel scars, tags reading “Seoul—Busan—Tokyo.” I skimmed past. I kept on, toward the place every route empties into: the short run that ends right behind the main curtain.

Two steps later the air changed—denser, stickier, like walking into smoke without seeing a cigarette. The transformer hum slid to the background, replaced by something that wasn’t sound but wore its skin. I leaned a second on the wall; the rough plaster scraped through the jacket.

I swallowed and threaded deeper through the snaking back alleys—when something moved ahead. First a shadow, so fast my brain tried not to log it. A blink later I collided chest-first with Mystery, planted there like he’d stepped out of the dark itself. His outline drank the light—bending the edges of the LEDs, sifting every beam that tried to touch him.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said—low, steady, packed with warning. An invisible blade through air.

I met his eyes, heart hammering my ribs like a runaway drum. Warm blood slicked my wrapped hand; the tattoo at my nape burned like a fuse about to catch. Every muscle tightened—legs to jaw—ready to spring, to feint, to do anything that kept me breathing.

“Shouldn’t I?” I tipped my head, letting irony cut through even as my throat cinched. “I mean… another soul to harvest.”

While I talked, I mapped him—distance, danger, any hint of an unseen strike. The sarcasm was a mask; underneath it, tension locked my chest and shoulders, every part of me screamed not to underestimate what stood in front of me.

“Out” The single word hit like a cold wind punching straight through. A shiver crawled up my spine. Muscle by muscle I drew taut enough that one more notch might snap me; my fingers crushed the blood-stained fabric; my heart tried to beat its way out.

“You’re really going to pull thousands of souls in one grab?” I cut in—breath chopped, disbelief and anger braided tight. “Ever heard the one where greed tears its own sack?”

He cocked his head—slow, almost careless. Said nothing, his silence had weight, a wall closing the lane and reminding me my words weren’t going to shift a thing. He turned on a dime and bled into the dark, leaving me with the echo of my pulse and the clean certainty I was small against what was coming.

“Your plan is going to fail!” I threw it after him, stopping dead, heart pounding so hard it felt like it might punch free. “What you’re doing is too big not to boomerang.”

Before I could take a step back, Mystery snapped into place in front of me—blink and there. My breath cinched; my body braced for an incoming hit; His presence pressed down—an emptiness pulling the air out of the corridor—making me feel like my strength wouldn’t stretch far enough for anything.

“What would you know?” His voice was low, steady, lined with disdain, and what I sensed were his eyes looked straight through me, pinning every thought that flickered across my face.

My default sarcasm—my sword against uncertainty and life in general—caught in my throat, replaced by the cold certainty that I was standing in front of someone who could drop me without lifting a finger.

“Rumi’s out there.” My voice came tight, a thread of desperation I couldn’t hide. I swallowed around the knot in my throat, my shoulders bunching under the weight of each word. “Huntr/x is coming…” I added—half to myself, half hoping someone, even Mystery, would hear it.

He didn’t move at first, just watched me with that infuriating, terrifying calm. Then: “Huntr/x is over. Jinu handled it.”

I froze, like the air had thickened all at once. My heart banged like a fist; a chill ran my spine.

“You smell like him.” The line landed like a blindside hit, straight to instinct.

Every part of me stalled. Jinu’s trace—on Mystery of all things—was impossible to ignore. Muscle tightened, my hands shook, and the brand at my nape throbbed hard, reminding me I was pinned between fear and shock. I stood there stone-still, fully aware that every extra second in front of him was a game I couldn’t win by force.

Mystery moved faster than I could process. The air around me kinked, bending back on itself. I braced, uselessly. A violent yank tore me off my feet.

The world spun—and dumped me onto cold, wet asphalt. I staggered up, heart out of rhythm, clothes sticking with sweat and adrenaline. I looked around. The crowd kept streaming toward the tower, oblivious to the supernatural shove I’d just been handed.

No sign of Mystery. He’d gone to smoke, leaving me with the certainty I couldn’t stop this alone—and that no one was coming to pull me out.

I breathed deep, trying to stitch myself together after that ripcord pull. The street felt too quiet after him, like the world had held its breath for a beat. Blood crawled along my palm, tacky against the stolen jacket; I didn’t care. My eyes lifted to Namsan Tower. I had to go back, I had to get inside again.

I cut along the alleys skirting the venue, keeping out of sight. The masses flowed inward, but I wasn’t part of that current anymore. My line was different: straight through the chaos.

Smoke and powder drifted from inside, braided with the metallic tang of blood the voices had left in my mouth. Each step synced the ache in my hand to the burn at my nape, a single drumbeat in time with the muffled music bleeding through the walls.

A back door hung ajar. I drew a slow breath, caging the leftover panic and adrenaline, and eased it open. Shadow pooled inside, long and alive. Every click of a shoe, every crew whisper, every metal scrape snapped my head around; I kept moving, keyed for anything.

I worked through cables and crates, every muscle primed for a cheap shot. My breathing stayed measured even as my heart pounded war-drum hard. I could feel each pulse, each flare of the tattoo, a reminder that the threat wasn’t just physical—it was in the air, in the charge of the place, in the footsteps I knew I couldn’t hear.

I took a scaffold that ran straight up to the stage. Each rung scraped my bleeding hand, leaving a thin red trail—a reminder I didn’t have the luxury of stopping. Crew steps clanged somewhere below; it didn’t matter. They couldn’t see or stop what I’d already decided to do.

At the top I crouched over the stage, leaning just enough to get eyes on it. The Saja Boys hadn’t appeared yet, but the energy was there—building, coiling. The stage shifted under my gaze. Magenta and violet washed every surface, crossing with the razor cones of moving lights. LED walls flared, throwing out shards and shapes that matched the place’s pulse, like the air itself was breathing in anticipation.

A chill climbed my back. Everything was about to break. Every shadow, every static-buzz in the air, every tremor under my boots said the same thing: the moment was here. And I was dead center, braced for it.

Then letters in Latin flamed into being—hanging there like an omen:

“Dies iræ illa Vos solve in Favilla”

“That’s not ominous at all,” I muttered, a nervous laugh slipping as I tried to hold the line against the pressure bearing down.

Shadows started to move like they had choreography, riding the first low swell from the speakers. The crowd detonated into cheers. And there they were—rising out of the dark, floating indecently above the stage, silhouettes cut sharp against the blaze. Each one carried weight, like figures pulled from a forgotten legend. Their eyes burned unnatural, and the air around them buzzed like it was alive.

The letters harmonized—louder—shaking the floor under me. The audience surged in waves, arms up, screams feeding the Saja Boys like fuel. The show snapped into its climb, wrapping the entire venue in a magnetic field.

Abby stepped center. His voice rose—clean, crystalline—with that sweetness that always hid a venom drip.

“I can be your sanctuary…”

I went still. One beat of paralysis, air stuck in my lungs—then my blood boiled.

“MOTHERFUCKER!!” I breathed, fury tight and quiet, eyes fixed on him. “That’s my line!”

I cursed him up and down in silence, every venomous word I could think of. My teeth ground; the brand at my back flared hot, thundering with rage in time to the music. They knew they were provoking me, that line might as well have been aimed straight at my throat.

I tried to look away before I lost it. That’s when I saw them. Zoey—lower bowl left, third row from the front. Mira—right side, almost straight across.

My stomach dropped. Shit.

Stage, crowd, lights—everything dropped to background noise. I ran. I bolted along the side catwalks that fed into the stands, skimming over coils of cable. My heart hammered with every step. I had to reach them before—

A stench of burned iron and sulfur punched up at me. The metal under my boots took on a different buzz, like something heavy had latched onto the structure. The stage lights hiccupped; shadows stretched thin.

I stopped dead.

They pulled themselves out of the machinery’s dark gaps—warped silhouettes. Demons. Twisting, eyes burning like coals, fangs dripping, claws screeching lines into the scaffold steel with a sound that iced my blood. Adrenaline hit me like gasoline. Of course. It had to be now.

My dagger flashed under the strobes, cut a clean arc, and buried in the first one’s neck. It shrieked—high and metallic—and tumbled out of sight, invisible to a crowd that kept screaming like it was all part of the damn show.

“You have got to be kidding me” I snapped, slipping under another swipe.

One came in from the side. I planted on a slack cable, vaulted, and drop-kicked it into open air. It slammed into the sidelights—sparks rained over the audience, who roared on cue, thrilled by the “effect.”

Fast, frantic. I slipped, hit, kicked—always a foot from the void, every bar of the song marked a strike; every flash lit up another approach.

The tempo shifted; bass hit harder; the lights pulsed like neon heartbeats. A sheet of fire shot up center stage—huge, pyric—tailoring Baby’s rap. I risked one second to look down—only one—and felt the chill rip through me. That flame wasn’t practical FX, not something the boys had conjured to juice the set. It was Gwi-Ma, lounging on his throne, pushing power to hypnotize the herd.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” I muttered, snapping the baton from my waistband. The metal click of it locking open drowned under the crowd.

The verse kept running—felt endless—especially knowing what waited beneath me if I missed. Three more crawled out of the stage supports, scuttling along cables like warped spiders, claws glinting a sick color.

The first lunged head-on. I turned my hip and cracked its jaw; the bone-pop slotted into the backbeat like a drum sample, it reeled, but didn’t go over. The second hit from behind. I spun on axis; the baton smashed its forearm—bone gave with a wet snap. It screamed and raked for my face with the other claw. I ducked—felt the wind shear my hair. The third came without warning, straight into my gut. It lifted me and slammed me into the scaffold rail. Metal thrummed up my spine; blood washed my tongue. I barked a breath and drove the baton into its temple.

My first flurry landed in time with the rap. A shiver of disgust crawled my back; I had to shake it off—reset—before it tore my focus.

One staggered, but the other two were already on me. The first clamped my free arm and yanked me backward. The second rammed a shoulder into me; together they pitched my balance. I hit the grate hard; cold steel punched my spine. Air blasted out of me. I barely got the baton up to catch the third’s strike.

Claws smashed down on the reinforced grip, half an inch from my face. It leaned in, drool-black strings hanging from its fangs, driving to crush me flat. My arms shook; muscle burned. The claw crept lower, rasping the grate by my cheek. The brand at my nape flared, pulsing rage.

“You’re… not… touching me,” I ground out, trying to shove it off.

It roared, forcing the claw down until the baton squealed. My teeth locked; my breathing broke.

“Can I get the mic a little higher—”

The first drop detonated—low boom—vibrating the entire rig. All three hit at once and the scaffold floor vanished under me. A raw scream ripped out as I dropped 10 feet to the next level. The landing knocked the lungs out of me; my back lit like I’d been split.

The second drop hit merciless. I’d just rolled aside when one crashed after me, tearing out a section of railing and pitching me toward the edge. I caught the crossbar on reflex; my nails skated and tore on paint. Pain whipped up my arm. With a growl I let go on purpose—fell to the next deck just as the bass slammed.

Blood filled my mouth; I’d bitten my tongue on the fall. My leg buckled off the grate—white pain blanked my vision.

And then the third. The last drop. The third demon dropped like a shadow, its weight slamming me into the grating three levels down. The metal boomed—indistinguishable from the percussion. The crowd roared like it was choreo.

“Fuck—!” I coughed, voice shredded, spitting blood through the mesh.

It didn’t wait. The claw came up and knifed down. I rolled; its talons ripped my sleeve and kissed skin at the shoulder. Heat flared—blended with light buzz and music.

Everything hurt—bones screaming—but my hand still had the baton. I hauled it up with a ragged shout and uppercut the demon’s jaw. The crack rang like it was in the PA. It reeled, shrieking. Another was already snaking down the iron to reach me.

The stage under me thrummed magenta; their voices braided with the roar of my own blood. I gasped, shaking, back wrecked against steel, leg on fire, sweat and blood stinging my brow. The scaffold shuddered under the three of them. I raised the baton like it was the only thing keeping me alive, and truly...it was.

The first charged; I rolled. The second was faster—caught my side with a brutal hit and launched me backward. The world flipped in a blink, I went through the rail and the void opened under my boots.

A hoarse scream tore free as my right hand, on instinct, found a horizontal strut. I hung there in open air, baton still in the other hand.

“Shit—!” My arm felt one breath from tearing.

I glanced down—easily ten yards to the deck. The fall would kill me or, at best, set a record for broken bones. And just foots—no, inches—away, there they were, floating higher than at the top of the set.

What a sick joke.

One demon slid along a lighting cable like a spider, coming straight for me, eyes lit with hunger. It got to me in a heartbeat. Its claws punched into my forearm—deadly precise. Pain flashed white—total—and an animal cry ripped out of me. Blood ran hot down my wrist. It grinned and yanked, trying to peel me off the beam. I saw its teeth inches from my face.

“Nobody is coming to save you—”

So I did the only thing I could. With a roar that scorched my throat, I let go.

And fell.

The demon stayed latched to my arm. Mid-drop I hauled the baton and smashed the side of its skull with everything I had left. The hit thundered, its grip slipped—just enough—and I shoved down with one last burst of fury. It hit first, breaking lights to pieces. I hit a heartbeat later, impact rattled my bones. I landed wrong; my shoulder popped with a grotesque crunch, pain blew me open—I screamed—raw—louder than the music, louder than the crowd.

The stage shook when the demon’s body burst on the deck. I could barely stay on my knees, barely pull breath. My shoulder hung out of socket; blood streamed from the torn arm; the baton rolled away. The crowd noise was a hurricane—confused—while the world smeared into lights, screams, and blood. The mix dropped a few tones, like the world exhaled a warning. I braced against the stage metal, shoulder blazing, blood dripping hard, every breath a blade.

I was still trying to get my legs under me when the demon I’d dropped with came lurching up—and another one, one of the scaffold stragglers, let itself fall in behind me. It clamped my waist, claws raking skin as it cinched me in.

“Let me go!” I spat, kicking backward.

The yank ripped a raw scream out of me. The dislocated shoulder flared so bright it fuzzed my vision. I thrashed anyway— my nails digging into demon hide while I tried to wrench free.

“It’s inevitable, my dear” Gwi-Ma’s voice rolled up—funereal.

The one holding me forced me forward, one talon biting at my throat. I fought dirty—wild kicks, nails carving bloody grooves down the forearm pinning me.

“We’re hunters, voices strong—”

The air cracked with a dry roar.

Rumi stepped out of the haze. She cut through the FX smoke like it wasn’t there, outfit wrecked, one eye burning gold—half a breath from going full demon.

Gwi-Ma’s magenta fire rose like a living tide, spilling up behind the stage and swallowing every pocket of shadow and light. Fear hit so hard I froze. Part of me wanted to fold right there, let that fire take me and be done. It’d been a long time since I truly thought: I don’t get out of this alive.

I could barely stay upright—shoulder hanging like a hot iron, breath hacked into knife-slashes—and still I couldn’t go down. If I went down, there was nothing between him and the crowd.

“You’re nothing now…” Gwi-Ma’s voice tore through me—distorted thunder. The fire did the rest—pinning me, snaking closer in a thousand tendrils.

My legs shook. For a blink I saw myself on my knees, swallowed—gone in that magenta sea. Then Rumi again. “No!” Rumi’s voice speared the smoke like lightning.

There was force in her I hadn’t met before. She sang the line with a tremor that flipped into certainty, like this was her ground, her war. Zoey and Mira came in behind her—no hesitation—their voices twining tight with hers. A melody stupidly pure in the middle of hell.

A minor demon sprang at me, fangs catching the magenta glow. Instinct took the wheel: I slid my last dagger with my good hand and drove it up under its jaw. The shriek punched both eardrums; sparks splattered my face as the body dropped at my boots.

The next one hit faster, taller. I dove, reaching with the bad arm anyway, fingertips finding the baton where it had skittered into the rigging. As soon as I felt it, adrenaline pulled strength from somewhere I didn't know I was saving.

“I said let go!” I roared—and hammered the thing across the skull. It reeled, still snarling, until I followed with a kick that emptied the tank.

It sailed—far, far away—straight toward Rumi, Zoey, and Mira. The landing hit on the bar like I’d timed it; one dry crack said out cold—or at least knocked stupid. Either way, I’d bought us a breath.

My legs burned, my shoulder throbbed with every twitch—but I still had gas. I ran the catwalk, weaving past metal shrapnel and hanging cable until I hit their mark.

“Hey!” I rasped as I closed—voice sanded down by smoke. “Save the love songs for later.”

Zoey’s head snapped up, dazed, like she really had been tuning between the dust and the blood. Mira let out a quick, humorless breath.

“And you—Rumi…” I jerked a crooked nod. “Your patterns are beautiful. Own them.”

Rumi squinted at me, still half-lost—arm shaking where the cut tracked her skin. But something in my words—the edge, the order dressed as sarcasm—hit home. She grit her teeth, lifted her human hand, and braced me at the hip; the lines of her patterns slid against my torn skin, like threads trying not to come apart.

I huffed a bitter laugh, wiping blood from my lip with the back of my hand. “That’s it, princess. Now show them why they shouldn’t have picked us.”

Her brow ticked up. No comment—but the look said she got it. Zoey and Mira traded a quick glance and nodded. Each of them reset like the stage had finally shown its true shape: a battlefield.

We squared up—shoulder to shoulder—eyes forward. Gwi-Ma’s magenta roar still boiled behind the set, but there was a sharper target now: the boys. There they were. The air hummed so thick you could chew it. Music rolled on; the crowd screamed.

No time for speeches. The four of us fell into line, breathing hard, locked in. We went—clean, together. Mira cut straight for Romance and Abby. Zoey went at Mystery and Baby. Rumi and I took center, sights nailed to our mark: Jinu. I felt Rumi bite down on her weapon, knuckles white on the hilt. I drew a long breath, shoving past the spike in my shoulder, the burn in my legs, that acid pinch in my chest where my cursed heart sits. Every step we took toward him stretched the air tight between the three of us, loading it with static—one spark from blowing.

Before I could pace her, I spotted demons pouring out of the stands, driving straight at the fans. First instinct: smash the nearest one with the baton—feel the shock roll up my arm—and start cutting a gap while the others locked onto their marks.

Another came from behind. I pivoted—ugly but necessary—shouldered it off and cracked the baton across its head. The crunch ripped a shout out of me—braided with the track and the crowd.

I checked the stage: Mira was already toe-to-toe with Abby and Romance, slipping past shots, trading back—fast and clean. Zoey was fitting blocks against Mystery and Baby with surgical precision—the kind that made me wish I weren’t so banged up. And Rumi… she stood in front of Jinu—radiating calm and force—singing every line like the song itself was a shield.

I snapped back to the tide of lesser demons rushing me. They came from everywhere—crowd, scaffold, any angle they could find. Every baton crack, every kick, every turn cut a tiny safe pocket for the girls and me.

One grabbed for my back. I rolled, drove a knee, flipped the baton and punched it into the thing’s gut. It went over, and another was already in the lane. No pause. No time to look at the pain. Just fight. One dropped from a cable; it latched my right arm and I felt claws rake skin. I hauled it in, clubbed it off, and heaved until it skidded away—right into the zone where the girls could finish it.

I dragged a breath. Air burned my lungs; blood ran down both arms. Every muscle begged to quit, not happening. From the edge of the deck I caught Mira again—parrying, slipping Abby and Romance—but she couldn’t be everywhere at once. Then I saw it—clean as a cue: Abby about to take a hit that would send him straight to the void.

I didn’t think. I jumped into Mira’s lane, shouldering her aside with the baton just before I drove the point at Abby. The bump threw my balance, but the reflex held. A chunk of fallen truss sat at my boot; I scooped it one-handed and, with a blind, mean spin, let it fly. The piece carved a perfect arc—threading the space between Abby and Romance—and smashed square into a demon climbing in from the far edge. It pinwheeled backward, blown off the deck and out of play.

“Hey, Abby!” I panted as I pushed back to my feet. “I want my royalties!” I jabbed a finger at him. Abby blinked, incredulous; Mira snorted—clearly irritated, with zero seconds to argue.

More demons burst out of the crowd, dropping from trusses and springing between bodies straight at me. Each one looked hell-bent on dragging me down before I could cover the girls. I smashed one with what strength I had left, shouldered another off his line, spun and kicked a third that was clawing up a cable toward me. Every move bled me out. My shoulder felt like it wanted to tear free; the brand at my nape burned with every breath.

I choked up on the baton with both hands—then one hit landed too clean. Metal groaned; with a dry snap the thing sheared in half, the chunk in my grip jittered and slipped. I went down on the deck, spine to cold metal, gasping, unable to haul myself up.

A demon stalked in, claws glittering under the magenta fire, angling straight for my face. A chill raked my spine. I couldn’t afford to stay down—every second mattered. But my body was wrecked, bruised to the bone; I froze, fighting for air.

Everything stretched thin—as if the night decided to take a breath. Every sound, every motion, every spark of Gwi-Ma’s magenta flame pulled long. I watched it rear higher—one wall of fire about to smash into Rumi, her face split between focus and fear. Jinu was sprinting, ready to throw himself between it and her, and I knew that move could be fatal—for him or for her. Mira had Abby dead to rights, blade poised to drive through; Zoey was a heartbeat from putting both daggers into Mystery.

Every frame sat crystal-clear, cinematic. I was the eye of it, wrecked and heaving, nerves lit by pure adrenaline. Impact was seconds away. Gwi-Ma’s blaze roared like an unbroken dragon, demons closed at kill-speed, and one of them was crawling up my legs to pounce.

I didn’t know how I could feel this awake and this broken at once. But something primal kicked on—act or die. My good hand found what was left of the busted baton; I hauled it up, shoulder screaming, the tattoo searing. I brought the shard in front of me—clumsy, but ready—praying even the tip would find its mark.

And in the instant before it landed, the feel flipped—like the metal had its own will. Power ran my arm; the baton changed. The broken half lengthened, curved, gained weight and menace. A simple stick became a Woldo—bright, lethal—thrumming with an old energy, a crimson spine laid down its center, a matching plume flaring from the shaft.

The blade split the demon at the belly; it vanished to motes that rained across my face.

My eyes nearly blew out of my head; my breath came fast and hard, the only thing holding me to consciousness—screaming over and over that I was alive… and that the family line had finally woken.

“We are the balance, my heart”

Mom.

My mother’s voice—sweet as I remembered, attentive, protective—cut through me like a sacred whisper from somewhere else. Warmth pressed in at my side, like her palms framing my face, nudging me forward.

Air filled with fire. Whatever adrenaline I had left streamed off me, taking strength with it—but I forced myself upright, swaying, planting weight on legs that didn’t want to hold. The dead arm hung useless at my side; the pain dropped to a far buzz under what had to happen now.

With a strangled roar, I went for one last, impossible pull. I lifted the woldo—first a few inches, then higher, higher—until every tendon along my back creaked like a beam about to crack. I held it over my head, true as a vow you don’t break, and set the line—straight at the battlefield promising a bloody end.

Then my voice detonated.

“THAT’S ENOUGH!”

It thundered through my skull—refused to be ignored. Not a shout—a command from somewhere deep. A rip through the air that broke the standoff and rose over the chaos like the world itself had to obey.

I caught my breath for those knife-thin milliseconds as I drove the blade down—then dropped the woldo with everything I had. Metal hit with a low, gutty boom—like the earth itself shuddered. A shockwave rippled out, tearing up dust, cable ends, shavings of truss—followed by a crimson fire that wrapped me whole.

I didn’t feel the heat. I didn’t feel the inferno bite. I felt held—contained inside it—as the flames peeled off behind the wave, keeping time like a heartbeat. I stood at the center of the blast, the air shoving hard from all sides without moving me an inch. A storm eye—every muscle strung tight, every sense overclocked.

Everything around me blew outward. Lesser demons went up like ragdolls and unraveled mid-air, sifted to dust by the crimson fire that ate them clean. The girls, the boys—everybody—was flung in different directions, leaves ripped up by a hurricane you can’t stand against.

Then Gwi-Ma’s magenta fire reared—brutal, starving—roaring like a beast set loose to swallow the world. The heat was so fierce every breath scorched my lungs; for a heartbeat I swore reality itself was about to split under it.

And then… it died.

The colossal flare folded in on itself and blinked out, as if someone yanked the soul out of the blaze in one pull. The energy bled away at once, swallowed by the shockwave I’d loosed, leaving behind a strange, unnatural hush.

Only ragged breathing, low groans, and the crackle of falling scrap picked at the edges of it.

When the wave finally eased, I stayed put, lungs burning like I’d inhaled coals. My whole body still thrummed with the echo of what I’d unleashed, unsure whether to keep fighting or just give out. My knees were dug into the deck—skinned, buckling under my own weight. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking, and beneath them a dark blood pool kept spreading, fed by every fresh drop my body could spare.

I dragged my head up, almost in spite of myself—neck locked, vision filmed with tears, sweat, and blood. My eyes fought to catch on something real between the red-black ghosts dancing across them.

First came the wreckage: twisted metal and torn cables hanging from the grid, turning slow in the air like time itself had decided to drag its feet. The girls were scattered across the seating—broken silhouettes in dust and ash—trying to push upright in clumsy bursts or rolling over on instinct to shield themselves. Their breathing came in harsh, uneven pulls that set the rhythm of the stifling quiet.

Rumi was still breathing. I saw her facedown, unmoving except for the faint tremor in her back when she exhaled. A clean, vicious cut tracked her right arm. Zoey and Mira had tumbled together, forearms up over their ribs in that desperate, too-late brace—as if they could still save something vital from a threat already burned out.

Abby clung to the stage edge, listing, breath hitching, knuckles bone-white. Romance had gone full length on the floor, sprawled like a puppet after someone cut the strings. Mystery and Baby hung a fraction longer in the air—caught in an impossible frame—before slamming into the higher truss. Tangled in cables and hanging lights, their faces froze somewhere between shock and pain, like their bodies hadn’t had time to understand what hit them.

Even the closest fans—the front rows, the pit—had collapsed under the blast. Some curled over their heads on reflex, others just lay where they’d fallen, gasping, unable to get their feet under them yet. The crowd’s murmur had thinned to a chorus of muffled cries and shredded breaths.

The stage sat in a warped half-light. Long, misshapen shadows pooled over the boards while the LED walls spit intermittent clicks of light, cracked like dying black mirrors. One loose spotlight swung on its cable, then finally gave up and smacked the floor with a flat crack that made the silence vibrate.

No flames now—just pillars of smoke and slow-falling embers, ash drifting like it was stuck in slow motion, powdering everything with a suspended kind of tragedy.

I tried to stand, and my own sight betrayed me. Lights bled into shapeless flares, bodies blurred to blotches, edges slumped into nothing. Losing the reins on my own body hit like a fist straight to the gut.

And then I saw him.

Jinu pushed himself up out of the wreckage. Part of his outfit was gone, his hair a snarl, and still—he rose. His body shook from the hit; his hands searched for purchase through bent metal and broken set—but his eyes… his eyes never left me. There was a feral kind of intent there, lit by a contained panic burning him from the inside. Every move was raw, imperfect, but driven like an animal. Dust and sparks kicked up around him, like the ruin itself was shoving him forward.

One clear strip of vision held while the rest smeared away: smoke-thick air, far-off screams, the metallic echo of truss giving way… and him, coming toward me—alive, solid—too real to be a trick. Every second stretched into a minute; every heartbeat thumped in my ears like a war drum calling the end.

My eyelids fell with a weight I couldn’t fight.

Darkness, all at once—absolute, swallowing. The world unspooled into total quiet, leaving only the faint echo of what had just happened… and one last, stubborn certainty:

He’d been there.

The room breathed like a tired heart: the soft hum of the air, the curtain billowing and falling with the city breeze, and, at the center, a small body sunk into so much luxury.

You slept facedown, your face buried in the pillow, lips slightly parted, breathing air that would’ve felt too heavy for anyone else… anyone but you. No wounds, no blood. Jinu had seen to that, handing you back a misleading calm. But on your back, the red beat of your tattoo refused to settle; naked skin gleamed with a feverish sheen—embers under the skin. You were burning alive, the crimson lotus flaring and fading in step with your breathing, each pulse seeming to push the air against the walls.

The Saja Boys had no idea what to do with you, nor how to hold that scene without breaking it.

Mystery lingered in the doorway, arms crossed, pretending the scene in front of him didn’t faze him, but the strain in his jaw gave him away every time you twitched in your sleep. Baby paced short steps by the window, cursing under his breath how inconvenient your presence was, yet he kept sneaking looks at you—as if he expected you to open your eyes right that second.

And Jinu… he drifted closer than anyone should've allowed. He sat in the same old armchair; the backrest already knew the shape of his spine. Immaculate, steady hands wrung a cold towel over a steel bowl, setting it back against your nape with care, then slid the compress along the edges of your tattoo, skirting its burning center.

The silence between them weighed more than your breath. Every second you stayed asleep was another turn of the screw: crossed looks, unsaid reproaches, the air thick with everything no one wanted to admit.

The clock’s tick felt like mockery. Baby clicked his tongue, frowning. “This makes no sense. When is she going to wake up?”

Jinu answered without looking at him. “I don’t know”

“Don’t fuck with me” Baby spun around, eyes hot. “This is getting out of hand, hyung! We’re not babysitters—least of all for a human”

The air cinched tight. Romance, leaning on the window frame, let out a low, insolent laugh. “Right, because leaving her sprawled in the middle of the chaos would’ve gone down so much better.”

“Shut up” Baby snapped, but his voice lost bite when he looked back at you. Your shoulders rose and fell, slow—your bare back marked by the latent heat.

Jinu, who hadn’t blinked in a while, let his voice drop—grave and unbudgeable. “She’s here because I decided it”

Eyes clashed. Mystery ground his molars. “And since when do you make choices for all of us?”

“Since you didn’t lift a finger” he didn’t raise his voice; he let it fall—an impossible weight to dodge.

The rush of air that followed hit harder than any punch. Romance dropped his gaze, unable to keep his eyes on you. Jinu bent toward the bed, as if that small motion alone could close the conversation. And it did. Silence slid back in—heavy, thick—the air stale, the waiting chewing them up. Outside, the city kept living, moving right along, but in here time crawled, measured out by the pace of your breathing.

“She still smells like you” Mystery murmured—low and lethal. His eyes were knives locked on their leader.

Jinu didn’t flinch. “So? I’ve been bathing her for days. Of course she—”

“She smelled like you since the Idol Awards,” Mystery stepped forward, his shadow stretching over the carpet, “since before we went onstage”

Romance shifted, letting out a hard breath. “Quit chasing ghosts. What matters is she’s alive”

“If you mean it that way...” Baby shot back, lip quirking. “If our Jinu hyung hadn't intervened, she would've been a human remnant”

Romance’s eyes hardened as he finally pushed himself straight. “Shut your damn mouth”

Baby crashed into a far sofa, laughing under his breath with that acid mockery he used to stir the pot. “Or what?” He tipped his head, amused. “You gonna admit you let your guard down too? Because the way you look at her isn’t exactly midnight watch, champ.”

Romance burned him with a look but didn’t answer. That lack of words was all Mystery needed to clock.

“Pathetic” he said—not with his usual force, as if even he felt how fragile the balance was.

Your body cut through the tension: a small twitch in your fingers, almost nothing—and yet it shut them all up. The sheet slipped lower at your waist, your back laid bare in the weak light. Your head turned a fraction on the pillow, a sigh slipped out, and a hotter wave moved through the room.

Romance leaned in, hands digging into his knees. “She’s moving” he breathed—too soft, as if afraid to break the moment.

Mystery fixed on the tremor between your shoulder blades, your uneven breath. “No…” he rumbled. “She’s reacting.”

Baby rose from his corner, slow steps, eyes bright with a mix of suspicion and curiosity. “The damn girl’s burning alive, half-naked, and you’re worried more whether she’s reacting or just twitching”

The tattoo flared again: a magenta pulse rippled under your skin, then dimmed, embers fighting to die out. Romance clicked his tongue, trying to hide his discomfort but unable to look away. “That seal won’t leave her alone” he muttered.

Baby’s eyes narrowed. “Won’t leave anyone alone.” The words hit like a weight. “Last time I tried to do something nice and wipe the sweat off her back, it burnt my fingers.” He flicked his hand. “You saw it—blisters for two days.”

“Clearly she doesn’t like you.”

A second tremor ran through your legs—as if your body wanted to rise but your mind kept it pinned. Your nails rasped against the sheet—tiny sound, big effect: Jinu moved. Very slowly, as if afraid of waking something else besides you, he leaned closer; his shadow draped your bare back, the warm ghost of his breath barely skimming the nape of your neck.

The tattoo throbbed again—harder this time—as if it recognized him. Magenta light rippled in short waves, climbing from your hipbones to your shoulder blades. Mystery cocked his head, watching. Jinu opened his hand; there was no hesitation—only a precise, measured motion. His fingers brushed where your old bandage had been the night before it all went to hell—and your body replied: a shiver, like the memory of a wound no longer there but still felt.

He said nothing. His eyes locked on the tattoo—steady, intent—as if the mark itself could answer him for you. The rest waited. No one dared cut in.

From the door, a voice sliced the tension clean.

“Time to go.”

Abby stood on the threshold, arms crossed, a frown that suggested he’d been there longer than they’d like to admit. His tone wasn’t taking no for an answer.

Baby clicked his tongue, dropping his gaze to you, as if weighing whether to scorch you or cover your back. Mystery rolled his wrist, fixing his arm warmer—just something to do with his hands—and slipped out without a word, though his shadow lingered on the wall a few seconds more. Romance blew out a breath and turned away, jaw tight—but not without a last look at your bare back.

Jinu was the last to move. He withdrew his hand with a slowness that looked like self-punishment, closing it into a fist as he stood. He didn’t look at Abby, he didn’t look at anyone. Only at you, still surrendered to sleep.

Footsteps thinned into the hallway. Silence returned—denser still—until a soft huff broke it. The blue tiger, who’d been tucked in a corner, rose and stretched along the floor beside the bed, a living shadow. The magpie hopped down from a shelf with a brief flutter and landed on the headboard. The room stayed like that: you, your even breathing, the tattoo pulsing under your skin in silence, and two impossible creatures keeping watch.

----------------------------------------------------

Waking didn’t happen all at once. First a stab in my back, right where the tattoo burned, then a weight that forced me to roll awkwardly. The mattress waved under me as if it wanted to swallow me whole—plush, foreign, too perfect. I didn’t recognize that softness, it was the kind of bed you don’t sleep on—you sink into it.

I opened my eyes too slowly.

The dimness looked designed, not accidental: warm, indirect lights tracing the walls like someone had drawn them by hand. In front of me, a clock crafted of marble and metal stood like an art piece over the headboard—half white, half black, split by a thin gold line. First thing that screamed I wasn’t home—and definitely not in a hospital.

To my left, a window stretched floor to ceiling, pulling in the city under an orange sky smudged by the last gold of the day. Towers glinted like blades, the tallest slicing the horizon with a glass edge.

To the side, a low-back brown leather chair, a small table with a single blue lily, fresh, and a half-full glass. There was an odd symmetry: two identical black lamps, two facing chairs, two dark doors that could lead anywhere. Too tidy, too calculated—like I’d been set on display.

I pushed up just enough to feel the sheet slide over my bare skin. It took a second to realize I was nearly uncovered: back to the air, heat throbbing at that brand where the tattoo seemed about to claw itself out of me. The contrast with the cold silk sheet made me shiver.

I ran a hand over my forehead. Clean skin—no blood, no bandages. I remembered the blows, the demons, the stage, Rumi’s voice breaking. And still, my body showed none of it.

The air smelled like expensive wood, a too-sweet burst of costly perfume barely poured into the room. And something else: a trace I couldn’t place. A presence; I turned just enough to clock I wasn’t alone.

A faint blue breathed from the corner of the bed, as if the air itself had decided to give off light. I blinked until the shape settled: the tiger—huge, imposing—the one that kept showing up at the most inconvenient moments. His pelt shimmered with electric threads, every rise of its chest pacing my own. He lay on the floor by the window, a patient sentinel.

Next to him, perched on the chair back, the magpie tilted its head left-right-left; black-and-white feathers caught the light with a metallic gleam. It watched me with one beady, knowing eye, like it knew I was awake before I admitted it. The tiger’s amber eyes cracked open, cutting through the dim straight to me.

“So you two are my guards, huh?” I rasped, more to myself than to them.

The magpie answered with a dry, low caw—more a no than a yes. The tiger didn’t move, but the soft thump of his tail against the floor was enough to remind me I was safe on his watch.

I let out the breath I’d been holding. I’d fought demons, shaken my bloodline awake, bled until I passed out, and yet now—naked and vulnerable in a penthouse I didn’t know but absolutely knew who it belonged to—all I felt was… peace. I sank back into the pillow, eyes locked with the glow in the corner, and let another long, slow sigh roll out.

I sat up carefully again; muscles complained like they’d been asleep longer than I had. The room tilted once—mild, then gone with a long blink. I slid my hand down my arm: clean skin… but tacky, like I’d sweated for hours without room to breathe. My hair was worse, the moment I dragged it forward I hit a rough knot—tangles scraping my nape. I was clean, sure—but not the kind of clean you choose. The kind somebody else decides for you.

Bare feet sank into the thick carpet as I stood. The tiger lifted his head, tracking me like a lighthouse; the magpie flitted to the lamp, ruffling as if to approve.

I walked to the window. The city spilled beyond the glass like an ocean of lights—huge, bright, indifferent. My reflection threw back a version of me I barely recognized: hair a mess, lips dry, a body etched by a fatigue that wouldn’t quit.

I hugged myself, trying to feel out how long I’d been gone. Everything here—the satin sheets, the luxury furniture, the curated calm, the hush beyond the door listening for me to step out—made it hard to breathe without knowing I didn’t belong.

I looked back at the bed—still warm where I’d been—and the heat in my back reminded me the tattoo was still beating, smoldering under the skin like someone had left a fire on inside me.

“What the hell is going on?” I muttered. Neither tiger nor magpie answered.

My body creaked at every step; it felt mine and not mine at the same time—like it had been swapped from the inside out. That shift—that new current in my veins—sent a shiver down my spine. Air sneaking through the window’s seams didn’t help keep me steady; a faint cold whisper reminding me I was naked except for panties that needed to retire.

The bathroom door stood by the wardrobe: tall, dark, like it hid something forbidden. When I pushed it open, the space swallowed me whole: black marble walls, mirrors multiplying the dim light, a tub wide as a private pool, and at the back a glass-framed shower with a lit touch panel I didn’t understand but that woke at the lightest brush.

I shut the door behind me, wanting this minute to myself. I peeled off the almost-nothing I had on and stepped into the shower, turning the water on without overthinking it. The spray hit my head warm at first, then hotter, washing off the weight of the fight, the blood that wasn’t there, the voices still stuck to my skull. Steam rolled in, fogging the mirror and wrapping me in private mist.

For one second I felt okay—nearly safe. Muscles uncoiled; my hands worked through the snarls in my hair until the water smoothed them out, teasing the knots apart. But when I leaned back to let the water run free down my spine, the relief cracked—the tattoo blazed like heat had woken it up again. A steady stab, a beat under the skin. I shut my eyes and pressed my forehead to the cold marble—balancing the contrast: heat and cool, ease and pain.

I breathed deep and let the tension bleed out with the steam. It wasn’t unbearable—but it was there, reminding me nothing was truly healed. The mark lived with me—lit, staking its claim every time I tried to forget.

I let the water run longer than I should, waiting for my body to get used to the heat and for the pulsing to die down.

I cut the water and stood there, still wrapped in vapor. Silence thick as the air, broken only by the drip off my hair. I stepped out, careful with the slick floor while hunting for a towel in this enormous bathroom. I wrapped myself in the largest towel I’d ever seen—too wide for an average human and soft like sin—stroking down my skin. I lifted my head. Like everything else here, the double mirror looked expensive—fogged over, reflecting my shape more than my face. Dark circles, skin too pale; I’d probably dropped a few pounds—the ribs faint lines above the sternum—and the tattoo glowing underneath like a burn that never quite scabbed.

I planted both hands on the marble, leaning in. The image warped through the haze; I felt more ghost than person. “Still alive,” I mouthed—no sound—just to remind myself.

Tired, I rapped my knuckles twice on the bathroom’s cracked-open door. The sound got lost in the suite, but I heard it right away: the soft scrape of claws on marble. The tiger—majestic, silent—appeared, holding clothes someone had left folded in the room in his jaws.

“Thanks,” I told him—faint smile, but real.

He set the bundle on the bench and watched me with that unsettling calm, like he could read more than I was willing to show.

I unfolded the shirt first. The vinyl was torn in several spots—seams completely blown. Held up to the light, it looked like a map of scars. I let it drop, annoyed. Then I picked up the pants Mira had lent me—shredded in places but could pass for fashion… if I squinted. Twice. And even then they’d be a torture device: stiff, too tight for my sore body.

I hauled the towel up tighter and huffed through my nose. “Perfect,” I muttered, raking a hand through damp hair.

The tiger blinked slow, as if approving the complaint. I lingered in front of the mirror—towel stuck to my skin, steam thinning—trying to decide if shoving myself back into the remains of a fight I hadn’t finished processing was worth it. I pursed my lips and glanced at the tiger perched patiently in the doorway like a jade statue.

“Look, I know you’re a tiger, not a laundry service… but I need something else. Something comfortable, yeah?” I asked him like he could understand.

He cocked his head—and just then the magpie popped up on the doorframe like a judge from above.

“You too. No torn, no tight. Anything I can move in without snapping,” I added, pointing at both. The magpie gave a quick caw and vanished. The tiger turned and padded down the hall.

I sat there a few minutes, drumming fingers on my knee, wondering if I’d just begged two magical beasts for an outfit like a lunatic. Then the tiger came back first—carrying something far too colorful. The magpie swooped in right after, something dangling awkwardly from its beak. It dropped it on top of the shirt and I burst out laughing—half disbelief, half surrender. A clean pair of boxers—folded disastrously.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I covered my face, laughing and resigned. “Fantastic. A dream come true.”

The tiger yawned—a deep, rumbling sound that made the marble vibrate—and the magpie fluffed up, proud of its “haul.” I just shook my head and sighed, picking up the shirt. Clean. Soft. Then I unfolded it and nearly dropped my jaw.

“What the hell…?” A shock of bright green—huge red flowers—like it screamed vacations in the Caribbean.

I slid it on and buttoned it up half-heartedly—swimming in fabric. It hung off me—shoulders drooping, sleeves down to my elbows. One look in the mirror and I couldn’t help snorting. “Of course. Abby.” I shoved a hand through my wet hair, messing it up more.

I pulled on the clean boxers and took a few test steps to see if they’d slide off mid-stride, the soft cotton weird against my skin. The contrast was absurd: me, freshly awake from God-knows-how-long out cold after a fight, damp from the shower, back still burning, wearing a loud floral shirt like I was about to order a mojito on the beach.

The tiger grinned from ear to ear, showing fangs; the magpie tilted its head, waiting for approval.

“Yeah, yeah, stellar job,” I deadpanned, pinching the hem to show how it floated around me. Ridiculous as it was, the clean smell and the easy drape gave me a breath I didn’t remember needing.

I stepped out to see what waited on the other side of the door. Past it, a huge corridor, most of it dark save for a soft strip of LEDs glowing overhead. It opened onto several rooms—six by my count—facing each other with doors shut. At the far end, stairs dropped to the lower level of the penthouse—or mansion, really.

I went down carefully, the borrowed shirt brushing my damp skin. Each step thudded in polished quiet—nothing like the constant noise I was used to.

The hall opened into a massive space—and I had to stop. The air smelled different: clean, with a metallic edge cut by a hint of floral. Ahead, a sprawling living area bled into an open kitchen—like the two were one thought.

The floor gleamed gray—reflecting the light pouring in from wall-sized windows. To the right, an L-shaped sofa sat staged to perfection, draped with soft throws and pale pillows. The kitchen stretched behind it. A row of stools lined the island like someone might slide in and have breakfast any minute.

I stood still, taking it in. The place intimidated—not just by size, but by how tidy it was… and yet, somehow, a strange calm slipped into my chest, telling me I could lower my guard.

My stomach growled and shoved me toward the kitchen. The cold floor under bare feet reminded me I was still vulnerable—wrapped in someone’s oversized shirt—but I didn’t care. I yanked the fridge open and a blast of cold air slapped my face. Inside… not much. Some fruit stacked in a lower bin—apples, plums, a handful of forgotten grapes— a couple of fresh vegetables hanging on in there, and rows of water bottles lined up like a commercial.

“Seriously?” I lifted a brow. I shut the door and turned to the cabinets.

First pantry, first surprise: shelves of hot sauce. Different brands, colors, sizes—but all of them screaming fire. I opened another—same story. Next? Ditto.

“Who needs that much bottled napalm?” I muttered, holding one up like it could justify itself.

Deeper in, I unearthed rice, some eggs, a few sheets of seaweed, and more vegetables tucked away. Enough to throw together something decent—assuming I didn’t nuke myself with the hot-sauce arsenal.

What a balanced diet

I lined the vegetables on the counter like I was prepping for a test. Pulled rice from a high shelf along with a bowl big enough to serve a crowd. Rinsed it, set it to boil. My eyes drifted to the living room wall.

Dead center, a huge TV—so thin it looked pasted to the marble. The white sofa sat perfectly aligned—like the room revolved around that screen. The penthouse’s hush felt too heavy, so I grabbed the remote. One click—a blue splash lit the room, sound flooded in: anchors’ voices, that generic news-bed music I could pick out in my sleep.

Knife in hand, a monotone voice rattled off headlines from the last few weeks “…two weeks after the chaotic night at the Idol Awards, the fallout continues…”

The knife slipped on the board; I nearly nicked my finger.

I turned to the screen, eyes glued to the footage. News clips, man-on-the-street interviews. The stadium empty. Debris already cleared. Two weeks crushed into seconds, like my entire world hadn’t been on pause. Rice bubbled behind me—barely registered. That one line kept banging around my head.

Two weeks in a coma. Two weeks pulled clean out of my life as if I didn’t exist.

I sank onto a stool at the island—elbows down, eyes locked on a screen still spitting news. The contrast was absurd: me, in borrowed clothes, smelling like cheap soap, about to throw together a bootleg bibimbap, and out there the world trying to package a disaster I still couldn’t measure.

“Two weeks…” I gritted out—as if saying it again might make it less unreal.

I didn’t move. I let the anchors’ voice wash over me—the tone they used to tell you the world ended in the same voice they used to say milk went up.

“…there is still no official explanation for the incident during the performance. While authorities claim it was ‘an accident caused by technical and pyrotechnic failures,’ eyewitness reports contradict...”

Footage rolled with it: distorted flashes, smoke swallowing the stage, chairs turned over. I recognized angles, I remembered where I’d been standing when it all caved in. A chill slid down my back—right over the hot brand under my skin.

The metal bowl in front of me began to fill: rice, spinach, sprouts, shaved carrot. I tried to focus on color, on order—as if building that bowl could hand me a sliver of control. The TV droned on—some expert now, interviewing someone who’d been there.

“…everything felt unreal, like we were trapped in some weird dream. There was this noise in the air, like a tremor, but… suddenly it was over.”

I clenched my teeth. Yeah. A dream. That’s all people had words for.

The rice was done. I scooped it into the bowl, fanned the vegetables, cracked an egg on top, the oil still hissing. Hot sauce… well, you couldn’t skip it—not with this many bottles staring me down. I dabbed in just for the illusion of a real bibimbap.

I sat at the island, TV lighting the cavernous room, bowl warm in my hands. Outside, the city lights fanned out like a distant sea. My eyes stayed glued to the screen, watching and watching—more wreckage, more civilians’ stories.

“…in this new report, health authorities confirm a dozen fatalities due to apparent mass convulsions during the show. Others, caught in the stampede, sustained grave injuries. Although the police insist there were no major anomalies and the evacuation was carried out at record speed, witnesses maintain something else occurred…”

The TV’s hum drilled into the base of my skull.

Mass convulsions. Falls. Crush.

Clean words. Words that—without knowing the truth, and likely never knowing it—tried to dress up the hunt. They hadn’t died by accident. They hadn’t died in a stampede. Their souls had been ripped out.

I shoveled up rice, stirred it into the vegetables and egg without finesse. Lifted it to my mouth, chewing slow—as if every motion had to be forced. The news kept ladling out that clinical, lukewarm language, and I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen.

Taste unfurled and then stopped short—muted by the certainty burning in my chest: how many of those deaths were on me? How many people did I hit so hard with the shockwave that their bodies just gave out?

Spoon after spoon. The TV kept throwing up images: people crying in the streets, vigils, candles, signs begging for justice.

Click. I changed the channel.

Now a showbiz program—neon glow, haze, sharp choreos swallowing the frame.

“Your Idol!” the host announced with a blinding smile. The screen cut to a stage clip: the Saja Boys in formation, charisma pouring off them, the crowd screaming their names like gods had stepped down to earth. The song popped with a sticky hook, movements locked in, that impossible pull only they had.

Cameras dropped to the audience. A girl with glitter on her cheeks cried with joy, waving a sign with Romance’s name.

“It was the best show of my life” she said between sobs—laughing at the same time like she’d been touched by a miracle.

Another fan—a boy with a blue-painted face—leaned into some pop-up mic. “They’re different. There’s no group like them. When they’re on stage… it feels like pure magic.”

Magic. Sure. Pure. The rice turned to ash in my mouth.

The host reappeared—impeccable suit, almost solemn face: “What we witnessed that night was history. The Saja Boys redefined what it means to be an idol. Power, talent, absolute commitment. No one can deny the phenomenon is real”

I went quiet, swallowing hard. The TV pumped out applause and canned screams—as if the whole world had decided not to see what was in front of them. As if I hadn’t been there—bathed in blood they insisted didn’t exist.

I let the TV yammer like an annoying neighbor you can’t evict. I chewed slow—not just food but a rage rising from somewhere marrow-deep. But… It was done. No amount of kicking furniture or yelling at a screen would hand souls back to anyone. Nothing I could fix right this second.

So I ate. And ate. And ate.

They cut to another shot: more lights, more screaming, more happy faces. Whatever. I drew a thin line of one of those inferno sauces and kept going. The heat opened my nose and pricked my eyes—but it was simple pain, manageable; the kind that at least listens when you talk to it.

Let the world keep up its farce. For now, I just needed the weight of food dropping into place—something to anchor me to my body.

A studio in soft lighting, two anchors with serious faces. “Let’s roll the press conference from a few days ago” The screen cut to them: semi-formal—dark shirts, no jackets, hair perfect, chrome-tipped mics. A neutral banner behind. Front row, heads dipping at the exact angle.

“We deeply regret what happened at the Idol Awards,” Jinu began—voice low, eyes centered. “Our hearts are with the fans”

“We condemn any mockery toward the families,” Abby followed, measured pause, exact expression. “And we’re cooperating with the authorities.”

Choreographed even for grief: a sad half-smile, hands folded on the table, fingers laced, a “thank you for your patience” that sounded like a close. The anchors bounced back to praise “the maturity of the message” and “the group’s composure in difficult times.”

The lock beeped, the front door whispered open like new hinges do. Soft steps, a brush of fabric, the discreet thud of wood closing. The tiger padded in from the living room wall and flopped by the window—head up, waiting for his masters to come closer. The magpie settled beside him, tilting like it was taking roll.

They walked into the living room...and stopped at the rug’s edge—each at his own rhythm, all at once: runway silence, sizing the space, the TV still on their soft-focus empathy.

I didn’t look at them.

“I’ve gotta hand it to you…” I said around a mouthful of rice, eyes on the bar, “…you’re damn good actors at hiding your shit”

-------------------------------------------------------------

No one breathed loud; a heel adjusted on marble, a wrist clinked against a ring. On screen, their looped versions kept bowing. They hovered motionless, as if the floor had invisible marks laid out for each of them. The TV still talking to itself. Mystery broke first, voice still, body still. “She’s awake.”

“No kidding,” I muttered without looking. I took a bite and set the spoon down.

“Classy,” Baby finally said—half a smile. “You want the Oscar for ‘Best Welcome Speech’?”

“I’m busy,” I said, eyes on the TV. “Watching you rehearse mourning.”

Baby took two steps, head cocked toward the counter. He frowned. “Is that my hot sauce?”

I held the bottle up, turned the label so he could see. “Son of a bitch! You’ve got a hundred of these up there!!” I flicked my chin toward the cabinet.

“Yeah, ‘cause they’re mine, bitch!” he snapped, jaw about to blow.

I hit the island hard. “Motherfucker!!” I shot back—flat. “I made you a decent human meal—probably the only decent thing you’ve eaten since you landed in this realm. Try being fucking grateful!!”

Silence thudded. Baby took a step, then another, the vein in his temple pulsing with anger. “What did you say?!”

He squared his shoulders and leaned in to lunge; I instinctively tipped back, the stool rocking against the island, one hand groping for something sharp.

But the clash didn’t land.

Abby snatched him from behind, lifting him clean off the floor. “Not more steps”

“Let go!”

“I said no.” He didn’t raise his voice—didn’t need to. Abby tightened just a hair and he stepped back, eyes never leaving me. Baby huffed behind Abby’s arm.

I flicked to another channel, dropped the volume, and slid my bowl aside—dragging the fruit one closer. Romance rubbed the back of his neck, uncomfortable, and came one step nearer, careful.

“How do you feel?” Romance asked—no detours.

“Like two-weeks of shit,” I said, pinching a slice of apple and popping it into my mouth, “but alive.”

Mystery tipped his chin—like that was enough for now. “And sweeping away our food”

“Oh please!, all you have is liquid lava” I shot back.

The air snapped. In a blink, Baby slipped Abby’s hold and blinked in behind me, his fingers knotted in my hair and yanked hard; my head whipped back.

“Agh!” I squeaked. Pure reflex took over; my hand shot up on its own and—smack!— slapped his cheek.

Baby went stock-still, eyes wide, stunned. Abby blinked into place behind him again and clamped him by the neck—pinning him to thin air. Romance barked a laugh he barely swallowed; Jinu covered his mouth with the back of his hand.

Mystery’s smile showed just one tooth. “Reflexes are good” he pronounced, neutral.

“She—she hit me,” Baby mumbled, genuinely offended.

“You asked for it,” Abby said—same tone.

Still holding him, Abby’s gaze slid to me… and stopped on the shirt. His eyes tracked it—big red flowers down to the loose collar that had slipped, baring one shoulder. Damp hair dripped there—drawing a dark half-moon on the fabric.

“That shirt’s mine,” he said—flat.

I froze mid-bite on a plum, and met his eyes. “That's a problem?”

I put the fruit back in the bowl, grabbed the hem, and lifted it all the way up under my chest—enunciating every word. “I can take it off.” Clean skin on display—and the fact I wasn’t wearing a bra.

“No!” Romance, Mystery, and Jinu chorused.

“Don’t you dare,” Baby added—still restrained—straddling alarm and outrage.

Abby held my stare one second longer, then exhaled through his nose—half resigned, half amused. “Keep it. Looks… odd on you, but keep it.”

I let the hem fall. The fabric hung big. The island’s cool edge held my hip; the bare shoulder chilled in the draft from the window.

Romance cleared his throat, hunting a safe place to park his eyes. “If you want, I’ll make coffee. Or tea.”

“Water’s fine,” I said, pushing the empty glass his way.

Baby grumbled through his teeth and Abby squeezed once before letting him go.

“Okay,” I said, taking a neat bite out of the plum—eyes never leaving them. “If you want to talk, talk. If not, let me finish eating and then we’ll get started for real.”

No one left. They settled there—calmer than when they’d come in—filling the space like drivers waiting at a red that would eventually flip. Jinu broke the lull first. He didn’t come any closer; he didn’t need to raise his voice.

“The tattoo,” he said, like putting a bullet point on the table. “I saw it beat. You lit it up onstage.”

I took my time with the other half of the plum. Didn’t answer.

“You turned your baton into a woldo, then slammed it to the floor,” he went on. “The shockwave threw all of us. Demons, the girls… and then you blacked out.”

Romance set a full glass of water on the island; I took it—spun it absentmindedly, more interested in the tiny whirlpool inside than anything else.

“What exactly was that?” he added—softer. “What can you do? And why didn’t you do it before? What does that make you, if not a hunter?”

“Nothing” my voice came flat, unbothered.

To my left, Romance drew a full breath. Abby finally eased his hand off Baby’s shoulder; Baby kept side-eying me, badly hiding the sulk.

“You owe us,” Jinu pressed. “We pulled you out and kept you here.”

I met his gaze for the first time since they’d come in. “I owe you nothing” I said—clear. “I saved your asses; you took care of me. We’re even.”

“Besides…” I dare looked at the other four guys “you don't looked keen on that arrangement.” I leaned back against the counter, my tone sharper than I’d intended, watching the weight of my words land.

Silence followed, heavy, stretching across the room. The magpie tilted its head once, then clicked—dry, abrupt—like a period slammed at the end of a sentence, or a comedian’s punchline no one dared laugh at.

“Not enough.” Jinu’s tone didn’t change, but the line landed heavy. “If it flares again, I need to know whether to shield you, step back, or stamp it out”

“How gallant” I bluff.

Mystery dropped his eyes for a second—like pocketing the line. Romance set two fingers on the counter—peacemaker. “We’re not asking for a manual. Just… a boundary. Something.”

“My boundary’s mine.” I tightened my grip on the glass without raising my voice. “If you want to draw a chart to feel in control, tough luck.”

Baby clicked his tongue. “So helpful.”

Abby cut him a look; the comment died there. Jinu held my eyes one beat longer. I flipped channels out of reflex: a game, screaming fans—nothing to do with us. Set the remote down again.

“Listen,” I said—slower. “I know you want answers. So do I. But today I don’t have them for you...Or me. I ate, I showered, I put on the loudest shirt on earth, and I found out I lost two weeks. That’s enough to chew on for one day.”

“Why wouldn’t you have any?” He held my look a touch too long; I cut it short.

“…and that’s all for today,” I finished, dodging his last question with a sigh. “I’m going to the store. I made food—if you feel like putting your teeth into something decent—but you won’t last two days between water and bottled lava.”

Nothing. TV murmured. I slid off the stool, and when my feet hit the floor the shirt rode up a little. The black elastic of the boxers flashed—ROMANCE printed across the band like a billboard on a freeway.

Romance frowned; it took him a second. “Is… that mine?” Half incredulous, half nervous.

I held his stare, then pointed at the magpie on the lamp—very prim in its tiny hat. “The magpie.”

“Sussie,” Jinu cut in.

My head swung toward him in slow motion, thumb still aimed at the magpie. Then I swung back to Romance. “…Sussie did it,” I murmured. Then back to Jinu. “…Sussie?” I dared.

He only lifted a shoulder. Sussie clicked—proud.

“Anyway,” I said, tugging the shirt down. “I’m going upstairs to put on real pants and something on my feet. I’m not hitting the store in borrowed underwear.”

I climbed the stairs with that sticky feeling between my shoulder that all their eyes tracked me. In the room, I cracked the wardrobe and fished out gray joggers and white slip-ons. Before I pulled them on, I checked the mirror: hair damp on my neck; Abby’s shirt oversized—sliding off my left shoulder.

I “made it mine”: popped two buttons, cuffed the sleeves halfway, tied the fronts in a knot over my navel like one of those perfect photos that cheat the light. The knot pulled the fabric in and left more skin out; my collarbones came sharp, one shoulder hinted, the tattoo gave one warm throb under the scapula—roll call. I yanked up the joggers, hid the boxer band, slipped on the shoes.

Deep breath. The mirror threw back a weird mix: half tourist in a loud shirt, half soldier fresh off a battle. I tied my hair in a high pony to free my nape and headed down.

“All set,” I called from the last stair, step steady now. “I’ll bring fruit, veggies, rice… and something that isn’t hellfire sauce. If you’ve got cravings, now’s the time.”

Silence. Then Abby, small gesture: “Coffee. Strong.”

“Noted.” I tapped the knot once more. “If I don’t come back, send Sussie to collect your clothes.”

The bird side-eyed me—offended in all directions. Abby gave me a once-over—surprised and, against all odds, satisfied. Romance cleared his throat and said nothing. I tightened the knot and headed for the door. None of them tried to stop me—but I felt their looks follow me out.

---------------------------------------------------------------

The trip back from the store left my hands full and my head empty. Bags on the floor, red ribbons trimmed, new-plastic smell mixing with ripe fruit. I filled the fridge: crisper drawers with greens, fruit up top, water bottles lined down one side; milk and a jar of actual kimchi in the door. In the cupboards: rice in jars, noodles, sesame oil, seaweed, cans. I shoved the hot-sauce shrine to the back and left only three in front—like I could house-train a wildfire. In the tote bag I hung by the door I stashed my stuff: bread, coffee for my place, a couple of cans, soap.

Every time I opened a drawer the window’s reflection flashed the city; every time I shut one I felt eyes on me.

They were “minding their own” in the living room—with their eyes on me. Romance fiddled with a new coffee maker I’d brought; Mystery skimmed a page without turning it; Baby pinged a coin against the table, biting his tongue; Abby checked his phone on the sofa arm, watchful without looking it; Jinu stood still, tracking my hands from shelf to shelf.

I taped a “missing items” list to the side of the fridge, nudged it closed, and leaned on the island for a second. “If you’re gonna stare every time I put an apple away,” I said without turning, “I’m gonna start charging.”

No one replied; for the first time, the silence didn’t prick. It felt… occupied.

I was about to head up when the heat kicked on in my back. First, a timid warmth; then that low buzz sliding between vertebrae. The shirt started to scrape my collarbone—heavy, unbearable. The pulse under my skin pushed: one… another… deeper, wider.

A seam of light split under the fabric—red edging out by my shoulder—and snatched my breath. It wasn’t an outward blast; it pushed from inside, like something pulled air straight out of me. The beam snapped—tchkk—and my knees gave out. I dropped hard to the marble; pain shot up through my thighs—clean, humiliating. The sound rang around the living room.

They moved at once. Romance stepped in; Abby’s arm lifted; Baby leaped over the furniture; Mystery peeled off the column; Jinu set his feet—ready.

I threw a hand up—buzz chewing my nape.

“Don’t!” I held my palm into the space without looking. “Don’t come closer.”

Need roared—animal. The shirt chafed like teeth. I hooked my fingers under the knot and yanked. The shirt popped; the print flared open; cold air bit my sternum.

I stopped one breath short of disaster.

I braced my forearm across my chest, strangling the urge to rip it off, and twisted until my bare back met the island’s edge. The marble was ice, cold surged up my spine in a clean wave and, for the first time, the red dipped. The pulse turned from siren to a far-off drum.

No one moved. I could hear them breathing—held—on the other side. I pressed harder at my chest; Four in… four out. The marble drank the fire—inch by inch. Gooseflesh rose and, with it, the last of the light died under my skin.

“Like that,” I whispered to myself. “That’s it”

I loosened my fingers but didn’t let go. I tugged the fabric just enough not to flash anyone and left it loose down my back—stuck to the cold. The seal thumped once—obedient—and went still.

I heard the shift in weight before I saw them. One step. Another.

“No,” I said without turning. “Stay.”

Romance stopped half a meter out, hands open, calm. “Let me—”

“Stay.” The marble’s cold was a lifeline; I wasn’t losing it.

He didn’t fully obey. He inched one step closer, arm extended, palm open. “I’m just going to—”

I slapped his forearm. Sharp. The hit twisted his wrist and he yanked back on reflex.

“DON'T TOUCH ME!”

It came out with a weird echo—double—as if another voice—older, lower—had spoken under mine. The sound vibrated in the stone and squeezed their chests. The tattoo gave one heavy, dark red thud and quieted. Romance froze—wide-eyed—the skin of his forearm flushed red.

“From there,” I said—no echo now, just hoarse. “All of you.”

Silence obeyed first. Then they did. The throb stayed tame—like the seal itself had clocked the line. I counted to four again, and when the tremble finally drained from my knees, I took a full breath.

I set my palm on the island’s edge and lifted slowly—vertebra by vertebra. The marble’s chill clung to my back like it didn’t want to let go. I straightened the shirt with one hand and breathed until the beat under my skin went back to being what it should be: a beat.

“Don’t follow me,” I steady.

The tiger padded two steps forward and planted himself at the foot of the stairs—mute sentinel. The magpie hopped to the banister and tapped the metal with a neat little click—like cueing my path.

I passed Romance without grazing him; he dropped his gaze. Abby held Baby back with two fingers to his chest—enough to stop him from trying anything. Mystery slid aside—leaving me a clean corridor. Jinu didn’t move, but his eyes trailed me to the first step.

Foot on the stair, Then another. The seal stayed quiet—warm, compliant. I climbed at my own pace—one hand on the rail, the other hitching fabric over the bare shoulder. At the landing, I turned just enough for them to hear me.

“If you feel anything, don’t come up.”

I shut the door and pressed my forehead to the wood—stealing a second of stillness. The room breathed warm, the light ran low, like veins in a sleeping animal. I straightened, the marble’s cold echo still trailed my spine like a print. I loosened the shirt and let the AC cool my collarbone until the pulse settled.

I padded over carpet that lifted underfoot like soft surf and remembered this place was engineered so nothing hurt. I laid my palm on the coverlet and pulled back at once; my body wanted coolness, not softness. I sat on the window ledge—glass for a wall. My reflection stared back: I was built of loans; clothes, bed, this roof, even the calm I’d hacked together pressing my spine to someone else’s kitchen island.

I thought about the slice of light. It wasn’t pain first; it was the warm warning, then the vibration, and suddenly red pushing from inside like a breath that wasn’t mine. The voice that came out of me wasn’t all mine either—I could still feel it in my mouth. It hadn’t been anger—it was survival.

I let my skull rest on the glass, the tattoo pulsed once—obedient. I thought about the looped press conference, about the word “convulsions,” about a country tucking the story in so it could sleep. I thought about Rumi’s voice cracking, about Zoey shaking, about Mira’s steady hands and cold eyes. I thought about Jinu measuring each of my breaths like he could write a manual out of them.

Under the city’s hum, I heard the penthouse breathing. A soft knock—maybe Romance versus the coffee machine—leather creaking, the magpie’s traveling click if it had dared up to the landing. I stayed put, waiting for the seal to misfire again. It didn’t. Fatigue did—heavy sand—all through my joints.

Two weeks erased; one night no one would tell straight; a house that wasn’t mine filling up with me without asking if I wanted it.

I closed my eyes. For a second, sleep looked easy right there on the cool floor with the city’s electric sea beyond the glass. I opened them again. I walked to the nightstand and dimmed a strip of light; the room dropped a shade. I stood in the middle—not sitting, not lying.

Inhale. The seal didn’t answer. Exhale. I lowered my voice, even alone.

“Like this,” I told myself. “For now, like this.”

And in the quiet that followed, something in me accepted that short version of a plan: a borrowed room, cool air on skin, and my own pulse leveled—finally in line with the city.

The soft click of claws on the floor told me before I looked. The tiger slid through the door—silent—with something violet hanging from his jaws. He padded over, set it at my feet, and looked up like he knew exactly what I needed.

A satin pajama set—smoky plum with black piping: shorts, a thin-strapped top, and a light robe. I lifted it. The fabric slipped through my fingers like cool water.

“Good timing, big guy,” I said, scratching between his ears. He rumbled—a vibration more than a sound—loosening my shoulders.

I changed without rushing: worked the knot loose, left the shirt on the bed with the joggers, and pulled the set on. Satin hugged me with a hush; the robe, barely a weight on my arms. The tattoo thanked the fabric—staying quiet, warm, like it exhaled too.

We stayed there a long while. Me, cross-legged on the window ledge; him, sprawled at my side—huge—tail ticking a slow beat. Outside, day slid from blue to graphite; the first city lights came on like embers on a map. The magpie skimmed the banister once—left a crisp click—and vanished down the hall.

I set my hand on the tiger’s back. His coat was tempered—alive. I felt his wide breath under my palm and, without meaning to, matched it. The glass cooled my nape; satin soothed my skin; the seal, at long last, asked for nothing. I let myself be, until tiredness rolled back in like an easy tide. When I stood to draw the curtain, he lifted his head and set it down again—a calm guard.

“Stay,” I told him. And he did.

I lingered little longer. Cool satin tamed my skin; the glass cooled my thoughts. When the seal’s pulse was no more than a murmur and my mouth asked for water, I stood.

I killed the strip light over the headboard and padded down.

The penthouse had slipped into night mode: low lamps, a subtle murmur coming from somewhere. They had dropped their gear too. Romance in an old tee and gray joggers; Mystery in a black sweatshirt, sleeves shoved up; Baby in a hoodie and shorts, hair damp; Abby in a big tee and biker shorts; Jinu barefoot in a dark tee and soft pants. The TV barely breathed—wordless music.

“Water,” I murmured when their eyes locked on me—more courtesy than asking.

I opened the fridge—cold air on my face, I pulled a bottle and drank long. My stomach wanted something else.

“Better?” Romance asked—from the island.

“Better,” I nodded. Another pull.

Baby gave the satin set a once-over and lifted a brow. “Interesting uniform.”

“It’s the tiger’s,” I shot back quickly, as if the words alone could shield me. My eyes flicked to Jinu, searching for some kind of verdict.

“Derpy.” That was all he said—flat, almost careless—but the corner of his mouth betrayed the faintest twitch, like he knew exactly how absurd that sounded.

Mystery gestured toward the stove, where a thin ribbon of steam curled lazily from the pot. “I warmed broth. If you want.” His tone carried no weight, but the way he kept his eyes on me made it feel less like an offer and more like a quiet test.

I ladled a bowl and sat at the stool—satin whispering at my knees. The first sip warmed my throat. For a little while, I let that heat eat me up—one spoon at a time.

I set my palms flat on the marble and felt the cold climb into my hands. The fatigue was grit in every joint. I breathed deep and felt the mask—whatever I use so nothing shows—start to loosen.

I swallowed; my throat rasped. I heard myself sigh and knew I was going to talk even if I didn’t want to. Not because I was ready—because staying quiet any longer would crack me open.

“I’m going to say this once,” I murmured, eyes fixed on the black lip of the marble countertop. My fingers traced the cold edge, grounding me. “Not because I owe you—because if we keep stumbling around in the dark, we’re going to keep breaking.”

Their silence pressed in, the kind that prickled against the skin. I drew a breath, steadying myself, and lifted my gaze only halfway before dropping it again.

“Simple first,” I went on, voice rougher now. “I’m not a regular hunter.” My hands tightened into fists on the stone. “Not a demon either.” The words came out clipped, as if I had to wrestle them into the air.

I let the pause linger, then forced myself to finish. “I’m what’s left of an old line. Yeonkkot” My throat tightened on the name, but I pushed through. “The Red Lotus. Older than the original hunters, not as strong… and with a different job.” My eyes flicked up then—meeting theirs just long enough to let the weight drop. “Hold the table steady between three realms—human, demon, spirit—so none of them eats the others.”

Romance lowered his cup with care, the porcelain touching the table as if even the sound might break something fragile between us. His voice came out low, almost reluctant. “You’re… alone?”

The question lingered, heavier than it should have, making the silence tighten around the room.

I drew in a slow breath, eyes fixed on the swirl of steam rising from my own glass, as if the answer might float up from there. My shoulders lifted once before falling again. “As far as I know,” I admitted, the words tasting flat, “yeah.”

Mystery stilled mid-shift, freezing his balance as if the words had nailed him to the spot. His face didn’t betray a thing.

“That’s why I see,” I continued, exhaustion dragging at every syllable. “The ones that hide… and the patterns.” I rubbed my temple, forcing the confession out. “Yours are violet. I saw them the first day.”

The silence thickened, pressing against my ribs like smoke with no air behind it.

Abby leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees, adjusting his seat as though anchoring himself. His voice cut softer than expected. “What happened to your people?”

The question lanced straight through. I pressed both palms flat to the counter, knuckles whitening against the marble.

“Taboo,” I said, clipped. “The mix didn’t go down well. We were hunted.” My throat tightened, but I forced the rest. “My mom was killed when I was five.”

A pause, sharp as glass. “An old hunter did it.” The words landed heavy. I dragged in a breath. “I don’t remember much… but I think I can still recall the voice.”

The silence after wasn’t the same. Romance froze mid-gesture, Mystery’s jaw clenched, Abby leaned forward, and even Baby’s smirk faltered. Jinu only stared, but harder than before.

They had finally understood—hunters hadn’t spared me either.

“A friend raised me until eighteen. He died a couple years ago.” I glanced away, swallowing down the bitterness with a sip of water. “I’m twenty-six, if you’re wondering.”

The glass touched the counter with a muted click, the sound carrying more finality than the words themselves. “No archive left.”

Silence followed—stiff, stripped of condolences.

Jinu asked, “What did yours know that the others didn’t?”

“That demons aren’t just the ones crawling around Seoul,” I said, my tone cutting through the silence. “There are others. Different kinds. They hide in the cracks of every city, every country—quiet, patient, buried so deep people stop believing they exist. But they’re there. Always.”

I dragged in a breath and let it out, slow and rough. “And you don’t need Gwi-Ma’s hand pulling strings for one to cross over. A human can do it alone. That’s the part nobody likes to admit.”

Mystery’s voice slid low, almost like recognition. “Taegukgi.”

“Exactly.” I tapped the glass against the marble, the sound sharp, final. “It’s not a switch—it’s a pendulum. You push all the darkness out of one realm, and it doesn’t disappear. It swings back. And when it does, it comes out somewhere else—sometimes here.”

I leaned forward, my words clipped, deliberate. “And that’s worse. Because when it leaks into humans, it doesn’t need claws or fangs. It just twists what’s already inside. You think demons are born monsters? No. Humans are already cruel enough—greedy, jealous, selfish. Give them a shove, peel away that thin layer of decency, and they don’t need Gwi-Ma. They’ll turn into demons on their own.”

The silence stretched, heavy, but I didn’t let it soften. “So—balance. Not scorched earth. You burn it all down in one place, you guarantee it will surface in another. And this time, it’ll wear our face.”

I slumped onto the stool—elbows on marble—forehead in my hands. The cold held me up better than my legs. I breathed there, their eyes on me.

Mystery spoke, his voice rolling out from the column without him moving an inch. “The Idol Awards…” He let the silence carry the weight. “…was about balance, wasn’t it?”

I didn’t raise my head, just traced the marble’s edge with my thumb until the cold bit into my skin. Slowly, I nodded. “For balance. The board was breaking.”

My throat felt raw, but I forced the words through. “I told you… greed bursts the sack.” I lifted my eyes then, just enough to meet theirs. “That night was proof. The soul-harvest had gone too far. Too much, too fast. And when you push that hard, balance doesn’t forgive. It snaps back.”

The echo of my own voice lingered in the room, sharp and undeniable.

Abby shifted, his jaw tight. “So all of it—the chaos, the bodies—that was balance hitting back?”

“Consequence” I corrected, my tone flat.

The word dropped heavy between us, and for a moment none of them seemed willing to breathe. That was when Jinu cut the hush—without moving. “You can stay as long as you need. We won’t get in your way.”

I raised my entire face slowly. The marble printed on my forehead. I looked at him a beat and nodded—short.

“Thanks” My thumb traced the rim of my glass. “But I’m not taking it all the way. I’m leaving in the morning.”

Romance leaned forward, fingers laced tight as if holding himself together. “You’re still weak,” he said—not an order, just fact. “You need a little more rest.”

“I’m fine,” I lied, the word breaking too easily between my teeth.

“Not quite.” His eyes skimmed my posture, the slump of my shoulders, the washed-out tone of my skin. “One more night doesn’t chain you to anything.”

I didn’t answer. My elbows stayed pressed into the counter, the weight in my legs like sandbags, the seal under my skin murmuring faintly, almost tame.

“I’ll think about it,” I conceded at last, voice low. “No promises.”

Jinu stayed silent, only dipping his chin once—a quiet acceptance. Abby rubbed a hand down his face, as if too tired to hide the strain anymore, then dropped his arm over the back of the couch, Mystery shifted his weight off the column, knuckles rapping twice against the marble edge, like he needed the sound to keep himself grounded, and Baby let out a sharp huff, biting back whatever he wanted to spit out.

I let my cheek fall into my palm, the fatigue pulling heavier than gravity.

“Tomorrow,” I whispered, the word fraying at the edges. Not a plan—just a hope. Outside, the city kept breathing. Inside, for now, it had to be enough.