Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jinu can barely struggle as they drag him towards the ominous mountain that all demons avoided. There was a crawling feeling in his mind, just like all the other urges and words from Gwi-ma, that made him want to get as far away from the place as possible. He fights as much as he can but he’s weak and barely staying conscious as it is.

Gwi-ma had been furious with him. He’d barely realized he was still alive before Gwi-ma was punishing him for stopping his attack against Rumi. He’d screamed until his throat was shredded and only then did Gwi-ma level his sentence.

Jinu wouldn’t be put out of his misery for his failure. Wouldn’t even be further tortured, physically at least. Instead he was to be imprisoned with his singing stripped from him. Forced to live with the never ending memories of what he’d done. Never able to escape them. To rot in a cell till he faded.

He’s dragged through a crack in the mountain until he can no longer see any light besides the single flicker of a torch deeper in the mountain. His skin still crawls and he tries despite the looming hopelessness swallowing his conscious thought. He’d never get far and he can’t even leave the underworld if he did. The honmoon is firmly back in place and stronger than it’s ever been even if it’s not golden.

They reach the end of the crack in the mountain and Jinu is shoved forward falling to his knees. He stumbles up and turns around only to see there are now bars blocking him in. He rushes forward and bangs his hands against the bars trying to shout after the demons who dragged him here, but the second he touches the bars he’s thrown back by what has to be a magical barrier. 

He’s knocked to his back where he could only groan as his whole body felt like he’d been struck by lightning. He thumped his head on the ground.

He thought he would be free. After all he’d done. He’d been so sure he would be free of Gwi-ma. He hadn’t sacrificed himself for Rumi with that explicit intention or hope, but everything he knew about Gwi-ma’s power meant that he should have been destroyed. Giving his soul to Rumi was meant to be his atonement and final act to keep her safe. 

He didn’t even know what happened to her after. She was probably okay since the honmoon was remade and so strong, but he couldn't know that for sure. And he felt the guilt welling up in his throat. Dying in front of her hadn’t been a conscious choice. He just knew he had to keep her safe. 

Demon’s grew stronger the more souls they consumed. His soul was the first whole soul Rumi would have ever taken. He hadn’t taken a full soul since he was first converted. He’d fed off of his fan’s adoration and obsession and let the lower ranked demons collect the full souls. He didn’t like taking full souls. Especially not when they had to go straight to Gwi-ma. It always made him feel sick to hand over a soul to that bastard. 

Further proof of how he was just as broken as a demon as he was as a human. Selfish and cowardly, unable to even complete his duty of delivering souls to his king. He hated Gwi-ma. Every part of his being hated every second he spent in the Demon King’s presence. He’d avoided Gwi-ma as much as he could before coming up with his plan. Breaking into the human world every few years to perform and distract humans for the lower demons to consume. It was how he kept track of the shift in human music culture and what gave him the first ideas about creating a boy band.

It had taken him about a decade. Two years to study the Kpop industry and what made idols successful. Then he created a plan and tried to find demons he could get help from. He'd gotten lucky and over the next handful of years, he'd found four idols from different groups who had all made deals with Gwi-ma. They became full demons one by one when Gwi-ma twisted their deal just like he had for Jinu.

Approaching the four new demons, all jeoseung sajas like himself, had taken time as each one adjusted to the underworld and grieved their human lives, but in the end he'd convinced them of his plan. He’d helped them design their new identities and stage personalities and then they'd spent about two years training and practicing all together before the time came to present his plan to Gwi-ma.

His grand selfish scheme. Destroying the human world and every good thing it contained all to be rid of his memories. Offering up all the humans to Gwi-ma just so he could finally forget the faces of his mother and sister.

He slammed his head against the ground and brought his hands up to press against his eyes. He wouldn’t cry. Couldn’t. He didn’t deserve to cry. The physical pain was nothing and he’s been through every imaginable emotional torture already.

His chest felt hollow. The warmth that had been building there since that first meeting with Rumi on the roof was gone. Leaving only an icy hole where a human’s heart would be. She’d given him his soul back and then he’d given it to her. 

He stared at the ceiling of his cell and pictured her face. Every moment. How she’d looked at him that first time on the street, then after he ran into her and brushed her off, in the crowd at the street performance, at the game show set, the bathhouse, the roof, at the weekly award show. Then the fan signing, the day before the idol awards, when she asked for his help and they sang together. Their duet. That had been when the warmth in his chest came back to him in full. 

He’d been able to tell she genuinely meant it. She wanted to save him too. He’d let himself foolishly believe for just a moment, before he’d been violently reminded that he had no choice but to finish the plan he'd spent a decade on and put everything on the line for.

The glance at the idol awards. Under the stage after he betrayed her. In his last moments. 

He raised his hands above his head. His skin was back to its demonic shade with his patterns on full display. His fingers like claws.

The bracelet was still on his wrist. He’d almost not worn it. Shame eating at him everytime he looked at it but Derpy had insisted. 

Derpy and Sussie. The tiger and magpie spirits that attached themselves to his side at the same time he started approaching the others to recruit them. They refused to leave him alone despite his best efforts. He’d given in after a while and accepted them as his pets and companions even if it made no sense for a guardian spirit and messenger spirit of good news to give him the time of day. He’d grown attached. Making Derpy a tiny hat had been a joke at first when the tiger was playing with Jinu’s hat one day during practice. Then Sussie stole it and refused to give it back. 

He hadn’t seen any sign of them since right before the concert started. He had no idea where they were. Hopefully with Rumi. He didn’t know if Gwi-ma could affect the spirits and didn’t want to subject the fuzzball and birdbrain he’d grown so reluctantly fond of to that fate.

The spirits had grown so fond of Rumi in their time together. Neither could talk but they clearly conveyed their mixed opinion about his plan and Rumi. They'd go hang out with her almost daily for hours at a time. He wasn't even sure if stealing the lyric sheet for ‘Takedown’ had been on purpose to help his plan or if Derpy just wanted him to know what she'd been up to. Him taking it and twisting it had gotten him stared at by Sussie in that unnerving way the bird did with all six eyes trained on him.

Mys always laughed at him when Sussie decided to be a pain in the ass. Abe had been the one to name the two spirits when he learned Jinu hadn't. Babs would cuddle with Derpy when he thought no one would notice. Roma had been scared of birds in life so he and Sussie had a rivalry that Jinu couldn't understand no matter how many times Roma tried to explain it. 

He should have listened to them more. They'd had doubts after getting access to the human world again to refresh their human interaction skills as Jinu started setting up the backing infrastructure for their debut a few months before the plan started. He'd snapped at them once that they didn't understand what it was like to have spent 400 years with the memories of all his sins. They'd gone quiet then, and he'd hated himself for it. 

He hadn't let himself get close to them, not like they were with each other, but some things couldn't be avoided when you spent every single day together for almost two years. His days had been filled with the presence of others and while it hadn't done anything for his centuries of suffering, it'd felt nice at the time.

 He should have found some other way. When they started to have second thoughts. When he had them himself. When he realized Rumi had wormed her way into the cracks of his being in such a short time and pulled his soul back together. 

He'd had a dozen contingencies and spells and options he could have picked. He had plans, songs, and choreography ready for up to a year if needed. He'd been prepared for a drawn out war, wrestling enough control away from Huntrix bit by bit until they crumbled under the stress. To create enough dissonance to keep them from turning the honmoon golden while the Saja Boys fan base grew.

But in the end all it took was ‘Soda Pop’, three teaser clips for planned future songs, and seventeen days. That was all it took to snare the humans after he found out Rumi's secret and was able to exploit it. Tying their presence and debut so closely to Huntrix in the beginning hadn't been the plan but he'd taken the opportunity when they showed up at the game show set and it had catapulted Saja Boys to the top instantly.

The guys had been somber before the final concert but Abe had still joked about all the songs and choreography they'd learned for no reason. Babs had snorted and mocked that Abe just wanted his glory moment with the planned solo songs album. Roma chimed in that he hadn't even gotten to start the secret girlfriend drama/scandal plan and Mys had made that face they all knew was there even if they couldn't see it that said he thought they were being idiots. 

“What?” Roma had asked defensively.

Mys just drawled out, “Because everyone would have believed you had a girlfriend who wasn't Mira with the way you kept staring at her and mentioned her, completely unprompted, during that interview.”

Roma had sputtered which made Abe laugh and pull his partner to his side. “You're one to point fingers Mys. At least we didn't go feral at a fan because they were staring at her for too long.”

Mys had paused before shrugging. “I have no regrets.”

Babs had chimed in, “You're all losers and idiots for getting charmed by the hunters in the first place. They literally tried to kill us multiple times.”

That had sparked a debate between the four on how attractive they had found the girls and why them being able to kick their asses was a plus not a negative. It was a stupid debate that he'd cut off with a snap as he tried to keep his rolling emotions under control. His betrayal of Rumi and that look on her face under the stage fresh in his mind.

Jinu should have listened to them. They were his team and his friends. Should have realized they weren't being random with what they were talking about. That they'd been trying to signal they would have supported him if he'd just told them. They followed his lead over Gwi-ma every day. He'd literally taught them how to act like zombies so they wouldn't catch Gwi-ma’s attention without Jinu there to act as a buffer and shield. If he was following Gwi-ma’s orders, so did they. If he'd rebelled sooner they would have too.

Now he didn't even know if they were still alive and his choices would haunt him for eternity.

“You’re a sorry sight.”

Jinu froze. Who said that?

He slowly lowered his hands and pressed against the floor to lift himself up enough to look through the bars of his cell. 

He couldn’t see much in the light of the single torch flickering on the wall but it was enough to make out another set of bars across from him and a pair of golden eyes watching him from the other cell he hadn’t known was there.

“It’s not often that Gwi-ma decides to keep someone alive as punishment. That’s usually reserved for those that piss him off in a completely different way than the normal failings.”

Jinu just stared. The voice was deep and smooth but had an edge of disuse. The voice itched at the base of his skull and in his gums behind his fangs.

“Nothing to say? You jeoseung saja are usually a talkative bunch.”

Jinu blinked. What in all of the sixteen hells was happening? He was supposed to be wallowing in his misery and future eternal suffering. Not being interrogated by some demon he had no idea existed before now. A demon that had apparently pissed Gwi-ma off enough to be imprisoned here instead of killed.

“Though I suppose your brain might be a bit scrambled from the beating you took.” The voice mused and then snorted. “Nothing against you kid, I just haven’t had a chance to talk to anyone in about twenty-five years. Probably made me a bit insensitive and pushy.”

Had this demon just called him a kid? He was over four-hundred years old. He had been twenty-six before becoming a full demon also. He hadn’t been a kid in a long long time. He’d literally just orchestrated and executed the most successful attempt to gain control of the human world and resistance against the hunters since the honmoon was formed. His plan had only failed because he had sabotaged it in the final moments because he’s fallen for a hunter like an absolute fool.

A heartbroken idiotic fool who was reduced to a shell of himself and trapped in a cell with someone who was probably the only other demon in history to piss Gwi-ma off enough to be imprisoned instead of killed.

“How about I make it easy? Start simple. What’s your name? So I can stop calling you ‘the jeoseung saja’ in my head.” The voice said lightly.

Jinu swallowed. His throat still felt like he’d swallowed shards of glass but he managed to get some sound out of it. “Jinu.” He had barely any volume but the other heard him.

“Jinu, eh? Good name.” The eyes stepped closer to the bars of the cell. A tall figure formed out of the shadows and Jinu watched as a smile full of sharp fangs revealed itself in the flickering torchlight. 

“I’m Yeomra.”

Chapter Text

It feels like a spike is being driven through his temple as Yeomra tries to keep speaking after introducing himself. The pain drops Jinu back to the ground with a sharp cry. It feels like Gwi-ma’s fire searing through his brain as his worst memories, now including Rumi’s face when he betrayed her, play at their loudest and most emotional. The cries of his little sister as he lets go of her hand at the palace gates reverberating through his entire being.

He can only curl up and suffer through it till the initial wave of agony passes. He heaves in as much air as he can and presses his forehead to the cold stone that offers no relief besides a weary draining of strength from his aching and abused body.

“Oh, he really hates you.” Yeomra says, stunned.

Jinu can only groan and glare at the fleck of yellow eyes at the corner of his vision. 

“What did you even do? I’ve never seen him use his powers this directly on someone besides me before.” 

Jinu groaned again and tried to turn away to ignore the demon who decidedly talked too much. 

“Ah, right. People in pain don’t like talking. Of course. I’ll leave you be for a while.”

Jinu heard footsteps and the soft sound of fabric against stone before silence. He focused on his breathing. He’d survived 400 years of the pain of his memories, but this was a new level of cruelty he wasn’t used to. He’d just have to get used to it again. 

He was completely stripped of his powers and now had Gwi-ma’s full attention. He could use magic to create a barrier against Gwi-ma watching him and had taught it to the other Saja Boys also. But the barrier only kept Gwi-ma from picking up on passive thoughts and feelings. If Gwi-ma was looking for them, he’d find them immediately and sense the barrier which would just make him angrier. 

Which meant that even if he could use his magic, Gwi-ma would notice and punish him further for defying him again. His entire strategy and past musings about how to defeat and dethrone Gwi-ma had only been allowed and gone undetected because he kept himself low profile and outwardly completely loyal to Gwi-ma. He faded in and out of Gwi-ma’s court as it pleased him because everytime he showed up he brought results and in exchange he’d gained Gwi-ma’s favor and learned magic right from the king's hand that he’d used against him in his small moments of rebellious thought.

Until he finally couldn’t take it anymore and came up with a plan to put an end to it once and for all and put himself right in the spotlight. Where every action he made was being observed by Gwi-ma and watched by thousands of other demons. 

He was a self serving bastard who should have just thrown himself on a hunter's blade centuries ago. But he’d been too scared of what would come after for him. Angry too at times. Wanting revenge and scheming and ruining others lives. 

He didn’t have confirmation but he was 95% certain that the only reason Gwi-ma offered deals to Mys, Abe, Babs, and Roma was because Jinu made himself seem so appealing as an underling. He’d spent so much time in the human world while studying the kpop idol industry that in turn he’d brought in so many more souls for Gwi-ma as a cover story.

He’d unintentionally reinforced the idea that entertainers were the best way to collect souls during his research phase. Before he’d even had a solid idea of his plan he’d already laid the foundation. And ruined his friends' lives before they'd ever met because of it. Gwi-ma didn’t offer every desperate human a deal. You had to have something that made you seem valuable to him. Jinu hadn’t been the only entertainer, but he’d been the only vocalist in his four-hundred years in Gwi-ma’s court. 

A decade ago, if someone had asked him, he would have even said that Gwi-ma had said something about disliking singers and calling them untrustworthy.

But then Gwi-ma brought in four idols in under six years after Jinu spent every other month in the human world for two years. 

Jinu had found out about Mys as soon as he was dragged to the underworld and when he learned about the others, he’d tracked their lives in the human world so he was ready when Abe was dragged down, then Babs, then Roma. New jeoseung saja that would become his friends who may have found a solution to their struggles other than a deal with Gwi-ma if given the chance.

His friends who had been so angry at Gwi-ma’s twist of their deals and their enslavement to him. Who had snapped at Jinu and resisted when he first approached them with his far fetched idea. After four hundred years it had felt like everything had gone so fast yet those years were the best ones of his cursed existence. Jinu had researched for two years, planned for a year, found Mys and recruited him after over a year of trying, Abe a year and a half after Mys, Babs a year later, and finally Roma a year and a half after that. 

Mys, who rejected Jinu’s offer the longest since he had no proof of his insane idea, but once Jinu won him over, helped him revamp some of his ideas and plans since he had more modern knowledge of the small details of human life. He was trained in classical music but always wanted to do something more modern but didn’t know how. Gwi-ma had offered him freedom from his family who controlled everything he did with his music. Mys had told Jinu that he wasn’t sure who he was as a person anymore. He didn’t fit the mold he was raised in but he wasn’t some crazy rebel either. He was just himself. Jinu had told Mys he could work with that.

They’d worked together to figure out what Mys liked on his own without other influence. He’d been forced to do public speaking and how to hold polite high society conversation his whole life and had always hated it. So now he got to be the quiet and unbothered one who ignored the others. Mys ignoring others was what had given Jinu the idea to have them act as zombies to fly under Gwi-ma’s radar. He had Mys follow him around completely silent and like he was mindless. While Jinu talked and engaged with them, Mys was able to observe and get a deeper read on the demons and humans they talked to. He didn’t bring the others in front of Gwi-ma all together until the reveal but they’d trail after him one at a time when he made his appearances in Gwi-ma’s court. Gwi-ma hadn’t even noticed that he had collected all four of them until then. 

Abe, who called him crazy and pushed him away and only gave him a second chance because the yet unnamed Derpy decided to be a menace and bring Sussie along to follow Abe around until Abe came up to him to tell him off for having his weird pets spy on him. When Jinu had said he hadn’t told them to do anything, they were just like that, Abe had snorted and after their casual conversation revealed that neither the tiger or bird were named yet, Abe called him hopeless and said he would join. 

Abe had struggled with his body image and an eating disorder caused by his management when after finishing his two years of service, he’d come back with muscles that didn’t fit his debut persona anymore and his management had tried to “fix” him. He’d been passed out from hunger when Gwi-ma offered him the strength and control he so wanted. Jinu had promised that Abe could be whoever he wanted to be and he would make whatever that was work. Abe helped him and Mys create more ideas for their gimmicks and how to embrace those tropes completely. He’s the one who suggested Mys grow out his hair to cover his eyes after noticing Mys hated looking people in the eye. He also came up with them having trope stage names.

Then Huntrix debuted a few months later and they were suddenly in a race to get something functional together. Huntrix took the whole world by storm and they didn’t know if they’d have to try and debut their idea for a demon boy band before they felt ready. The hunters strategically hit the kpop world with their debut with free virtual concerts, becoming the new kpop light of the pandemic world and had world wide fans overnight and won their first Idol Awards less than two months later and started doing in person shows as soon as possible.

Without warning, passing through the honmoon undetected became way harder. It took all his magical knowledge and carefully gathering information of when Huntrix would be traveling for Jinu to be able to slip into the human world still and not end up with a blade through his chest. He’d had to teach the others how to use the type of magic he did too so they could help him get them all through safely. Jinu hadn’t been able to figure out what it was that was so different about this generation of hunters compared to the previous one. The honmoon had been more like a net than a blanket for almost two decades before suddenly tightening.

Huntrix’s rise was bad news for the demons, but it was also bad news for other kpop idols. Artists who had been struggling to hold smaller audiences lost them to the craze of Huntrix. Babs and Roma had been directly impacted by Huntrix’s rise but in different ways that led them to making deals with Gwi-ma.

Babs had been fighting the restrictions of his group who didn’t let him express himself in any way that would damage his cute and innocent reputation that had started when he was just sixteen. They went as far as making him sing in a higher pitch when his voice started to deepen naturally as he got older. Babs’ manager had belittled their group for being shown up by Huntrix. The manager had been horribly sexist and an idiot according to Babs, but his words had still stung at the time when Babs and his group had been putting up with so much already and had been since they were children. Gwi-ma had offered Babs the opportunity to make a name for himself with his real skills.

Babs had only one condition to join Jinu’s plan and that was that he got the final say in whatever he did or didn’t do and Jinu had agreed. Babs’ talent for rapping and his voice being the deepest of all of them, was what prompted Jinu to create the Baby Saja persona for him because if there was one thing Babs was, it was a snarky asshole who loved the looks on peoples faces when his voice didn’t match his face. Babs had been skeptical of feeding into that gimmick at first, but once he realized how far he could take it he was all for it. A direct spit in the face to his past group and managers.

Babs age and whether he was actually the youngest or not was their little inside joke. He was born a month before Roma, but became a demon and thus stopped aging a year and a half before Roma did but also had more experience than Roma as an idol and a demon at the same time. He definitely looked the youngest so he agreed to be the youngest in public but made them swear to never treat him like it when it was just them.

Roma, who had been used as the drama magnet for his management company and had his name absolutely destroyed by the media circus for doing normal human things anywhere someone else could see. He’d playfully flirted at a music festival with one of Huntrix’s sound guys during sound check and another member of the stage crew had broken their NDA to film and post a video of the incident. He’d been shamed and torn to pieces for it. He’d tried to fight back and was dropped by his company for it and his family had been found and publicly shamed for “having a son like him” as well. Gwi-ma had offered him a way to express himself without restraint. Roma had been filled with spite and a desire to prove something when Jinu had asked him about what his stage persona would be. Roma had made his persona all on his own and was firm in it despite the rest of their concerns. 

He just looked at them and spoke slowly but firmly. “I am more than the reputation they forced on me. I will not be shamed any further for being who I am. It’s not just me who’s doing it. You all are too. Each of us has chosen to become a direct parody and mockery of the things we were shamed for.”

Roma pointed as he talked, “Mys was controlled and puppeted as a mouthpiece for others. Now he’s the enigma and silent unknown who could do absolutely anything without reason. Abe was forced to starve himself till he passed out because of arbitrary beauty standards. Now he’s playing into the complete opposite target group and flipping off that unhealthy diet culture. Babs was forced to stay sixteen and innocent for years, never allowed to grow up and figure out who he was for himself. Now he gets to twist and spite that exact image however he wants with lyrics that would make the old aunties faint.”

Roma looked up at Jinu and his resolve was crystal clear. “While I may no longer be human, the most human thing in the world is to love. I wasn’t ever allowed to have that in life. And sure, it won’t be real as my stage persona, but it’s real enough to me. And trust me,” he snorted, “You need me to balance the others out. Mys has the weirdos, Abe has the foreigners, Babs has the rebels, and you have the classics. My role is to draw all the super parasocial girls by faking that it’s them I’m looking at in all the fancams. Make cryptic comments about ‘her’ and that I couldn’t possibly reveal who it is but she knows that she has my heart.” He said the last part in a sickly sweet tone that made Jinu shudder a little.

“If you’re sure.” Was all he could say to that.

“I am. So call me Romance and you have a deal Jinu.” They’d shook on it and Jinu had started organizing their practice and songs that day. 

That was the day they’d become a complete team and started to actually feel like they could make his crazy selfish plan a reality. He’d made it known his personal goals for this plan and they’d agreed out of the benefit to themselves. It let them realize their own goals and desires to be idols and make an impact in the human world. It would also grow their own strength and reputation in the underworld if the plan succeeded. 

He'd plotted and orchestrated everything for his own gain. They’d trusted him with their insecurities and desires and he’d betrayed that trust. Hadn’t let himself get close enough to them to open up to them. Had listened to their stories and watched their human lives and knew exactly what to offer them to have them agree with his plan. He’d used them and manipulated them.

He'd built up a grand lie that all came crashing down around him because he'd barricaded his heart under the excuse that because he was a demon he could have no good desires. That all he could be was selfish and cruel. He’d held himself to a standard that he didn't even hold the other Saja Boys too. He let them have their indulgences and soft moments with each other while telling himself again and again that he couldn't have that. For years he held himself at knifepoint. 

And then he’d practically tripped and fell into Rumi’s circle of influence. He’d meant to taunt her and use her for his own goals and without realizing it he’d actually grown attached and fond of her. Conflicting with everything he'd been telling himself for years. The shields he used against the guys were paper with Rumi.

The guys hadn’t said anything, didn’t tease him like they teased each other over Mira and Zoey. Roma had a soft spot for Mira from his life when she had called out how he was being treated unfairly during his scandal but even that hadn’t been enough to save him in the eyes of the fans. Abby admired Mira’s no nonsense attitude and ability to stand up for what she believed in. She’d openly sponsored multiple charities that helped with eating disorders. Mys had been enamored with Zoey since learning she wrote most of Huntrix’s songs. Babs thought Zoey’s rapping skills were good but that was it. He thought the other three were crazy for entertaining anything more than that and had reminded them multiple times the girls would sooner kill them than smile at them if they knew they were demons. Jinu had agreed with Babs before.

When he revealed Rumi being part demon and had a chance to talk with them after, they’d been confused how it was even possible. He’d gone to meet with her on the roof and when he’d come back noticeably off, they’d looked at him but hadn’t said anything. When they planned to crash the fansign event. They’d discussed which Huntrix girl they’d target. It hadn’t even been a discussion for Jinu to be the only one interacting with Rumi. They’d seen how off-kilter he was once again and just shared looks that he’d ignored. 

Roma hadn’t even said anything, just handed him a clean outfit to wear to meet up with her after he got the “save the date” note. Which, if Roma had said something, he would have realized that the modern phrasing of “date” had shifted. He’d had to quickly switch tracks when she revealed his misunderstanding. He hadn’t been opposed to the idea, just hadn’t had the most honest intentions about it. He’d still been planning to use her in his plan before then.

Babs had commented on the bracelet he had been fidgeting with when he got back and he’d stuffed it in his pocket and changed the subject despite the looks they’d shared behind his back that he ignored again. He’d pulled it back out later when he was waiting for her that night. He’d thrown it away from him after he was done in Gwi-ma’s audience, determined to forget everything about Rumi. 

Then that night when they were getting ready for Namsen tower, Roma had handed him a box without a word. Inside was a single earring with a dangling star charm. He'd looked up at Roma questioningly but the demon had already moved to helping Abe untangle his gat's bead string. He knew what the star charm meant. He'd stared at a picture of it enough times when crafting the glamour for the two demons who would attack Rumi during the idol awards. Rumi wore a star charm right at her throat.

He'd put the earring on robotically and organized the guys for the start of the concert. Then Derpy had brought the bracelet to him and insisted he wear it.

His mind was a loop of misery. He was repeating the same sentiments and self pity and loathing again and again. 

This was his punishment. To forever suffer. This was why Gwi-ma kept him alive. Because he knew that Jinu feared his own memories more than death. 

“Jinu?” 

He huffed and tried to tuck his head further into his chest and bury his face under his arms.

Yeomra made a frustrated sigh. “Kid, you gotta break the loop. That’s how Gwi-ma maintains his power. He literally manipulates your mind and memories to make them worse and then feeds off of your misery. The more you give in to it the stronger his hold on you gets. If you don’t snap out of it now, not only will those memories be completely twisted and corrupted, you’ll be drained to a husk in only a few days.”

Good. He deserved that much and worse.

“Cut that out! Quit digging yourself deeper into the self loathing pit. Literally any other emotion than shame. Get angry, get annoyed.”

He was annoyed. At Yeomra.

“That works!” Yeomra cheered.

How the fuck did Yeomra know that? Was he reading Jinu’s mind?

“Offended and wary curiosity? Oh, right! Emotion sensing isn’t a universal power. I am not reading your mind, just your emotions. And you are an absolute pile of misery right now. Which is not good.”

What the fuck was wrong with this demon? Jinu had met a lot of interesting characters in his time in the underworld but this one was a whole different kind of weird. What had he said? He’s been imprisoned here for twenty-five years?

“Listen, just sit up and you don’t have to talk but you can’t keep wallowing like this.” Yeomra’s voice held what almost seemed like genuine concern. 

Jinu sighed. Fine. He pushed himself up and pulled a knee up to lean against. He didn't know how long he'd been here. Already time had lost all meaning to him. 

Yeomra smiled, his fangs not holding any malice that Jinu could see. “There, that’s not so bad is it?”

Jinu glared but Yeomra just chuckled. The sound seemed strange to Jinu’s ears. A sound of any sort of positive emotion had no place here. 

Yeomra stepped right up to his bars and Jinu could make out his whole face. It was a handsome face. Strong features with dark hair and bright golden eyes. Yeomra’s patterns were strange though. Instead of the normal dark purple shades, his were metallic. Shades of dulled bronze, copper, and gold. Jinu got the strange impression that the marks should be glowing for some reason even though he had no idea where that thought came from.

Yeomra smiled at him, showing off his fangs once again. “You have to focus on the good parts of the memories and just that. The moment itself, not how it fits into the larger web that gives Gwi-ma a chance to twist what you're feeling.”

The good parts? That seemed impossible.

“Jinu, work with me here. I can't help you if you don't want to help yourself. I can only talk so much if you don't believe me. Whatever it is that led to you in this cell, it's Gwi-ma’s fault, not yours. That may seem impossible to believe but that's how he works. He works his way into your ear until he's twisted every thought to his whims without you realizing it. He completely rewrites your memories one by one until you hate yourself and can never imagine a life outside of serving him as punishment for what you did.”

Jinu shook his head. He’d had a choice and he’d not taken it earlier. He’d had so many chances to fight back and done nothing. Too scared and selfish to put himself at risk.

“Gwi-ma is the king, Jinu. He pressures and forces people into deals and compliance. Whatever rebellion slips past him is a feat of wonder itself. I held out for almost five-hundred years before he caught me. And that was only because I let myself get complacent and made a mistake. So I know how hard it is to trick Gwi-ma.”

Jinu looked up. Yeomra was looking at him intensely. “Be as brutally honest with yourself as you can be right now. Do you regret fighting back against Gwi-ma? Whatever you risked it for, it was worth it, wasn’t it?”

Rumi. Saving her from the blast and giving her a chance to stop Gwi-ma and seal him back in the underworld. The hope of something better even if he would never see it himself. That Mys, Abe, Babs, and Roma would maybe get to stay on the human side of the honmoon and realize their dreams as idols even without him if Gwi-ma was gone. That the fans he’d so callously planned to sacrifice for his own selfishness would get to live.

“Yes.” His voice still ached but he said it. 

“Okay. Remember that. Hold onto it and repeat it like a mantra. Why you did it and that it was worth it.” Yeomra pressed and Jinu nodded.

“Good. I’ve made it twenty-five years with that method so it should hold you over for now.”

Jinu didn’t even mean to, but his curiosity was apparent enough for Yeomra to sense it.

“My reason? My lover and our daughter. They were in danger and I broke my cover to protect them and Gwi-ma caught me afterwards and realized I’d been tricking him for centuries. Everything I worked for to oppose him and protect the demons and humans from each other was put in jeopardy but for them it was worth it. I’ve been imprisoned here ever since, doomed to rot until I’m forgotten and fade away. But I’ve resisted and am still here.”

Yeomra smiled softly and ran a hand over his hair. “They’re waiting for me when I get out of here.” He looked up and pinned Jinu with his gaze. “And I think you might be able to help me with just that.”

Chapter Text

Rumi played with Derpy’s paw pads, flexing his claws in and out. Derpy just lolled his tongue and rolled to give her access to scratch his belly. She smiled and gave the spirit tiger all the affection he demanded. 

Derpy and Sussie were all she had left of Jinu besides her sword and the notes. They’d shown up outside the concert venue and Rumi had to quickly explain their existence to Mira and Zoey, but the spirit animals had been accepted into their penthouse easily enough. Derpy’s derpiness had won Zoey over right away and Mira bonded with Sussie at their antics. Both loved both animals though.

The only reason Rumi knew their names was from an interview the Saja Boys had done after the first weekly song awards. They’d been asked if they had pets and had claimed Derpy as a normal pet cat and that Sussie was a random magpie that had grown attached to them and followed them around somehow. Mira had laughed herself silly when she learned that Romance was scared of birds and had a rivalry with the magpie because of it. Learning Abby had been the one to name them left her cackling. Zoey had said it was kind of cute. But at the time nothing the boys did was allowed to be interpreted as anything but acts of evil.

They'd watched the interview when it first aired but Rumi had just acknowledged its existence and focussed on trying to write ‘Takedown’. She'd asked the tiger and bird about the names later that night. Derpy had perked up at his name and Sussie had rolled his many eyes. There were times when Rumi was vividly reminded that Sussie was in fact a spirit with at least moderate intelligence and it had freaked her out at first, but she'd gotten used to it.

She’d watched every clip and interview she could find of the Saja Boys since the fight against Gwi-ma. She didn’t know what name to give the feeling in her chest every time she saw Jinu smile and laugh in the interviews. The way he interacted with the other Saja Boys and the casual gestures between them. Like they’d been an actual group and friends behind the scheme to take over the world.

Somehow they learned more about the Saja Boys afterwards than they did during the two weeks of trying to monitor their every move to protect the fans. They'd been blinded by their assumptions and what they thought they knew about demons. They hadn't even considered what the Saja Boys were doing between their encounters. So caught up in their own world and problems, focussed on what they'd been taught instead of what was infront of them.

They hadn't realized, but the boys had been extremely active on social media during their two weeks of fame. Romance posted daily outfit videos of not only himself but the rest of the group and handled all their merchandise promotion. Abby showed teasers for choreography for unreleased songs and dance practice variations for Soda Pop and videos of himself in the gym. Baby reviewed hole in the wall restaurants he found and ate at, and posted pictures and videos of the animals he found on his way to said restaurants. Mystery posted completely random and out of context clips of conversations the boys had and things they did in their studio and living area and videos of his plant collection. Jinu posted lyric teasers and sound snippets of songs with him showing off that he was mixing and editing the songs himself.

She also realized that the Saja Boys social media accounts had posts older than just their two week rise to fame. The oldest post was on Mystery's account from about six months ago which was a short sound bite of Romance shouting, “Get away from my salad you feathered menace!” and the sound of Sussie cawing and Abby laughing in the background.

The posts on the accounts were scattered and infrequent before their debut, but what was there clearly showed that the Saja Boys had lived in the human world long before their debut. It had dumbfounded the girls. How had they escaped their notice for so long? And what had they been doing that whole time? 

According to one of Baby's posts from three months ago, doing things like having a ramen eating contest where Mystery put them all to shame without flinching and a cryptic smile. Baby had sounded stunned when he asked, “How?” and Mystery just shrugged and didn't say anything.

In one of Romance's posts, the other four had all dressed up in suits and sunglasses to pretend to be Jinu’s bodyguards for a day for no apparent reason. The pictures also came with a video of them quoting an American meme, “Get down, Mr. President!” and Abby full force tackling Jinu to the ground out of nowhere. Jinu apparently started cussing them out but it was bleeped out and the video cut off to show the message, “We're not allowed to tackle each other anymore unless it's an actual emergency.” And in much smaller letters “(Jinu’s ankle was sprained, oops)”.

Abby had a compilation of clips of each of the boys trying to teach a dance move set to the others and the various failures. Baby could breakdance, Romance held extreme ballet positions, Abby knew how to do American line dances, Mystery could waltz, and Jinu knew ancient traditional court dances.

Jinu had posted a few weeks before the street debut about securing the production contract for their merchandise. Which had answered the question Rumi hadn't even known she had about where all the Saja Boys merchandise had come from so quickly.

Each past post had been flooded with comments and reactions after their debut. People despairing over not knowing about Saja Boys sooner and loving every scrap of information they got about the overnight sensations.

Following the rabbit hole of Saja Boys online also brought Rumi to the theory posts. People wondering who the Saja Boys were outside of the stage names and personas. The theories were wild. So many posts about comparing one Saja Boy to a random trainee of the past who faded from media attention. There were hundreds of disclaimers posted by said trainees that no, they weren't the sudden superstars. There were even theories that brought up idols who'd disappeared or even died in the past. 

Those theories were very harshly trashed and their creators attacked for the callous way some of them spoke about the people they were claiming the Saja Boys were. Rumi knew from Jinu that humans could absolutely become demons, but she still found it very off putting that other people had made those theories without that knowledge. She'd refused to read those full speculations. It was disrespectful even if their theories were somehow correct about the humans the Saja Boys used to be, especially since they didn’t know how old the other Saja Boys were if Jinu had been four-hundred but look like he was their age. 

She and the girls had their hands full with their own social media in the fallout of the Idol Awards. Finding Bobby in the aftermath crowd and getting him caught up to speed, revealing the truth about demons to him finally after five years, had taken the rest of the night. But by morning Bobby had pulled together an elaborate marketing campaign and scheme that framed everything as a stunt to reveal Rumi's patterns. They were saying the patterns were caused by a skin condition that Rumi had decided to finally embrace and be proud of as part of her new charity and social initiative focused on adaptive beauty and inclusion. 

All four of them had their hands full getting things organized and countering the skeptics who didn’t want to believe their so expertly crafted cover story. Bobby and Rumi got the charity set up and running in only a three days and Bobby had the girls on interview couches every day talking about the fabricated behind the scenes work they'd been doing to pull it all off and how things had admittedly gotten out of their control and had a negative impact on their fans.

They'd also covered for the Saja Boys absence by saying that the boys had never expected that level of sudden success when they partnered with Huntrix for this stunt. And with how things had gotten out of control, they had become overwhelmed after the Idol Awards and decided to take a step back for a while to make sure their content could still meet their fans' high expectations.

When questioned if everything about the Saja Boys had been scripted and if that meant they were just industry plants, the girls hesitated for a moment before Rumi took the lead. 

“No. Our backing of Saja Boys was purely financial in exchange for their help with the reveal stunt. They were in complete creative control of everything else, their songs, choreo, and productions were all their own. Where things got out of control was how quickly everything escalated. We could have never predicted how much everyone loved the Saja Boys and them going viral overnight was completely accidental. We had planned to support them through a longer debut phase, but when they were nominated for the Idol Awards we all got hasty and that led to the miscommunication and mistakes that happened at the show.”

Mira and Zoey grabbed her hands with reassuring smiles. Zoey spoke next. “When we moved the timeline up, everything started to feel rushed and pressured. When it came to the performance we had been disagreeing on whether it was the right time or not. Rumi was so nervous about it and got last minute nerves and wanted to call it all off and only perform Golden.”

“We reassured her that everything would be okay and would work out,” Mira added, “but when the time came and music switched Rumi started to panic again. Zoey and I didn’t realize she wasn't just acting scared until after she fled from the stage.”

Mira sniffled and cleared her throat but couldn't go on, suddenly tearing up. Zoey and Rumi wrapped her in a hug. The interview host gasped and offered tissues. 

“It's okay Mira, it was an accident. I already forgave you and it all worked out in the end.” Rumi soothed Mira who blew her nose as Zoey started to tear up also.

“Mira, you gotta stop crying or I'll start crying and then you know Rumi will start crying and then we'll never stop!”

Mira laughed wetly but took a deep breath before continuing. “So yeah. By the time we found Rumi and got her calmed down, the Idol Awards had already been canceled and the crowds had left so we had to jump on what was supposed to have been a surprise concert by both us and Saja Boys together, and have them twist the announcement and the show lineup. It all worked out in the end but we feel so bad for the confusion and hurt we caused all of our fans during it all. We offered to handle all the press for the Saja Boys about this since it was our fault in the first place.”

Zoey nodded. “And an extra apology to the fans watching the awards show from home who weren't able to see the concert broadcast and were left in the dark about what was happening. There was a malfunction in the broadcasting booth at the concert and the recording and live feed were both lost.”

Rumi smiled at the host. “To make up for it, our new single ‘What it Sounds Like’ will be released in full next week with all proceeds going directly to our charity foundation.” The audience cheered. “Thank you all again for your support of us in everything we've done and will hopefully continue to do in the future! Please, visit our website to find out all about our new charity and the others as well!”

They'd said their goodbyes to the audience and the host and exited the stage directly into Bobby's arms who hugged them all and told them that they'd done amazing. 

Once the press was handled and they had the music video and a studio recording for “What is Sounds Like” ready to go, Bobby mandated they all take an actual vacation and wouldn't hear anything otherwise. He allowed them to do minor fan interactions, like in the street after they finally went to the bathhouse together, but nothing official. They’d tried to say they were feeling good and wanted to keep going but he'd put his foot down. Something he did not do often.

Bobby had two things he refused to budge on. And that was their physical and mental health. If they were even slightly sick he would move heaven and earth to get them the time needed to rest and recover. Once they'd had to stop him from trying to reschedule an entire concert because Mira had sprained her wrist. Mira had been otherwise perfectly fine and just needed to wear a brace and slightly modify her choreography.

When Zoey had gotten nostalgic and homesick during their first American tour, Bobby had found the time in their schedule for her to get a whole day to visit her hometown and family who Bobby also made sure got free front row VIP tickets to the LA concerts and a hotel suite right next to theirs for the night so Zoey could spend as much time as possible with them. Ever since then he'd worked in a full week of family time each time they'd gone back to America. Zoey's parents would come visit her in Korea twice a year but that was the only time Zoey was able to see her other extended family outside of video calls.

Bobby had been a bit hurt about them keeping it a secret, but when they explained that once you knew about the other side of the world, the other side knew about you too, and that it broke the veil in your mind allowing you to see the supernatural as it was, he'd understood. He'd been startled and then delighted to meet Derpy and Sussie afterwards. Sussie would hop up and ride around on his shoulders anytime Bobby was in the penthouse and Bobby apparently gave the best chin scratches that Derpy demanded every time.

Having Bobby accept everything so easily had helped dissipate any lingering anxiety Rumi had about her patterns being out in the open now. Bobby had been with them for five years and they honestly couldn’t have made it as far as they did without him. Celine had been their manager for their debut and had hired Bobby as her assistant after they won their first International Idol Awards. Bobby had been professional from the start and far exceeded their expectations as Celine’s assistant to the point that he was five steps ahead of her at all times. It only took a month before the girls were going to Bobby first for information about their next event and any requests they had. 

The girls had been the ones to ask about Bobby becoming their full time manager and Celine had conceded when they proved how helpful Bobby had been and that he was practically doing the job already. Since then Bobby had been with them everyday since. Through singles, albums, three world tours, local concerts, countless award shows, thousands of interviews, and everything in between. From slander attacks and baseless rumors to supporting their unconventional stances and ideas they wanted to make a reality. 

They made sure to praise him regularly during their interviews and give him a shout out during shows, and as such he had his own fan base among theirs and dozens of other managers had reached out to him for advice and guidance. They knew they were lucky to have Bobby, but it had become clear exactly how lucky when three and a half years ago it came out that a manager had driven one of their idols to a mental breakdown and the idol had been forced to retire and had since disappeared. 

Bobby had been quiet for days before approaching the girls and asking them for a favor. They’d immediately agreed and worked with Bobby to help push for regulation and reform to the kpop industry so things like that would not only be harder for it to happen, but that there would be actual consequences for it. Having Huntrix’s name as a sponsor for the change had done a lot but they couldn’t catch everything. There had been countless incidents that had been covered up in the past that would never be fully revealed. 

Then there’d been another loss about two years ago that was covered up. The official report ruled it an accident, but one of his group members revealed that the idol had taken his own life because of the abuse he’d suffered at the hands of their management as the result of an overblown scandal. 

Bobby had immediately set all their resources on confirming the news and then tracking down the responsible parties for legal consequences and getting the rest of the group away from the company, blanket approving whatever was necessary to make sure they were safe. He had then wrapped the three girls in blankets and they’d watched movies together for the rest of the day. The next day they’d doubled their contributions to multiple mental health charities and to the local crisis line and to a few international ones as well. The entire kpop world had been in a shock for days before slowly moving on.  

Not telling Bobby about the demons and everything back then had been so hard. He was always so worried about them getting hurt. They’d gotten so good at covering up their scrapes from demon fights purely for that reason but the guilt ate at them regularly when they had to dash out of venues to fight demons and couldn’t give him a real explanation. 

Having it all out in the open with Mira and Zoey and Bobby relieved so much pressure from Rumi’s shoulders. It let her do things like relax in a plain tank top on the couch while cuddling with Derpy and not worry about any of them walking in on her. She still had habits she was working to break, like reaching for a sweatshirt or long sleeve everytime she dressed casual or went to work out. She didn’t have to layer her outfits anymore and could just wear a plain t-shirt if she wanted. Planning new performance outfits was also something she was looking forward to now that she could change up her tops. She still needed the full sleeves and pants for going incognito in public but that was expected regardless. 

Derpy rolled away from her with a chirp and padded over to where his water fountain was. She smiled after him and got up from the couch to stretch. It’d been two weeks since the battle with Gwi-ma and they’d been on “vacation mode” for five days now after the music video was released. Their official statement of their long delayed break had been announced the day after on a livestream they did from the penthouse. The overall response had been positive and supportive and they’d celebrated by not leaving the couch for the next twenty-four hours.

Rumi popped her head into Mira’s room and smiled when Mira looked up from her book. “Good book?”

Mira smiled back at her and bookmarked her spot before closing the book. “Yeah. The main girl just figured out how to do her super ultimate magical spell that she needs to use against the evil king and her love interest isn’t being completely useless so,” she shrugged, “I’ve read a lot worse.”

Rumi laughed. “It’s hard to be worse than that book you were reading on the first part of the tour.”

Mira made a disgusted face. “Why’d you have to remind me? I’d just started to forget about that trash.”

“You liked most of it.” Rumi pointed out.

“Correction, I tolerated it because there was a cool premise, but then the author destroyed everything they were building up to that point for a stupid trope twist that made no sense. They killed off the main character's girlfriend for no reason and then had the random guy friend side character suddenly swoop in and confess his love to her.”

Rumi made a face but then burst into laughter at the matching look on Mira’s face. “Well, if I can steal you away from your obviously superior book, I was gonna start cooking and wanted to know what you wanted me to order for dessert.”

“Oo. Not sure. You ask Zoey yet?” Mira got up from her bed.

Rumi shook her head. “Not yet, I was playing with Derpy till just now.”

Mira nodded. “Let’s see what Zoey wants and I’ll decide if I want something else from there.”

They found Zoey doing yoga in the gym. She smiled at both of them and unfolded herself.

“Hey!”

“Hey Zo, what do you want for dessert? Rumi's cooking.”

“Oo!” Zoey perked up. “Yagwa sounds really good right now!”

They shared looks and nodded. The fried honey pastry did sound good. They started chatting and migrated up to the kitchen when Rumi started to prepare her ingredients for a simple vegetable stir-fry to go with their other leftovers they needed to clean out of the fridge. Mira ordered the takeout dessert on her phone as they talked about their plans for the next day. Bobby had rebooked the fancy spa resort for them to go to and get the full package massage and treatment.

Rumi was about to start tossing stuff in the wok when Mira’s phone rang. They all stilled. That was a very specific ring-tone coming from Mira’s phone. The Sunshine Sister’s top hit opening instrumental echoed around the kitchen. 

Celine was calling. 

Chapter Text

They all stared at the phone. None of them moved. Just watching where it buzzed on the counter as the instrumental played out.

Part of telling Bobby about what happened involved telling Mira and Zoey where she'd gone between the Idol Awards and Namsen Tower. Explaining how Celine had rejected her and how Rumi had almost broken. How she'd been on the edge and when Celine broke her heart and shattered what had felt like Rumi's last shard of hope, she'd almost given in.

But she hadn't. She didn’t give in to despair and shame and they had done it. They’d remade the honmoon she'd ripped apart and it was stronger than before.

Telling Mira, Zoey, and Bobby about Celine had hurt. They'd been ready to storm the sanctuary and tell Celine off but they had bigger issues to deal with at the moment and Rumi had made them promise to not. To just leave Celine be and move on. And they had agreed that as long as Celine stayed away, they wouldn't go to her.

And for two weeks there had been nothing from the older hunter and their mentor. No notes, texts, calls, or anything. Just aching, stretching silence.

Until now.

They stared at Mira's phone for what felt like an hour but maybe only a minute or two. Then Zoey's phone started buzzing in her pocket.

Zoey's eyes went as wide as dinner plates and she slowly reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. She set it on the counter, screen up, with a soft click that felt like thunder in the tension thick air. Celine's profile picture, a selfie from their debut concert, lit up the screen.

The phone buzzed against the counter. Vibrating and taunting them.

The vibration stopped and the screen darkened.

Rumi's hand was already hovering over her pocket. Waiting. Tense as her heartbeat started to increase as her eyes flickered between Zoey and Mira's phones. Wondering if maybe Celine would call one of them again before calling Rumi directly. 

Two things happened at once.

One. Buzzing started in Rumi's pocket, accompanied by the soft chimes that used to remind Rumi of the sanctuary tree and carefree afternoons playing there.

Two. The elevator in the penthouse opened and Bobby strode out, flourishing their bag of takeout.

Rumi drew out the phone and stared in dread at the picture taken on her sixteenth birthday when Celine took her to Paris, a place her mom had always wanted to go but hadn't gotten the chance.

“Girls! I have your food!” Bobby cheered and stepped towards the kitchen before stuttering to a stop and taking in their expressions. He immediately started to frown, his arms dropping. “Wait, what's wrong?”

Rumi could only hold up her phone. “Celine called.”

Celine called. Oh gods. She wasn't ready. She wasn't. She'd told everyone. Everyone knew. Everyone saw.

Rumi was shaking. Her phone trembled in her hands. Her rising panic contrasted sharply with the whimsical wind chimes playing from her phone's speakers.

Bobby was in front of her and taking the phone from her hand. 

“Rumi, give me the phone.” 

Her fingers spasmed but released her iron grip enough for Bobby to pluck the phone from her hand. Bobby smiled at her but it didn't reach his eyes. “Thank you.”

He turned away from her and she didn't know what noise managed to escape her but there was a noise.

Bobby froze. He looked back at her and his stone mask melted. “Rumi, I'll handle this. I'm your manager, this is what I do.”

She felt a hand on her shoulder and then Mira was pulling her into a hug with Zoey crashing into her other side. She watched as Bobby stepped back but kept his eyes on her with a genuine smile until he tapped the phone and brought it up to his ear.

“Celine! How have you been?” Bobby's voice was sarcastically sickly sweet. The tone the girls only ever heard him use when dealing with ignorant idiots in public that had too much money or fame to be blunt with in front of an audience. 

Despite asking a question Bobby gave no pause for an answer before continuing.

“We need to talk.” He paused this time. They couldn't hear what Celine said but Bobby's face said enough as he frowned before speaking. “No, I will not.” Another pause. “Oh really?” Bobby leaned into his hip. “I see.”

Bobby smirked. “Though I do not see what you would need to discuss with them at this time. Considering the honmoon is currently stronger than it’s been in decades and there have been no demons sighted or sensed in two weeks.” They could read the smugness coming off of Bobby getting to reveal that he knew about demons and the honmoon and wouldn't be kept out of the loop anymore. Mira chuckled by Rumi's shoulder and Rumi could feel some of the tension bleed from her shoulders as Zoey giggled and gave Bobby a thumbs up. He smiled at them then his expression changed to outrage.

Bobby snapped. “They had every right to tell me! I should have been told years ago! About the demons and Rumi's patterns! I could have helped manage both issues and made sure the girls were getting the proper care they needed after their fights! I would have been able to advocate for Rumi during brand deals so she didn't have to coat her arms in makeup and feel terrified during every shoot that her patterns would be exposed!”

Zoey shouted, “We would have supported Rumi too if we knew! We love her!”

“Yeah! Instead we were jumped by it and reacted harshly and hurt her!” Mira shouted too.

Bobby looked at them with a melted smile that made Rumi want to squirm with how much affection and warmth the look held. Bobby looked at her and pulled the phone from his ear. He mouthed to her, Will you be okay with this?

She took a deep breath and nodded. Bobby tapped the screen and put the call on speaker. He set the phone down on the counter.

“We love Rumi and would have never, ever blamed her for something she couldn't control. She was born with her patterns the same as her hair. Which is another thing I should have been told about! I mean naturally purple hair? How cool is that?” He said that last part to Rumi, echoing what he'd said when he first found out. She smiled and laughed a little. Her hair color had always seemed like such a small part of her biology to worry over since it could be explained away as dye. She'd been answering the same repeated questions about her hair her entire life since Celine first took her to an event as a child and the press went wild over the color. Her color and pure volume of hair had baffled the press her whole life.

“You don’t understand!” Celine’s voice echoed from the phone. “The patterns-”

“Are beautiful!” Bobby cut her off. “They are a part of Rumi and that’s it! She never made a deal with Gwi-ma, had never spoken with him till Namsen Tower and even then she rejected him outright!”

Silence. “Gwi-ma made it to the human world?” Celine’s voice was whisper quiet and the girls could all hear the terror in it.

“We banished him back to the underworld and formed a new honmoon. Something that was only possible because of Jinu’s sacrifice.” Rumi’s voice shook when she started speaking but grew stronger when Mira and Zoey squeezed her arm reassuringly.

“Sacrifice?” Celine’s tone turned sharp and Rumi’s spine straightened on reflex.

“Watch your tone,” Bobby reprimanded Celine. “You do not get to question what choices the girls made.”

Rumi smiled at Bobby gratefully. “Jinu gave me his soul and it gave me enough strength to push Gwi-ma back and give us a chance to draw on the fans to-”

Celine gasped. “No!”

Rumi’s blood went cold. “What?”

“Rumi you can’t! Drawing on the fans like that is wrong! Taking a soul is wrong! That’s what demons do!”

The words were like a slap to her face. She recoiled from the phone. Mira hissed and Zoey scowled as they closed back in on Rumi to brace her and stop her from running away again. 

“Don’t listen to her Rumi.” Zoey pleaded with her. 

“Yeah, she doesn't know what she’s talking about.” Mira added on, shooting a death glare at the device on the counter like she hoped it would combust and transfer the effect to Celine. 

“No, she was very clear! Taking a human soul is something hunters have to avoid at all cost!” Celine sounded panicked now. Rumi heard the sound of ruffling as Celine dug through something and moved papers.

Bobby spoke up. “Who said that?”

They could hear Celine pause. 

Bobby looked at the girls questioningly but they didn’t know either. They’d only met the generation of hunters before Celine once, right after Celine recruited Mira and Zoey. They’d shown up to the sanctuary to perform blessings on them. All three women had been in their early sixties and showed the signs of their long fight against the demons. One of the women had stared at Rumi closely and had a very stilted conversation with her before muttering under her breath and switching back to general pleasantries and discussion of fighting styles. 

Zoey and Mira had never even met Soo-Jin, the third member of the Sunlight Sisters. Soo-Jin had gotten into a massive fight with Celine when Rumi was seven after she found out about Rumi’s patterns. That incident had been what had cemented it in Rumi’s mind that she had to hide her patterns from everyone. If her mom’s best friend would reject her then so would everyone else. Celine had told her it was for the best.

They didn’t know any other hunters. There were hunters in other countries and cultures that handled their own supernatural entities but who those hunters were or what methods they used to defend the world was a complete mystery to the Huntrix girls. They focussed on maintaining the honmoon globally since a culture's supernatural entities would be drawn to the people even if they moved away from Korea. The power of human belief and faith is what gives the supernatural their power. The same applied back to the hunters that each person who heard their songs and enjoyed them fed into the honmoon to strengthen it, creating a blanket effect that shielded them even if they weren’t part of the Korean culture and therefore targeted by Korean demons. They don't know if the honmoon was effective at suppressing other cultures’ supernatural entities or only the Korean and other Asian cultures' demons that were similar enough. 

Rumi knew only what Celine knew and that very little. Hunters had to be secretive by nature to not alarm the general population and there was no way to identify each other except by accidental encounters. There had been some sort of incident in Canada about twenty-three years ago that had apparently caused ripple effects in the honmoon but Celine had never learned exactly what had happened to strengthen the honmoon over North America so much. She’d just been relieved as the honmoon had barely been holding together over Korea at the time since Rumi’s mom had died a year and a half before.

Celine had been doing her best to hold the honmoon on her own when Rumi’s mom died. The honmoon only survived with the help of the previous generation of hunters doing a revival tour with a new album around Korea and international shows in a few other major cities with large Korean populations. Celine and Soo-Jin had continued as a duo until their fight where they split and then did solo work. The five women together were able to keep the honmoon intact when Rumi was little but it wasn’t anywhere as strong as Huntrix was able to make it within a month of their debut. When Rumi was thirteen she’d started her official idol training and Celine had entered her into a contest and the honmoon had surged during her performance. Rumi’s effect on the honmoon had been strong enough for the older trio to fully retire again.

She’d had the weight of the honmoon and protecting the worldwide population of Gwi-ma’s potential victims for almost half of her life. She turned twenty-five next month and had honestly forgotten what life was like before she had been subconsciously tethered to the honmoon feeling the resonance of it in the air constantly to sense when it fluctuated to indicate a demon was forcing their way through. Rumi knew so much about the honmoon and the hunter magics. She’d read every journal left by the previous generations and passed down. She’d read the spellbooks and guides for everything supernatural Korea had to offer. And she’d never read or heard anything that spoke of a hunter taking a human soul, only the many warnings about demons taking the souls for Gwi-ma. 

So Rumi had absolutely no idea where Celine would be getting this information from. She hadn’t even known it was possible for a hunter to take a human soul. It was something that had terrified her as a child. The fear that someday she would snap and turn evil and go on a rampage and steal the souls of the people she was around. She’d studied the chapters about how demons stole souls till she nearly wore out the pages just to make sure she would never do it by accident. 

Jinu giving her his soul hadn’t felt anything like what she had feared though. She’d felt light and strong. Wrapped in the warmth of Jinu’s essence till she channeled that power into her sword to attack Gwi-ma. 

It hadn’t felt wrong. 

“The author of the hunter manuals.” Celine said in response to Bobby, the deflection was obvious and not effective.

Rumi took a deep breath. “The books don’t say anything about hunters taking human souls. Only about demons. I’ve read and memorized all of them.”

Celine didn’t say anything but Rumi pressed as her heart tried to lodge in her throat in sudden panic. “I’ve read all of them, right? You’ve had me studying them since I learned how to read. I went through the entire library three times before I was fifteen. You wouldn’t have hidden a book about hunters from me. Not one about taking souls. You knew how scared I was about that. You knew!” Her voice had grown desperate and pleading as she braced her hands on the counter and stared at the phone with that picture of Celine staring back at her. 

“You weren’t ready for it.” Celine’s response sounded weak like she knew it wasn’t a good enough excuse. 

“Ready for what?!” Because honestly that defense was shit. Rumi had been exposed to the wide range of shit the hunters of the past had been through in both their personal journals and the condensed and summarized guides. 

“Your mother’s journal.” Celine said the words and they registered but Rumi couldn’t process them because there was no way. There was no way that Celine would have hidden her mother’s journal from her. Rumi had asked. Had cried for days when Celine told her that her mother’s journal had been lost when Rumi’s nursery was destroyed during the attack. 

Rumi was shaking. She could barely feel the grip Mira and Zoey had on her arms. Her eyes were drilling into the phone. Bobby’s hand came up and pressed against her chest. 

“Rumi, breath.”

She growled, deep in her throat and the sound felt natural, right even, when paired with the boiling rage inside of her. 

“Rumi.” Bobby’s voice was firm. The tone he had only ever used on her once before when she had started wearing full length sleeves constantly and first refused to wear a shorter sleeve. Her patterns had spread past her elbows right before their second world tour started and she had been freaked out about it and paranoid she’d be discovered. He’d approached her cautiously later that day and asked her about it. When she’d made a passing flimsy denial he had been firm and clear about what he was worried about. That she was hiding an injury from them. Specifically self harm injuries. She’d gone pale and immediately pushed her sleeves up far enough to reveal her wrists and prove that what Bobby feared wasn’t reality. 

Bobby thought she was hurting herself right now. 

She unclenched her teeth and gasped as air flooded her lungs. She coughed and Bobby’s hand shifted to her shoulder. His face came into focus and he looked like he was about to commit a murder. 

“What was that?” Celine’s voice came from the phone and Rumi snarled again. Her heart twisted and suddenly she was weightless before slamming back to reality.

Celine’s office at the sanctuary house came into focus around her. Rumi immediately zeroed in on where Celine was sitting at her desk, eyes wide and staring at Rumi like she was Gwi-ma himself. This time Rumi didn’t flinch. Didn’t care that Celine was looking at her finally but with fear instead of the love she had craved. 

Rumi’s focus was instead drawn to the journal laid open on the desk. She could see the cover and it was a dark royal purple that made Rumi yearn to know why that color specifically was picked for such an important book. She knew that was it, could feel it calling to her. 

She strode forward and Celine didn’t even move. Rumi picked up the journal carefully making sure her claws didn’t even touch the precious item. She folded it to her chest and just stared. Celine’s phone hung limply in her hand and Rumi could hear the panicked shouts coming from the other end. 

Rumi felt nothing but empty hollow pain. Her rage dissipated as soon as the book was in her hands and she felt the resonance of her mothers magic coming from its pages. A hunter's journal was a book that contained a part of their soul. Their memories and thoughts and musings about life and the magic that they wielded and weaved over the world. A hunter's journal was a physical object but it was protected just like their weapons. The object tied the closest to their magic and soul. Rumi had tucked the notes from Jinu between the pages of her journal and written down everything about their encounters just as they happened. Lying to your journal was to lie to your very soul.

Rumi didn’t even say a word. Celine knew what she had done. Had deprived Rumi of by keeping her mother’s journal from her. By actively hiding it because there is no way Rumi would have missed its existence before unless Celine kept it locked away and warded from her senses.

Rumi teleported away, going weightless before her mental image of the penthouse kitchen became reality around her. Mira, Zoey, and Bobby froze as Rumi calmly reached forward and ended the call to Celine on her phone. 

Zoey and Mira carefully stepped towards her and she didn’t react till their fingers brushed her shoulders and they bled the tension from her body again. 

“Oh wow.” Zoey said softly. “Her presence is so strong.”

Rumi nodded, a sad smile growing across her face. 

Mira slowly reached forward, eyeing Rumi for permission who nodded, and gently stroked the cover of the journal. “Her magic feels like lightning.” Rumi could see how the hair on Mira’s arm stood up. 

Rumi turned the book over to read the cover. “Ryu Mi-Yeong” was emblazoned on the royal purple cover in bright golden letters in her mother’s handwriting. She traced over the letters, her claws faded away, and felt the heavy electric presence that tugged at her own soul and called out to it. Rumi’s own journal was the same purple as her hair with her name, “Wang Ryu-mi”, in the same gold as her mothers. 

She’d seen Zoey and Mira’s journals before. Zoey’s was bright ocean blue with white-pink letters spelling “Zoey Byun” in English letters instead of Korean and Mira’s was a soft pink with spring green letters detailing “Cho Mi-Rae” in her elegant calligraphy. 

Rumi could feel the wetness on her cheeks and laughed before wiping away the tears. 

“It’s her.”

Zoey and Mira squeezed her into a hug. When they let go Bobby was watching them with that fond smile on his face. 

“Why don’t you head to the couch? I’ll clean this all up and order from the BBQ place down the street?” Bobby was already pulling out his phone to place their regular order from that restaurant.

They really didn’t deserve Bobby. He was too good for this world. Zoey cheered and started herding Rumi towards the couch. They paused though and wrapped Bobby in a hug. He laughed but hugged them back before shooing them off.

They all squished in on the couch and Rumi was about to open the journal when Derpy peaked out from behind the couch and licked Rumi’s cheek suddenly. She laughed at the surprise. She’d forgotten about Derpy in the moment, Sussie too she realized when the magpie hopped onto the table and cawed at them curiously. Rumi held up the journal for the two to see, she spoke loud enough for Bobby to be able to hear her in the kitchen. 

“This is my mother’s hunter journal. She wrote down everything she experienced since becoming a hunter. She was seventeen when she was scouted and trained to be a hunter. She was a hunter for seven years before…” Rumi swallowed. “Before she died saving me from demons who attacked our house when I was only two months old.” Rumi had been having a lot of feelings for a while about her upcoming twenty-fifth birthday and the fact she would be older than her mother ever got to be. 

Sussie hopped forward to look at the journal and tilted his head. Whether Sussie could read or not was something they had tried to test before but the results had been inconclusive because the bird was a little bastard and found their frustration hilarious. 

But whether or not he could read the name on the book didn’t matter because all six of Sussie’s eyes went wide and he cawed loudly before launching forward to land on Rumi’s wrist. She flailed but Sussie wasn’t dislodged as he swiped a wing over the journal's cover and then puffed up comically like the image of a person's hair puffing when electrocuted.

Sussie cawed again in what sounded like surprised delight and turned to look at Rumi and cawed again before doing something completely weird and unlike anything he’d done before. Sussie bowed his head to her and then flew off her wrist to land on Derpy’s head and caw at him and peck the top of the tiger’s head till Derpy mimicked Sussie and bowed towards Rumi before plopping his head into Rumi’s lap with a smile and extremely loud pur. Sussie just sighed and side eyed Derpy, something he did very often, before hopping up to Rumi’s shoulder, tucking the loose bits of hair by her ear into place with surprising gentleness before turning his focus directly on the journal and then doing nothing else, like he was waiting for her to start reading.

She stared side-eye at the bird on her shoulder. She glanced at Mira and then at Zoey. Both were looking at the bird with wide eyes, just as clueless as her. 

“... Okay then.” She turned to the journal and opened the cover to start reading her mother’s first entry, the day she was recruited.

Jinu’s weird spirit animals were being weirder than normal. That couldn’t possibly have a deeper meaning. 

Right?

Chapter Text

“This isn’t working.” Jinu rasped out. His voice was better than it was but it still felt raw and he could only use it for so long before it gave out and he had to spend hours completely silent if he wasn’t careful. 

Yeomra sighed and ran a hand over his hair before turning to pace the length of his cell. “You’re right. Whatever Gwi-ma did to your voice isn’t getting better. Any significant progress you make resets the next time Gwi-ma attacks your memories.”

Jinu flinched at the reminder. Gwi-ma had been relentless. There wasn’t a distinguishable pattern for when Gwi-ma decided to make him suffer, just that it was often and intense. He could be mid word discussing magic with Yeomra and his throat would seize and he’d be screaming or biting the tip of his tongue as his mind and memories were taken hostage and used against him. 

Yeomra had to break him out of the spirals everytime. Yeomra had also made him tell at least something about his past and the memories that were being attacked so that Yeomra would be able to tell if the memories were being warped. And they were. The first time the difference was extreme enough to be noticeable had sent Jinu into another spiral that Yeomra had barely got him out of by throwing one of his shoes at Jinu. The revelation that items no longer attached to their bodies could pass through the barriers of their cells had been something they’d tested once Jinu was no longer on the edge of total collapse. 

Yeomra now made a point to recite the “real” versions of Jinu’s memories to him after each time he was attacked by Gwi-ma and randomly throughout their conversations so Jinu wouldn't get caught in another spiral.

“You are Jinu of Hanseong. Born during the reign of King Seonjo and a former court musician to King Injo. You had a mother and a sister who you struggled to provide for after your father was killed during the coup against King Gwanghaegun and your family fled to a farming village away from the capital. You made a deal with Gwi-ma to become a renowned musician and were invited to the King’s court where at the palace gates you learned you could not bring your mother and sister with you. You left them at the gates and began a life of luxury in the palace until your shame at leaving your family consumed you and Gwi-ma claimed you and pulled you into the underworld to serve him. You became a Jeoseung Saja and served in Gwi-ma’s court for the next four-hundred years.”

Yeomra was always so gentle when he repeated the list of Jinu’s many sins. Like he wasn’t judging Jinu’s faults and the ways he had failed to have a shred of decency or love for his family. Only making a deal to get himself out of that miserable life.

“Through the years you traveled to the human world to perform music as a distraction for other demons to harvest souls of your audience for Gwi-ma. You fed off of your audience's emotions and made strategic trades with Gwi-ma for more magic and power. About eleven years ago you realized that the modern kpop industry and the rise of the internet would allow you to use the same system the hunters did against them.”

The very over simplified version of events that totalled to him ending the lives of hundreds of humans for his own gain over the centuries. The other demons had been under his command and took the souls of humans he tricked. He’d traded humans for power and favor in Gwi-ma’s court like they were nothing to him.

“You created a plan and over the next years recruited four Jeoseung Saja who were human idols before they made deals with Gwi-ma. You helped them create new lives and identities in the underworld and brought them under your protection and influence. Together the five of you created “Saja Boys” for the purpose of sabotaging the hunters to stop them from creating the golden honmoon and sealing the demons in the underworld permanently.”

This was where Jinu usually began to protest as what Yeomra said no longer matched his memories. His head instead filled with images of him manipulating and forcing the others into compliance with what he wanted them to do. Montages of Jinu approaching Gwi-ma and making suggestions about what humans to offer deals to and flashes of Jinu going to the human world to manipulate the people around the others to make their lives worse so they’d accept Gwi-ma’s deals and fall to him faster. Nightmares of Jinu destroying the human lives of his friends all for his own selfish gain. Forcing them to act out stereotypes of the kpop industry they hated. Using his magic to turn them into mindless puppets that weren’t able to argue against him.

“You spent months in the human world preparing with your friends as you trained for your debut and were ready to enact your plan when the first shades of gold showed up in the honmoon. Your plan was a greater success than you planned for when the hunters placed themselves in close proximity to you and you capitalized on that. Your plan would have succeeded but while attempting to manipulate her, you grew close to one of the hunters and she offered you a counter deal to Gwi-ma to help her seal the honmoon so you could remain in the human world.” 

Rumi. Her pleas and desperate cries as she demanded to know why he did it. Why he exposed all her worst fears and darkest secrets to the entire world and stood there laughing as she fell apart. Attacking her and only leaving her alive so she would know the pain he did of suffering your failures for eternity. 

“You betrayed the hunter and sabotaged the performance to seal the honmoon. The hunters turned on each other when your involvement was revealed and the honmoon was destroyed. During the performance you used to summon Gwi-ma and sacrifice the humans, the hunter returned and was able to reunite with the other two and stand up against Gwi-ma’s manipulation. Gwi-ma attacked the hunter and you blocked the attack, thinking you would die to protect her and give her a chance to stop Gwi-ma once and for all. A plan that seems to have succeeded as the honmoon has been rewoven.”

After the worst attacks by Gwi-ma on his memories, Jinu’d always end up curled in a ball by the end of Yeomra’s version of Jinu’s past. Struggling to stay conscious as the different versions of events warred in his head with the fresh imprint of Gwi-ma’s versions of his memories. 

“This is the version of your memories you were able to tell me after multiple days of being subjected to Gwi-ma’s manipulations and some details may have already been obscured and changed but you believe that the reason you opposed Gwi-ma and saved the hunter was worth it. Because of this reason you are working with me to learn magic capable of breaking us out of our cells because we do not deserve the punishment Gwi-ma is forcing on us.”

Jinu would process the differences between his memories and what Yeomra told him and when he was able to sit up without his head spinning, Yeomra would start asking him questions about what magic he knew and if there was something Jinu didn’t know, Yeomra would teach it to him. They hadn’t found anything that Jinu could use effectively yet. The cells didn’t completely nullify magic, since as demons their entire existence was supernatural, but it heavily suppressed it. Yeomra still had his ability to sense emotions but that was about it. 

“You have a large magical ability, but it’s being blocked by something.”

“My voice?” Jinu suggested.

Yeomra shook his head. “Music is one of the most powerful magical conductors but it’s not the only one. And besides that, even if Gwi-ma stripped your voice completely, you should still be able to channel magic through non-verbal ways but we tested the percussion spells already and they had no effect. It’s like there's something missing between your magic potential and your ability to use it. But that shouldn’t be possible. You can’t lose your soul and still exist.”

Jinu stopped moving. His entire body felt like it was on fire while that aching cold pit in his chest tried to grow and swallow the rest of him. 

Yeomra kept talking, missing that Jinu was freaking out. “That’s how Gwi-ma binds you to his service. He puts his mark on your soul as part of the deal when he claims you. He makes it so that even if you wanted to be free of him and destroyed your body, your soul wouldn't enter the cycle of judgement and rebirth, instead just returning to his court under his control still. That’s what makes a demon. A soul separated from the cycle of life, death, and rebirth that never atones for its sins. A demon's soul can only be freed by a purification ritual by a hunter or by being released by the king who holds it.”

Yeomra paused. His emotional sense finally catching on that Jinu was not okay.

“Jinu?” Yeomra was watching him warily but Jinu couldn’t move. He just stared. 

His soul.

He had a sudden blinding vision of his last moments blocking Gwi-ma’s attack. A light leaving his chest and wrapping around Rumi. His soul. He didn’t have it anymore. Rumi did. But he still existed. His body had shown up in Gwi-ma’s court and he had his memories and he felt pain. He was still him. But he didn’t have his soul.

Yeomra was staring back at him even as he reached to grab his shoe to throw at Jinu. It was such a stupid image. Yeomra who was so old he didn’t remember exactly how old he was but had been around long before Jinu became a demon and knew everything there was to know about the underworld and the demons that resided in it. If Jinu had a question to ask, Yeomra would have an answer. 

Jinu managed to break out of his full body freeze and bring his hand up to claw at his robes above the freezing pit in his chest. 

“You do have your soul? Right?”

He could only shake his head. Yeomra’s eyes went wide.

“Wha- how?!”

Jinu flinched at the sudden shout. Yeomra took a deep breath and stepped back. 

“No yelling. Yelling isn’t constructive. Clear communication and calm tone convey a message better than volume.” He spoke more to himself than to Jinu. Yeomra put his shoe back on before looking back at Jinu. “Do you know what happened to your soul?”

Jinu nodded. 

“Okay. Okay. This is fine. This is completely fine and doesn't break everything I thought I knew about how souls work.” Yeomra clapped his hands and smiled but it didn’t quite cover the wide eyed shock. “Can you tell me what happened to your soul?”

Jinu nodded. “I gave it to the hunter.” The words scraped at his throat but he got them all out clearly. 

Yeomra froze. “Gave it-” He cut himself off. “Okay.” Yeomra turned around and walked off to stand facing the far corner of his cell, disappearing from Jinu’s line of sight. Jinu could hear rapid muttering but couldn’t make out the words. A minute later Yeomra walked back to the bars of his cells with another fake smile on his face.

“Alright. Jinu, I need you to listen to me very carefully and then answer my questions as exactly as you can. Understand?”

Jinu didn’t like the patronizing feeling he was getting but whatever this was had freaked Yeomra out and Jinu liked that less so he nodded.

“When you say, ‘I gave it to the hunter’, you mean the lead hunter who opposed Gwi-ma, the one you interacted with and sacrificed yourself for.”

Jinu nodded.

“This hunter was of the newest generation, likely in her twenties but possibly early thirties.”

Jinu raised an eyebrow but nodded. Rumi was twenty-four, almost twenty-five, he knew that from researching her and the other hunters. Mira was six months younger than Rumi and Zoey a bit over a year younger.

“Okay. Do you know anything about the older generation of hunters, the ones who would have taught the current ones?”

Jinu nodded.

“Were any of the older hunters at the concert when you gave your soul to the hunter?”

Jinu shook his head. He'd only seen Celine once in person, from across a very large crowd, during his scouting of the human world, Rumi's mother had died when she was a baby, and the third Sunlight Sister was retired and living out of the public eye and no one knew much about her anymore. The generation before them were just names attached to a picture that Jinu had never met. Jinu had always done his best to avoid the past hunters during his trips to the human world and had only had a few run-ins with them through the centuries. He kept aware of the changing generations and groups but never on a personal level till his plan started, even then he was focused on the current hunters only. 

Yeomra frowned and flicked his eyes over Jinu, assessing him for the hundredth time since Jinu had been dragged in here. Looking for something he hadn't caught the first time. 

“I can sense you and you are stable despite what Gwi-ma is doing to you. It doesn't make sense. Only the kings can hold and claim souls and only hunters can purify souls. Hunters can't hold souls for longer than it takes to purify them and pass them onto the cycle of rebirth. The kings can hold souls but I've never heard of a king holding a soul and the body and mind still being functional.”

Jinu’s mind caught on a specific detail. “Hunters can purify souls?”

Yeomra startled, “What? Oh. Yes, they can, but it's not an easy magic for them to learn. They have to work as a trinity to do it, the reason they work in groups of three in the first place. One of the hunters has to act as the focal point for the soul while the other two channel their power through her, it's similar to how they power the honmoon. They channel as much positive emotion and light into the soul as possible to burn out Gwi-ma’s mark so the soul can rejoin the cycle.”

Jinu felt like he'd been shoved off a cliff. There was a way to be freed of Gwi-ma’s control this whole time? And it was as simple as walking up to the hunters and asking?

“Gwi-ma can still affect you, which means his mark is still on your soul and means your deal is still active. But if you gave it to the hunter she should have purified it or it would have gone back to you.”

Yeomra made eye contact and his gaze was piercing. “How clear are your memories of your sacrifice for the hunter? How foggy and distorted are they?”

Jinu thought about it. Yeomra had done his best to teach Jinu how to recognize what memories were being altered. Fuzzy backgrounds and missing details, odd proportions and things that seemed ever so slightly off. Stark colors and lighting that didn't match the rest of the scene. 

Gwi-ma was a master of mental manipulation and fabricating memories but he couldn't get them all perfect when he had an entire army to monitor and keep on a leash through mental anguish. When he was calm and focused Jinu could catch the changes now, but if he started to slip and Gwi-ma attacked him at full force it all blurred together and he couldn't make the distinction.

He tried to replay the details of the final concert as linear and factual as possible and was immediately drowning in the fog and blurriness. No background to go with his voice snapping orders to the Saja Boys before the concert. A shiny earring that was suddenly in his hand for some reason. Performing and hearing the cheers turn into screams. Rumi stepping out of the crowd and challenging Gwi-ma.

Rumi looked wrong. 

He didn’t know why or what was wrong but she just didn’t look like she should. 

Her face right in front of his with tears in her eyes as she glowed and begged him for something. A light bridging between them and that feeling of warmth before nothing until he woke up at the base of Gwi-ma’s dais. 

Nothing was making sense anymore. The dissonance in his head was crippling him more than his lack of a voice and access to his magic. 

Yeomra spoke gently. “There is something about the hunters that Gwi-ma is trying to hide from you. And possibly from me as well.”

“Why?” Jinu asked. Yeomra had made allusions to things like that before, about Gwi-ma trying to keep information away from Yeomra. The older demon had even commented that he was surprised Jinu had been imprisoned near him at all since before now he’d been kept in total isolation. 

“I never told you the full story of why I was imprisoned here, did I?” Yeomra looked at him curiously.

Jinu shook his head. He’d wondered but there was no way he was going to press Yeomra for his backstory when Jinu didn’t even share things like Rumi’s name with Yeomra. A curling feeling in his chest making him hoard the personal details he had about Rumi to himself even as he worried about losing those details to Gwi-ma’s manipulations and no longer knew why he cared so much about her.

“I was working with the hunters against Gwi-ma.” Yeomra said it casually even as the words imploded in Jinu’s already overworked and stressed brain. “I taught them the magic that helped them create the first honmoon and helped deflect Gwi-ma’s attacks through the years if the hunters were ever weakened at the wrong times. I flew under Gwi-ma’s radar by playing the fool and making myself useless to him. I knew that he’d already messed with my memories severely so I played it up to make it seem like it was his fault I was now the way I was. That he’d gone too far and stripped me of some core part of my being.” 

Yeomra snorted. “I played the balance just right and I was apparently important enough to him that he never got rid of me or went further into my mind. Meanwhile, I’d keep an eye on the hunters and if they needed it, give them training in magic that may not have been passed down from the previous generations or they were struggling to learn, usually to only one hunter at a time and I’d swear them to secrecy after proving I meant no harm.”

His voice turned mournful and self-deprecating. “That backfired on me the last time. I’d gotten close to one of the hunters and got careless when spending time with her. My identity as a demon was exposed to a hunter who didn’t know who I was and what I was doing and when she saw me trying to help during an attack, she attacked me and I was forced to flee back to the underworld because of my injuries.” Yeomra pulled at the collar of his robe and revealed a nasty jagged scar that started at the side of his neck and disappeared under his shirt.

“Gwi-ma realized something was off and when a demon who escaped the hunters gave a report about how I had been helping the hunters at the start, he tore into my mind and realized that I’d been tricking him for centuries. He had me thrown in here. I still don’t know why he didn’t end me right then when I’d already proved to be such a threat to him. Since then he’s been attacking my mind and memories and I’ve lost a lot of details but I’ve managed to defend the core of who I am and what my values and purpose for rebellion is.”

Yeomra pulled his hair over his shoulder, the braid that Jinu had watched him redo multiple times still in perfect condition. Yeomra pulled the golden ribbon from the end of the braid and Jinu looked at it closely when Yeomra held it up. The ribbon was connected to a unique purple maedeup and had a pink flower charm hanging next to it. Yeomra changed how he was holding it and Jinu realized it was a norigae but with a ribbon instead of tassels. The colors and design were strange but Jinu could tell just by how Yeomra held it that it was very special to him. 

Jinu’s one hand came up to brush against the bracelet on his own wrist. He’d forgotten how he got it but knew it was connected to Rumi and her smiling at him. 

“This was a gift from my lover right before we were caught together. I won the ribbon for her at a carnival on our first official date and the maedeup and the charm are made from her hair accessories that I teased her about at our first meeting. She braided my hair for me and tied the ribbon on, promising that with this she’d be with me always, watching my back and protecting it. I’d laughed and told her that I should be the one to protect her, I was the big strong demon afterall. She’d gotten a sad look in her eyes and kissed my nose, an infuriating habit of hers, and placed my hand on her stomach where our child was growing. She said, ‘We’ll both look after you, and you’ll look after us. The three of us, together.’”

Yeomra clutched the norigae and brought it up to his lips with a sudden whisper that sounded like an apology. “A week later her best friend snuck into our house planning to confront my lover about her strange behavior, she’d been hiding her pregnancy using illusion magic I taught her, and because she had no malicious intent just protective worry, my wards weren’t tripped and she found me in the kitchen, making lunch with my patterns on full display because my lover said I had no reason to hide them in what was supposed to be our home and sanctuary.” 

“I’m ashamed to admit I fled. I had no idea what to do, we’d only just discussed introducing me as my human identity to her friends when she could no longer hide her pregnancy. We made a plan for me to use my magic to create a fake paper trail and backdate paperwork for us to have been married. She’d been worried about the social fallout of the media and her fans learning not only was she pregnant but out of wedlock too. I’d been willing to do whatever she wanted, I just wanted to be with her. She made me feel more alive than I had ever felt before in my memory. She taught me more about the world and its beauties in those three years we were together than the centuries of watching humanity develop ever had.”

“I stayed away out of fear for days, not knowing what my lover had said or done to try and cover for me. I was terrified of putting her in danger with my presence. It was two weeks before she was finally alone for me to get a message to her and find out what happened. She’d tried to explain everything to her friend but the friend was convinced I had used magic to manipulate my lover and had forced myself on her. I had to stay away and we were reduced to sneaking around for stolen moments together. She never stopped trying to convince her friend of the truth but it was useless.”

Yeomra tied the ribbon back to his braid and when he was done one of his hands came up to rest against his throat. “It was right after the doctor's appointment where we found out we were going to have a girl. I’d met her inside the hospital in my human disguise and was there for the ultrasound, the longest we’d been able to spend together in a month. She’d snuck out and thought no one knew where she went but when we left the hospital her friend was in the parking lot. She was confused at the sight of me at first. Then out of nowhere, demons attacked. I’d been so preoccupied worrying about my love that I had neglected to monitor Gwi-ma and his plans. The fight started and I tried to stay out of the way as a confused human but then a demon nicked my lover's arm with a claw and I was attacking before I knew it.”

“I drew all the demon’s attention to myself to let my lover get to safety. I was so focused on the demons I didn’t notice that her friend was aiming for me until her hwando was trying to take my head off. I was torn between the demons and defending myself, I didn’t want to hurt her but she was relentless. My lover tried to intervene and it distracted me long enough for her friend to land the blow that forced me to flee back to the underworld where Gwi-ma captured me.”

Yeomra’s hand lowered from his neck. He looked up and Jinu didn’t know how to read that expression. Raw, vulnerable, and resigned. 

Flashes in his mind. 

Long pink hair at the center of a pile on a couch looking up at him and the words, “I just wanted it to end.” Short blue sitting in a dark corner, “I’d forget what my voice really sounded like.” Short pink buried in dark blue stripes, “I shattered three mirrors before they stopped replacing them.” Pale purple hiding eyes that wouldn’t meet his, “Sometimes I’d scream just so they’d have to acknowledge I existed.”

Trusting.

Yeomra was trusting him with the thing he held closest to the core of his very being. The thing that gave him a reason to exist. 

Yeomra had spent centuries rebelling against Gwi-ma and giving the humans a way to fight back against the demon tyrant. He had fallen in love with a hunter and wanted to marry her and create a family with her. He’d lost that chance because of the very fear he’d sacrificed everything to protect the world from. 

Jinu swallowed the lump building in his throat. He was putting pieces together but he didn’t know if they made sense. Not with how his memories were so heavily fucked with by Gwi-ma. This had to be what Gwi-ma was trying to keep them from figuring out. Something about Rumi connected to Yeomra.

Could it be…?

Maybe. But then, that meant… Jinu opened his mouth to try and say something to Yeomra when Gwi-ma’s voice filled his head.

“NO!”

And Jinu knew nothing but pain. 

In his disassociated state after he managed a single thought, ‘What memory had Gwi-ma taken from him this time?’

When Yeomra dutifully recited his version of Jinu’s memories they seemed largely untouched from the last time they checked. When Yeomra refreshed his memory about what they had just been talking about and sorted through all the questions Yeomra had been asking him before, only one answer of Jinu’s had changed. 

“‘Do you know anything about the older generation of hunters, the ones who would have taught the current ones?’

Jinu nodded.”

“Do you know anything about the older generation of hunters, the ones who would have taught the current ones?”

Jinu shook his head. He’d always avoided the hunters completely before creating his plan. He’d sent up sacrificial scouts to test whether the hunters were in an area or not before he would slip through the honmoon to perform and sciphon souls for Gwi-ma. When he started researching Huntrix he’d skimmed over the sections about their family before dismissing it as not relevant.

Yeomra looked resigned when he finished refreshing Jinu. “Whatever you knew is gone now. I won’t push in case Gwi-ma attacks you again, you can’t handle a second attack so soon. Get some rest. We’ll try something else later.”

Jinu could only nod and lie down with his head on his arm on the cold stone floor.

He couldn’t help but wonder how important whatever Gwi-ma had taken from him this time was. He didn’t even know what he was missing now. If he had known something about Yeomra’s lover and child it was all gone now. 

How long would it be before everything about him was stripped away and he became a husk that faded away to nothing?

Chapter Text

Rumi was twelve years old when she was given a phone for Christmas from Celine. The phone was a practical gift for her safety as much as it was an attempt by Celine to make up for the loss of her mother with expensive gifts. The brand new smart phone was the latest on the market and had all the fancy features any tween girl could want… If said tween had a social life to maintain and lord her new acquisition over. Instead Rumi was given the phone because she was now old enough for Celine to allow her to venture out of her sight for a majority of the day. 

Rumi would still be under constant watch as she was basically being babysat by the other trainees and idols that all worked under Sunlight Records. Anytime she was off from school and not at her own lessons, she had to fill her days somehow. So she sat in the corner of the room working on her supplementary studies while the trainees practiced. She was in zero danger, but Celine would no longer be able to just turn and talk to her. 

So Rumi was given the phone and was shown how to use it by a soloist that was one of her more frequent minders. Her ventures into social media were hesitant and nervous at first, her account usernames randomly generated and different on every platform because she’d been told about and had seen some of the crazy things some fans would do to try and get the attention of their idols if they found even a single hint of identity. She didn’t have any fans of herself that she knew about, but people knew who she was and she’d been warned extensively about how people might try and use her to get to Celine and the other idols.

She ghosted through a few different platforms and was scared away from many of them as it was a lawless land back then. She did find one platform though that she settled into and would scroll through whenever she had finished the work she brought with her and was left in a corner by the older kids who couldn’t say no to taking her along but were too scared to actually talk to her and get to know her because of her closeness with Celine. Rumi wanted to talk with them, and her classmates at the fancy private school Celine sent her to, but they always looked at her funny and made her nervous when they whispered to each other. So instead she just stayed out of their way and scrolled through Tumblr, liking memes and posts about her favorite books, movies, and music groups and practicing the modern and common versions of the languages she knew compared to the formal version she learned from her tutors. 

She was completely unsupervised on the internet and had made many online friends across the world hidden behind the random profile picture she found on google of an apricot blossom. She was able to speak with others who loved music just like her and the same movies and books and because she couldn’t see them, they couldn’t look at her weird whenever she started to get excited and started to ramble and get an unusual light in her eyes and smile a bit too wide to be normal. 

She got to be just another music fan who had an impressive but anonymous knowledge of music and the technical aspects of what went into the creation of the songs people loved and which ones that didn’t do as well as expected. She gained a reputation for her blog index of music and playlists she curated to very specific styles and sub-genres. She had constant requests to find songs similar to others and songs to create specific emotions. 

She never paid much attention to the numbers her posts generated since she got her phone and started working on her blog. That was until a week before Celine entered her in her first public showcase. 

Someone reached out to her blog claiming, and she found the proof that they were telling the truth, to be a member of a group she’d found a few weeks ago and added all their songs onto the appropriate playlists and made a post going over the groups aesthetic and sound and basic information about the members. The member had reached out to her account, thanking her for the promotion and that the group had been close to disbanding due to lack of album sales before her spotlight on them. They had shot up in popularity and had scheduled a fan event and had a massive turnout. They’d asked the fans about how they found the group and Rumi’s blog was the most common reason given or they were recommended the group by other friends who also cited her blog. 

Once she’d confirmed that everything the member said was true, she’d panicked. Gone completely dark, deleting the app from her phone for the rest of the week leading up to her performance in the contest that would be her live performance debut. She poured herself into her rehearsals and training until she was too tired to do anything but pass out at the end of the day. 

She was exhausted but prepared despite her nerves as Celine dropped her off at the contestant greenroom with a promise she’d do great. She’s kept to herself, finding her comforting corner, watching the contestants before her on the monitor and clapping with the others. But then she walked onto the stage and saw the honmoon actively react to her performance as the audience cheered for her. She felt something shift inside her and couldn’t stop smiling as she felt the tether form between her and the people she was destined to protect for the first time.

When she returned to the green room and was greeted by smiles and cheers from the other contestants, even the one other trainee from Sunlight Records that had never actively interacted with her before. They didn’t avoid her and actively wanted to talk to her about the song she sang and her performance. A kind boy with an accent she couldn't quite place asked about why her cover had a slightly different arrangement than the original and when she admitted to making the alterations herself, complimented her and they chatted about the technicalities of music production that they enjoyed. Others stood by and listened closely and added in passing comments also, no one looked at her like she was wrong for knowing so much at her age. They’d all cooed over her when they realized she was the youngest one there by at least a year.

And when she slipped and made a comment about something someone could do to improve an area they mentioned struggling with, they actually smiled and thanked her for the advice even though they were years older than her. They just asked her how long she’d been learning and training and when she said that it had basically been since she could walk and listed out some of her different skills, the others had gotten momentarily weird looks, especially from the trainees from Sunlight Records, but they’d all smoothed away a second later and the conversation continued. 

Everyone introduced themselves and talked briefly about the training they’d all done. The boy she had talked to about music production had moved to Korea on his own when he was her age and had become a trainee in a company Rumi instantly recognized and had heard Celine talk about. Celine liked to passively criticise that company's CEO and how he wasted the potential of his artists in attempts to create sensations instead of solid talent. Celine had had her eyes on a few of that company's trainees who were only a few years older than Rumi for possible magic compatibility. She’d been watching them for a while but couldn’t find a way to meet with them and test their compatibility and then potentially buy out their contracts without causing a publicity issue.

When Rumi mentioned she was training to be part of a group, not a soloist like someone assumed, the one guy offered to introduce her to some of his own seniors who were set to debut in a girl group soon. She’d been excited about the offer and thanked him profusely. Sunlight Records was a small company but powerful with Celine’s name and backing. Celine was picky about her trainees but each one was talented and had a bright future ahead of them no matter what they did with their career. There was only one proper girl group currently in Sunlight Records, and they were extremely busy and twice her age so she rarely saw them anymore since they’d long moved out of the dorms and had other adult responsibilities when they weren’t preparing for their next album or show. 

They all watched the rest of the performances together and then when the time came for the awards portion of the contest, they all cheered for her when she won first place for female soloist. She’d been completely stunned but the other girls gave her quick hugs and the guys gave her thumbs ups. It was a completely different reaction than she would have expected based on the reactions she’d gotten from others before. Granted she’d never performed in front of others before. Only Celine and her teachers. Before now the others had only ever known her as a presence on the edges of their space.

Afterwards, Celine had congratulated her and said she was proud of how much talent Rumi had and how strong of a hunter she would be and that her mother would be so proud of her too. Celine said that Rumi had a natural talent that she had worked hard to train and improve until it was something that could someday turn the honmoon gold. 

Rumi preened under the praise until that night in her room when she was coming down from the adrenaline high and growing tired and her phone lay on her nightstand, mocking her. The phone case she had customized with a photo of her mom when she first debuted as an idol staring at her.

She was proud of her singing, she absolutely was. She had worked hard in her vocal training lessons and spent countless hours, days, weeks, and months, preparing for this over the years. Preparing to become a hunter. Working herself to exhaustion every afternoon after school in her dance lessons until she could barely stand and then she sat down at her desk to complete her homework and when that was done work on her hunter studies. 

She’d found moments between that all and on the weekends and holidays to create her blog and passion for sharing music with others. She loved getting the compliments and thanks for her recommendations and excited reactions when other people enjoyed the songs she found. She’d been so scared of being known at that moment she realized the person who messaged her was really who they said they were. That they were saying the truth about the avalanche she had created. 

Had she done it to other groups too?

She had to know. 

It took no time to get the app reinstalled and she was suddenly drowning in notifications and posts wondering where she had gone. She’d never disappeared without warning for so long before. She had a near daily schedule she tried to stick to for new recommendations and reviews. 

The number of people genuinely worrying if she was okay made her burst into tears. 

She was still shaking and her vision blurry when she started typing.

“Sorry for disappearing on you guys. Something uh, happened. Not bad! But shocking and it freaked me out and combined with something else happening in my real world life, I panicked and deleted the app until tonight. 

I won’t give too many details but what happened was that a member of one of the groups I recommended a while back reached out and thanked me for it. I checked and they were who they said they were and the numbers from the charts back up what they said. Apparently you guys really liked them and nearly sold out their album and surged to a fan event like they’d never seen before. And when they asked, you guys all named this blog as how you found their music. 

I’d never before equated the numbers at the bottom of my posts and how many notifications I have every day to, like, actual people? If that makes sense. And knowing I got a lot of numbers on my posts absolutely did not correlate in my head to having an actual noticeable impact on the success of the artists I enjoy listening to. 

I’ve been involved in music since I was born. I have taken lessons in vocals, dance, and even a few instruments since I could stand up. Not to mention the multiple languages you guys already know about and all the traveling I’ve done around the world. I can read, write, speak, and then sing in five languages and am learning two more currently all for the hope of being able to reach more people with my music. I could read sheet music before I could read a chapter book. Music is my everything. 

Which is why knowing that I impacted someone else's music career so much only a few days before I had my first live performance sent me into a complete spiral. 

I started this blog because I had no one else to talk to about music and how much I loved it. No one would listen when I went into “Blossom Analysis Mode” and started to break down everything from lyrics to the tuning on the backing track. They would look at me weird when I started talking. I’ve always worried that they thought I was a know-it-all looking down on them or just a privileged girl overstepping because I had the means to take so many lessons. So I just stopped talking about it with anyone besides my music teachers, but even they would get this look on their face if I went on for too long or asked a question they didn’t know how to answer right away.

But after my performance that changed and I was able to talk with other people who loved music just as much as I did and they enjoyed what I had to say and could talk with me and provide their own opinions and suggestions. That conversation and the reaction to my performance helped me a lot so here I am again. 

It’s still terrifying to think about the impact I had without even knowing about it but it’s not something I can run from, especially if I want to keep performing and make it a career someday. 

Give me a few more days to get everything sorted back out and I’ll do my best to get back to normalcy with posting. My schedule will be shifting as I’ll now have some performance rehearsals to fit into my already packed schedule but for you guys it’s all worth it!"

She picked over the post for a half hour after she wrote the first draft. Being careful to stay as vague as she could about the details that could connect back to her real identity while still being genuine about what she was feeling. She felt bad about it but she had created a shell around her identity to help protect her in case she slipped up. She had implied that she was an older teenage Korean-American and split her time between America and Korea pretty evenly with frequent trips to other places. She often implied she was in an opposite continent and completely changed dates and time ranges whenever she traveled somewhere unless she was talking about attending a massive event where she was just one of tens of thousands or there was no public media record of her or Celine being somewhere.

In reality she just went to America two or three times a year for a few weeks with Celine to check on the honmoon over the high density Korean diaspora population centers disguised as stopping in on the tour stops of the record label’s currently touring artists. They did the same for visits to other countries. Celine wasn’t an active idol anymore, focusing on the company and preparing Rumi, but she still made a few smaller appearances and at least one major performance a year in Korea at Sunlight Record’s yearly showcase. She was still a very relevant figure in the music industry and everyone knew who they were. When they traveled, if a spot in the honmoon was particularly weak, she’d find a way to work in her presence during her artist's shows there to resonate with the audience and channel it into the honmoon. Just enough to patch the weak spot without overstepping on the artists themselves and their show. The older generation of hunters contributed too with revival albums and throw-back shows for their generation and they were holding it all together. 

Now that Rumi had officially connected with the honmoon she could step up and help Celine and the others out. She could still feel the thrum of it in her chest. 

Rumi had always been skilled at magic, her protection charms were twice as strong as Celine’s and her other spellwork had always come to her really easy as long as the instructions in the journals were clear. 

The journals. 

Rumi gasped and sat upright in her bed, hands coming up to clutch at her chest. The thrum of the honmoon echoing with her heartbeat. 

She’d connected with the honmoon. That meant she would now be able to summon her own journal and weapon.

She’d completely forgotten in the rush of everything that had been happening. Celine hadn’t said anything but surely that was because she had thought Rumi would remember and they’d go over it tomorrow. But Rumi couldn’t wait. 

She thought back to the multiple entries she’d read from past hunters about how summoning your journal and weapon was supposed to feel. She held out her hand and focussed on the feeling of weight settling into her palm while softly singing an old hunter hymn to connect to the honmoon. 

She gasps as the book faded into view resting on her palm. The light of her lamp gleamed against the gold letters spelling her name on the purple cover that matched her hair. 

She sniffled and pulled the journal to her chest. Feeling the resonance between the book and herself. It was real. She was physically holding the proof of her future as a hunter. She had felt it before but this was different somehow. She had always imagined what it would be like to get her journal. 

She’d also dreamed about finding her mothers journal. Even though she knew it was long lost. Having been destroyed with the house during the attack that killed her mom when Rumi was just two months old. She’d dreamed many times about what she thought her mom’s magic and soul would feel like. 

She wiped the tears from her eyes and traced over the letters of her name on the cover. Wang Ryu-mi. 

She knew nothing about her father she got her family name from. Just that he was a demon and that was it. She had no idea why he had a last name to begin with and why it was given to her. The tabloid articles about her mothers pregnancy had no answers, having torn her mother to pieces when they learned about it and no wedding announcement or husband appeared at the same time. Celine had nothing to tell her after the first time when she was six and had asked why she didn’t have a dad like the other kids at school. Celine had said it plainly. “Your father was a demon. He’s been dealt with.”

And that was it. Her exposure to the internet had revealed many of the possibilities that Celine could have been trying to hide or spare her from. But none of them had ever felt right even if she cried over those possibilities and had scratched at the growing marks on her shoulders and arms.

She wasn’t the only person in the world who didn’t know who their father was, but she was pretty sure she was the only one who had a demon for an absent father instead of a normal one. 

Who was he though? Besides being a demon? What had she gotten from him that she would never know? Were her long fingers and height from him or from the grandparents she’d never met like Celine said? Was his hair purple like hers or was her color completely new because of her unique split biology?

Had he tricked her mother with sweet words and lies or used force to get what he wanted?

She would never know.

—---

“I AM GOING TO PUNCH HIM IN THE FACE NEXT TIME I SWEAR!”

The words were written in thick strokes that implied the pen had been pressed into the page with extra aggravation. A common theme whenever Mi-yeong wrote about Yeomra, the demonic tutor who showed up when she was twenty-one to teach her how the honmoon worked and its secrets. The two fought constantly in the year since they’d met. Bickering and getting into spats over the most inane things that were completely inconsequential and pointless. 

They argued over everything from human politics to the superior flavor of different snacks. Yeomra often would start with a completely random opinion that was either outdated or just factually incorrect to anyone who had actually experienced the thing and by the end of it Mi-yeong would have usually rectified the difference to a point. Her smugness over being right was often short lived when it meant that Yeomra would have a new topic to bring up to her the next time they met. 

“He actually thinks that festivals are boring and not worth attending! He wants me to skip going to the festival tomorrow so we can meet and go over the new illusion spell he’s been working on! He’s an idiot if he thinks I’m going to miss the festival to work on his stupid illusions!”

There was a break in the writing after the start of a word had been crossed out. Like Mi-yeong had paused and needed time to think before writing again. 

“I wonder if he’s ever been to an actual festival or just watched them from afar? In his words, ‘Festivals are just drinking, yelling, and a giant crowd of people who don’t know what personal space is.’ It would be funny to see his reaction to the rigged carnival games. Plus I’ve been meaning to make him try some new foods and festival foods are a good option. His face when he bites into some sugary monstrosity would be the highlight of my year.”

Despite their bickering and disagreements it was obvious to an outside observer reading the journal entries that Mi-yeong had grown fond of Yeomra and probably him fond of her too. Mi-yeong no longer wrote about the casual insults Yeomra had made when they first met and their fights had changed from true clashes of values to the squabbles of friends. Mi-yeong would no longer insult Yeomra’s existence as a demon and instead focussed on his annoying habits that got on her nerves but slowly smoothed out as time went on. 

There was another break in the writing. This time the break was big enough and the ink was ever so slightly different that it might have been a different pen that was used. Implying that the entry was made sometime later even though it wasn’t dated or timestamped.

“I didn’t punch him.”

There were marks on the page where a pen had tapped it multiple times, something that could be found throughout the entire journal. Signalling that Mi-yeong was hesitating before putting a thought into actual words. 

“I did the opposite of punching him actually. It’s stupid. It started as a joke. We met up a block away from the park the festival was being held at and he actually complimented my outfit and it sounded genuine. Then while we were walking to the festival a street vendor called out to us and implied that we were a couple. I laughed at first but then I looked at him and he was just looking at me with this furrowed brow and slightly confused look on his face.

I told him to just ignore the vendor and tried to walk ahead but then he grabbed my hand. I asked him what he thought he was doing and he paused. He came up with some excuse about proper etiquette and impressions, I wasn’t really paying attention because I had become fixated on the way the callouses on his hand felt against mine. In the end we kept holding hands as we entered the festival and started walking around.

He didn’t let go of my hand for almost an hour as we wandered and looked at everything and I explained what things were and found things that seemed to catch his interest. We finally decided on what food to get and that’s when he let go of my hand. When we were done eating though he offered me his hand to get up from the bench we’d sat down on and for some reason I took it and we continued on till we came to the carnival games. He didn’t see what was so difficult about them even when I explained that they were likely rigged and way harder than they looked.

He just scoffed and smirked in that infuriating way and stepped up to the booth to try. He lost, spectacularly. I laughed at him and the booth worker joined in and teased Yeomra. ‘It’s okay, lots of guys fumble and then get embarrassed about their girl seeing them fail.’ The implication that we were a couple again caught us off guard and I blushed. The booth worker caught it immediately and kept teasing. ‘Oh? Shy are we? Or no, perhaps a first date? Ah yes that’s it. Well then, I’ll be nice and give you another chance for free, in the spirit of young love and all!’ The worker winked and I felt like steam was going to come out of my ears.

Yeomra just cleared his throat and accepted the rings to try tossing them again. This time one of the rings landed on a bottle neck and the worker cheered. ‘There ya go! It wasn't so hard now was it? Now, what prize do you think the young lady would like?’ The worker gestured to the display of prizes for the lowest level of reward. There was a range of small trinkets and pieces of candy but my eye caught on a golden ribbon attached to a simple hair clip. I don’t know how he knew but Yeomra picked out the ribbon and then turned to me with it in his hand and I didn’t even say anything when he reached and clipped it in my hair to hang right by my ear.

He nodded to the worker and reached out to grab my hand again. We just wandered after that. Not saying anything to each other until we made it back to the start of the festival. He cleared his throat then and turned to me, ‘I had fun tonight. With you. More than I thought I would. I enjoy your company. And not just like this, but all the time. So, if you agree, could we do this again? A date, to be exact.’

I just stared at him for a while. I could see the flurry of emotions in his eyes and as I stayed silent, he started to pull away and I could see in his eyes that he felt hurt. I don’t know why I did it but I did. I kissed him. Just a quick peck on his cheek but I did it and he froze and stared at me. I just said, ‘I would like that too.’ And he nodded numbly before turning and walking away like a robot. I just watched him go.”

More taps on the paper.

“I’m going to have to teach him how to date, aren't I? Or at least find reference material for him. Because dating 101, don’t walk away from your date and leave her alone on the street at night. Even if she’s a badass hunter who can take care of herself. That’s not the point.”

Rumi just stared at the page in front of her. It had taken her two days to read through all five years of entries in the journal till this point. Zoey and Mira had been with her for most of it, discussing things they read and laughing and comforting her when she broke down crying and enforcing the need for breaks from reading. After the first night though, they’d agreed to let Rumi keep reading on her own since she could read faster silently than out loud to them. She’d promised to tell them about any important developments and had done so, telling them the summaries of what she’d read while they ate and went to the gym and even let them convince her to stop and watch a movie with them earlier.

But then they’d gone to bed four hours ago thinking that Rumi would be following them soon after. But that was before Rumi read about the first time her mom met Yeomra.

Yeomra. A name. She had a name and so much more. 

It wasn’t confirmed, there was still two years before her conception but who else could it be? A demon that had befriended and had now been confirmed to have loved her mother? She wanted it to be true so badly. Wanted this reality where her parents had loved each other and that she had been wanted and loved by both of them.

After knowing Jinu she knew demons were capable of love and she had been hopeful but now she was scared. What if it was all a ruse? It didn’t seem like it. Her mother's account of their interactions was so genuine and filled with the impassioned feelings Rumi resonated with. She could feel the lively and vibrant spark of her mother's magic and soul in the journal. It didn’t feel like someone who had been controlled or manipulated.

She could skip ahead to the later entries and have her answers now, but she also wanted to experience her mother's story for as long as possible before being faced with the end, knowing there wasn’t a happy ending for her mother. There would be a sudden cut off that was its own tragedy.

Derpy purred next to her and Sussie sat on his head watching her calmly. The magpie and tiger had stayed with her the whole time she’d been reading. She still had no idea what their strange behavior meant. Sussie peered at her and cawed briefly before turning to look at the clock and then glare at her.

Okay, Sussie can tell time then. Noted. 

“Fine. I’ll go to bed.” She conceded to the bird. Sussie just smirked and she rolled her eyes. She slid out of the couch blanket and scratched Derpy’s head and poked Sussie’s beak. Sussie glared at her and she giggled. 

She could get more answers in the morning. There was no rush.