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Jinu snaps out of it when Romance leaves.
His eyes had been blazing gold while he pressed into the others. Their Soda Pop debut went fine—great, actually. But to be an idol, they couldn’t stop there. They couldn’t just sing in front of a crowd, they had to keep it up—run accounts, make ads, make more music. Otherwise, they’d lose fans just as fast as they’d gained them.
It was taxing on all of them. Abby’s body was sore from flexing all day. Mystery had bruises from running into things, his half-vision only further impaired by the hair in his eyes. Baby was annoyed in general, having to act like a literal child just because his face fueled the role. Jinu’s hands shook from all the time it took to set up and keep. going.
Jinu was exhausted. He could tell they were, too, and as hard as they’ve been pushing (for him, of all people.) they couldn’t do it any more. Not today, at least.
But this had to work.
They had to get the dances perfect, their voices crisp, their song written. Because if they didn’t, they’d lose all the fans they worked so hard to get, all the souls would be gone, Gwi-ma would be furious, and they’d all die. All of them but Jinu.
No—Gwi-ma would keep him around. Force him to his knees to make him watch all of them scream in pain, fire lighting up their markings until they succumb, slowly, to the heat. Jinu would have to sit and watch the loves of his lives—the only people he cared about like this, the only ones keeping him sane in the literal Hell they’ve found themselves in—look him in the eye because he failed them, couldn’t protect them from this.
He’d see them all.
Every time he closed his eyes, every time there was silence, every time he experienced something that grazed the lines of happiness—he would see them. His mom, holding back his sister in fear of getting prosecuted. His sister, his little Yeon-seo, reaching for him with dirty, grubby fingers.
He wanted to let them in. The guards wouldn’t let him but he wanted to, he wanted to but he couldn’t—
No. No, he left them. He left them ( right? ). He left them. He was selfish .
He would see Abby trying to mask the pain even in dying, teeth gritted, eyes squeezing shut with effort until he was gone without so much as a look. He would see Baby letting himself go because fighting it would be a useless effort. He would see—hear—Mystery scream as the blazing heat consumed his very being, exposing all the sounds he wanted to keep quiet, all the sights he wanted to conceal. He would watch Romance cry, begging to Jinu as if Jinu could do anything, sounding utterly heartbroken until there was nothing left to break.
He would remember. Everything. All of it, brutally, day by day, minute by minute. No amount of screaming, no amount of clawing, no amount of begging—would make that pain cease.
But most of all, he has to forget. Because at this point, he would rather forget them all than remember the way their faces will look when he can’t save them.
“I’m not dealing with this,” Romance had huffed, turning on his heel and saying no more before he was gone. The lights come back on, the air goes clear—and Jinu realizes that he was hammering into them when surely that wouldn’t help him anybody in the long run.
He lets out a long exhale. “I’m sorry,” he says genuinely, his eyes downcast. “I just…I really want this to work.”
Great job, Jinu. Make yourself the victim, he thinks sarcastically. He clears his throat to correct himself, but Baby interrupts him.
“We get it, Ji,” he sighs. Baby glances at the others, an unreadable look in his eyes, before continuing, “we’ll get to work. Just…can't we take a nap afterwards? Please?”
Mystery adds, quietly, “Together.”
Jinu nods at them, relief flushing through his veins. It’ll all work out. They’ll make it as idols for long enough to get Gwi-ma the souls of everyone in Seoul.
“Alright. The game show already worked out great for our publicity,” he starts, pacing a bit. “And that half-demon girl from HUNTR/X carries a deep shame. I’ll handle her, see if I can gain her trust.”
The words feel disgusting when they leave his mouth, but they’re tainted by Gwi-ma’s tongue, and he can’t recoil when he hears them because it’s a good idea and he’ll forget and the boys will be fine. Much better without him—god knows what happened last time he tried to help the people he cared for the most.
You mask your selfishness with practicality, Jinu. You only care about yourself. Don’t pretend this is about ‘helping’ them.
Jinu shakes the voice (it’s his own, not Gwi-ma’s; Gwi-ma has left him alone for a few days), blinks hard, and keeps going. “Myst, you and I can brainstorm some lyrics. Baby, you update our social media status. Abby, you think you could come up with some more promo pic ideas?”
Abby nods faintly. Baby speaks up, voice bored as he pulls out his phone. “And what about drama queen Romance? Does he get to sit on his throne and pout some more?”
Mystery reaches over and thwacks Baby’s forehead, earning an offended scoff from the other. “Leave him alone. He just needed some space.”
“He doesn’t need space, just an excuse to get all in his head about it. He’s just gonna feel worse when he gets back—”
“Then maybe you should’ve stopped him from leaving, if you feel so strongly about it,” Mystery argues back, markings flaring. Baby’s flare right back, eyes flashing.
“So it’s my fault he stormed out? I’m just calling it like it is!”
“It is none of your business—”
“Guys,” Abby interrupts, his voice unusually rough. “Arguing isn’t doing anything. I know you two are worried, but just…get to work.”
Him and Romance were…close. They all were, but the two of them especially—they’d started out as something adjacent to a couple. Not quite friends but just too close to use any other term than lovers. While their dynamic was a bit steamy (they were never not making out, goodness gracious), it was also intimate on a level none of them could really describe. In every sultry glance there was pure love behind it; In every time they made out or made love there was infinite underlying trust, devotion, adoration. They can hardly stand to be apart. Fans already labeled them the pink-haired duo (and called their ship with Mira ‘pink poly club’---they just let the fans dream).
So figures that he’s grumpy when Romance isn’t there, especially since they made up in his absence. Baby grumbles, but obliges, sprawling on the floor while searching for an audio for their Story. Mystery slides towards Jinu, holding a pencil, and Abby pulls out his sketchbook, flipping to a blank page and drawing absent little thumbnails.
Time passes by. Tension between them fades—Mystery offers a hushed apology to Baby, which Baby accepts (and reciprocates); lyrics start coming together, and Abby is now adding much more detail to his ideas as they slowly come to life.
Jinu looks down at the page, frustrated. The next line isn’t coming to him.
Know I'm the only one right now
I will love you more when it all burns down
More than power, more than gold……..???????????
Before Jinu can frustratedly ruin the entire page with pencil scribbles, Mystery takes it from his hand, their fingers brushing—it makes Jinu blush, despite everything.
“Relax. The idol awards are weeks away, we don’t have to have this ready yet..” Mystery tries to comfort. He places a hand on Jinu’s back, rubbing it.
Jinu does relax at his touch, humming softly. “I know. Just frustrated. Suddenly I can’t think of anything that rhymes with gold. ”
Mystery thinks for a moment, then speaks up. Hesitantly of course—Jinu knows he struggles to think his ideas are even worth mentioning aloud. “Maybe it doesn’t have to rhyme with gold, exactly. Like, maybe it can rhyme in terms of rhythm, based on how it matches the syllables and which ones you emphasize. You could say road, or…something…relevant…” he trails off, clearly second-guessing himself.
Jinu straightens. “Or soul. You…gave me your heart now I’m gonna —no, now I’m here for your soul .” He smiles to himself. It’s perfect. Without thinking, he pulls the other down to kiss his cheek, grinning. “Mystery, you’re a genius, babe.” He murmurs before writing down the line. Mystery goes red in the face, biting his lip to suppress a smile.
Jinu sees Romance in his peripheral right before he falls.
He just barely glances over at the other, expecting to see a sheepish expression or hesitant stance—but instead he just sees blood. So much blood. On his sleeves, his hands, pouring from a gaping wound in his neck.
Jinu’s experienced fear before. He lives in Hell with the Demon King in his ear 24/7, who has the constant ability to grab him in His fiery clutches and burn him from the inside out. When he saw the patterns consuming him all those years ago, he’d felt it then, too—just like when his sister was missing for a while (the older kids allowed her to play with them, until someone shooed her away) and when Baby almost pissed of Gwi-ma a little too much and when Mystery got too quiet.
None of that compares to this. The horror that strikes through his veins as Romance crumples to the ground.
The others’ heads snap up. For a moment, there’s stunned silence, eyes going wide and mouths gaping at the sight that is Romance—bloodied, bleeding, unconscious.
Then it’s all movement.
“Oh my god, Ro!” Abby cries, standing up so abruptly it flings Baby off of him—but the latter doesn’t care, right on Abby’s heels as they rush towards the entryway. He drops to his knees before Romance, hands hovering like he’s not quite sure what to do.
Mystery arrives next, instantly pressing his hands to Romance’s neck. In doing that, he quickly finds out Romance isn’t all the way unconscious, and his eyes widen at the sight of them, brimming with tears.
Jinu is last. He looks at Romance, just…looks at him. His face is littered with deep gashes, bruises, blood (so much blood.) and tears, his body looking twenty times worse. His hand is bent weirdly, bone jutting out in a way that makes Jinu gag. His shirt is in tattered remains, shredded so much it exposes the skin underneath, looking almost the same. His chest rises and falls all too quickly, his eyes darting between them as he tries to form words, to no avail.
Abby’s hands cup Romance’s face, trying hard to be careful of the wounds he just keeps finding. “You— You’re okay, baby,” he croaks, tears falling freely from his eyes. Abby hasn’t cried in…a long time. “You’re gonna be okay, I promise.”
“We need a first aid kit,” Mystery says curtly, hands pressing down hard on Romance’s neck, only giving the other just enough slack to breathe—even though it hurts. “We—We need to go to the human realm, I don’t—the hospital won’t—”
Finally, Jinu falls to his knees. His eyes are golden.
Those aren’t just gashes, just bruises, just scrapes.
Claw marks.
Fists.
Hand prints.
“Who did this to you?”
Romance’s mouth opens as he tries to answer, tries to speak , but it makes blood trickle from his mouth so Baby quickly silences him.
“Don’t talk, sweetheart. You don’t have to talk, we’ve got you. We’re gonna get you all fixed up, o–okay?”
Not even Mystery fully believed that.
______
Back in the human realm, it’s even more chaotic.
The floor, once white and pristine and smooth, is smeared with blood. Romance has fallen truly unconscious now, eyes fluttering shut when the others started to prod at each injury, the pain being too much for him to handle this time.
With his neck, it’s a waiting game. Their demonhood will allow them to heal, but with a wound so serious, it could take hours. Mystery stayed planted in place, hands tight around Romance’s throat holding the wound closed and trying to stifle the onslaught of red that seeped between his fingers. He seems frozen, like if he moves all of this will become real, and he’ll have to face the reality that Romance looks dead.
They thought he was, for a moment.
The only reason they’re still standing is because of the icy adrenaline running through their veins. Even if their hands are soaked and their clothes stained, tears obstructing their vision, they power through. Romance needs them, even if his body can heal on its own, even if the cuts start to seal and leave behind ragged scars.
When they wipe away all they can, Abby holds Romance’s hand close to his chest, speaking even though Romance can’t hear.
“It’s all gonna be alright, Ro. You’re safe,” he whispers, voice shaking even then. “You’re safe.”
Mystery hasn’t moved. Baby, wielding a stained rag, pries at his hands—the wound looks pretty closed, but there’s still a bunch of blood to wipe. “Myst. Move your hand, babe.”
Mystery doesn’t move.
Baby tugs a little harder, lip wobbling—Mystery won’t let go and he knows why. “Mystery. It’s closed, let me clean it.”
When the other still refuses, Baby looks to Abby for help. Mystery is shaking, breath trembling, his jaw taut with tension. He holds a little tighter.
Abby wraps his arms around Mystery from behind, prying him away gently but firmly until the other has to let go in order not to hurt Romance any further. When he’s off, he gasps, tears instantly falling from his eyes, chest heaving with gasps and sobs. Abby pulls him closer, burying his face in Mystery’s neck as a wave of tears crashes over him, too. Even Baby looks like he’s teetering on the edge of breaking down.
They’d argued. They let him leave, and look what happened. He came back barely able to remain on his own two feet.
But Jinu?
Jinu wasn’t sad. He wasn’t afraid.
He was fucking furious.
___
He left without telling them.
In retrospect, it was a bad idea, but all his fear is concealed by rage towards whoever did this to Romance. His Romance.
His bubbly, loud, flirty Ro, whose world was heart-shaped and whose hands were made for holding, his lips for kisses and muttered nothings, his eyes for admiring.
His precious, sensitive, sweet Ro. Who never failed to make the guys feel special in a place where nobody meant anything, where nobody’s names held significance anymore. He made them feel like they were important, their minds unique, their bodies sacred—even when the raging fire in their heads told them the exact opposite, because they trusted Romance’s word over His and maybe, maybe that made them better than everyone else.
They hadn’t lost the ability to empathize. To feel. To love.
But that made them vulnerable. Especially the one of them who took everything to heart.
It makes Jinu’s blood boil just thinking about it—how defenseless Romance must have been despite his own power that he’d never had to use. The fear in Romance’s eyes as whoever the godforsaken demons were crumbled him into pieces and threw him away like a ripped up piece of paper.
It’s your fault. You made him mad. You made him leave. If you had just been kinder to your own partners, none of this would’ve happened.
Halfway through, he supposed the demons would be hard to find. There are thousands of them, if not a million, and every single one of them was guilty of something. Some were stronger than Jinu. Some wouldn’t snitch, and if Jinu even tried to rip apart the realm to find out who did this he’d get ripped apart himself in the process. But as it turns out, the demons—four of them, four demons ganged up on Romance—make it simple. It’s easy to find someone who hurt somebody you love when they don’t shut the hell up about it.
They were boasting. Joking around.
“You should’ve seen his face. He was crying like a little bitch!”
“I know, right. Dumbass didn’t even think to fight back.”
“More like he
couldn’t.
You know the little lovebird is the weakest of them all. He was probably hoping his ‘boyfriends’ would come save him.”
Laughter echoes across the group. And then,
“He deserved what was coming to him.”
Jinu’s fists clench.
Romance, who held Jinu when he was overridden with memories, helped Mystery speak when he couldn’t, reminded Abby he was more than a picturesque, helped Baby talk through his feelings when they got too much—didn’t deserve pain. He didn’t deserve to come home unable to speak but able to writhe and cry and be afraid.
He deserved to be held. Cherished.
He deserved to know that the people who did this would never do it again.
Before he can lunge at them, however, a hand lands on his shoulder, claws digging into it just a bit.
Jinu glances back at Mystery, eyes ablaze, markings flared, face set in stone. “Don’t try to stop me.”
Baby steps up next. He looks..vicious. His human form was soft, “cute,” innocent-looking—but god, his demon form was menacing. His markings climbed up his neck and swirled around his face, going further than they ever have—his eyes were glowing dully, like the amount of anger in his system was far too strong.
“We’re not.”
“I call the tall one,” Abby growls, his voice reverberating through the space, layered with anger. Mystery says nothing, but cracks his fists.
When they step out, and really see the demons sitting around a fire and boasting about nearly killing their love—their wrath comes out stronger than ever.
They make it slow.
Disabling the demons is easy—the guys are strong , and powered with anger (and maybe even a little help from Gwi-ma, if they’re not imagining things). When they’re sure the demons won’t fight back, they draw it out.
Every little second Romance was gone is repaid in triple. Every scratch, every drop of blood. Every slow heartbeat of Romance’s is one the demons lose.
“Piece of shit,” Baby snarls, tearing into one of them, so much so it’s like he wants to pull their heart straight from their chest. “What’d you think was gonna happen, huh? We were just gonna let you walk free like a bunch of fuckin’ punks?”
“If you have something to say to us, say it to our fucking faces,” Abby snaps, driving his fist into the other demon’s gut. When they double over, he grabs them by the collar and pulls them close, lips curled in anger. “You don’t get to take what’s mine and not expect me to take it back.”
Mystery is not a man of many words, but even he whispers—closely, intimately—to his prey with his hand tightening around the other’s neck. “You reap what you sow.”
Claws dig deep into flesh and drag. Slowly, carefully, like they’re afraid to break something.
Bones crush, poking through flesh, and even then they keep going until it seems like there was never one there to begin with.
Teeth fall out and eyes are gauged and fingers are snapped one by one, once and then backwards again, while talons dig into skin. Abby slams one against a wall so hard the stone cracks and he can hear the creaking crack of a skull—so he does it again, and again, then stops until it seems like the demon recuperates—then he does it again.
When they feel like they’re done (and boy, does that take a while. Nobody mentions that Mystery loses control while he bashes the demon’s head against the ground until it feels crushed in his grip—nobody stops him either, even if he’s crying, even if there’s blood on his face and hands and it isn’t his), the demons are groaning, if they’re even awake enough to do that.
Then they each take a clawed finger and sink it into the demons’ necks, slitting, deep. Not a shallow cut like Romance’s, but a slice that goes into the throat, cutting their necks in two until they’re open and stay that way.
When Jinu stands and wipes off his hand like the demons are nothing but scum beneath his feet, he grabs one—still breathing, still groaning—by the gaping neck.
“You don’t touch what’s ours.”
If there’s something Jinu will regret forgetting, let it be this—the sight of the demons crumpled in a bloody, lifeless heap on the ground, and his partners by his side to watch them bleed.
When they get home, Romance wakes up scared, hurt, confused—but not alone. He can’t speak, but for once, Mystery is the one to translate his rigid gestures and unreadable looks. He can’t move, but Abby is the one to help him into a more comfortable position, tangled up amongst all of them. He’s terrified, not being able to place where he was or how it happened but that it happened. Baby is the one to hold him close and promise that he’s safe, and he always will be when he’s with them.
Romance’s head leans against Jinu’s chest; Abby leans against Jinu’s shoulder, hesitant at first but comfortable when Jinu kissed the top of his head and pulled him closer; Baby lies at the end of the bed with Mystery, the two of them silent sentinels even in the safety of the human realm.
And honestly? Jinu hates himself a little bit more for wanting to forget this.