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Ryujin was going to smash her head in with a mace. Or the vending machine. Either worked, so long as the end result was no more of this.
Ryujin was staring hard at the clear glass of the vending machine. A soda would do her no good, but it would her no harm, either, except to her wallet and her general wellbeing. She still had no job. No source of income. She could get a soda. She could maybe make a deal with the devil to get an endless supply of soda. She wondered what the price would be. "Shut up," Ryujin grit out.
Sayeon blinked in a way that might have seemed innocent had she the common decency to drop the self-satisified smirk at her lips for more than three seconds. "I haven't said a word."
"Keep it that way," Ryujin said and turned sharply away from the vending machine. Better not to give in to temptation. Ryujin didn't know much about sinning and atoning, but she had the vague idea that temptation was supposed to be bad. Something about apples or boxes or wanting. Ryujin had never been particularly good at restraint.
"Of course," Sayeon agreed, breaking her promise instantly. "And what are you doing?"
Ryujin's grip on the little boxes of blackboard chalk she'd picked up, the plain candles, and she ground her jaw. "You know damn well what I'm doing."
Sayeon pretended to suppress her amusement, and hooked her chin over Ryujin's shoulder. Ryujin decided to ignore just how much Sayeon had to bend down to do that. "And you know there's only one way to send me back, Ryujin. Make a deal with me."
"I'd rather kill myself, thanks," Ryujin grumbled as she set the chalk and candles down with more force than needed at the till.
"Um… are you okay?"
Ryujin blinked. Shit. She'd forgotten about other people being a thing. She'd been holed up in her shitty fucking apartment with a shitty fucking demon for far too long. Three weeks too long. She knew better than to ask if the poor guy at the counter could see Sayeon. "Yep," she said, nudging the chalk forwards slightly. "Doing great. You?"
The cashier smiled with a somewhat forced affect. "I'm okay. Uh… any special occasion?"
Ryujin raised an eyebrow. Looked down at her meagre selections. Chalk and candles. "Sure. Exorcism."
The cashier perked up, eyes brightening. "Ooh. Are you a professional?"
Ryujin eyed her blackboard chalk and off-brand candles. She spared Sayeon a brief glance. She was looking at her with clear bemusement. "Sure am."
The cashier swayed forwards with wide eyes. Ryujin leaned back uneasily. "Really? What are your rates?"
Ryujin was starting to regret this. She debated telling him that she was joking. She could feel Sayeon's eyes on her. "Rates?" she echoed.
The cashier waved a hand limply. "Y'know. Prices."
Ryujin felt slightly insane. She considered the truth. She could feel Sayeon's eyes on her. "Well, it depends," she blabbed. "I usually charge after the exorcism. You never know how bad it'll be until you're, y'know, there. And most people don't know what they've got haunting them."
The cashier was nodding along, head bobbing enthusiastically like one of those little cat dolls with the giant wobbling heads that people stuck atop their car dashboards. Ryujin tried to blink away the resemblance and failed.
Ryujin could have hesitated. She could have asked him to hurry the fuck along. She could have taken her chalk and candles and trudged back home and stayed burrowed in there again to try another hundred useless expulsion circles until she ran out again and crawled back. She could have left this guy well enough alone. Instead, feeling Sayeon's eyes on her, she opened her big mouth and said, "Why, you got something you need out?"
Iseul Kim's apartment was a quaint enough affair, slightly larger than Ryujin's, although that wasn't saying much. She toed her shoes off after Iseul and peered cautiously around. There was a faint chill in the air, and Ryujin searched for the offending open window. She couldn't find it. She adjusted her grip on the heavy tome under her arm.
"I can't believe you actually agreed to this," Sayeon drawled, arms behind her back as she followed behind, her gaze politely disinterested as she scanned the place. "Really, Ryujin? I hadn't taken you for a scam artist."
"Shut up," Ryujin muttered under her breath. Clearly not quietly enough, because Iseul turned to look at her with a slight concerned furrow of his brow. "Not you," Ryujin clarified.
"Ah," said Iseul, though his brows did not unfurrow. "You've been, um, doing that a lot."
Ryujin shrugged one shoulder. "You do this long enough, you pick up some personal demons."
Sayeon scoffed from behind Ryujin. "You know how to drop me, Ryujin. I'm starting to think you don't want to." Ryujin was steadfastly ignoring the press of claws into her shoulder, how they just barely skimmed past the neckline of her shirt, almost brushing the jut of her collarbone. "Pathetic, really."
Ryujin bit her tongue. Sayeon was trying to get a rise out of her, she knew that, but knowing that didn't help, because it was fucking working. "You learn to ignore them eventually," Ryujin continued as though she hadn't heard Sayeon. "So, what's your problem here?"
Iseul smiled somewhat guilelessly. "Ah. It's a bit… weird when I say it out loud. I just… something's shifted around here. Like, I can feel it."
Ryujin tried not to make her relief too obvious, turning her face away from Iseul under the pretence of examining the wall. It was bare, and a somewhat ugly grey. Ryujin couldn't really judge. Home decor hadn't been her passion these past few years. So this was a phony haunting, then, just a fucking malaise or whatever. Probably just the turning of the seasons. Ryujin wasn't sure what she would have done had it been real. "I see," Ryujin acknowledged as though she thought Iseul was being reasonable. "Well. Today I'm just gonna be doing a detection ritual, yeah? So I can figure out what we're dealing with."
"Sounds good," Iseul agreed, nodding. "Anywhere you need to be in particular, or…?"
"Anywhere that's easy to clean," Ryujin suggested. "Chalk and candle wax."
They ended up in the living room, a small-ish room with a plain amber carpet in the middle that Iseul pulled away. If I can't get it out, the carpet'll just go over it, was Iseul's logic. Ryujin couldn't argue against that. Iseul had hovered so long that Ryujin had sighed and just told him to take a seat. She didn't mind an audience, she told herself, even as she began the wobbly outlines of a circle.
"Struggling?" Sayeon called out from where she'd thrown herself on the couch beside Iseul. Ryujin was trying very hard not to think about her, not to look at her, not to yell at her when that was all she had been doing for the past few weeks. "The ability to draw perfect circles is one I could give you."
Ryujin clenched her jaw. A stupid fucking ability, she didn't snap back."Hey, when did you first get your… ah, feeling?"
If Iseul heard Ryujin's skepticism, he didn't react to it. Good thing, too, because Ryujin was supposed to be the believer here, the professional. "Three weeks ago, I think."
Ryujin paused slightly, frowned. She sketched out the curve of the circle before she went over it again with a surer hand. "That's specific." The circle done, she went on to the inside, drawing the straight, angular lines with far more precision. Not a summoning star, this time, never again, but a simple set of non-overlapping lines that crooked in at the top and bottom, held together by one long line to the side.
Iseul contemplated the circle. "It was noticeable. Weirdly, but very. Like everything tilted just so to the left."
"Hm," Ryujin said. She set her chalk aside and placed the candles at every point the inner pattern touched the circle. "Matches?"Iseul handed them over. Ryujin took them wordlessly and took out a matchstick, her hands sure and quick as she struck it against the hatched side of the box, flame bursting to life at the tip.
Except, then, the flame died out. Ryujin tried again. It died again. A third time, another death. Ryujin blinked. Iseul made a soft, oh. "Sorry, it's weirdly drafty in here, isn't it?" Iseul apologised, twisting in his seat to look at the firmly closed windows with a frown.
Ryujin stared at the pale fingers pinched over the bulb of the matchstick, the dark claws that clicked together when they met and breathed in deeply. "Happens. Any windows open?"
"Shouldn't be," Iseul murmured, almost to himself, "but… I'll go check."
"Thanks," Ryujin bit out calmly as she could. The moment Iseul left, she rounded on Sayeon with a glare. "What is your problem?"
"My problem?" Sayeon repeated, and she had the nerve to affect incredulity into her tone.
"Yes, your problem," Ryujin hissed in a whisper, one eye on the doorway in case Iseul wandered in to see her talking to thin air like a fucking nutcase. "Just let me do the damn ritual. S'not like it'll do anything."
Sayeon held Ryujin's gaze. Her eyes were bright and completely unreadable. She tapped at Ryujin's cheek with a finger, the nail scratching Ryujin's skin as she dragged it across her face, down to under her chin. "You summoned me. If you want me gone, you'll have to make a deal with me."
"No," Ryujin said and turned away just as Iseul poked his head back in.
"Everything's shut," he affirmed. "It didn't used to be like this, I swear."
"Mm." Ryujin pointedly did not look behind her. "Poltergeist, maybe, then."
Sayeon huffed a breath, but the warmth at Ryujin's back receded to nothing. Ryujin tried again. The flame stuck.
"Oh," Iseul said happily. "It worked."
Ryujin lit a candle and held her breath. Sayeon made no move to snuff it out. If anything, Sayeon sank back deeper against the couch. If Ryujin didn't know better, she'd say she was sulking. Ryujin lit the next candle. "You should be glad this isn't a summoning," she grumbled. "Those need blood, and are way more trouble than they're worth."
Iseul leaned forwards, elbows on his knees, eyes wide. "You've summoned before? Summoned what?"
Ryujin cast a brief glance at where Sayeon was still busy melding herself into the couch. "Old ghosts. Never a good idea, but people get desperate."
"Have you ever summoned, like… a demon?"
Ryujin couldn't help it. She snorted, her hand shaking enough with the gesture that she missed the third candle. "Once. Never again."
Sayeon rolled her eyes. "You couldn't if you tried. You're mine. You can't bind while you're bound."
Ryujin ignored her and set the last candle alight. "Okay," she said as she sat back, and tried to consider how she should go about this. She hadn't needed a chant for the summoning, and the tome didn't dictate one for the detection, either, but it would make her seem more legit or something, wouldn't it? What the fuck would she even say, though? She settled for closing her eyes, her palms on her knees, and, softly, she hummed under her breath, a wordless, soft tune. She hadn't touched a piano in a very long time, not since she'd left the music room back in school. It had been far too long.
There was heat building near Ryujin's front. Iseul squeaked out something indiscernible. Ryujin's eyes snapped open.
The good news was that the fire was not rising. The flames stayed perfectly put, inexplicable and sudden heat aside, frosting-perfect on the candles.
The bad news was that the fire was green.
"Ryujin," Sayeon snapped, her voice sharp.
"Shut up," Ryujin snapped back, making Iseul startle, and she cursed herself. "Not you." She reached for the tome, balancing its weight on her knee, finger trailing down the page. There was nothing about the fire changing colour. The circle was meant to draw the supernatural into it, not become supernatural itself. Ryujin supposed there was something inherently supernatural about a ritual circle, but she didn't have the time to dwell on semantics. The fire was not behaving as it should. It should have—
Streaks of green fire split away from the circle, smokeless, climbing harmlessly over furniture and walls, the neon green a jarring contrast to the muted, subtle colours Iseul had surrounded himself with. Iseul made another alarmed squeak. Sayeon said Ryujin's name again, with more urgency.
—it should have done nothing at all, because Iseul's home wasn't supposed to be actually fucking haunted, but Ryujin had thought the summoning circle would do nothing at all, and look where that got her. Really, she shouldn't have been surprised. Ryujin sighed and watched the fire scurry back from its rounds around the apartment and climb back onto the candles like thousands of scurrying green ants.
"Ryujin," Sayeon said again, from right behind her. Ryujin shrugged away the hand that clasped around her shoulder. There was something happening, in the centre of the circle, the air hazily solidifying, somehow, twisting into something opaque and pale, and holy shit, Ryujin was about to see a bonafide fucking ghost—
"White?" Sayeon hissed.
White was fucking right. The thing that morphed into being was so completely devoid of colour that he could have hopped into a bag of rice and never been found. Except, of course, for the fact that his eyes glowed neon fucking green. There were scars on his face, one across one eye in a strangely cross-like pattern, and the other arcing up from under his chin, but the scar tissue was just as blanched as the rest of him, just raised like a broken needle threaded under his skin. He inclined his head, unspeaking.
It occurred to Ryujin that Sayeon hadn't just been playing I spy. "Wait, you know this freak?" she demanded, but the last part of her sentence melted into a grunt as Sayeon swept Ryujin behind her with one arm, throwing Ryujin onto her back with a gesture far too easy. "Oi," she complained, "what the fuck?"
"Uh… Ryujin?"
Ryujin closed her eyes, was tempted to just lie back down on the floor and never get back up. She'd forgotten about Iseul again. "Tell me you see the guy in the circle."
Iseul's vague but high-pitched sound was confirmation enough. His voice was equally high, carrying the lingering notes of a question half-formed. "But you're not… you're not talking to him."
"What are you doing here?" Sayeon demanded, ignoring them both.
The new guy— White? Uncreative, but descriptive enough, Ryujin supposed— gave them a look so blank that Ryujin could have taken an eraser to his face and rubbed away his features, and it wouldn't have made a damn difference. He looked from Sayeon to Ryujin and back again. "Samin sent me."
"Here?"
"To keep an eye on you. I got lost."
"Hold up," Ryujin interrupted. "That's your fucking babysitter?" Ryujin couldn't see Sayeon's face, but she could have sworn that she could feel it in the air, the way her jaw tensed. "Glasses."
White's eyebrows raised.
"I swear to fuck, tell me that's not another fucking demon."
"Ryujin," Iseul warbled. Ryujin didn't look at him, just sighed and flopped back against the floor. She had resisted the call of the floor for long enough. "Who are you— oh. Oh. What? Has she been here this whole time?"
"A lot longer than that," Ryujin grumbled. "And hey, congrats. Your place isn't haunted. It's demon-infested."