Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In the hyper-competitive world of K-pop, Saja Boys are the undisputed kings.

For six straight years, the self-producing five-member group has dominated the industry with their musical talent and flawless public image.

This meticulously crafted success is the work of two key figures: their devoted manager, Bobby, a good-natured man who navigates the brutal world of showbiz for them, completely unaware of their second life; and their mentor, Celine, a singer from the legendary group "Sunshine Boys," who trains them for success on two very different stages.

Because privately, the Saja Boys are the inheritors of an ancient tradition, a new generation of demon hunters operating in the shadows.

Their name, Saja (사자), is a carefully chosen double-entendre.

To their adoring fans, it means "lion," a fitting title for the kings of their industry.

But in the underworld, it's short for Jeoseung Saja (저승사자), the grim reapers of Korean mythology who deliver souls and maintain cosmic order.

They are lions, yes, but they are also reapers.

This precarious balance is threatened by the debut of Huntrix, a magnetic three-member rookie girl group.

They are talented demons of formidable power.

But their true purpose remains a mystery.

Have they come to the human world simply to climb the music charts?

Or perhaps, they've come for a more dangerous game: to hunt the hunters.

Late night.

The air in the abandoned downtown Seoul parking garage was thick with the post-rain damp and the unmistakable, unholy scent of sulfur.

In the far corner, cornered and terrified, a score of low-level demons hissed, their forms flickering under the weak emergency lights.

Out of the deepest shadows, five tall figures emerged.

They wore tailored trench coats over immaculate white shirts and crisp trousers, their faces partially obscured by the brim of their fedoras.

They were the Saja Boys.

The fight, when it began, was less a brawl and more a performance.

Jinu, the leader, moved like a conductor, each gesture of his hands directing a symphony of elegant, lethal blows.

Abby was a powerhouse, his attacks raw force, a single punch enough to shatter a demon's frame.

Baby was the ghost, a blur of motion weaving between enemies, while Romance was the technician, his movements precise, always finding a demon’s core.

And then there was Mystery, who seemed to be taking a casual stroll through the chaos, a serene smile on his face as he effortlessly dispatched any threat that strayed too close.

When it was over, not a single drop of ichor had managed to stain their snow-white shirts.

Jinu gave a signal.

The other four instinctively parted, creating an opening.

The last two or three lesser demons scrambled through the gap, tumbling back into a shimmering rift to the underworld.

Baby clicked his tongue in annoyance. "Letting them get away again."

Abby calmly slipped a set of brass knuckles off his fingers. "Living fear," he said, his voice a low rumble, "is a more effective threat than death."

Their reputation was spreading through the demon world.

They were the new breed.

The most merciless hunters in history.

The scene shifted.

The backstage of a broadcast station was a cacophony of bright lights and bustling staff.

Inside their private dressing room, the Saja Boys sat, still in the clothes they’d worn to battle, a faint, lingering aura of menace clinging to them like cologne.

Stylists swarmed around them, making final touch-ups.

One meticulously sculpted the curve of Jinu’s bangs with hairspray.

A makeup artist dusted highlighter on Abby’s biceps, making the muscles pop under the stage lights.

Another adjusted Mystery's perpetually crooked collar.

A knock, followed by the door being thrown open with more enthusiasm than etiquette.

Three girls with vibrant, intricate makeup burst in. "Hello, sunbaenim! We're Huntrix!" they chirped, bowing in unison.

Before they could take another step, their manager, Bobby, flanked by two burly bodyguards, intercepted them.

"They're about to go on," Bobby stated, his tone flat and devoid of emotion. "It's rude to interrupt. Being late for your stage can get you blacklisted by the network."

The Huntrix members froze, their bright smiles faltering.

From the doorway, they gave a deep, ninety-degree bow towards the room before being unceremoniously escorted out.

The Saja Boys, six years at the top, were used to this.

Jinu’s eyes remained glued to his phone.

Abby had already put on his headphones, eyes closed.

Romance and Baby were in a quiet, intense discussion about stage blocking.

Not one of them had even bothered to look up.

Only Mystery, catching his stylist’s eye in the mirror, flashed a bright, cheerful smile.

As the grand finale of the year-end show, Saja Boys performed their mega-hit, "Your Idol," to a stadium of roaring fans.

After the performance, all one hundred-plus idols on the night's roster crowded the stage for the New Year's countdown.

Saja Boys, naturally, occupied the golden center spot.

At the extreme edge of the stage, in a corner the cameras would barely ever catch, the three members of Huntrix waved excitedly to the audience.

Mira watched the Saja Boys, bathed in the spotlight and adoration. Knowing they couldn't possibly hear her from this distance, she let a cold, knowing smile touch her lips and murmured, "Hello there, sunbaenim. We're the hunters' hunters—we're Huntrix."

As the words left her mouth, as if sensing a shift in the very fabric of the air, Abby suddenly turned his head.

His eyes, sharp as a blade, cut across the entire stage and landed directly on them.

Chapter Text

On January 1st, while the rest of Seoul was nursing a collective New Year’s Eve hangover, the internet chose its first villain of the year.

Headlines bloomed like mold across every forum: Saja Boys’ new single “Red High Heels” accused of plagiarism.

The song had no promo cycle, no tour on deck.

The timing was surgical. 

In the intricate, high-stakes machinery of the K-pop industry, a song’s life is brutally short.

Its survival depends on a relentless, company-mandated promotional tour.

This is the lifeblood: a grueling two-to-six-week cycle of performances on the country’s major music television shows.

This circuit is the ecosystem where chart positions are won, fanbases are galvanized, and relevance is maintained.

To not participate is to willingly accept obscurity; it’s a non-move, a forfeit.

Which is what made the plagiarism accusation so perfectly venomous.

Saja Boys’ new single, “Red High Heels,” had been released without a promotional campaign.

It was never meant for the charts.

It was a gift, a quiet thank you note to their own fan community—the sixth anniversary of their official fan club (공식 팬카페, literal translation: official fan cafe), the dedicated digital clubhouse hosted on the Daum platform where their most loyal followers gathered.

The announced plans were minimal: two radio show appearances.

A “reverse support event”—where idols give gifts back to their fans, flipping the script on fan-organized tributes—was still in the planning stages, unannounced.

It was an intimate gesture for a closed circle.

And now, that gesture was being called a crime in the town square, while the group itself was off-cycle, a sitting duck with no platform from which to fight back.

The company slipped into damage control posture and issued a single, bland line: “We are reviewing the matter.”

By dawn, Bobby had the boys sealed in puffer jackets, caps, masks—the anonymized silhouette of fame—and steered the van toward a temple tucked inside the city grid.

An attendant listened to Bobby’s halting explanation, face flattening into concern.

A ritual would help, the man said.

Not the tourist-trap incense-and-Instagram kind—an old-school gut (굿, a shamanic rite), meant to scrape bad luck off the bones.

The temple courtyard buzzed with the soft, perpetual murmur of morning regulars.

Inside the little bubble of the six of them, the temperature dropped ten degrees.

Jinu’s jaw was locked.

Abby and Baby gave the idea of a rite the same respect they gave rumors and cowardice—a scoff straight to its face.

“It’s Mercury retrograde,” Bobby murmured, pleading. “Please. Do it for me.”

Jinu finally looked up. His voice came out raw. “You don’t believe me either… do you?”

Romance moved first, steady hand to Jinu’s shoulder. “We believe you. That’s why we’re calling it bad luck. Think about it—Abby got cornered by a sasaeng (사생, an obsessive, stalker-like fan) at the gym again. We could all use a reset.”

Abby’s face shuttered, his zipper rasping up to his chin. Jinu gave a tight nod. Baby clicked his tongue and turned away.

Then Mystery trotted back, hauling a box: “Look what the monk gave us!” he grinned. “Mochi and rice crackers.”

Bobby went to pull the van around.

The boys took the narrow stone path toward the main road.

They turned the corner and ran headfirst into sound.

Bass, bright as chrome, detonated across the street.

A pocket of fans screamed.

In the middle of a pedestrian crossing, Huntrix were setting a trap disguised as a pop-up show.

Three rookies in riot-bright stage outfits.

Rumi held the mic, eyes scanning the crowd.

She found them in an instant.

Her smile curled, playful with teeth. “What a beautiful day!” she chirped. “This next song is for some very special sunbaenim (선배님, a respectful term for a senior in the same field) who might be here with us today.” She blew a kiss—deliberate, unmistakable—in their direction.

Zoey and Mira fanned the spark with winks and finger hearts.

Mystery’s eyes lit, and inside his sleeve he shaped a tiny heart.

Jinu’s hand shot out, iron on Mystery’s wrist. “What do you think you’re doing?” he hissed.

Abby recoiled.

Romance exhaled. “This is trouble.”

Baby clicked his tongue. “Too loud.”

The opening bars of “How It’s Done” hit.

The current of bodies flowed toward the center.

Moving against it, the Saja Boys were pinned, famous ghosts caught in the undertow.

The song was a blitzkrieg.

A hard-hitting beat under a cascade of rap verses, traded between the three girls with a ferocity rare in the industry.

For a moment, the professionals in them were captivated.

Saja Boys were not merely performers; they were architects of their own sound, a rarity in an industry that often prefers its idols to be beautiful, well-oiled cogs in a larger machine.

For six years, they had dominated the peak of the Korean music world and extended their reach across the globe precisely because they wrote, composed, and arranged every beat, every lyric, and every harmony themselves.

They were the heirs to a rare tradition of idol-producers who had shattered the mold, proving that commercial appeal and artistic autonomy were not mutually exclusive.

Their work carried the sharp, disciplined edge of seasoned musicians, and it was this hard-won professional mastery—honed through countless hours in the studio and grueling rehearsals—that allowed them to connect with audiences from Seoul to San Francisco.

They weren't just idols; they were artists who had hard-earned their throne.

And that made the quality of what they were hearing on this street corner both impressive and, in a way, deeply insulting.

It was good.

Annoyingly good.

But there was a dissonance.

The sound was a declaration of war; the performance was a charm offensive.

They winked, they pouted, they made hearts with their hands, and as they did, something impossible happened.

The little gestures took form, peeling away from their fingertips to become solid, three-dimensional balloons of pink light that drifted into the grasping hands of the crowd.

Mira snapped her head to the side, a sharp, practiced move, and framed a heart with her thumbs and forefingers. The shape solidified, a perfect confection of light, and floated free. 

It sailed over the heads of the cheering fans, unerring as a guided missile, and came to a gentle stop directly in front of Romance.

He caught it on instinct, his hand closing around the warm, weightless shape in his palm.

“They can make hearts out of thin air?” Baby’s eyebrow shot up, his voice laced with the pure, uncut skepticism of a man who dealt in harder truths.

And then the sun hit at a different angle, and they all saw it at once.

A flicker, there and gone, on the skin of their arms and necks as they moved.

Not tattoos. Markings.

Sigils of unholy geometry that pulsed with a dark, familiar grammar.

The air around the five of them changed.

Chapter Text

That night, the air in the Saja Boys’ penthouse apartment—a sprawling space of glass and minimalist furniture high above one of Seoul’s most exclusive residential neighborhoods—was so thick you could weigh it.

Bobby and Celine arrived together, a study in contrasts.

(In this story, Celine is a male mentor—a gender swap from the original character; see Chapter 1: Prelude: Endlessly on Stage (끝없이 on stage) for details.)

Bobby wore his defeat like a cheap suit. He stood in the middle of the living room, hands spread in surrender. “Look, I don’t know why you’re all so fixated on this Huntrix group, but what’s the point? There’s nothing to find. The company is a ghost, a shell corporation registered to nowhere. No address, no phone number. It’s like they just fell out of the sky. We need to focus on the plagiarism story. That’s the more important fire right now.”

“The more important fire?” Celine’s voice cut through the room like a shard of ice.

He was their instructor, a shareholder in their agency, and a living legend in the entertainment world.

He was Saja Boys’ mentor in both the art of the hunt and the business of fame, but he offered no comfort, only pressure.

“You keep digging, Bobby.” The command was absolute. Celine looked from Bobby’s wilting frame to Jinu’s rigid one. “I told you this would happen. This obsession with being ‘self-producing idols’—with being singer-songwriters. Wouldn’t it be easier to just stand there and sing the songs we give you? You wouldn’t have this mess.”

Jinu’s face was a mask of thunder, his lips pressed into a bloodless white line. He said nothing.

Baby glanced at the older members, their faces set in masks of respectful submission, and saw an opening. He jumped in, partly to explain, but mostly to draw Celine’s fire away from Jinu. "With all due respect, sir, the market isn’t what it was back in your day. Since the first generation of idols, the need for major agencies came into play because singing and dancing were essential—"

“Don’t lecture me,” Celine snapped, cutting him off. “I know the business better than any of you. And as long as I am a part of this company, my influence is more than enough to keep you popular.You already possess the talent, and that’s sufficient. All you need to do is maintain your physical condition. You refuse the simple path and insist on this bloody, self-inflicted struggle. And now look at the result! Why do you think you’re being accused of plagiarism? Because of this pointless artistic insistence! If you had just followed the path I laid out, you would have avoided all this suffering!”

To understand Celine’s fury, you have to understand the rigid caste system of Korean entertainment, where the public’s recognition of an “idol” as a true “artist” still lags far behind that of a “singer.” The pecking order reveals itself in a thousand small humiliations. At major year-end awards shows, both singers and idols perform, but the comfortable, well-appointed green rooms are reserved for the “singers.” Meanwhile, even top-tier idol groups are sometimes relegated to makeshift tents in the parking lot, leaving their fans to rage online as their favorites shiver in the winter wind.

Celine’s career began in an era before the Kpop idol system became an assembly line, back when Korean idol groups weren’t produced en masse and a top group’s image could stand alone. In his own mind, he is a singer, not an "idol", and he believes his status is unshakeable—a dynamic not unlike the one that led a generation of Backstreet Boys fans to look down on a rising Justin Bieber.

It’s why he speaks to the Saja Boys with the unblinking certainty of an old patriarch: order given, obedience expected.

Like a cat whose tail has just been stomped on, Baby shot back, his voice dripping with acid. “Sir, that’s because back then, the Sunshine Boys just had to stand there and sing.”

A dangerous glint flashed in Celine’s eyes, but he held his tongue.

He couldn’t unleash the full force of his argument, not here.

Not with Bobby in the room—oblivious Bobby, who knew nothing of demons, or the real stakes of their work.

“Celine- hyung ,” Romance began, stepping forward to smooth the churning air, “Baby didn’t mean it like that…”

But Celine’s ideology was as unbending as his posture. He had paved their path to stardom and forged them into hunters, but he saw Jinu’s perfectionistic drive for artistry as a character flaw. Fame was smoke. Idols were ephemeral. Their true purpose, the only one that mattered, was guarding the Honmoon. This musical ambition was a dangerous distraction.

As Celine opened his mouth to deliver another volley, even the stoic, ever-silent Abby moved. He didn’t say a word, but he shifted his position, placing his own broad frame squarely between Celine and Jinu, a silent, human shield absorbing the force of their mentor’s oppressive gaze.

The gesture broke the spell. Bobby, seizing the moment, promised again that he would find a way, that he would keep digging.

Celine let out a short, sharp snort of disgust and, for now, let it go.

After he left, the oxygen seemed to leave with him. The five of them were left in a vacuum.

Six years in, they’d been topping charts worldwide—and fighting demons in every city they toured. Both the public spotlight and the shadows had left them utterly worn out.

Mystery was the first to move, breaking the heavy silence. He crossed the room and wrapped Jinu in a brief, silent hug, a simple gesture of comfort before he turned and disappeared into his own room.

Romance followed, resting a steadying hand on Jinu’s shoulder. His gaze flickered for a moment toward Baby, who was still radiating a low-level, simmering anger, before he sighed and retreated to the kitchen. The soft click of a cabinet door was the only sound.

"It's nothing. Don't mind him," Abby said, his voice a flat, toneless line that offered no real comfort. Then he, too, was gone, vanishing down the hall.

Jinu believed the plagiarism scandal was all his fault. Celine’s words—that “pointless artistic insistence”—were harsh, but this time, he couldn’t find a single word to argue back. He stood frozen in place, observing the expression on each member’s face before he finally fled to his room.

Chapter Text

He fled to his room, the verbal blows from Celine landing harder than any physical hit.

Jinu slid open the glass door to the balcony, and the glittering, indifferent sprawl of downtown Seoul City opened up at his feet.

The balcony was decorated with potted plants, a riot of green in the concrete and steel—all of them Romance’s doing.

A cleaning service watered them twice a week, and so they thrived, oblivious to the neglect of their owners.

Jinu stared out at the rivers of light from the traffic below, feeling utterly and completely alone, an outcast in a city that once worshipped his image.

And then, something impossible happened.

On the polished floor of the balcony, a circle of watery, aqua-blue light shimmered into existence.

It spun lazily, a flat, silent vortex of impossible energy.

A portal. The image, plucked from a page in an old hunter-training manual, flashed in his mind.

But it made no sense!

The Saja Boys’ global fame and relentless touring schedule served a dual purpose: it fed their egos, yes, but it also fed the wards.

The Honmoon, the barriers between worlds, had never been stronger.

And this apartment, their dorm, was protected by a web of the highest-level deterrents, woven by the five of them personally.

Nothing demonic should be able to get this close.

The light pulsed once, then collapsed in on itself, winking out of existence.

It left behind a single, canary-yellow card, so small and unassuming it looked like the kind of miniature card a fan would choose specifically to be able to slip into an idol’s hand during the chaos and rush of an airport arrival.

After a few hesitant prods with the toe of his shoe, Jinu managed to flip it over.

On it, in a cute, bubbly script, were two lines:

Meet me!

Huntrix, Rumi

Rumi.

The name was a key, unlocking a flood of unwanted, crystal-clear images from the street performance.

Jinu sometimes hated his memory.

It wasn’t a gift; it was a curse, honed to a razor’s edge in the academic pressure-cooker of Daechi-dong’s cram schools, a world he was thrown into before he could even properly read.

His doctor parents had demanded perfection, and the tutors had delivered a near-photographic recall that now served only to torment him.

He hadn’t looked at online comments in at least two years, but he could still see every hateful post, every betrayed message from a fan-turned-anti, every grainy, invasive photo taken by sasaeng fans (사생팬, stalker fans, literal translation: private-life fans).

He sighed, the weight of it all pressing down.

He remembered their name tags from that day, the blocky, stylized English letters.

Zoey, the one with the twin buns, very bright smile, and a machine-gun arm for firing finger-hearts.

Mira, the tall one with sharp, phoenix-like eyes. The one who had blown the 3D hearts out of thin air.

And Rumi. The one with the long, purple braids who stood in the center and could sing very well. " This next song is for some very special sunbaenim…”

The memory soured instantly.

After seeing their demonic markings, he mentally stamped the same, stark word across each of their smiling faces:

'TARGET.'

“No,” he murmured to himself, a slow, cruel smile beginning to curl at the corner of his mouth. “This is perfect.”

A thought, dark and seductive, began to unspool in his mind—the clean, simple release of violence.

“Bobby can’t find a thing. I agree to meet, I take them all out in one go, and this is over.” His foot pressed down on the little yellow card, a satisfying crunch under his heel. “But how do I respond? They can’t breach the wards, so this must be a one-way street.”

As if in answer, a sound drifted across the gap between his building and the one opposite: “ Roar .”

It was a strange, high-pitched sound, like a kitten trying to imitate a tiger.

The building across the way was shorter, its rooftop easily visible.

And on it stood the most bizarre creature he had ever seen.

It looked, for all intents and purposes, like a two-meter-tall, solid-blue American Shorthair cat.

Standing next to it, perched on the ledge, was a crow with three pairs of eyes.

Mythical beasts from a storybook?

Jinu didn’t hesitate. He swung himself onto the balcony railing, addressing the strange duo. “Take me to your owner.”

He didn’t wait for an answer. He launched himself across the gap, landing with a soft thud on the opposite rooftop.

The giant blue cat was, strangely, trying to right a small, overturned potted plant, its movements clumsy and oversized.

It nudged the pot with its front paw three times, and each time, it tipped back over.

“Hello?” Jinu said, turning his attention to the magpie.

The magpie blinked, all six of its eyes rolling in a perfectly synchronized expression of utter annoyance.

Jinu let out an exasperated sigh, knelt, and set the plant upright.

The big cat immediately began to purr, a sound like a low rumble of an engine, and rubbed its massive head affectionately against his leg.

“Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” Jinu grumbled, trying to sidestep the affectionate gesture.

The magpie let out three short, sharp caws.

And in the next instant, the world dissolved around them.

... Jinu, the cat (tiger), and the magpie were gone.

Chapter Text

In the blink of an eye, the world snapped from one picture to another.

The high-end penthouse apartment the Saja Boys used as a dorm—one of those sleek, needle-thin towers stitched into Seoul’s skyline—fell away like a backdrop, its glittering, steel-and-glass shell just one more elegant cage among dozens.

The city reassembled as curved rooflines and stone walls: a cluster of traditional hanok houses.

Jinu blinked twice, his hunter’s instincts kicking in faster than his surprise.

The architecture, the layout—he knew this place.

Bukchon Hanok Village.

Bukchon Hanok Village is a historic residential neighborhood in central Seoul, a lived-in maze of narrow lanes lined with hundreds of restored hanok homes.

It’s often called a “living museum,” where residents still occupy the tiled-roof houses and workshops, galleries, and cultural centers share space with everyday life.

He caught a flicker of movement from the corner of his eye—a feminine silhouette.

Without a second thought, his specialized longsword materialized in his hand, a whisper of steel in the cold night air.

He swung.

The figure toppled with a hollow, unsatisfying thud.

Wait.

That's just a mannequin, dressed in a traditional silk hanbok .

From behind the fallen dummy, Rumi appeared, still clad in her glittering stage costume from their street performance.

She straightened up with a grin that was equal parts infuriating and, he had to admit, a little charming. “Hey! I wasn’t exactly expecting a welcome-back hug, but isn’t that a bit much? What if you’d chopped up the wrong girl?”

Jinu’s expression remained a perfect, unreadable mask.

He closed the distance between them in three long strides, the tip of his sword coming to rest against the delicate skin of her throat. “My sword doesn’t harm humans.”

“Ooh, scary,” she said, her voice dripping with mock terror as she dissolved into a swirl of violet smoke. “Relax! I just want to talk.”

“I have nothing to say to a demon.”

“What if I told you I know how to fix your plagiarism problem?” She reappeared a good five meters away, hands stuffed casually into the pockets of her shorts.

“I didn’t plagiarize,” he snapped, the words tasting like ash. “The melodies might sound similar, but—”

It wasn’t theft.

It was fatigue.

Years of white-knuckle overwork, the kind that makes you forget your own name, let alone the micro-details of a sound sample license.

“Wait, why am I even explaining myself to you?” He didn’t know why he was still talking, why he hadn’t just lunged again.

His sword was already up, the steel flashing.

The truth was uglier: a perfect storm of bad luck and his own impossible standards.

The problem came down to a few sound samples, bought cleanly from a European music sample company.

Jinu had written the melody around them, but when mixed, the whole section sounded uncannily similar to a B-side track by an old European band.

And then the real comedy began.

The samples, ordered in July, sat idle while one guy vanished on a twelve-week vacation.

He came back, we signed the MOU, and then—nothing.

In Korea, though, the big fish can make the little ones wait—sometimes ninety days if you’re unlucky.

Apparently, the European company wasn’t playing by those rules.

By mid-December, our guy chased for an update, only to learn the office had already shuttered for an early Christmas.

Worn down, Jinu pressed ahead, trusting that the final clearance—the producer’s one job—had been locked in.

And then, the story everyone already knows:

Jinu dropped the song on Saja’s official fan club.

The press swarmed, teeth bared.

...This was the swamp Jinu waded through.

Saja' record company ran the numbers within 24 hours of those breaking news: strip out the licensed samples, and the overlap with the old track fell well below any legal bar for plagiarism.

Results showed that it wasn’t a hanging offense.

Still, for Jinu, it landed like one.

His standards had betrayed him.

His rational brain knew he need not to talk with a demon.

His emotional state? Just a steady string of curse words.

Rumi’s hands shot up in a gesture of surrender, a playful grin spreading across her face. “Whoa there. So… you’re a Pengsoo fan?” she asked.

And then, in that impossibly clear, beautiful voice, she began to hum the jaunty theme song of the giant penguin mascot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by 펭수 (@giantpengsoo)

Jinu glanced down.

He was wearing a plain white T-shirt and a pair of cotton pajama pants patterned with a repeating print of the beloved cartoon penguin. “Shut. Up.”

“Right. Talking is clearly not on the menu tonight,” she said with a sigh. “Good thing I came prepared.”

In the split second he was distracted, she moved like a ghost, closing the distance between them in a blink.

She deftly tucked a folded letter into the back pocket of his pajama pants, gave the spot—his butt, she had just patted his butt —a cheeky, deliberate little tap, and then vanished in another puff of purple smoke.

Across the way, the giant cat and the three-eyed crow disappeared into a fading circle of blue light.

Jinu stood there, frozen in disbelief.

The cold night wind of Bukchon swept through the empty alley, and for the first time, he felt the chill on his bare ankles.

He looked down.

...He was wearing his indoor slippers.

A frantic pat-down of his pockets confirmed the horrifying truth. They were empty!

No phone. No wallet. All of it, sitting uselessly back in his room.

“Damn it,” he muttered, the first of many curses.

Saja Boys were, without exaggeration, the biggest idol group in the Republic of Korea.

They had charted on Billboard, topped Apple Music playlists in many major countries, and built a global empire.

And here was their leader, their creative core, Jinu, wandering around a closed tourist attraction after dark, dressed like he was about to raid the fridge for a midnight snack.

Calling a cab wasn’t impossible—he could probably convince a driver to let him call someone to come down and pay—but that would involve standing on a street corner, in this ridiculous outfit, and flagging one down.

The risk of being recognized before he even got in the car was astronomical.

The headlines were already writing themselves: Plagiarism Scandal Takes Its Toll! Saja Boys’ Leader Jinu Wanders Streets in Pajamas, Mental State in Question.

“Shit…”

Chapter Text

Jinu stayed frozen long enough for winter to find him.

The Bukchon wind snaked around his bare ankles, a cold little shock that finally made his brain catch up to the reality of his situation:

he was standing in a closed-for-the-night tourist-trap, wearing penguin-print pajama bottoms and his indoor slippers, with absolutely nothing on him.

Not a wallet, not a phone.

Not even dignity.

Humiliation hit first, hot and sharp.

Anger, its scrappy best friend, sparked right behind it.

With a sigh, he let his elegant grip go slack.

The hunter’s blade dissolved, breaking apart into a thousand blue pinpricks that blinked out like a dying constellation.

He reached into his back pocket and found the “letter”—which was being generous, since it was really just a scrap of paper—and crushed it into a tight, angry little ball.

Fine.

He could live with this.

He would live with this.

Probably.

He pulled the hood of his black hoodie up, cinched the drawstrings until his face was mostly shadow, and took a breath that scraped cold all the way down his throat.

Then he looked. Really looked.

Landmarks, slope of the road, the grid of the streets—the way a city tells you where it wants you to go, if you’re paying attention.

A typical idol, cocooned by vans and bodyguards, might never learn the bones of a place. Their whole world is a series of back doors.

But Saja Boys had been hunting since they were trainees. Practice rooms by day, demons by night.

Cities make more sense when you’ve mapped them in blood.

Bukchon wasn’t close to home. But it was still Seoul.

And Seoul was a language he spoke fluently.

Home—or, technically, the dorm, if a high-rise glass palace in the sky even counted—lay about five miles away.

By car, that was a twenty-something-minute drive, traffic permitting.

The subway would take double that.

Walking? An exhausting trek of over two hours.

Since pride was definitely involved tonight, it would have to be rooftops.

Though he had built up a thick skin from the constant interviews and entertainment show training, he still had very little tolerance for humiliation.

Bargaining with a taxi driver—I swear I’m good for it, just let me call my roommate from your phone—was his absolute limit.

This alone was a doable, if mortifying, act, but he wasn’t going to risk his face being plastered all over the internet for it.

And walking was even worse.

Not because of the two-hour journey, but because he wouldn’t make it two minutes without being spotted.

【PLAGIARISM? DRUGS? FAMED BOY GROUP LEADER ROAMS STREETS AT NIGHT IN INAPPROPRIATE CLOTHES, VACANT EXPRESSION.】

The headlines in his head got more unhinged with every block.

So, rooftops it was.

He slipped off his indoor slippers and jammed them into the loose pockets of his pajama pants.

Then, with a hunter’s easy, practiced strength, he planted a foot, then another, sprinting up two walls that met at a perfect right angle.

He hooked a hand on the edge of a hanok eave and swung himself up.

A soft 'thump' as he landed in a crouch on the slate-gray tiles.

The neighborhood was a neat, quiet grid of traditional houses—single-story, maybe two at most.

In the moonlight, the repeating lines of the tiled roofs unfurled under his feet, so calm and orderly it felt like the sky itself had come down to meet him.

He moved in a style that was something like parkour, an easy, steady lope from roof to roof.

It took only a few minutes for the slipper in his right pocket to launch itself free during a particularly ambitious jump, tracing a sad little parabola into the darkness of the alley below.

He clicked his tongue, annoyed, and tossed the other one after it.

Bare feet on cold tile gave him a truer sense of every foothold anyway. 

He’d never really used his hunter skills for running this long, not in one continuous stretch.

The very real danger of plummeting into someone’s backyard kimchi pots forced a kind of brutal, beautiful focus.

There was only the next step, the next jump.

Just… moving.

Which was great, except for the tiny, insignificant detail of where he was doing it.

The leader of the group their fans had crowned 'global trending idol'* was currently treating a random Seoul neighborhood’s roofs like his personal jungle gym.

* 글대돌, 글로벌 대세 아이돌, Direct Translation: Global Big Trend Idol.

Shit.

Nope. Don’t think about it.

He let his attention narrow to the route and the risk, and the noise in his head—the imaginary headlines, Celine’s disappointed voice, the self-loathing—began to dim.

Seoul at night is a different animal from a rooftop.

The Han River in the distance was a black ribbon threaded through the city’s glittering lights.

Down in the skinny alleys, the occasional late-night figure hustled past; each time, he held his breath and kept his footfalls ghost-quiet, his brain helpfully workshopping fresh headline disasters.

But the surprise was this: no one looked up.

Every lone pedestrian was in a hurry. The ones with companions were too absorbed in each other to glance at the sky. Everyone else was either staring at their phones or puffing on a cigarette.

No one cared about him—this hooded, pajama-clad parkour weirdo skimming the eaves of the city.

A weight he didn’t even know he was carrying lifted.

He couldn’t remember the last time it was like this.

Just him.

Alone, but quiet.

No members.

No staff. No cameras. No chorus of fans screaming his name.

No obligation to create, to perform, to be something.

And somehow, instead of feeling empty, he felt… alive.

He had to feel only his own movement, his own breath.

He was just himself—right here, right now—not Jinu of Saja Boys.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Jinu stepped into his room, the wooden door of the private bathroom looming to his right.

His feet throbbed with each step, and without ceremony, he ripped off the penguin-print pajama pants.

He stared down at his dark, grubby soles.

Annoyance bubbled up from somewhere deep and bitter.

Without a second thought, he grabbed the discarded pajamas and scrubbed at the dirt with that ridiculous cartoon penguin, then hurled them into the corner trash can like discarded garbage.

As the pants hit the bottom, a crumpled piece of paper slipped out of the back pocket——the very same scrap Rumi had personally slipped into his pajama pocket, complete with that cheeky little tap before she vanished.

He bent down, picked it up, and smoothed it out.

Written on it in that same cute handwriting:

"We really do have a way to solve this. It won't cost you much.

Just write your reply and leave it under the succulent pot on your balcony."

Chapter Text

The pale blue teleportation circle immediately consumed the note.

The demon girls were clearly prepared; a reply appeared in less than two minutes.

Jinu suppressed the knot of dread in his stomach and lifted the plant again.

The note he’d tucked beneath the succulent was gone, replaced by another small card.

He took a sharp breath and unfolded it.

"Let us silence the storm for you.

To prove our good faith, you won't pay until our work is done.

The price is simple: get Saja Boys and Huntrix on a variety show together.

A single show."

 

Jinu tore the card to shreds on the spot. 

Appear on a variety show with Huntrix?

Jinu looked at the card and couldn't decide whether to laugh or punch something. Maybe both. The audacity was almost impressive—asking him to parade around with Huntrix like they were all just one big happy family.

Sharing a stage with those demons was a public crucifixion, not a solution.

To have the notoriously ruthless Saja Boys, the most feared hunters of all time, laugh and play nice with a pack of demons for the entire nation to see?

He sneered, a raw, ugly sound in the quiet of his room. "I, Jinu, would rather drown in public scorn than accept such a grotesque condition."

He spun around and hurled the shredded pieces into the trash.

But just then, the doorbell rang.

Obsessive fans sometimes broke into the building, so as a rule, none of them ever answered.

The bell rang once, a long, sustained tone that carried a familiar, infuriating pressure.

Four of the boys feigned deathly silence.

Only Romance, with a sigh, put down his tablet and picked up his phone.

It lit up immediately with an incoming call: Celine.

Most apartments in Seoul used electronic locks.

Celine, of course, had the code.

The call was a mere formality, a notification of his imminent arrival.

Romance, wearing his practiced, camera-ready smile, was the only one to greet him, meeting Celine’s cold, inorganic stare.

This was Celine’s rage.

Silent, frigid, and absolute.

"So, it comes to this," Celine’s voice was laced with a chilling disappointment. "A petty squabble among mortals, and the shield of the world trembles. The delusion that you can balance 'art' with the duties of a hunter is dangerous. Creativity invites fragility, diverting energy that belongs to the Honmoon—a cost we cannot afford to bear."

Romance stood beside him, a statue of quiet deference.

Celine coldly tossed out his verdict. "This incident, though trivial, provides the perfect justification for a tactical adjustment. The 'creation' process is the source of this fragility—an unnecessary variable, a liability that must be cauterized. It will cease. From now on, the company handles the music productions and all. Your role will be simplified: you will perform, you will fight. There is nothing else. Each stage will be a ritual to fortify your power. This is the most efficient and logical path forward."

Romance knew, with a sinking heart, that Celine was delivering these words with a twisted, self-righteous form of care.

But it was a care that extended only to their bodies, their physical health as guardians of the Honmoon.

He had never once shown concern for their minds, for the human spirits being ground to dust within those bodies.

Because that was... Celine.

In his zealous mission to fortify the hunters' power, he treated even himself as a mere tool, obsessively sharpening his own edge, rigidly bound by centuries of ancient, unyielding doctrine.

Celine’s words hung in the air, and the room fell into a deep, frozen silence.

Usually, Bobby would have smoothed things over.

With Bobby absent, that role fell to Romance.

But this time, Romance chose silence.

And his silence was a tacit endorsement of the rebellion to come.

Mystery, normally the group’s gentle, big-hearted golden retriever, who always offered a touch of ingratiating sweetness to Celine, now met his gaze with an undisguised flicker of defiance.

It was a first.

Even Abby, who for the past year had been a ghost, lost in a fog of despondency—silent, withdrawn, not really meeting anyone’s eyes—now stood with his arms crossed, his gaze locked directly on Celine, his body radiating a stark, clear warning.

The muscles in his forearms and jaw were corded with tension, a portrait of unyielding opposition.

And Baby, the resident rebel, was a given.

The few times Saja Boys had ever talked back, it was always the rapper who’d delivered the lines.

Though he held his tongue now, the disgust on his face was a shout.

_

Chapter Text

It was only then that Celine noticed Jinu’s door, cracked open just a sliver.

The sliver of darkness was a clear answer: he had no intention of emerging.

The boys’ silence was not indicative of compliance. It suggested caution.

Historically, their resistance manifested as nominal agreement followed by private deviation.

Bobby or Romance playing diplomat, while Jinu spearheaded the musical framework behind the scenes, and the rest of the group brought it to life with their lyrics, rap flows, and choreography.

Jinu nods when criticized. Says nothing.

He lets the lecture roll off him, then bolts the door and bleeds it into the track.

Of the five, he's the one starving most for the approval of the man who watched them grow.

Too gifted to stay quiet without it hurting, he just wants that approval earned the right way:

By the music only he can make.

Mystery’s sweetness?

Not a performance. It’s how he’s built.

Only one of them who grew up loved the right way.

Celine’s approval mattered before debut. Now the fans flood him so hard he doesn’t need an ounce of it.

Abby wore respect like a uniform before the gloom settled over him, but his faith belonged to rules, not rulers.

Blame his dad: he could measure a line to the millimeter and decide exactly how far it deserved to be followed.

If Celine’s guidance sounded like opinion instead of law, Abby let it slip past like static.

And Baby’s blunt force.

Full service for fans, zero theater for Celine.

Romance only seemed easy.

In reality, his moves were calculated and precise—he picked his moments like locks, stepping in not to please the boss, but to shield his group.

His respect for Celine was a tool carefully deployed to mitigate risk.

This distinction was lost on Celine.

Until now.

When it finally clicked, Celine went still.

No audience.

No meddling staffs.

Just him and these men he still thought of as boys.

And for once, Mr. Unflappable… flapped.

A quick, almost invisible retreat.

If the stage manager had been there, she would’ve called the cue on the headset.

Also, the way the boys moved—a series of coordinated, protective gestures so in sync you’d think they’d rehearsed it—felt like a pointed piece of choreography meant just for him.

Had they always been this strong, or had he just never bothered to look?

It was the same laser focus he’d drilled into them for their performances, now aimed directly at him.

For the first time, Celine felt the unnerving math of the situation:

'It was five against one, and he might actually lose.'

The lecture that was already queued up on his tongue dissolved.

He then announced a fictional meeting and vacated.

The air left behind in the dorm was thick with the kind of humiliation and emptiness that sticks to your ribs.

For Saja Boys, the roar of crowds and climbing charts felt hollow now.

The real currency—their work and the respect of industry professionals—that's what held them up.

Funny how the world's most famous boy band sometimes lived off reaction videos on YouTube.

Their disappointment toward Celine in that moment was venomous, far stronger than their conditioned hatred for demons.

It's devastating when your ally feels more like the enemy than the enemy itself.

They were the kind of dazzling men who could make a stadium forget its own heartbeat, but offstage they shared a secret even their manager Bobby didn’t know.

What the world saw were five legends lit from within; what they didn’t see was the shadow road that ran beside the spotlight.

Years of hunter selection and training came first—where failure meant pain and success meant harder trials.

After hunter training—strict, severe, more about staying upright than staying on beat—only then were they measured for stages and cameras.

You don't hand a crown to someone who doesn't know its weight.

Their childhood ended early.

The hours were long, the practice heavy, and the blood, sweat, and tears weren't metaphorical.

Jinu, listening from his side of the door, witnessed the whole damn thing.

Suddenly, the demon’s offer didn’t seem so crazy.

He weighed being suffocated by Celine's care—control, really—against the demon's straightforward deal.

At least the literal demon offers you a contract.

It wasn’t even a choice anymore.

He scribbled his acceptance on fresh paper, slid it under the designated plant, and waited.

The reply came back on a pink card.

Six words in unfamiliar handwriting:

You’ll keep your promise, right?

No signature.

Instead, a hot-pink lipstick mark.

A seal on a dangerous transaction.

Jinu stared at it.

Not Rumi's writing.

A light wave of disappointment washing over him that he absolutely did not have the energy to unpack right now.

Chapter Text

Jinu retreated to his room and did what any rational adult would do:

hH scrolled obsessively through the major online forums.

It wasn’t the top trending topic anymore, but the things that had replaced it were the usual fleeting dramas.

Meaning, as the Saja Boys' first major public scandal, the PR nightmare had officially spiraled out of control.

The internet was a courtroom, and we were on trial. He thought. Can you make a deal with a demon, and still keep any part of your soul?

Jinu forced himself to calm down, pulling out a pen and paper to map out his thoughts.

Huntrix had to have more tricks up their sleeve; this was just the first step, which would explain their deceptively generous offer.

In this specific deal, Jinu held all the cards.

Sure, arranging the recording would burn through some social capital, but Huntrix hadn’t specified any details.

He could stick them in a huge variety show taping where the demon girls would get a fleeting glimpse of screen time—seen, but not heard.

That way, they couldn't siphon a single soul, guaranteeing the fans’ safety.

He could even tell the TV staffs not to give them mics.

That would eliminate any risk entirely.

Afterwards, Jinu could just explain to the demons that there were too many A-listers on set, and a trio of rookies simply couldn't get a word in.

The plan felt unbreakable, a perfect countermove that left no openings for failure.

Besides, Jinu couldn’t resist the offer.

He felt the plagiarism scandal was his burden to bear, a mess he’d made that he had to clean up alone.

He really wanted to end this crisis himself, to shield his treasured teammates from any more fallout.

And if that wasn’t reason enough, this so-called ‘first step’ was also the perfect chance to get back at Rumi for leaving him stranded with nothing, forcing him to make that long, humiliating trek all the way home.

With a hand that wasn’t as steady as he would’ve liked, he wrote back. “Of course.”

Jinu woke up at eight the next morning feeling surprisingly okay.

He wandered out into the living room to find Abby staring at the TV, his mouth hanging open.

The morning news program was reporting on a high-profile scandal as its lead story.

The subject was a prominent actress “A.”

NEWS ANCHOR (on TV):

…a shocking development in the entertainment world today, as beloved actress “A” is under investigation for illegal use of a controlled substance—Propofol.

She has not yet admitted to the allegations, but she was apprehended at a well-known plastic surgery clinic in Gangnam.

Clinic staff claim "A" was only there to sleep, and that the drug was administered as a sleep aid for her chronic, severe insomnia.

The Chungmuro* actress, a former member of one of the nation’s most popular girl groups, has built a career on her flawless image…

*Note: Chungmuro (충무로) is the name of a street and neighborhood in central Seoul. Historically, it became synonymous with Korea’s movie studios, production companies, and film distributors. Much like “Hollywood” in the U.S. Many Korean actors split their time between TV dramas and movies. A “충무로 actor” label emphasizes a screen actor whose primary credentials and reputation come from film work.

A huge actress in a massive drug scandal.

The whole country was in an uproar. The internet was a wildfire.

And just like that, the Saja Boys’ plagiarism issue, which had been losing steam and lacked any legal merit, was instantly rendered insignificant—a skirmish forgotten in the face of a full-scale war.

Jinu stood, rooted to the spot, as the news report repeated.

A cold wave washed over him, starting at his toes and working its way up.

They had been fighting demons for nine years, ever since they were idol trainees, kids, really.

You do something that long, you start to get used to it.

You get careless.

The demons they usually fought were just… mindless monsters.

They weren’t intellect.

Huntrix was smart.

And Jinu had just found out exactly how smart.

Meanwhile, completely oblivious to the shockwave they'd sent through Jinu's world, the three members of Huntrix were having a perfectly normal afternoon.

The demon girls were holed up in their “base” in an old Seoul neighborhood—a single room in a goshiwon (고시원, a tiny, bare-bones dorm-style residence originally meant for students preparing to take exams. Usually just a bed and desk and very limited private space, shared bathrooms and kitchens, with utilities and Wi‑Fi baked into rent).

When they’d first slipped over from the demon realm, things had been even grimmer—they were basically urban campers, unrolling sleeping bags in subway corners like raccoons with a crafting habit.

Not for resting—again, demons—so much as for commandeering the station bathroom mirrors to practice their hair and makeup and hijacking any borrowed power source to hand-sew stage outfits and practice hair and makeup like it was a 24/7 boot camp sponsored by chaos.

The sleeping bags weren’t for sleep; they were for inventory.

So this tiny room had become, in every sense that mattered, their first “home,” even if the lone desk had disappeared beneath fabric, thread, and sequins colonizing in glittery, unstoppable waves.

Their only piece of tech: the cheapest Samsung smartphone purchased because TV staff needed a number that didn’t require summoning circles to reach them.

Right now, the phone was cupped in Mira’s palms while all three perched on the twin bed, staring at the screen with the reverence of pilgrims at a very small shrine.

The video playing was a little grainy, a little old‑school:

Onstage, a younger Celine stood singing at center mic, belting a Sunshine Brothers classic, while behind him five baby‑faced boys in matching promo outfits.

The five boys being, unmistakably, Saja Boys.

“What is this?” Zoey blinked. “They… did backup dancing for Celine?”.

In the comments below, fans were busy time‑traveling via nostalgia, explaining how, pre‑debut, the company had teamed up with a TV station to stage a showcase:

Celine—on the cusp of retirement—front and center, Saja as his backup dancers, a tidy springboard into First Official Exposure.

For trainees, it was a golden ticket—deeply reasonable, if a little glitter‑sore on the knees.

To three demons only half fluent in the ecosystem of human showbiz, though, the whole thing read like a tragic backstory written in rhinestones.

“Oh no,” Rumi said, face in hands, compassion dialed to eleven. “They were used as stage wallpaper by a previous‑gen hunter?”.

Mira tilted her head. “Humans call it ‘nepo baby,’ I think? They’re background, yes, but it means they were seen before debut”.

“I’ve got it!” Zoey nodded, absolutely certain she had just cracked Sociology. “Nepo babies! And that is also what humans call… mama’s boys!”.

One could almost hear the gears turning in their heads.

Mira, whose memory was airtight, gently corrected her. “Zoey, Celine is a man. So… wouldn’t that make them daddy’s boys?”.

“Oh! Right!” Zoey lit up, committing the vocabulary to permanent storage. “Daddy’s boys!”.

“Makes sense. Mira’s brilliant,” Rumi said, because when someone hands over the right term, the only appropriate response is applause.

Chapter Text

The Demon Hunter organization wasn’t exactly in the business of recruiting happy kids.

Its trainees were almost always the products of broken families—the abandoned, the neglected, the orphaned.

They were kids like Celine, shuffled from one relative to the next until the organization acquired him.

After all, no loving parent would condemn their child to a life drenched in blood and sweat.

But Mystery was different.

He came from a good home, a big house filled with love where his parents adored him.

The only catch was their careers, which took them across the globe.

He’d traveled with them as an infant/toddler, though he has no memory of it.

Once he started school, he had to stay behind in Seoul with housekeepers and tutors.

He was a kid who was naturally attached to his parents, and while he knew he was loved—practically bubble-wrapped in it—a small, persistent loneliness took root in his heart.

When a family connection offered a glimpse into the world of the hunters, Mystery’s sharp mind saw not a battlefield, but an opportunity.

He realized that being the best hunter was a fast-track to becoming an idol, a way to skip the line.

He wasn't after money or fame.

He was after an extreme form of love—the roar of a crowd chanting his name, a force so powerful it could chase away any lingering quiet.

It's why, when you look at him, you can still see the boy who was given everything.

A boy who carries his innocence not like a shield, but like a birthright.

Cut to the filming of the Idol Star Athletics Championships, the annual special scheduled to air over the Lunar New Year holiday.

The Demon Hunters organization went way back, with ties to pretty much every major network.

And in a business built on favors, slotting someone in last-minute wasn’t exactly unheard of.

Thanks to a friendly director and a producer who owed them one, Saja Boys landed a huge private dressing room.

Their sasaeng fan situation was the stuff of legend, and since this was a one-outfit kind of event, any staff not needed on the field were sent home early.

Mystery, fresh from his track event, ducked back to the dressing room under the guise of a makeup touch-up.

His stylist had gone a little wild with his fluffy lavender hair today, making it look so soft it was practically begging to be petted.

The fan screams had been especially ear-splitting.

A small smile played on Mystery's lips as he caught his reflection.

He was, he had to admit, enjoying the attention.

He was in the middle of chugging a bottle of water when the door flew open.

A figure practically bounced into the room, totally uninvited, beaming as if she owned the place.

Zoey. From Huntrix.

What was she doing here?

Mystery immediately went on high alert.

She bounced toward him with a bright, sunny smile. "You're just my type..."

Her expression was all warmth and open friendship, like she was about to share an exciting piece of good news. “Hey! Mama’s boy!”

Mystery just blinked, a giant, cartoonish question mark practically floating over his head.

When he didn’t react, Zoey figured she’d fumbled the delivery.

Following Mira’s coaching, she corrected herself, even louder this time:

“My bad. Daddy’s boy!”

That only seemed to confuse him more.

He glanced from her to himself, utterly lost.

He couldn't even parse the sounds she was making into actual words.

Seeing her message fail to land, Zoey’s bravado instantly deflated. She raked a hand through her hair. “Wait, did I get it wrong…?”

She looked up at him, her eyes wide with a pure, unfiltered curiosity. “I heard,” she started, her voice laced with the agony of a deep injustice, “that human kids get taken care of by their parents until they’re eighteen, sometimes even twenty-two… Someone makes them good food, and kisses their boo-boos, and tells them bedtime stories…”

Her voice trembled with longing, and then—right before Mystery’s stunned eyes—a pair of fluffy, floppy puppy ears popped out from her hair, drooping with a heartbreaking sadness.

“…I’m so jealous.”

The puppy-ear gambit was a move the girls had swiped directly from a webtoon—their emergency eject button for social screw-ups.

—It was a critical hit.

Mystery’s brain flatlined.

He forgot his name, the place, the fact that they were mortal enemies locked in a generations-old war.

His heart was sucker-punched by a force known only as Terminal Cuteness.

All his training, every ounce of his hunter’s instinct—it all disintegrated in the face of those floppy ears.

An instant later, his hand was moving on its own, instinctively reaching out to gently ruffle the hair of the sad little puppy in front of him.

“…I’ll take care of you!”

The words tumbled out of his mouth before he could stop them. 

Ding!

Demon Hunter Mystery: Captured.

(Capture Progress: 1/5)

So the camera lights were basically trying to blind him.

That was fun.

Abby was standing on a field holding a bow and arrow, shaking, while his skin felt like it was on fire.

The crowd was screaming, but honestly?

It sounded like they were at the bottom of a swimming pool. His heart was doing a thing—not the good kind.

Six years.

He’d been doing this for six years.

The whole pop-star-by-day, demon-hunter-by-night gig was really starting to lose its charm.

Today was probably it, the day it all fell apart.

And not because of a demon, which would have at least made sense.

No, it was because of a human girl.

A girl with a staff pass and a sweet smile who gave him a sports drink.

He was desperate to appease the fans after the scandal.

He’d smiled, he’d charmed, and he’d let his guard down for a single, fatal moment.

He drank it all.

Because of course he did. 

The beverage had been adulterated.

Chapter Text

Story Timeline:

• Saja's New Song, "Red High Heels" (In Production):

  • July 2024: The process of purchasing music samples was initiated. The purchase was still incomplete when the scandal broke.

  • Christmas 2024: The song is pre-released by Jinu exclusively on the official fan cafe.

• Year-End Performance:

  • December 31, 2024: Saja Boys perform at a year-end show, sharing the stage with Huntrix for the first time.

• The Scandal:

  • New Year's Day (After Midnight): The plagiarism news breaks.

  • Company's Emergency Response: A legal assessment is conducted, and an employee is sent directly to Europe to finalize the purchase of the music samples.

• Idol Star Athletics Championships (ISAC, 아이돌스타 육상 선수권 대회, abbr. 아육대):

  • January 10: The event is recorded.

  • January 28-29 (Lunar New Year): The event is scheduled for broadcast.

The camera lights were a personal assault, a burn against his retinas that felt suspiciously like the fire currently rampaging through Abby's bloodstream.

He was standing on a ridiculous AstroTurf field, a bow shaking in his hand, and trying not to visibly sway.

In the stands, a sea of screaming fans and light sticks blurred into a dull, underwater roar.

Abby was tired—bone-tired, and not just from the scandal.

He was tired from the unending siege.

Six years.

Six years of this double-act circus: K-pop idol for Saja Boys by day, demon hunter by night. It had sanded him down to a raw nerve.

Their public image had been flawless—at least, before the plagiarism scandal had gleefully taken a match to it on New Year’s Eve.

For six years, they were the self-producing darlings with perfect faces and even better fan service.

After their first monster hit, “Soda Pop,” went nuclear, no one could touch them.

No one could ever accuse them of riding their agency’s or their seniors’ coattails.

But the thing finally about to take him down wasn't a demon with sulfur on its breath.

 It was a seemingly harmless human.

A girl with a staff ID and a shy smile, who had handed him a bottle of a popular sports drink backstage.

He hadn’t slept well the night before, and today was critical—their first broadcast appearance since the plagiarism scandal.

To be precise, it wasn't just last night he hadn't slept well; 

It had been a long, slow slide into exhaustion.

The trip to the temple on New Year's Day had a secondary purpose: to do something about Abby’s rotten luck.

While every member had their share of obsessive followers, Abby was a magnet for them.

He was the one the sasaeng fans always managed to corner, like he had a homing beacon for the unhinged tattooed on his soul.

Thanks to his military father, his life ran on a regimented schedule, down to his daily gym sessions.

... Which, ironically, was the crack in his armor.

His life ran on a regimented schedule, a predictable rhythm the sasaeng fans had learned to waltz to. 

He changed gyms, swapped cars, got a new phone number every few months.

The effort was useless.

The crazy fans were always there, lying in wait.

Within a month, the silent calls would start, a constant, suffocating reminder that his life wasn't his own.

To function, he’d turned to a cocktail of anti-anxiety meds and sleeping pills.

They’d worked, for a while.

But eventually, the magic wore off.

His body slept, but his mind didn't.

His Apple Watch delivered the grim punchline: an hour of deep sleep a night, if he was lucky.

He was a ghost haunting his own life.

So, when he’d felt the exhaustion creeping in during the endless rehearsal, he’d chugged the entire sports drink.

And now he knew.

It was spiked.

Of course, it was.

Because with his brand of luck—the kind that could curdle milk from three towns over—what else could it possibly be?

His heart was trying to punch its way out of his ribcage, but not because of the competition.

No, this was a special kind of panic, courtesy of the unnatural heat licking at his skin and the tight, insistent pressure in his groin. 

Because, let’s be honest, there was no competition.

People had it backwards.

They saw idols playing at sports; he saw hunters playing at being idols.

Saja Boys were physical monsters, every single one of them.

The plan, as always, was to put on a good show, win by just enough, and not hog the spotlight. It was part of the job.

Today, the real job was fan service—they’d already sent custom lunch boxes as a reverse-support gift to the fans who’d shown up, a gesture of goodwill in the wake of the scandal.

As he stood there, a line from the hunter’s anthem they’d all learned as kids wormed its way into his brain, a horribly cheerful, out-of-place tune. 

'Cause we are hunters, voices strong, and I know I believe...

Blood was vacating his brain for parts south, leaving him dizzy and disconnected.

Every step felt like a betrayal.

The score didn't matter.

The score was just a way to get screen time, and screen time was the one thing he’d sell his soul to avoid right now.

Archery, at least, meant the cameras stayed on his upper body. Small mercies.

He can manage his upper body. Sure.

The individual match was three rounds, two arrows each.

A bullseye was worth 10 points, for a perfect score of 60.

ISAC had only ever featured a group archery match before, but with Korea’s repeated Olympic gold medals in the sport, the network added an individual competition, betting on high ratings.

Only four idol groups were invited to compete in total, for both the individual and group events.

But MBC was notorious for its “devil’s editing.”

Less popular groups could win silver or bronze and still get zero airtime.

Saja Boys, on the other hand, were guaranteed to be front and center, a fact that made Abby’s stomach churn.

As a hunter, his weapon was a crossbow—heavier, more powerful, and with a much longer range.

This bow and arrow felt like a child’s toy.

The Olympic target was 70 meters away, outdoors, where you had to account for wind.

The ISAC competition was indoors in a dome, with the target set at a supposed 30 meters.

In reality, it felt like less than 20.

The producers probably worried that low scores would make for bad television.

Chapter Text

Abby had skipped practice on purpose—an arrogant but calculated move he was now starting to regret as a cold sweat made his shirt stick to his back.

This rebellion was exactly what his therapist had been talking about.

She kept encouraging him to let go of the militant-level discipline his father had instilled in him, suggesting that if he wasn't so wound up all the time, he might actually get some sleep. "Your nervous system doesn't know the difference between a threat and a tight schedule," she'd said.

Romance was his biggest supporter, constantly pushing him to "embrace the chaos" and just eat out instead of meal-prepping.

But the idea of letting go felt like stepping off a cliff.

And right now, he was in free fall.

The game had changed.

The mission wasn’t to win; it was to escape the winner’s circle and the goddamn interview that came with it.

And for him, that was a hell of a lot harder.

Nailing a perfect score was muscle memory.

Child’s play.

But engineering a loss that was just close enough—good enough to look respectable, but bad enough to keep him off the podium?

That took real artistry.

His first three arrows were perfect.

One shattered a camera lens.

The second split the first.

So as the third.

The crowd ate it up.

Abby forced himself to focus.

The string sang.

9 points.

The arrow flew, landing just outside the bullseye.

9 points.

Another arrow.

8 points.

The host’s voice boomed through the speakers, expressing sympathy for the near-miss, and the crowd applauded his effort.

Abby managed a weak wave, his smile a fragile mask, before stumbling off the stage.

His control was gone.

Each shot had been a deliberate, calculated effort to lose.

Another male idol had clearly practiced hard; Abby was happy to let him have the gold and avoid the winner’s interview.

He needed to be alone.

Away from the cameras.

He knew Romance, with his eagle eyes, had already clocked that something was wrong.

The other boys would cover for him.

They always did.

He just needed his dressing room.

His sanctuary.

The hallway was a gauntlet of buzzing staff and other idols.

Bound by the industry’s strict etiquette, he had to acknowledge their greetings.

He offered clipped, jerky nods, keeping his head down as he half-ran toward the door, desperate to escape.

Up ahead, next to the door, a row of five nameplates gleamed under the cold, unforgiving light.

They weren't anything special.

Just clear acrylic holders, the kind you’d see in a cubicle farm, with slips of printed paper slid inside. 

The nameplate read:

Abby – Saja Boys

Romance – Saja Boys

Jinu – Saja Boys

Mystery – Saja Boys

Baby – Saja Boys

The nameplate didn't just hang there.

It laughed at him. 

It was a public declaration that didn't match the private ledger he kept in his head, the one where he was perpetually in debt. 

He didn't feel like a cornerstone of the group; he felt like a supporting beam, and a splintering one at that.

Within the ecosystem of their group, he, Jinu, and Romance were the same age.

But Jinu was the leader.

His name always came first, a silent, unspoken acknowledgment of the burdens he carried, the creative force he channeled for all of them.

Today, in some bullshit attempt to be "low-profile," the staffs shuffled the deck.

A spotlight on a man who preferred the shadows because he knew, bone-deep, that he didn't pull the same weight.

Jinu’s value to the group was absolute, plagiarism headlines be damned.

And, here’s the thing: in Korea, the order of things is a really, really big deal.

It’s not just a suggestion; it’s the entire social instruction manual.

From the time you’re a kid, you’re taught who to respect, who to listen to, and where you fit.

It’s a whole system based on age and rank.

So, Abby’s panic attack over a nameplate wasn’t just him being in his head.

It was a lifetime of cultural programming short-circuiting, telling him that this—his name being first—was fundamentally, existentially wrong.

 

Despite everything, Abby kept his scores intact, but he didn't see it as a personal win.

It was just crisis management—the bare minimum.

Saja Boys' original plan was for him to snatch a tight win—but sell it like he'd pushed himself to the limit.

That kind of nail-biting finish? Exactly what MBC wanted for the cameras.

Now, the drug forced a rewrite, and he took that blame on himself.

 

It was this refusal to acknowledge his own worth that made the nameplate's placement hit harder than anyone else would understand.

Abby fumbled with the handle, desperate to escape the judgment of his own name, and pushed his way inside. 

He slammed the door shut, leaning against it.

The silence was a brief, blissful relief.

Until he saw her.

Mira.

Lounging on their sofa like she owned it, one leg crossed over the other, radiating a lazy, lethal confidence that made the air crackle.

His heart didn’t sink.

It plummeted.

Huntr/x.

The demons who’d waltzed into the human world to become pop stars, right under the noses of the Saja Boys—the most feared hunters of all time.

And she had somehow broken into their private dressing room. 

Today.

On what was officially the worst day of his life.

“What the fuck are you doing here, Demon?” The words came out like gravel.

Mira uncrossed her legs, rising in a fluid motion that was all predator. “Waiting for you, Abby. I have a proposal.”

His head was a blender full of rocks. “Not interested. Get out.”

“Don’t be like that.” She tilted her head, a gesture that was far too cute for a creature of hell. “Wait. You’re trembling, Hunter.”

He clenched his fists, his knuckles white. “Get. Out.”

A spark of genuine curiosity—or something that looked like it—flashed in her eyes. “You’re pale. And sweating.” She took a delicate sniff of the air. “But there’s no curse on you. No black magic.”

“Great. Thanks for the diagnosis,” he sneered, backing away until his shoulders hit the door. “Now get away from me.”

“Laugh, but I can feel you unraveling,” she purred, the sound scraping against his last nerve. “You forgot we can smell desperation, didn’t you? Tee-hee.”

His vision swam.

The drug was a wildfire in his blood.

“Mira, last warning,” he growled, the threat undermined by the sheer panic in his eyes. “Get. the fuck. out.”

Chapter Text

Mira uncrossed her long legs and stood, moving with a lazy grace that seemed to consume all the air in the room. "Been waiting for you, Abby. Got a proposal."

Abby's head felt like a snow globe someone had shaken violently. "I’m not playing whatever game this is, Mira. Get out."

"Don't be like that," she said, tilting her head. The look she gave him was a little too charming for the crisis currently unfolding in his veins. "Wait a second. You're trembling, Hunter."

Abby clenched his fists, the muscles in his forearms cording like steel cables. "Get. Out. Now."

Curiosity, sharp and genuine, flashed in her eyes. She took a sniff of the air around him. "You're pale and sweating, but I don't smell any curses or black magic."

"Thanks for the diagnosis," he managed a smirk, sarcasm dripping from every word as his back hit the door. "Stay the hell away from me, demon."

"You can pretend," she purred, stepping closer, her voice a low scrape against his nerves. "But I can smell you unraveling." The words were meant to be an opening, a way to offer help, but they landed all wrong—a taunt instead of a lifeline. "You look like you're about to shatter. Need a hand?"

A fresh wave of cold sweat washed over him.

He literally couldn't speak.

His vision was tunneling.

The drug—Viagra, he realized with a horrifying certainty, probably mixed with an aphrodisiac—was a wildfire in his veins, turning his own body into a weapon against him.

The denim of his jeans felt like a cage, the pressure building to an agonizing peak.

Her proximity, the scent of her, the dare in her voice—it lit a fuse deep inside him.

It hit a nerve he didn't know was so raw.

The line between hunter and demon didn't just blur; it fucking vanished.

There was just her.

Tall, leggy, with that gorgeous, aloof face.

Mira, mistaking his silence for stubborn pride, pressed on. "What's the matter? Can't even handle one little demon?" She’d slipped. Her tone was the one she used on other demons.

The words were out before she could stop them, and she instantly regretted it.

Her mission was to feign concern, to lure Saja Boys into a partnership, but where in the demon realm did they offer acting lessons?

She'd defaulted to her true nature, the taunt slipping out, revealing the demon beneath the idol.

It was her mouth.

The way it formed that final taunt.

That was the last straw.

He lunged.

She didn't flinch.

She was just wondering, should I let him get a punch in before we talk?

He didn't even know what he was doing.

One part of his brain was screaming, Push her away! but that part was no longer in charge.

He swore to god he meant to shove her, to put distance between them, but his hands betrayed him, yanking her forward.

Their bodies slammed together, and his mouth was on hers before he could process the thought.

It was a hard, messy, clumsy kiss, born of pure, unraveling instinct.

Mira's hands flailed for a second before gripping his shoulders, more for balance than anything else.

She was a demon born of power and shadow, barely a year into this fragile human form.

She understood violence, not this dizzying, terrifying chemistry.

He groaned, a feral sound against her lips, his hand tangling in her hair and yanking her head back.

He deepened the kiss, taking, demanding, nipping at her lower lip.

"Abby," she mumbled against his mouth, her voice a mix of confusion and something else. "What... what kind of attack is this?"

He didn't hear her.

He couldn't.

His mind was a storm of chemical noise.

As a hunter, his body was a high-performance machine, honed by years of relentless training to the level of an elite athlete.

His metabolism could process and purge substances with brutal efficiency.

But this was a perfect storm.

The antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication he took were inhibitors, gumming up the works of the very liver enzymes his body would normally use to break down a drug like Sildenafil.

So while his superior circulation had delivered the drug into his system with terrifying speed, the exit path was blocked.

The aphrodisiac wasn't just working.

It was trapped, its concentration building to a toxic, unbearable level.

His greatest weapon—his own highly trained body—had turned against him, amplifying the poison.

Meanwhile, Mira's demon senses were picking up everything.

The raw, unfiltered aggression pouring off him was... intoxicating.

A tiny, triumphant smile touched her lips.

Okay, so maybe I didn't mess this up.

This was way better than the cold, professional distance that defined their groups.

Her head was spinning.

This is... kissing?

She and the girls had binged a ton of K-dramas, but none of the kisses looked like this.

This felt more like being taken captive.

It was just so confusing.

Her demon soul was loving it.

While Her human body was a blank slate.

"Clueless" wasn't a strong enough word.

Demons fought.

They didn't touch.

The brief, choreographed brushes during Huntrix's stage performances were the most physical contact she'd ever had.

Abby was clearly losing it, his hands starting to pull at the fabric of her clothes.

Abby’s breaths came out in harsh, guttural pants, the sound of a man starved, scorching her skin with a raw, animalistic need.

His mouth left hers to map the coastline of her jaw, each press of his lips a memory being made in real-time, branding her skin in a way that felt both terrifying and achingly permanent.

He was marking her, leaving a pretty little necklace of pink blotches like he owned the place.

A tremor went through her, a full-body earthquake she hadn't seen coming.

"Abby?" The name was a wisp of a question, tangled up in a surprise that tasted nothing like fear.

Her nails dug into the unyielding muscle of his arms as she tried to anchor herself to reality, but he was her reality now.

Her body was a traitor, singing a song she didn't know the words to.

The air was thick with the scent of his battle for control, and a war drum hammered in her ears.

Okay.

Time to make a call.

Chapter Text

This wasn't part of any plan Mira and the girls had cooked up, this raw, unscripted desperation coming off Abby in waves that made her demon soul purr with anticipation.

The problem?

She had absolutely no clue what was happening to Abby right now.

No curse, no dark magic—just pure, inexplicable weirdness.

She should have been alarming if she were a human.

But she is a demon who felt deliciously chaotic instead.

She couldn't figure out what was happening with Abby, sensing he was trapped in some abnormal state that made his eyes burn with unfocused hunger.

But what was wrong? What did he want?

And how was she supposed to fix this without accidentally making everything worse?

Should she call for backup? Get the other Saja Boys involved?

Though honestly, they'd probably just try to exorcise her on sight. Ew.

Mira's decision was tactical.

She would comply for now and continue gathering data on the unfolding situation.

Maybe this was connected to the Huntrix girls' secret plan to work with them behind Gwi-Ma's back.

And maybe—just maybe—this was the most direct path?

She decided to let the scene run, just for a moment.

But a moment was all Abby needed.

His hand found her breast with rough, possessive weight through the cheap polyester tracksuit.

His touch was clumsy and demanding, yet a strange, unfamiliar current sparked deep inside her, making her breath catch.

The official ISAC uniform—zip-up jacket, long-sleeve shirt, and track pants—was all too familiar to the Saja Boys members.

Abby could find that cheap zipper with his eyes closed.

He just yanked it down hard.

The flimsy metal broke with a pathetic snap.

MBC's budget constraints had produced uniforms with the structural integrity of tissue paper—garments designed for single use that no one would ever want to wear twice.

Mira had peeled off her shirt after the 400-meter relay, not used to the sticky, deeply human feeling of sweat.

As a demon, she remained bewildered by the layering requirements of human female clothing.

When the jacket was ripped open, leaving her in just a bra, she failed to react for a critical—well, ten seconds.

He's literally ripping my clothes off? she thought, bewildered. But this is from the broadcast station... What?! The zipper just broke like that?

Mira's eyes widened in shock—not from embarrassment, since demons don't really do shame—but from the sheer unexpectedness of it all.

She couldn't parse this chaos, but her demonic soul was having the time of its centuries-long existence, practically reveling like a drunk celebration at the raw, desperate energy radiating off him.

While she couldn't comprehend the meaning behind these uncontrolled actions, her demonic essence found unprecedented exhilaration in the primitive need emanating from him with furnace-like intensity.

Unfortunately, it was the last moment of stillness she'd get.

Just as she was distracted enjoying her demonic soul receiving Abby's negative energy, her bra had mysteriously vanished (seriously, where did it go?).

In his unfocused gaze, her naked body was the only thing that seemed real.

His eyes were unfocused, but they were locked on her.

He tore the bra away with an efficiency that should have been terrifying but was instead... electrifying.

A low groan rumbled in his chest as his hands cupped her, thumbs swiping over her nipples.

Then his head dipped, and his mouth—hot and wet—closed over one.

A sharp cry escaped her lips, half shock, half something else entirely.

"Is—is this kissing, too?" she gasped, the question sounding ridiculous even to her own ears as she tried to shrink away.

Abby didn't answer—couldn't answer.

Instinctively noticing her retreat, his powerful arm wrapped around her hips to stop her.

In the space between one searing kiss and the next, he lifted her off the ground and slammed her down on the cold makeup counter with possessive force.

His mouth moved to her other breast, teeth scraping lightly, leaving a mark that registered not as pain but as a confusing spike of pleasure.

She could hear soft moaning and realized with a jolt that it was coming from her.

Why is this so intense?

It's a tiny bit of pain, but it feels like pleasure.

Is this a human-only feeling...

The drug had him—ninety percent of him, anyway.

The last ten percent wasn't rational thought but pure, leftover primal instinct.

The kind of male instinct that feels the person beneath him wasn't fighting back and just... pushes forward.

His hands were at the waistband of her pants, pulling them down, his fingers finding the spot between her legs through the last thin layer of fabric, pressing and rubbing with unerring accuracy.

"What? Abby!"

The name came out as a squeak as her knees buckled, her hand knocking a canister of makeup brushes off the counter with a sharp clatter.

Neither the hunter nor the demon cared about the scattered brushes.

The problem was, she only glanced away for a second, and in that instant, his fingers had already slipped inside her underwear.

"Hunters are way too fast," she complained under her breath, though her voice was breathless with something that wasn't quite complaint.

She can't believe while her demon soul was enjoying the mayhem, her human brain seemed even more scrambled than Abby's.

Chapter Text

"Fuck. You're all wet." Abby muttered.

Other curses seemed to be forming in Abby's mouth, but his movements were merciless.

I'm the one who should be cursing, Mira thought.

By all accounts, He was the one who was breaking down, and she could have used that to her advantage.

She had always been known for her cleverness among among her kind—but she couldn't get her footing, couldn't map the strange, contradictory landscape of this hunter's actions.

Hmm, is whatever hex he's under contagious?

From every point of epidermal contact, a current of his misery bled into her.

It was a constant, desperate hum of negative energy that only grew louder, more impossible to ignore, the closer he pulled her.

As their intimacy deepened, that despair and pain became less and less concealable.

Mira's soft moans were broken and breathless under his relentless assault, her mind spinning.

A strange, unprecedented feeling inundated her.

It was a dizzying cocktail: His darkness was a feast for her demon soul, and his touch was awakening her human flesh.

Her brain was a switchboard lighting up with a thousand new signals, but not a single one of them was fear.

Her demon instincts were sharp and clear, reading the truth of him: he was drowning in a sea of his own misery, but there wasn't a single drop of intent to actually hurt her in him.

How strange.

He was the one taking, but his heart was screaming with fear.

fear of losing control, fear of becoming an abuser, of becoming the monster he hunted.

All of it tangled up with disgust for himself and... even a sense of self-destructive relief.

When her sensitive pearl met its first orgasm, the double pleasure sent her into a state of near ecstasy.

However, because this body was so inexperienced, the insane pleasure was still not enough to make her ignore the fact that Abby's fingers had shifted, now pressing into a part of her that had never been touched, let alone breached.

His fingers, now two instead of one, mapped the secret, untouched territory inside her. Abby’s kiss was a fever, sealing her lips, and somewhere in that breathtaking, dizzying tangle, Mira felt her sweatpants being pushed down.

His kissing skill... is... pretty good...

The absurd thought flashed through her mind.

Superior to its dramatization in Korean drama series...

Something hot and rock-hard pressed against her, a threat that made her whole body clench.

The kiss was still going, her head still spinning from the slick slide of his tongue against hers, when he started forcing his way inside.

Pain, sharp and sudden, bloomed with an intense, stretching pressure.

Mira froze, stunned by the sudden invasion, her mind a complete blank. "Ow...? That hurts?"

she murmured, her voice laced with nothing but pure, honest confusion.

Although Mira was completely unaware, Abby's the very root of Abby's soul, his fundamental nature, was that of a good man.

Even as his sanity was being completely incinerated by the drug, the residual gentleness in his subconscious was still fighting against that ferocious desire.

But for a body that had never known a lover's touch, a few moments of clumsy preparation were nowhere near enough to fend off the tearing pain of a first time.

Then again, the demon hunters would never have imagined that a demon's body could so precisely replicate all the fragile and sensitive structures of a human female.

Abby's movements paused, the headlong force slowing down.

But that tiny thread of sanity didn't last.

Luckily, unlike a true human virgin, unburdened by the interference of complex emotions like nervousness, anticipation, or shyness, Mira's feelings were purely physiological.

When Abby started moving again, that first tearing pain started to fade, replaced by something weird and new, something she’d never felt before.

She was perched on the cold surface of the vanity, and he was standing right there in front of her.

Every thrust was rough, but not mean, hitting a spot deep inside her she never knew she had with a dead-on accuracy that made her gasp.

His wet kisses marked her skin, from her shoulder, down her collarbone, to the swell of her breast, leaving little dark red flowers of possession in their wake.

Without her even noticing, the pain was gone.

But it was still her body's first go-around, and Abby was out of his goddamn mind.

So, the pleasure was a slippery thing—sometimes there, sharp and undeniable, other times a hazy, distant pulse.

In the fleeting intervals between the tides, Mira tried hard to recall her plan with Rumi and Zoey:

How to guide the Saja Boys, step by step, until Huntrix became something they couldn’t possibly let go of.

"Demon, you can still be distracted?"

Abby's cold voice suddenly rang in her ear, shattering the fragile train of thought she'd been clinging to.

He ducked his head, branding her neck and chest with more of those faint red marks.

The rhythm of his hips turned unforgiving, each push deeper, harder, more insistent than the last.

"What? Wait! Agh—!" Her protest was slammed into a broken, sharp-edged moan as her mind went fuzzy with static.

Her body instinctively mobilized the muscles of her thighs and hips to retreat toward the back of the vanity, to escape this overly intense attack.

Abby tilted his head, his eyes so cold and ruthless they barely looked human.

The moment he registered her retreat, his hands shot out, clamping around her thighs and dragging her right back to where she'd been.

At some point, the speakers in the room had come to life, playing Saja Boys' chart-topper, "Your Idol."

The familiar tune was now the bizarre, surreal soundtrack to this out-of-control moment.

Keeping you in check, keeping you obsessed

Play me on repeat, 끝없이 (endlessly) in your head

Anytime it hurts, play another verse

I can be your sanctuary

Know I'm the only one right now (Now)

I will love you more when it all burns down

For the first time, Mira the demon learned exactly how weak a human body could be, completely and totally at the mercy of Abby the hunter.

Chapter Text

Mira couldn't even remember how many rounds they'd gone anymore.

Besides, how was one supposed to count, anyway?

Was it once per his release?

A new position?

Her climax?

The entire concept was baffling.

After the vanity and then the adjustable chair, their third round started with her standing, pinned against him as they faced the mirror.

Her world had narrowed to pure sensation and the ragged sound of his breathing, but her legs were beginning to tremble, threatening to give out.

It was only then that Abby seemed to notice, his drug-hazed focus shifting just enough to spot the two-seater sofa nearby.

Then he just... effortlessly moved her there.

Let's get one thing straight about Abby—the man was built like a superhero.

It wasn't the showy kind of muscle for photos, but the kind forged from years of relentless work.

He never missed a training session, because his hard-ass father had beaten one lesson into his children's heads:

Discipline wasn't optional.

"Discipline," his father would say, voice cutting through exhaustion, "is the difference between surviving and becoming a casualty."

Please note that Abby wasn't genetically blessed.

Every ounce of his strength came from pure, stubborn willpower made flesh.

But that discipline had abandoned him now.

During the first two rounds, Mira's demon soul had been drunk on his emotional output.

—all that fear and desperation was like the finest cocaine.

But somewhere in the third, he went emotionally flat, checking out mentally even as his body kept going.

Meanwhile, her human form was finally getting the hang of things.

The pleasure became sharper, more intense, and she heard sounds escaping her throat that she didn't recognize from any of her research.

Abby had her completely pinned, and she was just along for the ride.

...Or at least, that was the story she was sticking with.

She was not a creature who could be so easily dominated, but using her demonic powers would inevitably lead to mutual destruction.

Also, she could teleport away, but she didn't want to.

She told herself it was for the mission, for the sake of their potential partnership—absolutely not because of anything else.

He had finished inside her for the third time, and as the aftereffects of the drug and the climax faded, he sat up.

His eyes were clear.

Horrifyingly clear.

And they looked directly down at a naked, breathless Mira.

The next second, a look of profound shock crossed his face, and he covered his forehead with his palm, as if trying to physically hold his thoughts in.

A shudder running through his powerful frame. 

The fear, the desperation, the self-loathing that had poured from him moments before—all of it was gone.

In its place was a wave of something so vast and heavy it felt like it had its own gravity.

A heavy wave of sadness.

No, an ocean of... deep, soul-crushing grief.

A knot of uncertainty tightened in Mira's chest.

Had she messed up? Was cooperating with him a bad idea?

But looking at the raw, unguarded grief on his face, some instinct told her this wasn't it.

Abby had not shifted to hostility, but to a different, equally potent emotional frequency that she couldn't immediately categorize.

It felt like something deeper, something that resonated with a terrible finality.

High-level demons could feed on negative human emotions.

Her first choice was fear.

Five-star, Michelin-grade, panic-in-the-streets fear.

It was clean, it was sharp, it was energizing.

This... this bottomless, soggy sadness he was radiating?

It was the emotional equivalent of a three-day-old, lukewarm casserole.

Utterly inedible and it was making her feel vaguely ill.

It was also a reminder of the chasm between them.

Her demon soul felt like it had just finished a Thanksgiving dinner for one, and her human body was officially logging off for the night.

And—oh, great—there was the undeniable, mortifying sensation of... leakage.

Right. Time to go. Immediately.

"Abby," she found her voice was hoarse, "we'll talk later."

Before the words had fully left her lips, she teleported away.

ABBY

Darkness.

Then noise.

The roar in the stadium.

The thrum of the bass.

The screaming.

No, the screaming is closer.

It’s hers.

It’s mine.

My father’s voice, a drill sergeant in my memory.

Discipline is a choice you make every second.

I am making no choices.

My body is a traitor, a vessel commandeered by a foreign agent.

The drug is a wildfire, but the kindling had been there for years—the anxiety, the exhaustion, the crushing weight of a name on a placard being placed before the name of my leader.

The shame of being first when I felt I deserved to be last.

Then, clarity.

Like a switch being flipped.

The roar recedes.

The frantic heat in my blood cools to a dull ache.

I am on a sofa.

There is a woman beneath me.

—Mira.

—The demon.

The horror wasn't in what she was.

It was in what I had chosen to do.

Her skin is flushed, her hair a mess.

Her lips are swollen.

My hand is on her hip.

I am inside her.

The sequence of events reassembles itself in my mind not as a memory, but as a series of brutal, undeniable facts.

The drug.

The dressing room.

The things I have done.

I pull out of her and sit up.

The air hits my skin, cold and accusing.

I look down at my hands, expecting them to be stained.

They are.

Just not in a way anyone else can see.

The shock is a physical blow.

I press my palm to my forehead, trying to stop the world from spinning.

The fear is gone.

The anger is gone.

The drug-fueled need is gone.

All that remains is the quiet, cavernous grief of a man who has just become the monster he was born to hunt.

What Abby couldn't possibly know, lost in his grief, was that a different kind of predator had already been lying in wait.

Mira's arrival in the dressing room was silent, a flicker in the air, but she was not alone.

A young woman was already there, lurking near the sofa with an air of predatory anticipation.

The real trap wasn't the drug racing through his veins; it was already waiting for him.

Mira didn't know the details, and she didn't need to.

The ugly, potent energy radiating from the stranger was a taste on the air—the taste of pure, calculated malice.