Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Yoo Joonghyuk looks down at his phone, quickly thumbing across the panes when he passes the lock screen to pull up his newest app. The software is MinoSoft’s newest release, some tamagochi type idle game that lets you supposedly relax. He isn’t usually one to play mobile app games but he’s recently come into some free time.

Namely, the gym is closed and his current day job is going through some management upset. Many jobs across the country are tied up in politics right now, foreclosed or shut down for a “temporary” period without an end date. His own company, what started modestly and now is a powerhouse when it comes to finances and accounting, had made headlines by offering its employees groundbreaking paid time off during their shutdown. It’s why Yoo Joonghyuk can spare time to waste with his phone, and thus he had turned his eye to the newest and hottest game on the market.

The icon is black and white split evenly down the middle. It’s a nondescript icon for a popular enough game, and the title “Idle Demon,” is typed in tidy letters underneath it. When Yoo Joonghyuk thumbs it open, his screen blossoms with MinoSoft’s famous logo. The black screen retreats and then he’s left looking curiously at a whited out screen, which would have been blinding if he isn’t one of those strange people who always keeps the brightness level on his phone to the minimum.

Two black, pupilless eyes peer out at the viewer from the white backdrop. The only other interruption of color is what looks to be a pair of horns, though those flicker, zipping in and out of focus the longer Yoo Joonghyuk stares at it. What looks like an innocent enough pair of eyes, looks eerie too the longer he stares at it. It looks like one of those dichotomous images where if you tilt it one way you see one image and another if you tilt it the other way.

Creeped out a little, Yoo Joonghyuk presses onto the screen. It’s to make the opening screen disappear, which it does promptly. As a black screen returns, a loading bar creeping across the width of his screen under his watchful eye, Yoo Joonghyuk thinks to himself that the creepiness of the app is probably to match the season. Everyone knows Halloween is approaching, and though the country doesn’t strictly celebrate it on a national scale, many people will be dressing up in costumes and horror movies remain trending at the theaters.

Yoo Joonghyuk is reminded what a wimp he secretly is when the loading screen approaches its end and he discovers himself to be holding his breath. He’s tense, lying in his own bed with his bedsheets up to his waist, and the room feels weirdly cold even counting for the AC he has running.

He doesn’t shiver – he isn’t that frightened – but he definitely feels an indisputable unsettling in his bones. He shifts, wondering if he shouldn’t just pull up another app but he doesn’t because it’s lame. And he still hasn’t progressed past the loading screen.

Ding ding dong–

The loading screen has bypassed him. When Yoo Joonghyuk turns to look, not that he’s looked away really, the phone screen in his hand has become more animated. For one, there’s a kind of preppy music emerging from his low-volumed speakers, and on the screen there are a few icons, all of which disappear as the screen pops up with what looks like an orientation screen.

Yoo Joonghyuk looks down at the illustrated character. Although on her face there’s a black bar, preventing users from seeing her completely, she wears a friendly – lewd? – smile and a pair of angel wings. She’s neatly dressed, a set of chains hanging from her loosely. They look more like her own unique weapons than a mode of keeping her captive, a fact that’s evidenced by the way she swings one long loop of chains like a lasso, popping up with a speech bubble.

Hello, user! The lettering rabbits across the screen, with a small arrow at the corner of the speech bubble. Yoo Joonghyuk presses it instinctively, and the bubble expands. It’s good to see you’re finally here. As I’m sure you know, I’m Uriel, your guide, your angel, and your fiery executioner!

Yoo Joonghyuk stares as he presses the arrow. Executioner? The character, Uriel, continues. The balance of the world is in dire disarray, and so now it’s up to you to restore it! Please allow me to show you around.

The speech bubble dissolves as Uriel throws her lasso around the user. When that screen too has passed, Yoo Joonghyuk is left looking down at what looks like a tiny male with a set of horns on its head. He’s wearing a white coat and a friendly smile. He even waves out at the camera when it zooms in on him.

The screen blacks out, highlighting the character.

–this is our resident demon. We call him the Demon of Salvation for reasons I’m sure you can now surmise. Be forewarned – he’s a little weak. This is where you come in, user!

…oh, but I can’t call you user forever! Please, dear user. What do you prefer to be called?

Yoo Joonghyuk looks at the blinking cursor and the half screen where his phone’s keyboard has shoved up into view. He hesitates a bit, but he thinks, it’s just a game. If he doesn’t put his last name the company shouldn’t have a way of tracking all of his data and, actually, his credit card info is already attached to his app account. Is there even a point to hiding this kind of info now?

Pulling himself out of his train of thought, Yoo Joonghyuk types his first name into the textbox. He expects, he doesn’t know, to be told that name is taken, or that he needs to use more letters, or that it needs to be in English, but given the fact he’s allowed to type in Korean letters in the first place, the latter is probably not the case.

To his surprise, his name is accepted immediately.

— Joonghyuk! What a heroic name to match your no doubt countless exploits! Well, now I’m getting distracted. Before I do that even more, let’s visit our little baby demon.

The screen has popped to highlight one out of the vertical line of icons on the right upper corner of the screen.

Your goal is to raise your demon to be powerful enough to restore balance across the three worlds: Heaven, Earth, and Hell. What business does an angel have in raising a demon, you ask? Tsk, tsk, Joonghyuk, all will reveal itself in time. Let’s focus on the task at hand –

First, we have to give your demon some precious food. Demons feed on energy! Here– we’ll give you some for free to get you started!

When Yoo Joonghyuk thumbs open the icon of a swirling black cloud in the corner, it pops up with a pane at the bottom of the screen. There’s a bar right across the middle of the screen, and there are arrows. One of them says x1, while the other says x10. There’s a small logo for the black cloud and right now apparently he has 1000 of them.

The screen only gives him one option to proceed. Yoo Joonghyuk presses his thumb onto the “Feed” button and the small demon character flashes with a black light.

The light bursts in longer and longer intervals, and the level of the demon rises as indicated by the number on the top of the screen. The demon never loses its friendly smile, gazing out at the user with its dark pupiless eyes under a pair of short horns.

Yoo Joonghyuk blinks, his whole world blacking out for a second unexpectedly. He pulls his thumb off the phone and the lights burst back on. He’s lifted his head and when he turns to look the digital clock he keeps on his bedside table blinks, indicating the power’s gone briefly out.

From beyond the door to his bedroom, his fridge beeps at him to come and reset the temperature in it. Yoo Joonghyuk pushes his legs around the side of the bed to push to stand.

He has to stop for a second, woozy the instant he shoves up to his feet. Now that he’s thinking about it, he hasn’t drank much of anything all day and he must be so dehydrated right now. His brows furrow, tugging the phone with him after the world has stabilized and he can walk over to his bedroom door without the risk of falling.

He gives his demon some more food, then clicks through the rest of the tutorial as he walks over to his kitchenette and the fridge, peeling his eyes off his phone to thumb through the flickering menu of the smart fridge screen on one of the doors.

Yoo Joonghyuk presses the settings to lower the fridge’s temperature to where he prefers to keep his food fresh and at optimum quality. He then fiddles with the clock which is off by a minute or two. He’ll have to do the same with his microwave, and his smart TV, he thinks as he pulls up the window to adjust the clock. He presses the down arrow to fix the minutes when his eyes catch on something to the left of the screen.

It’s a set of pupiless black eyes set into a face as white as a corpse, smiling at him.

Yoo Joonghyuk gasps. Immediately he turns around, pulse in his ears, every muscle of his body thrown into flight mode. He hasn’t done well with scares like this in the past, there’s a reason he doesn’t watch horror movies, and while the game on his phone is creepy that doesn’t explain what he saw.

He turns around, startled, expecting, well he really doesn’t know, but he hopes nothing is there at least. And his hopes are answered; the emptiness of his living room stares back at him. The dim sunlight of a cloudy afternoon is the only source of illumination in this space, though there’s a pale rectangle from his open bedroom door and bedside window off to the side.

Yoo Joonghyuk calms his racing heart as he looks out at his living room and beyond that the glass window to his balcony. He has shutters, many people in the town have to have them or risk blackmailers taking compromising photos and scamming them out of all their money. His shutters are drawn too, and they sway innocently with the light flow from his ceiling AC. There’s nothing to indicate that there’s anyone in his apartment other than Yoo Joonghyuk himself and he swallows thickly.

He turns back to the fridge. Quickly, he sets his time and then speeds through setting his green blinking microwave clock too. He’ll do his TV later, he doesn’t want to risk getting shown ads of the latest horror flick when he’s so rattled, rattled enough apparently to be seeing ghosts where there isn’t any and those which look like a benign game character from his phone.

Speaking of, Yoo Joonghyuk glances down at his phone screen. The character, who has been fed, is sleeping peacefully on a bed within a black-and-red-decorated gothic bedroom. There’s a tiny speech bubble with a few Zs rolling within it. It’s drawn in the style of the early 2000s, and with the country going crazy over anything retro and grunge at the moment like it’s the latest new thing, he can see why the game has risen to the top of the charts in so little time.

But that’s that and intimidating is intimidating. Yoo Joonghyuk quickly thumbs out of the app and brings up his music streaming one. He scrolls through his playlists until he finds one that he typically uses for meditating or calming himself when he’s especially irritated. The soothing lilts of a ballad filters from his speakers. Already he feels more at peace. He walks over back to his bedroom and closes the door. The sheets when he slips into them are still warm from his earlier body heat, though when he slides all the way down until his blankets reach his chin, his feet are cool.

The bad feeling subsides.

He feels better now.

Chapter Text

Yoo Joonghyuk’s simple gray phone pings within the grip of his hand. He’s already pulled up into the messaging app. Under his eyes, the left side of the screen spits out gray speech bubbles: I want to kill my boss, it reads. Followed by, I want to kill my boss and then myself.

Send help, is the last in the chain of messages and when he sees no further response is incoming, he taps on the text box area.

Yoo Joonghyuk swipes through the keyboard that’s appeared, lazily meandering through the emoticon menus. There are quite a few, but he’s seeking one in particular. Finally, he finds it and sends it off with a whoosh. A red question mark appears on the screen, soon answered on the opposite side by a sobbing emoji. It’s at this point that his neighbor, who shares a wall with him behind the head of his bed thumps on it, making him startle. He soon subsides because yes, they do that sometimes.

They like throwing a basketball or whatever it is at the wall around this time of day.

It’s evening, and Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t protest. They usually don’t keep at it for very long. Everyone needs some kind of an outlet, even if it is annoying for other people. Back on his phone, Yoo Joonghyuk shoots back a sweatdrop. He sees three irritable dots tumbling on Han Sooyoung’s side, which don’t amount to a text.

He pulls up the messaging app’s tab to swipe it away. When he does, the glimpse of the new game that he downloaded earlier this afternoon that he sees in his queue, leaves him with a bad taste in his mouth. 

His neighbor thumps on the wall.

Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t know what he’s doing. He should just delete the game. It’s a free app, and isn’t life changing by any means. He briefly thinks about how he is still stuck in the tutorial. The demon had been cut off mid-feed. It’s probably starved to death then, Yoo Joonghyuk thinks uncharitably as he relents and thumbs on Idle Demon. Because it’s been several hours since he’s last played, it has to reload.

As the black screen inches through the loading bar, Yoo Joonghyuk takes a moment to turn his head to the right. Which stretches his stiff neck pleasantly, but it also lets him see some of the sky through the ajar bars of his bedside shutters. His bed is pushed into the corner, so immediately he can spot the black and navy overcast through the smudged glass.

Yoo Joonghyuk turns his head to the other side.

8:45. His digital clock winks at him from the squat wooden table by his bed. It had been reset earlier after he’d had that weird scare, misinterpreting what must have been some strange reflection of the light to be a face.

He must have been incredibly tired, maybe from working so hard at his job as of late. Which is why he had taken the rest of the afternoon to do nothing. It’s the only appropriate course of action on his first day of this impromptu and unexpected vacation. Yoo Joonghyuk’s phone has finally loaded when he glances back. He’s dropped immediately in the main room.

He hadn’t seen the opening sequence, perhaps because it’s only been a few hours since he last played it. The demon character, in its bedroom, moves sluggishly around in its ankle-length white coat.

It’s turned away from the viewer, shoulders slumped dejectedly. A trio of blue lines in the ubiquitous animated sign of sadness sits heavy on his black head of hair, and the Korean letter which resembles tear tracks quakes feebly in a small white speech bubble. Yoo Joonghyuk jabs up his volume out of curiosity. Amidst the OST, the unmistakable sound of an empty stomach growls loud.

So, not dead, but it is starving, Yoo Joonghyuk muses, the corner of his lips tipping up. It’s ridiculous, and the unexpected display crumbles away some of his misgivings. Really it’s just a game, he tells himself again, deftly pressing on the feeding, “energy,” menu.

Thump.

Yoo Joonghyuk sees he’s regenerated some black clouds of energy to feed the demon male with. It must be one of the idle functions of the game, of which he’s sure there are many. He feeds the demon, who grows progressively happier as he thinks to himself, he hasn’t had time to explore but already Yoo Joonghyuk sees the short column of action icons in the top right corner of the game. Once he’s progressed further into things, maybe he’ll unlock more? How else would he make this demon “grow”?

His neighbor’s thumping briefly pauses, only to return at half the BPM but double the volume. This time, Yoo Joonghyuk does frown in annoyance. He continues to interact with Idle Demon. The only light source in the room to see is the buzzing yellow lamp on his bedside table. It’s more than enough and Yoo Joonghyuk hitches up his legs while pressing the second icon down in the top right corner. It’s right under the icon for the energy menu.

His phone blacks out. Thankfully it isn’t from anything odd — that angel with the chains wrapped around her body, Uriel, makes a reappearance.

Joonghyuk! she chirps cutely. She grins under her black eye censor bar.

She gestures at the vague silhouette of the new menu that rolled up, rattling out her words in a speech bubble: so you’ve found our skillbooks! That’s great. While our demon requires energy, he too needs to train! Restoring the balance is no easy feat, after all.

Please pick one for him, Joonghyuk. He’ll need it to fight, later. If you don’t end up liking your first skill, no worries! There will be plenty of chances to learn more when he grows!

Try it, she urges, beaming. When Yoo Joonghyuk taps on her dialog’s small arrow, she disappears and the screen brightens. The bottom half of his phone screen has been overtaken by what appears to be a colorful library. From dark green to hot pink, there’s a large enough array of books that he needs to scroll down to fully take in. Popularity, one dark blue book burps out a description field when he presses and holds his finger over it.

It’s unfortunate that the description field isn’t much of a description field at all, because that’s all that it says. No explanation of the function or cost, and Yoo Joonghyuk thinks, Popularity? He is unimpressed as he removes his thumb.

Ultimately what he settles on is an elegant and regal red book. The color crimson reads, Cloning, when he presses it for the description. As opposed to some others, Yoo Joonghyuk feels like he knows what he’s getting into with this one. If pitched against monsters or other demons, or something, he figures having two Demons of Salvation to fight with will be better than just one.

Of course, that might mean its power is halved or other such nonsense, but that remains to be seen. His neighbor thumps on the wall as if in congratulations. Yoo Joonghyuk lives close to the city. He hears all sorts of noises even from his apartment on the thirteenth floor. From sirens to horny to drunken threats, he’s heard it all. Therefore the thumping is an easy one to bear with.

If he thinks about it, in some respects it even sounds like a set of cheerful knocking over the glass door.

Wait.

Glass? Yoo Joonghyuk thinks, pausing. His heart skips a beat. His body draws to a cautious halt before he knows it, as he double checks that what he’s hearing isn’t actually coming from behind his head. He doesn’t look up as he does this. His eyes remain on his phone.

When he focuses back on the screen out of nerves, his arms as heavy as lead where they are propping it up, the happy and pleased demon clutches a red crimson book to its flat chest. It also points, sending a wisp of a darker shade of red to Yoo Joonghyuk’s right side. He can’t see the window from where he’s looking down at his phone which is propped up over his chest. It’s out of his periphery. Yet that doesn’t stop his brain from extrapolating where the thumping is coming from.

It’s to his right, a bit over his head. In a blindspot. Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

The sound echoes through the wall. He doesn’t want to look. His eyes are open and unseeing over his phone. He isn’t sure what is happening or why. But there must be a logical reason he’s hearing that recurring knocking on his thirteenth story window. Maybe the cleaners are checking the integrity of the building in the middle of the night. Or it’s the eccentric landlord.

Reasonable, Yoo Joonghyuk thinks to himself as he gathers his courage. He glances up to the ajar shutters to his right side. Through the slots of glass, a bulbous and large head grins down at him. It has square yellowish teeth that are bared unnaturally.

It has lidless black eyes with sclera that are bloodshot. Its forehead dribbles crimson blood, smearing the glass with red as it continues to thump. Then it presses its face flat against the window from outside. Through the pounding of his heart, Yoo Joonghyuk sees the head taper into a long, thin, abnormally ropelike neck which cords down and off to the side of the window where it disappears. Behind the wall that he shares with his actual neighbor, Yoo Joonghyuk hears a door faintly open and shut. The thumping has stopped, he deliriously registers.

His breath is stuck somewhere in the vicinity of his tongue. He starts to shake without meaning to.

When he screams, the only sound that emerges is a wrangled whimper. The head grins wider with its smashed lips to press its face against the window so hard that the blood turns to run down the majority of its gray, leathery skin. Yoo Joonghyuk blinks. It isn’t intentional. He doesn’t know what else to do, whether he can move, whether he should remain as still as stone the way that humans and most other animals have programmed into their physiology when faced with something that is inexplicable and dangerous.

He can’t think, can’t breathe. He can’t move. When he blinks his eyes again however, he’s startled to find that he’s alone.

Sweat drips into his eyes, stinging them. He doesn’t think to wipe it away as he gazes with disbelief out of the black and overcast empty night sky. His lamp flickers, making him jerk. All of a sudden, Yoo Joonghyuk throws out a tremulous hand to hastily draw his blinds shut. There isn’t anything to be covered anymore, but now he can’t remain still. He has to move, shivering uncontrollably. Yoo Joonghyuk nearly hurls his phone away in his haste to get to his feet. He almost falls.

When he makes it into his closet, trembling like a leaf, he sees the faint flickering of a tiny white-coated male waving cheerily at him in thanks.