Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The red light blinks. They’re recording.

“Hey, what’s up everyone! Welcome back to my channel. Today, we’re trialling s0me more spooky rituals.”

Hyungchul flashes a grin at the camera. “First of all, I want to thank you for fifty thousand subscribers! Our last video on these rituals got over three million views, and a lot of you were asking for a second part. You ask, and I deliver!”

He takes the camera in hand, angling it so that Junil is in the frame. He slaps their hands together in greeting as if he’s just entered the room, and hasn’t been hanging out here all day. “So, if you’re a regular viewer of my channel, you’ll be familiar with Junil. He’s my best friend, resident wise guy, and complete sceptic.”

“Hey,” Junil says. “I’m ready for another video of nothing happening, are you?” On camera, Junil acts almost bashful, a complete opposite from his real-life personality. That’s show business.

Hyungchul elbows him in a way he would never do off-screen. “Hey! Don’t act like you didn’t nearly cry during Bloody Mary.”

Junil scoffs. Hyungchul looks back at the mirror. “So, we have several rituals we’re going to try tonight. We also have a special twist. Have you heard of the Midnight Game? Well, my little brother – he’s also on YouTube, I’ll post a link to his vlog channel in the description – and some of his friends are staying over tonight. We’re going to convince them to play the Midnight Game, but we have a special surprise at the end for them.” Junil snorts out of focus. “So make sure to watch to the end of the video to see their reactions when we prank them!”

He turns the camera off. Introductions are the worst part. No matter what he does, he feels still, fake, artificial. It doesn’t matter. The way his SNS followers have skyrocketed in the past month, this might finally be his breakthrough. His last video made the trending page on YouTube, and a VPN app has been talking to him about sponsoring his next video. If he can make another hit, the money will start to roll in.

“I’m tired of this already,” Junil complains. He yawns, not even trying to hold it in. Hyungchul rolls his eyes.

“This will be a good series,” he says. “Shit, do you know how many views those Buzzfeed Unsolved dudes get in each video?”

“I don’t watch that American crap.”

“That’s not the point. There’s a demographic for this. Turn off the lights and look scared and this video will do well. Then we can make a series until the rest of the content gains traction—”

“And you’re paying me for the videos I appear in, remember?”

“I’ve already paid you.”

“For putting English subtitles on your videos, not an appearance fee.”

“Right. If you do well, I’ll pay you extra. Can we continue?”

“Sure.”

They move to Hyungchul’s desk set-up. This is where he has his good lighting, but he turns off the lights in the back of the room for ambience. He makes sure his laptop is screen recording before he begins.

“Ready?” Junil asks. He nods. The red light blinks at him again.

“So,” he begins. “This first ritual…well, it’s not quite a ritual. I went on a deep dig through the internet to look for more rituals – scary stuff, let me tell you – and while I found some good ones, I thought I’d begin with this. Still creepy, but not as intense as some of the other stuff. Perfect to start!”

“So,” Junil turns to him. “What are we doing on your laptop? Don’t we need candles, or blood, or something?”

“Nope. This is all online. We’re filming on June 3^rd and tonight happens to be a new moon. This is because the site we’re about to enter can only be accessed during a new moon.” He types in the URL and hits enter.

Junil squints. “Blind Maiden? What is this?”

“This is a website that allows users like you and me to experience the ultimate horror,” Hyungchul explains. “Or so the Internet would have us believe. Apparently, it’s dedicated to a doomed spirit.”

The screen is black.

“That’s it?” Junil asks. “That’s underwhelming.”

It is. Hyungchul bites back a frown. He hadn’t checked this site out before, wanting to keep his reaction as real as possible for the cameras, but most online accounts had reported gory pictures and not just…an empty screen. “Maybe we need to refresh…”

As soon as he says it, however, text appears on screen.

this website will take you to a whole level new of horror.

a horror that will use all five of your senses.

you must be very careful not to click on anything by accident.

you will be faced with a real experience of absolute horror.

click the accept button to engage actively in the experience.

ACCEPT                     DECLINE

Junil grins at Hyungchul. “Accept?”

“Hell yeah.”

***

The footsteps have gotten further away.

Seokjin looks up from the book. It’s Norwegian Wood, one Namjoon recommended. He’s finding it a little hard to focus on, but that might be because of his setting. Sitting in an abandoned school in some warped dimension of reality doesn’t make for good reading conditions.

He can’t hear the footsteps anymore. He looks at the scrawled instructions he wrote.

Time to count.

“One,” he begins. His voice is loud and cleaves the silence like a butcher’s knife. “Two.”

The quiet is pretty bad – one of the reasons he found it so hard to focus on the book. Seokjin is a city boy, born and raised, and the absence of any sort of noise is disconcerting. “Three. Four.”

No traffic. Not a single car, or bus, or even a plane overhead. “Five, six, seven.”

Nobody on the streets. No music playing from a distance, no burst of chatter slipping out when the door to a restaurant opens, no sounds of TV or radio. “Eight, nine, ten.”

The entire city is as silent as the grave.

Except for Seokjin’s counts.

And the footsteps he can hear again in the distance.

So, yeah. He hadn’t been able to focus on the book.

It’s alright though, because the book wasn’t an intricate part of the ritual. The instructions recommended bringing one so you didn’t get bored waiting – they said it could take hours before the footsteps came. Seokjin has already lost track of time.

“Eleven, twelve.”

The footsteps are getting closer again. It’s a lopsided rhythm, as if whatever is walking is dragging something behind it.

The roof of his mouth is dry. He presses his hand against his pocket, feeling the outline of his spear.

Honestly, can it be worse than anything he hasn’t already seen?

Seokjin keeps counting as the footsteps get closer, counts all the way to two hundred and fifty.

The footsteps stop right outside the door of the room he’s in. He holds his breath – a funny habit he can’t quite let go of, despite not technically needing to breathe anymore.

It’s magic that pumps through his body now, not blood or oxygen.

There is a knock on the door. Seokjin drops the book, waiting for the second knock, and the third. Then, the fourth.

Four – four is bad, isn’t it? Well, not bad, but he needs to take measures. He glances at his handwritten notes again.

“I forbid you,” he says in his sternest voice. “I forbid you.”

The words ricochet through the silence. Nothing answers them back. Seokjin takes a deep breath and with a trembling hand, opens the door.

Yoongi looks back at him.

Seokjin inhales sharply. He knew it would be someone he cared about but, he had been expecting someone from before – from the great stretch of his past that seems so long ago, from his actual life – his mother, his father, one of his friends.

It’s an interesting choice.

Seokjin swallows tightly, extending his spear from its compact mode to its full length. He flips it in his hand before smashing the bladeless end into Yoongi’s skull.

The statue smashes easily under the magically reinforced metal. Seokjin has yet to meet a material that won’t yield to the steel from Yeomra’s well. The statue is an uncomfortably close recreation. Seokjin winces when he watches the stone crumble and fall away from statue-Yoongi’s face. It looks so real, so like Yoongi – his nose, his eyes, the way his hair falls into his eyes, even the pimple he had this morning, right there on his chin – it almost hurts to destroy it.

But needs must. The real Yoongi is in his apartment with Yuna and Chaeryeong, doubtlessly pacing across his living room as he waits for Seokjin’s return.

He brings the spear down again. The statue doesn’t put up much of a fight. The head doesn’t withstand Seokjin’s force, and when he pushes it over it smashes when it hits the floor.

Well, at least that’s over with. He shuts his spear back down to its four-inch form.

He needs to leave, now, through the entrance he entered. Luckily for him, the window he smashed further down the corridor remains broken. There’s no sign of anyone in the hallway, so he creeps back out and clambers through the window.

This reality is horrible. The very air smells wrong, an unidentifiable burnt scent hurting his lungs. It’s like he’s fallen into a ‘60’s psychedelic rock star’s bad trip. The colours are bright, but they’re too harsh, and they’re all wrong. The trees and grass are orange. The sky is red. A vermillion mist swallows everything up. Something could be walking a few yards ahead of him, and he wouldn’t see it.

However, when he looks up at the sky, he can see the moon clearly.

Yoongi had told him the possibilities, repeated them over and over again until Seokjin could repeat them back. When you get that far along, he hears in Yoongi’s voice, the moon will be in one of four forms, and each has its own task you must complete to return.

A pink crescent moon means he has to take out his phone and call his third most recent contact.

A pink full moon means he has to dial a random number and bite through his tongue before they pick up.

A green crescent moon means he has to strip off all his clothing and sprint back to his house, without looking back. No matter what, Yoongi had said, don’t look back.

If the moon is green and full…Yoongi had paused the first time he read the instructions. “If the moon is green and full, you’re screwed. You’ll be dead within half an hour.”

Seokjin looks up at the moon. It’s green and full.

Death within half an hour, then.

Seokjin’s alright with that. He is, after all, already dead.

“Bring it on,” he mutters. A flick of his wrist, and his spear has extended fully again. He walks slowly, weapon raised in a two-handed grip, poised and ready to strike or twist without hesitation. Time is ticking. He begins to make his way to the general direction of Yoongi’s apartment block. This reality is wrong, everything is skewed and nauseating, but it’s still a reflection of his own world. He knows where to go.

He just doesn’t know who he’ll meet along the way.

Damn, this would have been so much easier if he had gotten the damn pink crescent moon. Beggars can’t be choosers, though.

It’s hard to keep track of time, but Seokjin reckons he’s made his way about halfway to Yoongi’s apartment, tentative step by tentative step. He climbs up on top of a car pulled in along the pathway. The mist, for the most part, lies low. The height gives him an advantage. He can see better up here and can easily turn for a 365-degree view.

However. He’s also making himself stand out. It – whatever it is – will see him before he sees it, but it won’t be able to sneak up on him in the mist.

He keeps light on his feet.

And then, in the silence, he hears footsteps.

Like the ones he heard back in the school building, they drag slightly. He turns, trying to locate the direction they’re coming from. The mist is impenetrable.

Suddenly, the footsteps break into a run. Seokjin tries to brace himself, but he’s unprepared for the sight that comes lunging out of the mist.

It looks almost like a human. Maybe. It looks like a human if someone who hadn’t seen a human in fifty years tried to draw one from memory after awaking from a nightmare. In the split second Seokjin has to register the creature, raisin is the word that comes to mind. A raisin is a dehydrated grape. This looks like a dehydrated human. It’s too thin, and its skin is waxy and hangs off its bones. Except raisins – nor humans – have slits for nostrils, or a lipless mouth with needle-like teeth, or gaping white orbs instead of eyes.

Seokjin supposes it’s irrelevant what it looks like because despite its emaciated frame it must have some severe muscle strength. It leaps up like a dog, high enough to clear the car he’s standing on, coming right at his chest—

Seokjin slams his spear in a curve, slicing into flesh. The creature squeals, twisting in the air and hitting the side of the car. The wing mirror crushes under it and as it falls it pulls Seokjin’s ankle down. He curses as he tumbles off the hood of the car, landing on top of the creature. It makes a noise – like a growl, but worse – that makes the hairs on Seokjin’s skin stand. It’s horrible, a tangle of limbs trying to push him down. When it opens its mouth, the smell of rotten flesh is so strong that Seokjin feels bile rise in his throat.

So, pretty bad. But Seokjin’s seen worse.

He grits his teeth, twisting his body out of the creature’s grip. It opens its maw wide and goes for his throat. Seokjin forces down the panic and raises his arm, elbowing the creature in his face. Its razor-sharp teeth pierce through his flesh. The pain cuts through him, but Seokjin uses the opportunity to reach for his fallen spear. It’s just out of reach. His fingers fumble across a shard of glass from the broken window. He brings it up, smashing it into one of the creature’s eyes.

It barely even notices. Seokjin kicks it as sharply as he can, ignoring the tear of teeth through muscle. It doesn’t hurt it but shifts it up slightly. Seokjin uses the chance to scramble back.

He had wondered at the seemingly frail nature of the creature, especially if it succeeds in killing everything it catches. But if nothing harms it except Underworld technology…

He throws himself toward his spear. The creature jumps after him and Seokjin feels its talons dig into his shoulders, feels its weight on his back just as he grips the weapon. He thrusts backward, feels the resistance as he thrusts it into the creature’s chest.

There’s a sharp yell, as it begins to thrash.

Seokjin has the upper hand now, and he squirms out from underneath it, stabbing the spear deeper through it until it’s pinned to the concrete. It thrashes in pain, but it’s relatively easy for Seokjin to gather its soul into one of his container cylinders.

Then he’s alone again.

He takes a moment to collect himself. There are claw marks in his back, he can feel them beginning to congeal. His left arm…between it serving as an appetiser and getting pushed around in the ensuing struggle, it’s in pretty bad shape. Seokjin forces himself not to look at it.

He can feel the magic running through his body, but it’s pretty slow. Makes sense, seeing as he’s in a different reality than his soul medallion. When he gets back to Yoongi, then it’ll kick into overdrive. His arm will be fully functioning by the end of the night.

He just has to avoid looking at it for the next while.

Seokjin trudges back to Yoongi’s apartment – or rather, the version of Yoongi’s apartment in this reality. He knows there’s nothing else out there, but he still pulls the altered version of his furniture in front of the door, just in case anything does try to get in. The TV is there, in the exact spot where he woke up.

He lies down and shuts his eyes.

To the average human, making the shift from this mirrored reality back to their own dimension must be a jolting, sickening experience. To Seokjin, who makes regular visits to the Underworld and back, he barely registers the jump.

The pain follows him here too, as he opens his eyes in Yoongi’s spare room. It’s dark outside. The only light comes from the old analogue TV in front of him. Immediately, he feels the warmth of magic increase. Seokjin finally gathers the courage to look at it. Worst case scenario, if his arm is hanging by a few threads, he’ll need to press the medallion right up against the wound for it to heal. Fortunately, it isn’t as bad as he expects. It’s only about half chewed off. The normal setting for his healing should work fine. Even as he watches, he can see muscle knotting back together, blood vessels repairing themselves, the bone crunching in place.

It still makes him feel a little sick, so he looks away.

The TV screen just shows static, but now there’s an infinity symbol in the top right corner. Channel ∞. Seokjin picks up the remote.

Curiosity gets the better of him.

He clicks the guide button. The TV changes to an unfamiliar interface, listing TV shows and programmes that are apparently all showing now. Seokjin scans some of the titles. The Solution to All Your Problems is one he lingers on. How to Gain True Inner Peace is also tempting, as is The Secrets to the Universe or How to Achieve True Love. Not to mention Was Your Life Worth It? The Dead Human’s Guide.

He bites his lip. Enlightening information is the prize for making it through the ritual. He hesitates on the remote control. He still has so many questions, about himself, about the Boundary, about the Underworld…

Through the door, he hears the murmur of Yoongi’s voice.

Seokjin sighs.

Elevated knowledge isn’t the goal of today’s mission.

He turns the TV off, stands up and opens the door.

The two girls whirl around. Yuna screams when she sees his arm. Chaeryeong sits down sharply.

“Oh,” Yoongi says. “You’re back. Welcome home.”

“Y-your arm!” Yuna finally gets out.

Seokjin smiles. “Anyone need a hand?”

Yuna sits down abruptly, joining Chaeryeong on the couch. “W-what…are you going to be okay? Oh my goodness, Seokjin-ssi, if you got injured because of us I’ll never forgive myself—”

“Don’t worry, Yuna-ssi,” Seokjin says, sounding cheerier than he feels. “I’ve seen far worse. Look, it’s growing back already.”

The two girls look like they’re going to faint.

“We’ll be right back,” Yoongi says, dragging Seokjin into his bedroom. “You’re going to scar those girls.”

Seokjin shrugs. “I don’t think this is worse than training to be an idol.”

“I don’t think YG walks around with his arm falling off.”

“They’re JYP trainees, not YG.”

“Whatever.” Yoongi pulls an oversized cardigan out of his closet. “Put this on, at least. It’ll cover the gory regrowth.”

“I’ll get blood on it.”

“You’ve already gotten blood over my apartment before. What’s another cardigan to the mix?”

“At least your clients will think it’s spookier now. I’m giving you authentic decoration.”

Yoongi rolls his eyes, but helps Seokjin’s bad arm into the cardigan anyway. “You’re alright, though?”

“Yeah. It was an ugly fucker, but it’s done now.” He taps the cylinder.

“Do I still need to hold the medallion for you?”

“Oh? No.” Seokjin ducks his head.

Before starting the ritual, Seokjin had to give an item he held dear to the person he cared about. That had been easy, seeing as the only other human he knew was Yoongi, and he had already given him his medallion. “I think it just helped connect me to this reality. I’m back now, so…”

“Still want me to keep it here?”

“Please.”

Seokjin sits on the edge of Yoongi’s bed while he buries it in one of his drawers.

“What even is it, anyway?”

“What do you think it is?”

Yoongi pauses, inspecting it. “Something from before you came back that has sentimental value and brings you comfort.”

“Oh?”

“That time – on our first project together. A ghost dropped something on your head. I thought you were done for, but you began to heal. You grabbed this immediately and you seemed to calm down. And you’re very attached to it. Something that reminds you of who you are? An heirloom or something?”

Seokjin scratches at the healing scabs on his skin. “More or less. It isn’t worth much, but it’s important to me. I don’t want anything to happen to it if a demon destroys my apartment.”

Yoongi laughs darkly. “I’m not sure my apartment is much better on that front. How are you feeling?”

“Better. Well, kind of gross. I can’t wait for a bath, but we should probably talk to the girls first.”

“Yeah.”

Both of them jump when they re-enter.

“You look…better already,” Chaeryeong says. Her eyes are still a little wide.

“I’ve felt worse,” Seokjin says, sitting cross-legged in front of them. It’s a rather awkward movement without his left arm to steady him.

“Did you see it?” Chaeryeong asks quietly. “Did it…”

“Do this?” Seokjin jerks his head towards his arm. “Slightly humanoid looking with awful eyes?”

Yuna shudders. “That’s it.”

Seokjin feels sorry for them. Like very many other foolish teenagers, Yuna and Chaeryeong had attempted something they read online. They’re idol trainees, something evident in the way they hold themselves and the way they dress, trainees whose debut had been delayed for the nth time. Channel Infinity poses risks to those who try it but offers answers to all of your deepest questions. He can’t blame them for wanting to know if it would be worth it.

Yuna was the one who went through the steps. She had seen a crescent green moon, but when she ran back to her room she made the mistake of looking behind her. Every night since, it crept through her nightmares, getting closer…

Until they reached out to Seokjin.

He reaches out with his good hand to squeeze her knee. “I killed it,” he says. “I’m sending it back to the pit it came from. You’ll be safe now.”

Chaeryeong wraps her arm around her friend when she sniffs loudly. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “This—”

“There’s no need to apologise,” Yoongi says gently. “In fact, you did us a favour. You made us aware of this, and we were able to take care of it. Many others might have been harmed if it had passed us by. And besides, you’re far from the first teenagers to try some sort of ritual.”

“I probably don’t have to tell you this, but it would make it easier if you didn’t speak about this to anyone. We won’t do anything if you do, but nobody will believe you and it could damage your reputation.”

“People will think you are crazy,” Yoongi finishes bluntly.

“We won’t. And we won’t do anything like this ever again,” Chaeryeong promises, “for as long as we live.”

Seokjin sincerely hopes they live long, prosperous lives.

“Well,” he says, “if you do need my help again, you know how to find me.”

***

“There are still a lot of things I don’t understand about it,” Seokjin says, scrubbing the blood from his shoulders. “Did that creature generate the alternate reality? Or was it simply occupying it? If so, what was generating all of the content?”

“Did you watch any of it?” Yoongi asks, tapping moisturiser onto his face while Seokjin showers. He had been a little unsteady on his feet. Yoongi’s going to dig him out of the drain if he collapses.

“No. Wanted to, though. Can I use your coconut shampoo?”

“Knock yourself out.”

Seokjin squirts a handful into his hair. “But I could tell – even from the titles – that it knew about me. The creature I fought didn’t seem so sophisticated. And the fact that Yuna could access it – that’s freaking me out. She has no sixth sense. Any human could stumble into that trap.”

“It is worrying,” Yoongi agrees. “Maybe…maybe the connections between everything…maybe everything’s a bit looser, now that the Boundary is crumbling.”

Seokjin inhales the scent of coconut. “What, so like, this time last year the ritual wouldn’t work, but now that Boundaries aren’t as strong, it’s easier to crossover?”

“It’s just a suggestion,” Yoongi says. “I’m flying blind on this too.”

“It sounds feasible. Conditioner?”

“You don’t have to ask.”

“Yes I do. Anyway, I think this is above my expertise. I’m going to talk to Namjoon about it, he’ll know who to pass it onto. Some Guardian or Elder can mop this shit up, it’s not my job.”

“What about Taehyung?”

Seokjin closes his eyes. “I’ve barely heard from him.”

Radio silence ever since the fiasco with Gain.

“He’s embarrassed.”

“It’s more than that. He thinks he fucked up a chance at ending this whole conflict. He’s feeling guilty.”

“He shouldn’t be. He was trying to save you.”

“So I’ve said.” Seokjin turns off the water. He doesn’t elaborate on how trying to save him was probably a mistake. Taehyung didn’t know that Seokjin didn’t need saving, but even if he did – Seokjin has already died. He’s mortified that the key to this conflict has eluded them because of…him. It makes something burn within him, but he doesn’t admit this to Yoongi. “Taehyung doesn’t accept that, though.”

“It must be difficult for him. He isn’t a human, after all. He’s not going to fit our standards.”

“I know.” The steam is making him a little dizzy. He wraps a towel around himself. When he steps out, he wobbles a little, but Yoongi grabs his hand, steadying him. “I wish he’d stop beating himself up about it.”

Seokjin rubs some of the steam away from the mirror. The reflection only shows lines of white scar tissue where his arm was hanging earlier. It matches the scar on his throat.

Yoongi pushes his shoulder. “He’ll come around. Eventually. You smell nice.”

Seokjin winks. “Only because I smell like you.”

Yoongi wrinkles his nose. “Go call Namjoon, loser.”

Namjoon and Hoseok occupy a very strange territory between physical and spiritual. They have an apartment, co-opted into a headquarters and base of operations, and they have physical bodies that the likes of Seokjin and Yoongi can see and touch. They are also quite solid; a chair scrapes back when they push it, Namjoon drinks tea, he’s pretty sure they even have a laptop. However, they haven’t fully existed or participated in society since their last time off in the ‘90s and don’t talk to very many people. Namjoon’s phone is purely for Seokjin’s benefit, and he barely knows how to text (it’s a chunky flip phone, it reminds Seokjin of one he insisted on carrying when he was in his first year of college to make a statement about how he could disconnect from social media, but really was just an effort to be funny). He also doesn’t always have the damn thing on him, which means it takes Seokjin twenty minutes of calling before he answers, followed by another twenty minutes of recounting his report.

When he answers, Yoongi is freshly showered, hair still damp, and waiting at the door. “Let’s go to your place,” he says. “I’ve sprayed some of the purification essence Minki gave me, and he says it’s better to let it settle alone.”

“Don’t want a dead man to mess up your spell?”

“Exactly.”

Seokjin laughs and tries not to think about how they smell like each other now.

On the way to Seokjin’s apartment they make a quick stop to buy beer, jjapaghetti and some wasabi almonds. The place is empty when they enter. Jungkook must be busy spying on their neighbour. Seokjin feels bad for spending so much time at Yoongi’s, but it’s difficult for him. After the incident with Gain knowing where he lives…sometimes it’s hard for him to relax. The paranoia never seems far away, these days.

It is easier, however, to ignore it when he sits on his balcony with a Hite in one hand and Yoongi at his shoulder.

No, when they watch the sun set over the city together in an easy silence, it’s something else that bothers Seokjin at the edge of his mind.

we don’t create feeling, we just enhance it. so anything you felt for that human, all that attraction, all of that lust, all of it you had already felt before i just magnified it so that you couldn’t ignore it

“I did something like that once.”

“Huh?”

“Like what Yuna and Chaeryeong did. Found some online instructions for a supposed ritual, did it with some classmates.”

Seokjin sips his beer, mainly to give him a chance to collect himself. “I didn’t think a kid who grew up seeing ghosts would be that stupid.”

“You’d think, right?” Yoongi laughs, but there’s something underneath it, a tension that Seokjin can’t quite identify. He pauses, and Seokjin can see the hesitation.

“Well,” he says, taking a fistful of almonds. “Are you going to tell me or not?”

Yoongi nods to himself. “I told you that I used to be the weird kid in school, right?”

Seokjin isn’t going to forget that outburst anytime soon. It was a while ago now, back when he was new to the undead cleaner shtick. So was Yoongi, so Seokjin doesn’t hold it against him. However, they haven’t really spoken of it since.

They have enough to deal with in the present and future, and there is so much to unpack in their pasts.

“You did. Briefly.”

“Yeah. I never really lost that reputation ‘til I left Daegu to come to Seoul. But uh…that’s not really relevant to the story. Basically, a group of boys in my school wanted to play this game one of them had read about on a forum somewhere. It was supposed to be an old pagan punishment, I think? You summon a…well, I don’t know what he was, but the game called him the Midnight Game, and you played a game against the Midnight Man. It was like a fucked-up version of hide and seek.”

Seokjin says nothing. Yoongi won’t look at him. His gaze is fixed on one of the buildings opposite them.

“They thought it was mostly fake but would be a fun scare. And they decided it would be scarier if they could get the freaky boy who talks to ghosts to help them play it.”

Seokjin winces. “Oh.”

“And I knew it was a bad idea, but an invite to anything was wonderful. I thought that if I could show them how fun I could be, they might like me and we’d all become friends. And I wanted that more than anything. So, I said the words they told me to but looking back…well, not as much was coming through the Boundary back then. But I have a deeper connection with the supernatural than any of them had. I think whatever it was…I summoned it more successfully than they could have.”

“Did you see it?”

“No – like I said. This was before all of the cracked Boundary shit started playing up. But I think I brought it close. I could feel it. None of them could – for a while. In the end, they scared themselves. One of them had to go to counselling afterwards, and then they all were afraid of me too. But they didn’t experience it like I did. I could feel its eyes on me.” His voice wobbles and Seokjin pretends not to notice. “For weeks after, whenever I closed my eyes, I could feel it watching. There was this rule they had read, that the Midnight Man would always be watching, and at the time I thought it was bullshit added to make the whole thing sound scarier, but even now I can remember its presence behind me so clearly.”

Yoongi squeezes his eyes shut.

“Do you still feel it?” Seokjin asks.

“Sometimes. Usually it’s covered up by everything else we’re dealing with.”

Guilt gnaws at Seokjin’s chest again. He’s dragged Yoongi into this mess, it’s true. Yoongi will have no chance at a normal life while Seokjin is around, but without Yoongi…Seokjin wouldn’t be able to do this. He’ll have to be selfish a little while longer. He hopes Yoongi can hold out until then. He is Yoongi’s friend, but Yoongi…Yoongi will probably be relieved when this is over.

“Anyway, the reason I’m bringing it up now…” Yoongi opens his eyes again, composure regained. “Yuna and Chaeryeong obviously found a similar online ritual. They had better reasons for it. But how many of those things are online, do you think? How many are attempted every day?”

“I’m sure most of them are fake,” Seokjin says, “otherwise we’d have been dealing with them long ago.”

“But what if not all of them are. What if the reason they usually don’t work is because whatever…being, or demon, or creature is running it is separated by the Boundary?”

Seokjin begins to see. “But if that’s the case, as the Boundary weakens, more of them might come through.”

“And fun sleepover scares become very real. The Midnight Game was horrific, and that was only with a shade of the Midnight Man there. If he was able to fully manifest because of the cracks in the Boundary…”

“We’re going to be dealing with one hell of a mess,” Seokjin agrees. He picks at one of the holes in his torn jeans.

“We should probably update the blog,” Yoongi says. “Tell people to back off. It won’t travel far, but if it stops one person from bringing something unholy over…”

“I’ll be worth it,” Seokjin says, standing up. The sun has well and truly set by now. “And if he does come through, I’ll kill it.”

“The Midnight Man?”

“Yeah. I’ll send it packing. You’ll be okay.”

Yoongi doesn’t look convinced.

***

When he dreams, his mother smiles at him. “Seokjin-ah,” she says, teary eyed, clasping his hands. “I’m so glad you’ve come home. I missed you so much.”

“I missed you too,” he says. The longing that always bubbles in his heart threatens to consume him.

“Why did you leave?” Her tone shifts, something accusatory rising.

Seokjin squirms under her gaze. He was never good at withstanding it when he misbehaved as a child. “I didn’t mean to.”

“But you did. You left us alone. For what?”

“I didn’t want to leave.”

“Really?” Her grasp is so tight, it’s painful. “You seem to like this. I think you enjoy this role. You kill so easily with your weapon.”

“What? No, I don’t—”

Seokjin is vaguely aware that this is not his mother, but the illusion of the dream is strong. “You found something you’re good at after all these years. You just had to die first, and now others die so you can prove yourself—”

“I don’t kill!” He tries to pull his hands away, but he can’t. “I send souls back; I don’t kill humans—”

“You killed me.”

His mother is gone, and Seokjin is free to turn around and face the new voice. It’s Minsong, the girlfriend-killing bastard he let El Silbón kill. His chest is a gaping cavity, ribs cracked open to show his lungs wheezing. Most of his other organs are missing, just a mesh of wet flesh and blood, and a little bit of an intestine trailing out.

“You killed me,” he says. “Your duty was to dispatch El Silbón, but you let him kill me first.” He steps forward. Seokjin wants to step back, but he can’t, and he can feel the sweat beading on his forehead. Dread pulses through him. “You heard as I screamed, as he disembowelled me, and you did nothing. You did your research, you knew what he was doing, but you sat and listened as he tore out my organs one by one.”

“You’re a monster,” Seokjin says, voice cracking. “You’re a killer.”

Minsong smiles. “So are you.”

“You would have killed more people.”

“And more people are going to die because of you. Maybe I should take you out of the equation.”

Seokjin notices the knife for the first one. Minsong pulled a knife on him before, but it was a spotless kitchen knife grabbed in a panic. This is an old penknife, jagged from use, metal rusted. A knife Seokjin has been intimately acquainted with before, in an alleyway behind a bar early on New Year’s day.

Minsong shoves forward, the knife aimed at Seokjin’s throat. Phantom pain flashes through his scar and the blade pierces his skin and he tries to scream but instead—

He wakes up.

“Hyung!”

Jungkook floats in front of him, concern writ over his features. “Hyung,” he says, “you were screaming.”

Seokjin is very rude. When he half-falls out of bed, he runs straight through Jungkook’s ghostly form. He feels bad and doesn’t like doing it, but he also doesn’t want to empty his stomach on his rug. He makes it to the bathroom just in time before he vomits, the nausea the dream – nightmare? – instilled in him rocking through him like a sea storm. Jungkook follows him in.

“Can you give me a minute?” Seokjin asks.

“It’s not like I haven’t seen you cry before.”

“I’m not crying.” Seokjin vomits again, then sobs into the toilet seat.

By force of habit, he tries to reach for his medallion before remembering it’s in Yoongi’s. His hand trails up instead to trace the outline of the jagged scar in the centre of his throat.

It’s funny – despite the general confusion and chaos of his final moments, he can still remember the pain so sharply.

You’re a killer.

He did let Minsong die, and he did it on purpose. Essentially, he murdered him. How many people will be hurt by his incompetence before this is all over? How many people did the Bongcheon-dong ghost hospitalise before he finally sent her home? How many people did Gain kill before he could stop her? He couldn’t even stop her in the end, and his failure cost them the only lead they ever had. Anyone that gets hurt or killed will be on his shoulders because he could have ended it and—

“Hyung. Breathe.”

He takes a shuddering breath.

“Good, that’s good hyung. Can you do another one for me?”

That’s good. Jungkook’s voice. That’s something. He tries to centre his thoughts on that, on the cold of the tiles underneath his knees.

“You’re doing really well, hyung. I’d get you a glass of water, but it would probably take me a really long time.”

It’s a weak joke, but Seokjin cracks a smile.

“Fuck,” he says.

“How can I help?”

“Just keep talking. Please. About anything.”

“So I was thinking about your new blog thing, and the name you picked for it and it made me remember this film I watched with my mom when I was younger. I don’t really remember the details but it was about these Americans and the woman made pottery and her boyfriend was killed and turned into a ghost. Like us! And he hangs around even though she can’t see him and finds out she’s in danger, so then he goes to this psychic lady who is a little bit mean at first, and I was thinking that’s like Yoongi hyung! And in the end they’re able to save his girlfriend but he has to leave her anyway, and it’s really sad. There was a really sad song playing. My mom used to always cry at that part.”

His tears dry up.

“Anyway, I mostly forgot about it, but then I was watching Music Bank the other night and they showed this music video – you know Twice, right hyung? – and they were recreating movies. I didn’t recognise most of them because I think a lot of them came out after I died, but one of them wore a yellow dress and danced like that La La Land film we watched last month. Anyway, one of the scenes they did was the pottery scene. And I had completely forgotten about this film until that moment, then remembered watching it with my mom, even though I don’t think it was age appropriate, then it made me think of us. Wild, right?”

Seokjin swallows. He pulls himself up, although his limbs feel like lead. He flushes the toilet, then rinses out his mouth with tapwater. “Thanks, Jungkookie.”

It’s been a while since anything like this has happened. It’s ridiculous that his old insecurities are still there. He needs them gone. He’s not human anymore, so why hold himself to human standards?

No, he’s not human, not anymore. So why worry about being humane? Minsong certainly wasn’t.

This would all be easier if he could let go of this attachment to that troublesome concept of humanity. It doesn’t serve him.

Jungkook looks at him like he’s about to fall apart at any moment. “Are you okay, hyung?”

“Bad dream.”

“You can talk about it to me if you want, you know.”

Seokjin shrugs.

“Was it about dying? I used to think about mine a lot, but it’s not the same because ghosts don’t exactly sleep—”

“Kind of.” Seokjin rubs his eyes. “I miss my mom.”

Jungkook is silent. “I miss mine too.”

Seokjin might start crying again if he thinks too much about his mother. “I’m sorry, Jungkookie. You shouldn’t have to see that. I’ve just been feeling a little guilty about messing up, and it’s been a long day, and it all just surfaced at once. I feel better now that it’s all out.”

“You know I can tell when you’re lying, right?”

“I’m not lying.”

“You’re not feeling better, though.”

“I just want to go back to sleep,” Seokjin says. “I’m so tired.” He feels it right down to his bones.

Jungkook floats back into the bedroom after him. “I’ll stay nearby,” he says. “If you start squirming again, I’ll scream until you wake up.”

“Thanks, Jungkook-ah.”

It takes a while, but eventually, Seokjin falls back into an uneasy sleep. He doesn’t dream and he is very thankful for it.

***

The blog had been Seokjin’s idea, and it remains one of his better ones.

Namjoon had been against it, paranoid about information going online. Seokjin was able to counter it by showing him the wealth of information – mostly false, but with nuggets of truth – about the supernatural that already existed online. Most would consider him no different than those who upload scary stories or creepypasta to frighten readers.

And on that part, it is successful. Most of his comments seem to think he’s some sort of method writer, spinning a fiction through an unconventional medium. It fills a surprising amount of his free time, reading through them and laughing about how wrong they are.

However, it does have an important function for the percentage of readers who are serious. If you search for supernatural help, it’s his blog – Diary of a Ghost Detective: Seoul’s one-stop spot for all your paranormal expertise and advice – that comes up as one of the first results. People who think they’re being haunted, or who suspect something strange is happening reach out to him. It helps him deal with potential threats before they do too much harm.

It’s working well, too. Yuna and Chaeryeong, the trainees who attempted to access Channel Infinity, found him through it, and he was able to slaughter the creature before it forced its way through their dreams into reality. Seokjin has dealt with no less than seven poltergeists all reported through his contact button. He is pulled automatically towards spirits who have slipped back through the Boundary, but some of them – like Jungkook – have never been picked up by the system at all and are desperate to move on. Sometimes smaller or less powerful creatures take longer for his sixth sense to pick up, but thanks to his comments Seokjin was able to capture the NotThem before it killed a second victim. The week before, he was able to deal with an Aswan before anyone was injured.

It’s more than proved its worth to Namjoon. The people who need help get it, they are able to deal with creatures before they get out of hand, and everyone else gets a laugh out of what they think is well-planned but poorly written fiction. Seokjin just has to ensure that everything he writes is far enough from the truth to prevent revealing too much.

After his nightmarish sleep, he sleeps in until three o’clock before he is eventually awakened by the pull of a ghost. He drags himself out of bed, lethargic, spends an hour and a half rooting out the spirit – simply a lost human one, easy to deal with – sending it back and returning home again, before opening his laptop.

He’s not sure many will heed this warning, but even if only a handful of his readers so…well. It’ll be something.

On Rituals…

Hi ghoulfriends! Today’s post is short and sweet. I want to discuss rituals today! If you’re a fan of spooky stories or like diving deep into the scary side of the Internet – which I presume is a lot of you, if you’re reading my blog – I’m sure you’ve come across a lot of rituals online. There are quite a few of them! It’s not too hard to find a page that lists a bunch of instructions, and I know some of you may have even attempted some of these before.

While a good scare can be fun among friends, I want to urge you not to try any of these this year. The energy at the moment is really sinister, and I’ve already had some calls out to people who attempted one for it all to go very wrong…

He’s exaggerating a little, sure, but it’s a PSA. He reckons its allowed.

Of course, some of them are pure fiction, made up with the sole purpose of unsettling readers. Some, however, are very real, and very dangerous, and it’s impossible to tell which is which without trying them yourself.

Protect yourselves and stay safe! More importantly, protect your friends and those around you. And even more importantly, protect me, because I don’t want to risk my wellbeing saving your asses from summoning a demon for fun. Pretty please heed this warning, you’ll make my job a lot easier and I’ll be able to focus on saving the people that really need it <3

Remember. Safety first, safety second, spooks third!

-- The Ghost Detective xx

He scrounges up some dinner while Jungkook tells him about an idol group who got their first win that afternoon. After the wash up is finished, he glances at the comments.

juyeon0395: aw boring i was hoping for follow up on aswan

minx_x: so short tt please update more regularly

sone3000: these youtubers have been doing rituals you should check them out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIkZOLsnoqY

130613: face reveal face reveal face reveal!

naruhodo: do any of these rituals actually work? i tried the elevator game once but nothing happened

jungbros: @naruhodo my cousin tried playing the elevator game once too and she said nothing happened but a while later was hospitalised…scary TT

Most of them are pretty innocuous, but Seokjin eyes up the YouTube link. He makes a mental note to watch it soon. The last time they need is a ritual caught on camera – although, he assumes, everyone would just claim it was staged. There’s probably nothing to worry about.

***

“Ready to go?”

“Whenever you are.”

Hoseok links his arm with a grin. “You’re gaining muscle, Seokjinnie.”

“Am I?”

“All of that spear work. Speaking of, we haven’t sparred in a while. I’ve heard you’ve gotten good.”

“I had a good teacher, and lots of practice.”

Hoseok pulls him a little closer. “Sorry about that, by the way. I think you’ve gotten a lot more to deal with than we expected. You’re doing a good job, though.”

Seokjin pretends to swoon, throwing his weight against Hoseok. “Oh, thank the gods! And I thought this meeting was to fire me!”

“What, and have to train someone in from scratch?”

“Mean. You’re so mean.”

“Nope, I just…what’s the phrase? I keep it real.”

“You sound like an old man.”

“I am an old man. I’m several centuries old.”

“And you still can’t come up with a better joke? Tragic.”

As they walk, their surroundings melt. The apartment building’s walls fade away in a mesh of colours, reforming brighter until they form one of the temples in the Underworld. Seokjin feels the familiar swoop in his stomach as he shifts realities.

“So, what is this meeting about then?”

“It’s an area debriefing. You’ve met Miryo, right? She’s in charge of this whole operation in Asia, Australia, and most of Russia. Occasionally, if there’s trouble in a more specific area, she calls her team in.”

“So, what – we’re the Korean team?”

“Not even – we’re the Seoul team.”

Hoseok leads him inside the temple. “You’re not the only extra help we’ve hired, but for whatever reason, the concentration of incidents related to the Boundary Cracks are in Seoul. I assume it’s something related to that.”

They’re the first ones to take their seats, which means Seokjin gets a good look at everyone who enters. Hoseok whispers names in his ear.

The next to enter are a pair of women – or at least, they have the form of human women. Seokjin isn’t sure if they’re appearing in human form for his sake, if the magic of this place makes him just see them as human, or if they tend to favour human form because they work primarily with humans. He doesn’t get a chance to ask.

“The one with the red hair is Jea,” Hoseok explains. “The other is Narsha.” Seokjin remembers Jea from breaking into Miryo’s quarters once, and swallows. She remembers too, if the amused grin she gives him says anything. She and Narsha nod to them before taking their seats either side of the head of the table and resuming their conversation.

“Jea used to be head of this operation,” Hoseok whispers. “However, she transferred to another area. Her expertise is in tracking renegade spirits down. This is a lot more impressive than it sounds: you humans can’t comprehend how vast the Underworld is. If someone’s in the wrong place, by accident or design, it takes a lot of work to find them. Miryo took over from her, and now Narsha is her right hand.”

Another figure walks in, clothed in the most stunning hanbok Seokjin has ever seen, hair stacked high in an intricate knot, the style of which Seokjin has never seen anything like. “And they are…?”

Hoseok opens his mouth but pauses. “They don’t actually have a name in the human tongue. They’re kind of like a diplomat. They keep communication running between the different human areas, and in turn their boss works with keeping interdepartmental communication with other dimensions. They might have a report from one of the other human areas that Miryo doesn’t cover, or they might be here to take notes on us and keep everyone updated.” They both stand and bow to the newcomer, who smiles tentatively at Seokjin and gives Hoseok their hand to kiss.

They’re followed by a woman with bright pink hair. Hoseok greets her warmly, but she seems lethargic as she bows to them both.

“That’s Vivi,” he says. “She was a Guardian like Taehyung. Used to work Korea with him. But since the YYXY incident, she’s been working on their case. If she’s here…”

“They’re the defectors, right?”

“You know about that? Well, yeah. She used to work closely with Yves. Took it quite hard when she left, but didn’t try to follow them.” Vivi takes her seat beside Jea.

Taehyung enters next, with another man. “Oh. That’s Bogum. He helps delegate individual souls when they get here. He sorts out the different religious folks and filters them so they aren’t too alarmed when they arrive at first. That way they experience death the way they’ve been prepared for it. And you know Taehyung, of course.”

Hoseok stands to clap hands with them both. Seokjin follows suit, but Taehyung doesn’t quite meet his eye. Seokjin squeezes his hand during the brief second they touch.

Finally, Miryo enters, looking as regal as ever. They all stand as she takes her place.

“Please, sit,” she says. “Welcome, everyone. Formalities first, as usual.” She glances at those gathered around. “No Namjoon?”

“We decided it would be best if one of us stayed behind,” Hoseok says. “With the fragile situation, we want to avoid a build-up of souls in Seoul. I came to represent both of us.”

“I see. Well, I trust you to report back to him. Shouldn’t be hard seeing as you two seem to share a mind.” She cracks a small smile. “The Elder, King Yan was invited as he takes an interest in our area, but we discouraged him – you know what he’s like, he would make it about his feud with Pluto and we have enough to deal with.” There’s a murmur of small laughter; Seokjin doesn’t get it but smiles anyway. “The Elder Nana was also invited, but hasn’t shown up – no surprises there, either. Tablo is also absent as he’s continuing his investigation of the Boundary, but has sent a progress report which we’ll get to later. I assume you all know each other and that there’s little need for introductions, except for one case.” She gestures to Seokjin.

Her gaze still feels like it’s stripping away every layer of his skin to see what’s inside.

Seokjin still hasn’t made up his mind about her – he knows he feels a grudging respect and a sprinkle of fear, but aside from that…

“We have a real human in our midst,” Miryo says. “A very rare occurrence indeed. This is Kim Seokjin, who you will all recognise by name and reputation. He’s our cleaner positioned in Seoul at the moment.”

“The one who tracked down spirits to prove a human’s guilt?” The hanbok-wearer asks.

Seokjin feels the weight of all these powerful eyes on him. He nods.

“So you were the one in that mess with the succubus?” Bogum asks. It feels like a rhetorical question, so Seokjin doesn’t answer.

“We got lucky with him,” Miryo says. “Many others wouldn’t have been able to handle the pressure.” There’s an air of finality in her tone, and the topic is closed.

In front of her is a smooth stone tablet carved out of a marble-like substance. Miryo presses her palm against it and script moves across the surface, quickly moving, and constantly shifting. Seokjin doesn’t recognise the language.

“First on today’s agenda is our updates on YYXY. This is particularly important to you, Seokjin.”

He nods rapidly while Jea stands up, stone tablet of her own. She taps it and it projects four images into the air, four profiles of the infamous members of YYXY. “It won’t be news to this team that YYXY have been sighted in South Korea. Our last confirmed location for them was near Budapest, Hungary, by the Africa/Europe team, six months ago. In early February we got confirmation of them in Pyongyang, and in April we had them south of the 38^th Parallel. Last week, we had visual of Gowon in Seoul. Their magic is strong and they have successfully illuded us since. We all need to be on high alert.” She looks up at them. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that South Korea has had the highest concentration of incidents since they landed in the country.”

Vivi takes over. “We only have circumstantial evidence connecting them to the issues with the Boundary,” she says. “However circumstantial it may be, it’s convincing. We need to rule them out, one way or another.”

“How do we do that?” Hoseok asks. “Seoul is our turf, but we have our hands full at the moment.”

Seokjin pauses. “I could…”

“No,” Miryo says.

Seokjin winces at the rejection. He feels so small in front of all these immortal beings.

Miryo catches it, and she sighs. “It was a possibility I considered,” she says. “However, if their plan is to make the Boundary burst open, you’ll likely be a target.”

“Me?”

“No matter how high they can force the Boundary open, it won’t collapse without a large purge of magical energy. Since they’ve been cut off from the Underworld for so long, I doubt they could generate this themselves,” Vivi explains. “However, a cleaner like yourself contains a large amount of Underworld magic.”

“I do?”

Miryo rolls her eyes. “Every one of your biological actions is generated by magic,” she says. “Keeping your soul alive and attached to a physical being without them being conjoined – that takes a lot of magic. Every time you are injured and heal? Your weapon? Your ability to cross over into the Underworld? Magic motivates all of this. You may not be able to wield it, but you have an incredibly high concentration of magic in your soul.”

Seokjin gulps, thinking of the small medallion in Yoongi’s locked drawer. “So if they needed a boost…”

“I’m not sure if it would work, but it wouldn’t stop them from trying. You might end up being a sacrificial lamb, so to speak, and the newly expelled magic from your destroyed soul could be used to bring the Boundary down on all our heads.”

As if things weren’t hard enough.

“Then…won’t it be better if I…”

What would Yoongi say if he never returned?

“If we destroyed you now? No. Your work is very important to the balance between the human dimension and the Underworld. How many monsters have you sent back? How many normal human spirits on a daily basis?” Miryo shakes her head. “The worst-case scenario is them using you for their own gain. However, they would probably still kill you if you approached them, and we can’t have that. The backlog that would form would be disastrous. And we can’t send another cleaner to help you out without severely disrupting the delicate balance of the dimensions. Too much magic in one area will only attract more spirits and be counterproductive. We need you to stay safe and stay away from them. Part of the reason we brought you here is to show you how.”

He’s not sure what to think.

At least he isn’t as disposable to them as he thought.

“Hoseok – I know you and Namjoon already have enough on your plate. We need you to be aware of their presence and keep vigilant for any unnatural energies or presences. However, we don’t want you to engage. Vivi and Jea will be focusing on tracking their exact location. When we find them, we’ll arrange a confrontation which one of you will be involved in. Until then, focus on keeping up your good work. And Seokjin…”

She turns to him again. “If you do find yourself in the presence of YYXY, simply press down on the gemstone in your ring. A burst of magic will automatically activate them and you – and any non-human beings around you – will be transported into a safe spot into the Underworld where we can apprehend them.”

Seokjin feels a little stupid. “What ring?”

Miryo smiles. Seokjin looks down and jumps a little: on the middle finger of his right hand is a ring he’s never seen before.

“Oh,” he says. “More cool Underworld jewellery.” Someone laughs.

It’s a thin circular band, dark grey. It looks like the same material his spear is crafted from. It’s so light he barely feels it. In the centre, a tiny bright gemstone rests, pale blue and perfectly circular. He raises his hand to admire it. “Wow, look at that.” Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Taehyung smile.

“Glad it is suitable for your tastes,” Miryo says. “However, I must urge you to only use it in the deepest emergency. Preferably if you’re in the presence of YYXY. We’re trying to keep the energies of the dimensions balanced and crossing like this will certainly cause a disruption – so please, only when bringing in the highest level of transgressors and not a stray vampire.”

“No worries. I haven’t seen any vampires. Yet.”

***

“It’s kind of scary,” Seokjin admits to Hoseok when the meeting is over. “I mean, everything since I’ve started this has been scary, but I don’t like the thought that they could be coming after me.”

“Namjoonie and I won’t let that happen,” Hoseok says, brow creased. “You know that.”

“You and Namjoonie won’t always be there. Besides.” Seokjin lowers his voice. “The succubus – Gain – she knew where I lived. She was let through by someone on the inside. I don’t see why the focus should be on YYXY.”

Hoseok glances over his shoulder to make sure nobody is in earshot. “They had lots of friends before they left,” he says. “Someone might be helping them. Catching them would hopefully reveal their person on the inside.”

Seokjin thinks of the pink-haired girl with tired eyes. “Like Vivi? You said they used to be close.”

“I did,” Hoseok says, carefully.

“And now she’s in charge of their case. I’m not accusing anyone of anything, but hasn’t anyone thought that perhaps the reason they haven’t been found is because one of the people looking for them isn’t actually looking?”

“The Underworld is taking this seriously,” Hoseok says. “Just because we can’t see the internal investigation doesn’t mean it’s not happening. We just have to focus on keeping things running in Seoul.”

“So,” it’s Miryo’s voice. Seokjin whirls around. “Hope your first debriefing wasn’t too boring.”

Seokjin raises an eyebrow. “It was alright. Could have used snacks. But if they’re so important, how come this is the first one I’ve been to?”

“Usually cleaners don’t need to. They’re largely focused on internal or Underworld affairs and rarely affect the individuals in your position. Today’s was an exception, and with the stakes so high I don’t think it’s fair to treat you like a child who can’t sit with the grown-ups.”

“Wow. Should I be flattered?”

“I’m impressed. I expected you to be incompetent. You’ve proven that you’re not bad, so it would be a pity if you got destroyed.”

“So you are flattering me.”

“And I’ll flatter you with my fists if you don’t learn to control that mouth of yours.”

Seokjin blows her a kiss.

Miryo sighs. “Just once. I hope we get someone professional. Go on, you two.”

Seokjin can’t supress his laughter as she walks away. Hoseok elbows him. “I’ve seen her take disciplinary action for less,” he says. “She really must think you’re reliable.”

His voice filters out, because at that moment Seokjin sees Taehyung leaving the temple.

“Hey! Taehyung!”

He pauses, turning around gingerly. “Oh. Hi, Seokjin.”

“Where – I’ve missed you. You haven’t visited me in a while.”

“I know. I’ve had a lot of work to do.”

“That didn’t stop you before.”

“Yeah. Well, I have to make up for a lot now. I’m trying to work hard with no distractions.”

Seokjin thought he was a friend, not just a distraction.

“Oh. Sorry. I guess my tiny human brain isn’t able to understand some of your higher thought processes.”

Taehyung looks nauseatingly uncomfortable. “I guess. See you, then.”

Seokjin tries not to huff as he walks away. “I thought you immortal souls would have all of your shit worked out by now.”

Hoseok smiles, but it’s a little sad. “I wish that were the case.”

***

“So then it was just boring stuff about like, the logistics of the Boundary. Half the words were incomprehensible to me, and I couldn’t even understand the words I did recognise.” Seokjin shrugs. “Taehyung could barely look at me.”

“Cool new ring, though,” Yoongi says. “You’ll be fully iced out by the time this ends.”

Seokjin grins. “Yeah, by the time this ends, so I can go to the afterlife blinged up.”

“Are they really going to just send you on their way when they’re finished with you?”

“That’s the deal.” Seokjin pushes the knife down, cutting through the watermelon. “That’s what I signed up for.”

Yoongi hums. “Is it bad that I wish it doesn’t get resolved for a long time, then?”

Seokjin pauses, separating the two melon halves. “A little,” he says. “The longer this goes on, the more people will be frightened, or traumatised, or injured, or killed. The more chaos will spread through the universe. It’s impossible to predict the potential victims, including, possibly, ourselves.”

Yoongi holds his chin in his hands. “Well, I want to be selfish. I don’t want to lose a friend.”

Seokjin snorts. “No wonder. I’m your only friend.”

“And I’m your only friend.”

“That’s only because all of my friends think I’m dead! I was very popular.”

“Yeah, I’m sure. You were vapid, too?”

Seokjin flicks the watermelon juice on his fingers in Yoongi’s direction. “You didn’t know me.”

“From what you’ve told me, you sounded like the dumb popular pretty boy from cliché high school dramas. I bet you were friends with anybody, but was there anything going on behind that forehead?”

Seokjin knows Yoongi is only teasing, but it hits a little too close to home. He pretends it doesn’t. “Are you saying you think I’m attractive?”

“You know you’re attractive. You don’t need me to tell you.”

“You’re right.”

Seokjin finishes cutting up the watermelon. He shoves a slice to Yoongi.

“Did I upset you?” Yoongi asks. “With what I said?”

Seokjin takes a bite of the fruit. Yoongi is so in sync with him, sometimes he forgets how sharply he sees past his walls.

“I was only teasing,” Yoongi says. “I’m sorry.”

“I know you were only teasing,” he says, spitting out a seed. “I just…I’m just sensitive.”

“No, let’s talk about it.”

“We have work to do.”

Yoongi raises an eyebrow. Seokjin knows he won’t let the subject drop. So he sighs. “I don’t know. Just more regrets about my life.” He kicks his heel against the stool he sits on. “I wish…looking back, I wasted so much time trying to be liked by everyone, and trying to please everyone when I wasn’t even happy. So many nights where I went to parties because I was expected there, instead of staying in and watching a film I’d been waiting to see. Or…time spent trying to win over people I barely knew or liked, because I couldn’t bear the thought of anyone not thinking the world of me. Even my degree – I did it to please my parents. They didn’t even put that much pressure on me to do it, and I love them, but I would have been happier if I chose something I wanted.”

“It’s hard,” Yoongi says. “I was desperate for people to like me too, and it led me into doing some stupid shit. It’s difficult navigating what you as an individual want against what society wants or expects of you.”

“I know.” Seokjin sighs. “I just...If I had known it was going to end so soon, I wouldn’t have wasted my life.”

“You’re not wasting your death,” Yoongi reminds him. “You’re doing more important work than some people do in their entire lives.”

“Yeah.” Seokjin doesn’t have anything else to say on the matter, so he rams more watermelon into his mouth. Yoongi catches on and doesn’t push the topic further. Seokjin doesn’t feel…better, per se, but it is nice to get these things off his chest. Sometimes he slips into his old habits, trying to pretend nothing’s wrong, but Yoongi…Yoongi is a kindred spirit. He gets him, and prods when he needs to, and it’s just nice to be able to talk to someone like this, without barriers. It’s cathartic and comforting.

They’re silent while they eat, but it’s not awkward. Seokjin feels comfortable, just existing here.

Some watermelon juice trickles down Yoongi’s hand, and he’s quick to lick it up, tongue darting over his skin. Seokjin looks away abruptly.

So, maybe there’s more to it than just comfort.

Seokjin…Seokjin knows it. He does. He’s attracted to Yoongi. And not in the “you’re objectively good-looking” way. In the “you’re so hot sometimes can you please fuck me already” way.

Which is disastrous.

He forces his mind elsewhere. Yoongi means more to him than whatever lust is raging inside him. Yoongi is hot; he can be as cute as a button or sexy as hell depending on his mood, sometimes both at the same time, and sometimes Seokjin gets distracted watching his fingers when he plays keyboard, long and skilled and strong, or when he wears low t-shirts and Seokjin sees the dip of a collarbone, or times like now when he licks up juice with that tongue.

Sometimes, he remembers hiding in the wardrobe with Yoongi, being right up in each other’s space, Yoongi’s hands tight on his waist, half-hard in his jeans against Seokjin’s thigh—

Or when they fought, rolling around on his carpet, Seokjin straddling Yoongi’s hips and Yoongi yanking him down—

But no – Yoongi is alive, and bright, and Seokjin is dead and lonely and he can’t even remember how long it’s been since he’s had sex with someone. So he takes that lust, acknowledges it, then puts it in a box and shoves it far away. He can compartmentalise it, and if needs be he can unlock it in the privacy of his room with his fingers and a bottle of lube. Because lust – it’s just lust. It’s nothing else. And Yoongi is his friend, and his partner, and means so much to him, and he won’t jeopardise any of that just so he can get some good dick. He won’t.

Besides, regardless of Seokjin’s attraction, Yoongi was probably only reacting to the heightened tension resulting in the presence of a succubus. There’s been nothing since to hint anything otherwise.

we don’t create feeling, we just enhance it. so anything you felt for hat human, all that attraction, all of that lust, all of it you had already felt before i just magnified it so that you couldn’t ignore it

“I was looking at the comments of your last blog post,” Yoongi says, shaking Seokjin out of his reverie.

“Anything good?”

“Well. There was one that bothered me. Did you watch the YouTube link someone posted?”

“I meant to, but I forgot with all this Underworld stuff. What was it?”

“Most of it was pretty boring. It’s this YouTube channel ran by this dude, Song Hyungchul. His most popular video was a while ago, where he and his friend Junil try using an Ouija board, stuff like that. The link was a part two of spooky rituals, posted two weeks ago. Most of it’s pretty standard. They go on this website and there’s a jumpscare, and they share a message from it as chainmail to scare their friends. They do a few things with dolls that don’t work but then…”

Yoongi is fidgeting.

“Then?”

“They try playing the Midnight Game.”

“Oh. Anything happen?”

“Not much. A few things fall over, a door blows open, all easily staged. But they don’t close the ritual.”

Seokjin puts down his watermelon. “Isn’t that the most important part?” he asks. “To ensure whatever you invited is gone, and won’t come back?”

“Yeah. I’m not even sure if anything played with them,” he says, but his expression is uncomfortable. “Maybe you need someone with a hint of sixth sense about them to successfully start the game. But if something – if the Midnight Man did come through…and they didn’t close it…”

“Shit. But we don’t know if it worked, though, do we?”

“That’s what I thought. I tried messaging this guy on social media. Didn’t get a reply, but didn’t think it was too weird – you know what these influencer types are like – but then when I checked, he hasn’t updated any of his SNS since the day after he posted the video.”

“Is that out of character for him?”

“He has thousands of tweets. I went back through them. Same on his Instagram. This seems like a dude addicted to his phone…but there’s been nothing for ten days.”

“You’re worried.”

“I am.”

Seokjin purses his lips. “We can look into it,” he says. “I’m not sure how. Do you know where he lives?”

“Not beyond him living in Seoul.”

“If we don’t know where he is and we can’t contact him, how are we supposed to find him?”

“I don’t know. I just wanted to tell you that I was worried.”

Seokjin frowns. “We’ll keep an ear to the ground,” he says. “Any unusual energies, we’ll track them down. I’ll tell Namjoon and Hoseok too, they might be able to help. If the Midnight Man, or anything else, is out there, it should come up on my radar.”

“What if it comes up too late? We could ask the witches for help.”

“We could. We already are in their debt, though. Let’s give it a few days first.”

“Okay.” Yoongi nods. “It’s probably nothing. I’m just being paranoid.”

“It probably is nothing,” Seokjin says, “but if you have a bad feeling about this, we’ll keep looking.”

Yoongi nods again, but still looks uneasy. “These videos are all usually staged anyway. I bet the social media silence is a stunt too.”

Seokjin hopes he’s right.

***

When Seokjin tries to sleep that night, he thinks of Taehyung.

Is the guilt that haunts him the same guilt that haunts Taehyung?

Because when Seokjin thinks of the entire situation, the fault is with him. He failed so utterly at apprehending Gain, that Taehyung destroyed her – and her information – to save Seokjin. To Seokjin, it feels like his mistake; if he had told Taehyung that he didn’t have his soul medallion on his person, or if he was stronger and could hold his own against Gain, none of this would have happened. Seokjin’s presence seems like a small price to pay for the safety of the universe.

To pin this on Taehyung seems utterly ridiculous.

But.

Seokjin thinks that Taehyung is probably feeling the exact inverse. It being anyone’s fault but Seokjin’s own seems so utterly preposterous, but Taehyung might relate to the same sentiment. Guilt works in unnerving ways. Taehyung would probably brush Seokjin’s guilt away the same way Seokjin has brushed off his.

And maybe that’s where the problem lies.

Taehyung isn’t the same species as Seokjin. He isn’t even of the same world as Seokjin. He only appears as human to Seokjin so that his mind doesn’t literally break. Yet still, Seokjin misses him.

Namjoon. Hoseok. Taehyung. Jungkook. Even Yoongi and Jimin. One way or another, Seokjin would never have met any of them if he hadn’t gone out for that smoke break and gotten a knife through his throat.

It doesn’t make it worth it, because in the quiet of the night Seokjin still thinks of his mother’s seaweed soup and his dog and getting drunk with Jaehwan and he aches. But they make it easier.

In this liminal existence, they’re all Seokjin has. And, like a child with only one toy, he holds them close to his heart.

He misses Taehyung, and Taehyung is punishing himself for protecting Seokjin. It can’t go on.

***

There’s a flurry of activity in the early morning. Seokjin wakes at the unholy hour of six-thirty by a ghost on his doorstep – literally. The human spirit is confused and lingers on the street just steps away from the entrance to Seokjin’s apartment building. He forces himself from the comfort of his duvet to collect its soul, then does a quick lap to collect the two other souls he feels nearby. Suspicious, but he’s long been used to fluctuations like this. He does keep an eye out for any unusual energy in the mix, but comes up with nothing.

He turns on the news as he reheats last night’s dinner leftovers for breakfast. The headline story is about two men found murdered. Their bodies had been found last night, but according to the report approximately twenty-four hours passed between the two deaths. The earlier murder had been found first. While investigating, police called on the last person the man had contacted via text, only to find him murdered in the same fashion.

“That’s grim,” says Jungkook, who floats in during the middle of the report. “How did they die?”

“Doesn’t say,” Seokjin says, “but I bet it wasn’t pretty.”

The story changes to a political scandal, and Seokjin loses interest.

***

Hoseok’s sword hits his spear and the metal sings.

Seokjin recovers quickly, jumping out of range to catch his breath, twisting his weapon in his hand.

“You’re getting quicker at that,” Namjoon comments from the sidelines.

“I have a good teacher,” Seokjin says.

Hoseok darts forward again, sword cutting low. Seokjin is expecting it, though, and spins. He blocks the blade with the bottom of the shaft. In the split-second pause while Hoseok recovers, he angles the spear, forcing the head of it towards his open torso. Hoseok isn’t expecting it, but he’s better than Seokjin, and manages to dodge.

“You’re a natural, Seokjin,” he says, an inhuman lightness in his feet. “But your problem is that you’re always playing defence. You’re never pushing offense!”

He lunges again. Instead of crossing weapons, Seokjin falls to the side.

The spear isn’t as strong as Hoseok’s sword, but it’s more versatile. Unlike traditional spears that consist of a wooden shaft, the entire weapon is metal, meaning he can use the length of the spear to parry or strike as well as the spearhead. He can switch between hands – or indeed, a two-handed grip, although Hoseok discourages this – and it has greater range than the short sword. If Seokjin had more confidence in his aim, he could also throw it – but that’s a last resort move. If he throws and misses, he leaves himself open to the enemy.

“You’re wandering again,” Hoseok says. “You need to keep your eyes on me if you’re going to strike.”

“Watch your stance,” Namjoon calls. “You’re too high.”

Seokjin swallows, adjusting his stance lower. He sinks down, ignoring the strain it puts on his thighs, weight on his back foot, front foot ready to lunge forward at a split second’s notice.

“That’s it,” Hoseok says approvingly. “Smaller target, more efficient movements. Can you keep up?”

He takes a quick step forward. Seokjin mirrors him by taking a step backward. Hoseok stalks to the left, and Seokjin scuttles to the right, keeping the same distance between them.

You’re never pushing offense.

Hoseok darts forward again and this time Seokjin steps forward to meet him, spear clashing against the wide arc of his sword. High, then low, the clanging of their blades acting as percussion to their rhythm. Seokjin isn’t a born dancer but he’s gotten good. Hoseok stabs forward and Seokjin twirls to the right, spinning his spear as he does, the blunt end catching Hoseok’s shoulder.

“If you’d used the head, you might have torn my shirt,” Hoseok says, grinning, “But—”

Seokjin doesn’t let him dictate their pace. He shoves forward, using the longer range of the spear to his advantage. He goes for Hoseok’s neck. To block, Hoseok brings the sword high. Seokjin presses in, kicking hard against Hoseok’s chest. He stumbles back with a guffaw, but Seokjin keeps going. He slides his spear down the length of Hoseok’s spear, driving into the flesh of his fingers until he’s forced to drop the sword. Seokjin flips the spear, cracking the blunt end against his kneecap. Hoseok is on the ground, and by the time he reaches for his fallen sword, the blade of Seokjin’s spear is nestled against the centre of his neck.

Namjoon claps. “I knew you’d get there eventually, Seokjin. Gods, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen someone knock Hoseokie on his back.”

Hoseok’s eyes twinkle. “I said you were a natural. See how effective you are when you stop playing it safe?”

Seokjin lowers his spear, shutting it down into its three-inch stick and shoving it into his pocket. He offers Hoseok a hand. “I’ll never be more skilled than you,” he says, “but luckily, most of my opponents aren’t in your range.”

Hoseok laughs, accepting the hand up. “It’s definitely easier to slice something that hurtles itself at you with little thought,” he says, “but still. You have improved immensely since the first time we sparred.”

Seokjin fails at hiding the pride he feels simmering in his chest. “I never thought I’d be able to land a blow,” he says, “let alone beat you in a match.”

“Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves. It’s still one win against about five hundred losses.”

“Sounds like you’re getting defensive, Hoseokie. Are you losing your touch?”

Namjoon leaves his spot to join them. “Don’t worry, Hoseok. If you need help bringing your skills back up to scratch, I’m sure Seokjin won’t mind teaching you a thing or two.”

Hoseok crosses his arms. “You two are the worst.”

“You don’t sound very serious when you’re pouting like that,” Namjoon says, poking one cheek.

“Cutest dangerous person I know,” Seokjin says, nodding seriously. “A great honour.”

“I’ll only forgive you if you keep complimenting me.”

They descend the stairs from the rooftop back down to their living spaces. “Hey,” Seokjin says. “When the Guardians filter out my apartment with that anti-Underworld protection, it won’t affect Jungkookie, will it?”

“It shouldn’t,” Namjoon says, filling a kettle with water. “Those type of protection charms work against things that aren’t of this world. Jungkookie never left the world, and he’s the ghost of a human being, so it won’t block him out.”

“If you’re worried, shoot Minki or Yooa a text,” Hoseok says. “It’ll be Nana setting up the spells. She knows about Jungkook and they’ll remind her to keep him safe.”

“Good. I like having a roommate.” Seokjin pulls out his phone. “What about Yoongi’s place? Should he get something down?”

“Not if he wants to keep his business as a medium,” Namjoon says. “It could block him out completely. But Minki told me they already had basic protection spells around him, so he should be fine. Besides, this is a protective measure taken specifically to stop Yves showing up in your bedroom and killing you in your sleep. Yoongi doesn’t have the same problem.”

“Doesn’t he? If they’re going after me…”

“They’re former Guardians. If they are in Seoul, they’ll feel your energy, even if they won’t be able to track you down with it. They know there’s a cleaner here. They don’t, however, know shit about random humans like Yoongi who have a hint of the psychic about him. Yoongi will be fine.”

“Besides,” Hoseok says, “we don’t even know if they will come after you. Personally, I think it unlikely. I think you’ll be – and I mean this in the best way – more trouble for them than capturing you would be worth. They’re…they’re anarchists, but they’re not straight-up murderers. This is just a precaution.”

“At the end of the day, there are lots of other spirits or beings in Seoul that are far more likely to want you gone than runaway Guardians.”

“Gee, thanks. That makes me feel so much better.”

“It should. Chances are, your routine probably won’t even be disrupted by them.”

“And what about your routine?”

Hoseok and Namjoon share a dark look.

“Well,” Hoseok says, voice a little tight. “I might need to practice my swordplay some more.”

***

“Wow, guys, it looks like nothing’s happening—” the voice is cut off by a shriek. The computer screen shown on camera turns abruptly from a black mirror to the grotesque shot of a face without eyes. The two YouTubers shown flinch at the jumpscare, then fall into laughter.

“Man,” the main one – Hyungchul, Seokjin thinks – “that’s so lame!”

Yoongi pauses the video. “These guys are such jerks.”

“Do we really have to watch the rest?” Jungkook asks.

“Yes. Or at least a bit more of it.”

Yoongi presses play.

“You should have seen your face,” the video resumes, the other one, Seokjin can’t remember his name, speaking. “You looked like you were about to piss yourself.”

“I felt like it, I’ll admit it,” Hyungchul says, “but so did you!” He turns back to the screen. “A lot of set-up, but the Blind Maiden website does deliver a good fright. What’s this?” A bubble pops up onscreen.

“Sharing options?”

“Wait, there’s a text message version you can send? Let me check this out.” Hyungchul types in his number, censored by the editing. His phone beeps a moment later. “Oh, this is wicked. It’s basically the same jumpscare, but through a gif. The text is good too.” He shows it to his friend, who reads aloud the text.

“The Blind Maiden has been made aware of your presence and will be sending her servant to find you and consume its fill. Send this message to as many others as you can, for the last reader of this message shall meet this fate.” He shudders a little. “Then – this gif, or whatever, it’s perfectly timed so that when you finish reading the message, the face we showed you earlier popped up.”

“Hold on—I need to send that to Hyungjoonie.”

“You’re such a cruel hyung!”

“No, watch – he’s going to call straight away.” Hyungchul taps on his phone. “Who else should I send it to?”

“Jane from Hophouse. She always sends me random chainmail in English, so this will be my revenge. And she scares so easily!”

“Yeah, you’re right. I’m going to send it to Minhyuk and Kwangsoo, too, you know they hate stuff like this.”

“How many people are you sending it to?”

Hyungchul counts. “About seven?”

“Watch Hyungjoon’s school come after us when he spreads it to the entire student body.”

“Popularity has consequences! There, sent.” Hyungchul turns to the camera. “We’ll show you if we get any responses!”

Seokjin pauses the video. “I literally can’t watch this anymore. My skin is crawling.”

“Is he…intentionally trying to get a reaction out of his brother and his friends for YouTube views? That seems a little mean, especially when it’s supposed to be scary…” Jungkook says.

“I hated this chainmail shit,” Yoongi says. “Or those posts that are like, “share or something bad will happen?” They used to give me so much anxiety when I was in school. I always thought they were going to become true.”

“That’s so mean,” Jungkook says. “I haven’t watched a lot of YouTube videos. Are they all this obnoxious?”

Seokjin snorts. “It’s a pity you can’t move away from the apartment, Jungkookie. We could send you to haunt them, give them a real scare and teach them a lesson.”

“What are you talking about?” Yoongi asks. “Jungkookie is too cute to scare anyone. Look at that face.”

“I could be scary if I wanted to be,” Jungkook says.

“It would be a bit like using a puppy as a guard dog,” Seokjin says. The urge to ruffle Jungkook’s hair takes over him, but he doesn’t want to sail a hand right through the apparition so he restrains himself. “Anyway,” he says, pulling out his phone. “I’m hungry.”

“You’re always hungry.”

“It takes a lot of energy to fuel the magic running my body,” Seokjin says. “I have to eat lots, more than a regular person.”

“I thought your body ran fine even if you didn’t eat,” Yoongi says. Seokjin kicks him from the other end of the couch.

“Do you want food or not?”

“Yes.”

“Then be quiet.”

Seokjin is in the midst of ordering fried chicken when Yoongi makes a strangled sort of noise. “What is it now?”

“I was just looking through the news app,” he says. “You heard about those murders, right?”

“The two men who were disembowelled?”

“Yeah.”

“What about them?” Jungkook asks, floating down horizontally behind Yoongi so he can look at his phone over his shoulder.

“They’ve identified the bodies,” he says. “Han Minhyuk and Im Kwangsoo.”

“Do you know them?”

“Hyung.” Yoongi’s eyes are wide, and Seokjin knows he’s missing something. He grabs the remote, rewinds a few seconds. The video plays again.

“Yeah, you’re right. I’m going to send it to Minhyuk and Kwangsoo, too, you know they hate stuff like this.”

Realisation dawns on Seokjin.

“The names,” Seokjin says.

“You don’t think…”

Seokjin shakes his head. “No. It has to be a coincidence, right? They’re not uncommon names.”

“You really think so? Really?”

“No. Fuck.” Seokjin moves to his feet. “And these are the same fools that played the Midnight Game without closing the ritual too, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit.” If these are all connected, Seokjin is going to break their faces when he gets his hand on them.

 He pulls out his phone and sends a text.

To: witch apprentice Kim Jungeun

Can I borrow a book?

***

Seokjin feels like a mess. He feels like the sensation when you don’t comb your hair for a few days, and the strands knot and tangle together, and smoothing them out again makes them tug at the roots of your scalp. It’s painful, avoidable, and you can’t do anything until you’ve heaped a metric tonne of conditioner on it and brushed it all out again.

His mind is spread across so many scattered thoughts. If he wants any chance to focus, he needs to take action – and this is certainly preferable than confronting his own lust.

Taehyung stands on his balcony. There’s a gentle June breeze that makes the light curtain dance. He looks ethereal, but when doesn’t he?

“Namjoon told me you needed my help.” His voice has the awkward air of someone who is trying really hard not to seem awkward.

“I do.” Seokjin flops down on one of the balcony chairs, the same ones he and Yoongi sat in just a few nights ago. “The truth is I can’t work efficiently when I’m so hung up on this.”

“What’s this?”

Seokjin raises an eyebrow.

“Alright,” Taehyung says, sitting down in the other. “You know…I don’t—”

“If I told you that feeling guilty about the Gain incident keeps me awake at night, what would you say?”

Taehyung meets his eye for the first time that day. “I would say that it wasn’t your fault and you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.”

“Funny,” Seokjin says. “That’s what I’d say to you, too.” He softens his voice. “If it wasn’t my fault, then it wasn’t yours, either.”

“So, you’re telling me you don’t feel guilty after all?”

“No. It’s more complicated than that,” Seokjin says. He sighs. “I’m just saying. We’re both clearly blaming ourselves for something and absolving the other of guilt. Maybe we’re both fuckups. Maybe neither of us should be so hard on ourselves.” Taehyung looks away. “You did what you did to save me. If you regret it – that’s okay. But you acted on kindness, and you need to remember that.”

“You didn’t have your soul medallion on you,” Taehyung says in a small voice.

“It’s almost been damaged a few times,” Seokjin admits. “And – despite everything. I’m terrified of dying. Or. Whatever might happen to me.” He waves his hand. “I’ve hidden it to keep it safe.”

“You’re smarter than I thought you were,” Taehyung says, trace of a smile visible on his face. “I’m sorry. It’s been hard for you too. I didn’t think my actions would hurt you.”

“It’s hard enough without one of my only friends ghosting me,” Seokjin says.

“Ghosting?”

“Never mind. My point is – I need you on my side.”

“I know. I’m sorry. It’s just…” Taehyung stands, surveying the city. “You went through a lot. And in the end it was for nothing. I feel responsible. I feel ashamed. And when I see you, that shame becomes hard to ignore. I wasn’t trying to avoid you, just myself. You humans take everything so personally.”

“I won’t apologise for that,” Seokjin says.

“And you don’t have to. Sorry. I find it hard to express myself sometimes.”

“I don’t want you to feel ashamed. If anything, I’m glad to have a friend that cares about me.”

Taehyung turns to face him. “Friend?”

“Yes,” Seokjin says, joining him. “I care about you. And you care about me. And we want what’s best for each other. That’s what a friend is. You have friends, right?”

“I do. I’ve just never been friends with a human before.”

“Well, you don’t have a choice,” Seokjin says with an air of finality. “We’re friends.”

Taehyung surprises him by taking his hand. “I’m glad we’re friends,” he says, and his voice is so full of sincerity that it makes Seokjin’s heart ache. “I think if I was in your position, I would hate me. I would hate all of the Underworld beings for putting me in that position. But you’re a human with an astounding amount of love in your heart.”

Seokjin tries his best not to look flustered. “All humans have astounding amounts of love inside their hearts.”

“Maybe so. But even by those standards, you’re exceptional,” Taehyung says, squeezing his hands.

“Of course I love you all. Well, I love you and Namjoonie and Hoseokie. You’re some of the few I have.”

Taehyung looks at their clasped hands. “It must be a lonely existence. You must wish this was over.”

“Sometimes,” Seokjin says, surprised at his own confession. “Sometimes not. And it is lonely, but that’s why you’re even more precious to me. So no more moods, please? I understand feeling guilty, but I have so few friends that I can’t stand if I lose one of them.”

“You won’t lose me,” Taehyung says, and he smiles. A true smile, this time. “As long as you want me, I’ll be here for you.”

Seokjin blinks away the prickling sensation in his eyes. “You’re a good kid.” An astronomical weight is lifting off his shoulders.

“I’m not a kid,” Taehyung says. “I’m many centuries older than you, my friend.” He lifts the hand holding Seokjin’s, and presses a kiss against his pulse in his wrist. There are no romantic or seductive connotations: this is a sacred oath. “And I promise you, I won’t leave you again.”

Seokjin laughs in order to dispel some of the tension in his chest. “You better not. I don’t care what you do or how badly you fuck up. You have to hang out with me. I sold you my soul, after all.”

Taehyung snorts, dropping his hand. “You know it wasn’t like that.”

“Yeah, but what’s the real difference?”

Taehyung giggles. When he smiles he shows all his teeth. It’s endearing. “I have to go back soon,” he says, “but I promise I’ll come visit you soon. Or even better, I’ll bring you to visit me. Do you actually need any help?”

“I mostly needed to get this off my chest,” Seokjin admits. He feels a little silly now, but he stands by his choices. He’s spent a lifetime repressing his feelings and he needs to stand by his decisions to express and communicate them while he has the chance. “I couldn’t stop thinking about how stiff you were the last time I saw you.”

“I’m sorry—”

“It’s over now. Let’s put it behind us.”

“I’m glad you understand.”

“Aside from that, unless you know the address of every soul in Seoul, I’m not much use to you. Now get going, before Miryo has my ass for delaying you.”

Taehyung raises his fist and Seokjin bumps his knuckles against it. “Stay safe out there,” he says. “And I’ll see you soon. And remember, Seokjin – I’m trying not to be hard on myself, but the bargain is that you have to try too!”

***

There’s a third murder.

Seokjin is nostalgic for the days when these hauntings only resulted in stressed parents.

They’ve barely looked into the incidents yet, but they’ve another one to add to the list.

“Authorities have connected this incident to the previous murders of Han Minhyuk and Im Kwangsoo,” the newscaster reads. “Like Han and Choi, Joo Kijung had received the same text message investigators used to connect the previous two murders. However, the message came from a different source. Police are investigating any ties to this message for any leads.”

“Online is freaking out,” Yoongi says. “That was this morning’s news. Apparently netizens have made the same connections as us.”

“Wow,” Seokjin says flatly, “I’m glad to be as smart as netizens.”

Yoongi gives him a withering look. “They don’t think the same names are a coincidence, especially since the media has been focusing on this messaging being a link between the victims.”

“When you publicly send scary chainmail to two people and they end up dead shortly after…that’s going to look bad.”

“Yeah. Some are superstitious and think it really is some demon and reckon the radio silence is because the kids who filmed it are dead too. But…the video in question has been shooting up in views. Some people think it’s some fucked up publicity stunt.”

“What – they think they’re murdering their friends for views?”

“If you don’t believe in demons or ghosts, I guess that’s the logical conclusion.”

“There’s nothing logical about that—”

“Easy for you to say, Mr. Walking Dead. Most people go through their lives with no paranormal actions.”

“How boring.” Seokjin rubs his temples. He feels a migraine coming on. If only his healing powers covered those. “So – how are we going to find these guys if they’re hiding from the entire nation?”

“The cops might figure this one out for us,” Yoongi says. “If this deadly message originated from them, they’ll track them down pretty fast. Especially with the way this has been blowing up online – it won’t take them long to figure it out.”

“Okay. The cops think Song Hyungchul is suspicious. They’re able to use police resources to find out where he’s living. They arrest him? And then what?”

“Then,” Yoongi says, “we find out which station they’re being held in. We send Namjoon, or Hoseok, or Taehyung in, they don’t take corporeal form except until they’re in and question them.”

“The guards can’t see them and it just looks like our prisoners are talking to themselves while hopefully giving us the information we need to stop this madness.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s a good plan. When do our plans ever go well?”

“The police force isn’t incompetent.”

“Isn’t it? How many times have we been almost caught at crime scenes and have gotten away by hiding under the bed or in a closet?”

“Well, they can’t all be incompetent. It’s been spelled out for them. In the meantime, we can research.”

Seokjin stands up from the couch, pacing around Yoongi’s living room. “Okay. So what we know about this…demon? Ghost? Monster? Thing?”

Yoongi pulls open his laptop. “Go.”

“So. The first and second victims were killed within twenty-four hours of each other. This implies that the demon – I’m just going to go with demon, if it’s offended by it I’ll apologise later – kills once a day. Maybe it’s feeding? But almost two weeks passed before the first kill. And then, four more days between two and three. Is there a pattern?”

“Maybe,” Yoongi says, typing furiously. “But – hyung, I think you’re pinning too much on the twenty-four-hour thing. Technically, a pattern needs more than one instance for it to be a pattern. It might have been a coincidence. These attacks could be completely random.”

“Maybe,” Seokjin says back. “But I don’t think very many things are random anymore. I would bet my arm that there’s some sort of reason behind it.”

“An animal eats when it’s hungry,” Yoongi says with a shrug.

“This would be a strange animal,” Seokjin says, “if it needs to eat twice within two days but only once the following week.”

“You’re right. It is strange.”

“If there is no reasoning, it’s going to be harder to intercept. Put this as issue one.”

“Yes, boss.”

“So my second issue – in the video Hyungchul said he sent the message to seven people. Minhyuk and Kwangsoo were two that he mentioned. By that logic, shouldn’t there be seven dead by now?”

“Maybe they just haven’t found the bodies,” Yoongi says. Seokjin winces at the casual tone of his voice. “Or – hold on. Let me pull the video up. There. The version of the text says that the last person who reads the message will be targeted.”

“So…when it goes to kill, in whatever pattern it goes, it targets the most recent person to have read the text. In theory, the more people you send it to, the safer you are.”

“So whoever was the last person to read this message – or at least, the last person before Joo Kijung – will be the next victim whenever this thing strikes again.”

“Unless someone else reads it between now and then, in which case it will be them.”

“Fuck this.” Yoongi pauses his typing. “Depending on how far this has spread, it could be messy.”

“We’ll need to find the person who sent the original – who might already be dead – and track down every person he’s sent the text to, and every person they’ve sent the text to, and so on, before we can stop it from spreading further?”

Yoongi pushes his laptop off his knees, standing up beside Seokjin. “I mean, not necessarily. If we could get a copy of that text, and you were the last person to read it, it would come for you.”

“And that’s a good thing?”

“Hyung, you could kill it! If you kill it and send it back to the Underworld. Or you could get Hoseok or Namjoon to read it, if you’re not sure you can kill it yourself. Either way, we won’t have to worry about tracing all of these people down.”

“Yes we will. Because if I read it and some other fool reads it after me…”

“Shit.” Yoongi walks away, irritated. “How the fuck are we going to do this.”

“I can’t even feel it,” Seokjin says. “I could tell there was something wrong when Gain was in the city, but with this…nothing.”

“No. No. we’ll come up with something. We always do. What if…what if we got Jungkookie to read it? If it came for him, it would go right through him. He’s not solid!”

“No.” Seokjin’s a little shocked at how firm his voice is. “There’s no evidence that it can’t harm him. Too risky.”

His skin is itching with frustration. How are they supposed to fight something like this?

He glances at Yoongi’s laptop screen, at his precise notes.

“Well, it comes back to the first issue, doesn’t it?”

“Which?”

“The pattern of its killing. How it kills.” Seokjin looks up. “If we work out when it’s going to kill, we can ensure that I’m the last person who’s read the message before it attacks. There has to be something that provokes it or spurns it on…if we can work out what that is, we’ll be able to cast a trap.”

Yoongi looks at him for a long moment before he sighs and sits back down again.

He types a subheading: Goals.

Underneath, he types the two things they’ll need to do.

1. Find a copy of the chainmail message
2. Discover how and when this bastard kills

“Well,” says Seokjin, trying to be cheery. “At least we’ve narrowed it down.”

“Progress?” Yoongi tries. “I have a client coming over in a few minutes. Will you be okay hiding in my room for half an hour?”

“Oh yeah.” Seokjin jams a thumb at the huge book on the table. “I’ve some light reading to do.”

***

It’s not that Seokjin doesn’t like reading. It’s just that when his brain is going this fast, he finds it hard to focus on one thing. When Seokjin plays video games, he often has a drama playing in the background. He watches films with Jungkook while he cooks. He plays mobile games while watching TV. He can’t do any of those while reading, however, and it’s a long book…

It’s a long, heavy, dusty old tome with pages that crackle when he turns them. It’s an encyclopaedia of deadly creatures he borrowed from Jungeun, written in archaic print. Seokjin’s mind is already wandering…

He pulls out his phone, finding the damned video. He makes sure to plug in his earphones – he can hear Yoongi doing his thing a wall over, and he doesn’t want to interrupt.

“Who else should I send it to?”

“Jane from Hophouse. She always sends me random chainmail in English, so this will be my revenge. And she scares so easily!”

That’s right. Minhyuk and Kwangsoo weren’t the only two named recipients of the cursed message. He pulls up the Facebook app on his phone.

It prompts him to log in, so he puts in his usual details – and pauses. It would be a little weird to message someone from a dead man’s account, right?

So, fuck it, he sets up a new account and looks very suspicious with his blank avatar and lack of personal information, but it’s all he needs. Song Hyungchul has a private account, but Choi Junil’s isn’t. He scrolls through his friends. There are three Janes. Only one is mutual friends with Han Minhyuk and Im Kwangsoo.

He glances briefly at their profiles. They’re swallowed up with memorial messages from friends, family and acquaintances. A voice in Seokjin’s head tells him that he should go back and look at his own Facebook page from before, or to read all of the comments under his last Instagram post, or—

He stops listening to that voice.

He clicks on Jane Nakayama’s profile.

It’s public, thankfully. It’s quite surprising, seeing as the netizens seemed to have found her too – it’s not exactly difficult. From a quick scroll through her page he finds out that she was born in Kyoto and raised in Colorado and has spent the last three months working in a bar in Hongdae. There’s a post on her page, the first half in Japanese. Seokjin scrolls to her Korean translation. It’s a little clumsy, there’s some awkward grammar, but it’s easy to understand the gist.

Since that video went up, lots of people have been asking me about that message…

Mostly Hyungchul and I text in English, so when he sent that message to me I had some trouble translating it

Then the scary gif popped up so I deleted the message TT I didn’t read it fully and I didn’t send it to anyone

People are asking me to send it to them but it’s deleted

I text Hyungchul too but he hasn’t replied to me…

Maybe it’s because she hasn’t made it down the food chain yet, but it would seem that Jane Nakayama’s misunderstanding might have saved her. If so, that changes things. It’s not the message itself that implements the curse. The recipient would have to read and understand the words for them to take root.

Interesting.

He does a quick search online. It’s surprisingly easy to find the address of one of the crime scenes. Apparently, the police have been lingering for days without much progress. One of the apartment buildings isn’t too far from here.

Seokjin swallows. Yoongi is going to be another twenty minutes with this client, at least.

It will be worth checking to see if he can get a spiritual read on the place at least. He’ll be back before Yoongi even notices he’s gone.

It’s only a short walk to the apartment building listed. It’s a relatively nice building – nicer than Seokjin’s, but not by much – and he notes the two police cars parked outside. Two uniformed officers stand against one, one drinking coffee in a paper cup. Beside them, a third figure in normal clothes. He’s tall, stands out because of his good looks, and looks at ease. He’s not being asked questions. He’s probably the one who does the asking.

Seokjin makes brief eye contact with him as he passes and looks down sharply.

Thankfully, another resident is entering right ahead of him, so he doesn’t have to awkwardly linger without a key in front of the cops. He goes for the stairs. He doesn’t know which floor the apartment he’s looking for is on. He’s hoping that there will be some sort of police tape or indication that will help him out, and he doesn’t want to be seen hiding in the elevator.

He does find an indicator eventually. He’s shuffling down the seventh floor when he sees yellow tape criss-crossing a section of the hallway. Police Investigation Underway, a sign reads. Do Not Cross. Access Apartments 007-010 via Eastern Elevator.

So this is the one.

Seokjin closes his eyes. He doesn’t cross the tape, but he drifts his fingertips across the wall and reaches out. There’s an aftertaste of a soul – Seokjin gets this sometimes when he’s in close proximity to a scene of a death. It hasn’t been too long since this soul died and Namjoon or Hoseok collected it for the Underworld. In that spiritual footprint he can feel fear, but nothing else.

Whatever attacked is long gone.

Seokjin expected as much, but he had hoped for something.

He squeezes his eyes shut even tighter, focuses hard on the air around him, hoping to find a fluctuation in the energy, anywhere, but there’s nothing. There’s no point in staying – he won’t get any help from the crime scene. The only thing that moves is the swish of the elevator doors opening and closing.

Wait.

Seokjin is about to turn around when he feels something cold and hard against the small of his back. His heart skips a beat.

It’s the first time he’s been held at gunpoint.

“Don’t move,” a voice says. “Or I shoot.”

“Okay,” Seokjin says, keeping his voice even. “I’m not moving.”

“Hands behind your back.”

“I thought you said I wasn’t supposed to move?”

“If—”

“Fine.” Seokjin shoves his wrists behind his back. The barrel of the gun disappears from his back while handcuffs are slapped around his wrists. “You know, usually I know the name of the men who handcuff me. Usually I make them buy me a drink first.”

The man rattles the cuffs sharply, enough to make Seokjin wince. “If this is an arrest, I deserve to know who’s arresting me and what I’m being arrested for.”

“This isn’t an arrest. I’m not a police officer.”

“Then this is a kidnapping?”

Seokjin turned around roughly, and the man – the one outside, who had been talking to the cops – begins patting him down.

“Lee Dongwook. Private Investigator.”

“You’re pretty good looking, Dongwook-ssi,” Seokjin drawls, because he’s panicking and trying to stall and find time for himself because he doesn’t know what’s happening. “I wouldn’t mind letting you handcuff me. I’d like to know why, though.”

“You don’t get to know why.”

“My rights—”

“I’m an investigator,” he says again, “not a cop. And anyway, those rights apply to citizens.” His face is face impassive and voice as smooth as silk. He pockets Seokjin’s phone and keys. He opens his wallet, but Seokjin has nothing to identify him inside. “To human citizens.”

Seokjin’s insides grow cold. Shit. “Who are you?”

“I believe I told you already,” he says. “I’m Lee Dongwook, a private investigator.”

“You’re more than that.”

Dongwook pulls out his spear. It’s in its condensed form, so it thankfully doesn’t look like any weapon recognisable to him. He’s confused by the strange metal cylinder that feels lighter than it looks, so he pockets that too. “I am. And I won’t hesitate to unload a gun into you if you make a fuss.”

“Why?”

Dongwook looks at him. There’s a coldness there, one that springs goosebumps across Seokjin’s arms. There’s something off about him. He can’t tell what – he’s not from the Underworld, he’s not a ghost or anything, but something is different. “I knew you were something unholy as soon as I saw you,” Dongwook says. “I can feel it about you. You’re involved in these murders.”

“No,” Seokjin says, really beginning to freak out. “It’s not like that, not exactly—”

“You’re coming with me,” Dongwook says. “No arguments. No running. If you do anything…”

Seokjin gulps. His soul isn’t on him, so being shot…wouldn’t kill him, exactly, but it would certainly debilitate him for a while, and he doesn’t want to be completely helpless and at the mercy of this apparent madman. He also doesn’t like pain, and he’s pretty sure having his guts torn up with metal moving at twenty-five hundred feet per second will hurt quite a bit.

“You saw me at my car. We’re going to go down to it now. Okay?”

“Okay?”

With one firm hand on his shoulder, Dongwook pockets his gun. The hand stays in his pocket, ready to go at a moment’s notice, and he marches Seokjin to the elevator.

It’s humiliating. Seokjin is trying to save these fools. The doorman looks wide yed as he’s marched out, handcuffed, pushed into the back of a car. It’s not one of the police cars he saw earlier – those are still parked, the officers nowhere to be seen. He’s pushed into the backseat of a nondescript black car. The driver’s seat is pushed back too far and his legs cramp as soon as he sits down.

Dongwook – Seokjin isn’t sure how much he knows, but he certainly isn’t taking any chances – unlocks his handcuffs briefly, bringing his wrists up into the air and locking the metal around the handle above the window.

“Well,” Seokjin says. “This is excessive. Did you think I was going to fight you with my hands tied?” He had been considering it.

“I don’t want you thinking you’ll be able to get away,” Dongwook says, shutting the door sharply.

“Well, it’s really uncomfortable. I’ve already lost feeling in my shoulders.”

Dongwook enters the driver’s seat and ignores him as he starts up the car.

“I thought all cops had partners.”

“I’m not a cop,” he says. “Not anymore. I don’t need a partner to handle you.”

Seokjin kicks the back of the driver’s seat. “Well, consider me handled. I’m really busy, though, so can we hurry this up? I don’t know anything that will help you.”

“How do you know that I want your help?”

“I’m handcuffed in the back of your car.”

“And?”

“And you seem to think I’m involved in these murders somehow. And you act like you know a lot about me, but really—”

“I know an Underworld demon when I see one,” Dongwook says.

Seokjin is silent.

Fuck!

“What are you?” he asks.

“Human,” Dongwook says.

“So am I.”

“No you’re not.” So that’s why something about him felt so off.

“As human as you are,” Seokjin says. “Most humans don’t know about the Underworld.”

“I was born and raised a human,” Dongwook says. “Don’t ever imply that I’m anything but.”

Seokjin feels fear begin to rise in his belly. “How do you know about the Underworld then?”

“I’m a human,” Dongwook says. “My mother is human. My father...”

“Oh,” Seokjin says. “Well, shit. I didn’t even know that was possible.”

Dongwook laughs gently from the front. He’s driving out of the city. “I’ve never been to the Underworld but I did inherit certain gifts from my father. And they knew about me, so I know the basics. And I know that every Guardian or Reaper would recognise someone like me. And I them. Yet here you are, claiming innocence yet I know you aren’t a being that should be here.”

“You can tell then? When something from the other side gets through.”

“Yes.”

“Have you noticed it happening more and more lately?”

Dongwook says nothing.

“If you check with any Guardian they’ll tell you that I’m here to help with the surplus. That’s why I went to the crime scene today.” Seokjin’s getting a little bit desperate, and more than a little annoyed. They don’t have time for this. “I think it’s supernatural too, and I’m trying to find out what it is so I can stop it.”

“And somehow,” Dongwook says, “I don’t believe you. The facts don’t make sense in this case. You’re right – I knew it was related to the supernatural. That’s why I got involved. I believe things the cops won’t. So I go have a look, just to see if this something I can help with, I get a supernatural reading and then an otherworldly being walks right into the scene of its crime?”

“It’s not my crime!” Seokjin grits out, kicking the chair again. The annoying part is that Dongwook doesn’t seem like a bad guy. In fact, he seems like a good one: he’s someone who is using his extra senses to try protect the people. That’s more than Seokjin can say for a lot of officers. But he’s so entrenched in the view that Seokjin has to be evil that he won’t consider an alternative.

Dongwook, Seokjin realises, might be a very valuable ally to him, if he opened up his eyes.

“Listen, you’re an investigator. You hear about crime all the time, right? Do you remember that on New Year’s Day, a man was murdered at the nightclub he worked at?”

“What about him?”

“Search him online. Look at a photograph of him.”

“I may not be a member of the police force any longer, but I’m still not going to use my phone while driving.”

“Then pull in! If you look at his photo, you’ll realise that he’s me. I’m Kim Seokjin. I was murdered outside Jinx Nightclub working the New Year’s Eve shift. I was stabbed in my throat and suffocated in my own blood and then the Guardians of the Underworld brought me back to life so I could hunt down demons and ghosts that slipped through the cracks and came back. I am on your side.”

Dongwook says nothing for a long time. Seokjin can see his knuckles turn white on the steering wheel.

“I’ve seen some awful things in this line of work,” he says. “I’ve seen demons change their face or possess human bodies. I’m sorry, but I just don’t believe you.”

“Take my fucking fingerprints if you need to and compare them!” Seokjin has no idea if his fingerprints actually are the same now, but everything else is, so he figures it’s a good bet to make. “Come on. You’re taking me to some station, or your office, or whatever; you can compare, I can tell you things about my life a demon wouldn’t know—”

“We’re not going to the station.”

Outside the car windows, the city is beginning to slip away.

“We’re not? Why did you arrest me, then?”

“I told you this isn’t an arrest,” Dongwook says. “This is an execution.”

***

The sun is beginning to set by the time Dongwook pulls over. They’re well outside of the city now, the skyline only just visible from the field they’ve parked at. Dongwook is reluctant but determined, and Seokjin is scared.

“There’s a chance you’re telling the truth,” Dongwook says slowly, opening the glove compartment. “In my experience with your kind, a miniscule chance. It’s a chance I’m willing to take if it’s going to stop the carnage happening with these murders. I don’t know how you’re using that message to kill, or track your victims now, but it ends tonight.”

“It only ends if you let me go,” Seokjin hisses. “This case, and so many more which I’ll be able to intercept.”

“If what you say is true, they’ll easily replace you. I can’t risk letting you live.” He has a gun in his hand, but it’s different from the one Seokjin saw earlier. He watches as Dongwook takes out a small case from the glove compartment, opening it to reveal silver bullets.

“They won’t kill me,” Seokjin says. “You’re wasting your time trying. Time I could be spending killing this demon.”

“They’re soaked in holy water.”

“They still won’t kill me.”

“Kill you, maybe not. But they’ll certainly injure you.” Dongwook loads them into the gun. “I’ve killed creatures like you before.”

“Yeah? And what do you do to them?”

“I injure them. Then I saw their heads off. Then I burn their bodies down to ashes and scatter them in the Han River. Can you survive that?”

Seokjin isn’t sure. He’s not a gambling man and doesn’t want to take the bet.

“You’re a detective,” he says, trying a new angle. “Your job is to solve crimes but you’re about to shoot me, an innocent man, in the middle of nowhere. Does that sit right with you?”

“Nobody would understand.”

“You don’t understand. We could help each other so much.”

Dongwook gets out of the car. He untangles Seokjin’s handcuffs from the car and drags him out, pushing him down onto his knees. The sky is golden as the sun dips behind the distant skyscrapers. “Do you have any last words?”

Seokjin takes a deep breath. He can smell the grass underneath him, the soil browning the knees of his jeans. It won’t be fun trying to wash those stains out. Yoongi is probably annoyed at him disappearing like this. Will Seokjin murder a human? Can he do that? He doesn’t have the right. The sun is warm on his neck. He isn’t wearing any sun protection. Seokjin is good at violence. Lee Dongwook is right; he’s not really human anymore. Does that mean he has to be humane? If Seokjin is a non-human, isn’t he justified in doing what it takes to complete his mission? If he isn’t human anymore, why is he so rigorously applying himself to human moral codes? He’s hungry. Dongwook’s hand is shaking.

“I’m sorry for what I’m about to do,” he says finally.

Dongwook tilts his head. He doesn’t get a chance to react before Seokjin launches to his feet, charging into him. Seokjin throws his full weight against him. A shot rings out and Seokjin feels pain rip through his arm, but he ignores it as they both hit the ground.

His wrists are still handcuffed.

Dongwook is struggling underneath him. Seokjin pins one of his elbows to the dirt with his knee. The other scrambles for the gun but Seokjin kicks it out of the way before stamping on his wrist. He’s never been more thankful for his flexibility.

Seokjin pulls his chained wrists up and over Dongwook’s head until the chain lies at the back of his neck. Then he pulls his wrists together. The chain is tight around his neck, cutting into his flesh and restricting his ability to breathe.

Alarmed, Dongwook starts kicking even more against him, legs scrambling to find purchase, hips working to shake him off, but Seokjin is balanced and firm. He’s never strangled anyone before. The hand that is pinned at the elbow reaches up to dig into his thigh, clawing so fiercely that the fabric rips. His movements become more frantic as he struggles for oxygen, his face slowly turning purple.

He’s dying.

Seokjin blinks away tears.

Just as they had initially become more frenzied, as the seconds slip away Private Investigator Lee Dongwook’s movements begin to slow down. His body is shutting down underneath Seokjin. He’s still alive, but not for much longer unless he starts breathing soon. His neck is wet with blood from where the metal has rubbed into his skin.

Seokjin could kill this man. Seokjin knows what it’s like to gasp for breath that doesn’t come.

He inhales deeply and moves his hands away.

The sound Dongwook makes as he breathes again is awful. Seokjin moves off him quickly, hand diving into his jacket pocket to secure his spear. He flips it out into its full length, spearhead aimed at Dongwook’s stomach.

Dongwook pays no attention for a moment, breathing deeply. The purple slowly fades from his face as he gasps for air like a fish out of water, hand on his chest like he’s afraid his longs will burst through his ribs.

It’s only when he’s back to his normal colour that he looks at Seokjin, looks at the spear ready to slice through his small intestine should he make a wrong move.

“Have you killed many like this?” Seokjin asks. “Out here, alone?”

Dongwook meets his eye without flinching. Something glints in his pupils – fear. “Not many, no. Not as many as I should like.”

“Who.”

“A woman who drank the blood of an entire family. One of the bodies in the morgue that started walking a week after dying. A person with red eyes and sharp teeth. Something – it was like a werewolf. A man who climbed into graveyards and cemeteries and devoured decomposing bodies and ashes.” He swallows. “One of my neighbours. The first one I killed. Who was a human, a good man, but something took over him and all of the good went away.”

“And ghosts?”

“What can I do about ghosts? I can’t touch them. They can’t touch people. I take out the things that have shown an intent to kill humans in this city.”

“What intent have I shown to kill?”

Dongwook’s eyes flicker to the spear and back up to his face.

“Before now,” Seokjin says.

“Returning to your crime scene.” Dongwook licks his lip. “At least. That’s what I thought. I could smell dead souls on you.”

“Past tense,” Seokjin notes.

“I think if you were a killer you would have killed me already.”

“But now that I have oh-so-generously allowed you to live?”

“Allowed?” Dongwook shakes his head. “Aren’t you going to kill me?”

“No,” Seokjin says. “It would probably be for the best, seeing as I’ve lost track of how many people in this city would like me destroyed and you’ve had a good look at my face. But I’m not a killer.”

Dongwook says nothing for a moment. “You’re not going to…eat me, or suck out my soul, or anything?”

“No.”

“Then do you mind losing the deadly weapon pointed at my stomach?”

“Not until I know you’re not going to try shoot me again.”

It seems Dongwook had forgotten about the gun and the shot he fired. He looks for the first time at Seokjin’s arm, eyes widening as he sees the bullet wound shifting in Seokjin’s arm. Seokjin can feel the bullet embedded in his muscle, and he can feel his atoms and molecules working together to push it out, repairing the broken flesh as it goes. The muscle heals, capillaries rebuild, and the bullet is forced back out.

He watches Dongwook’s face as his precious silver bullet falls out of Seokjin’s arm, as the skin heals behind it. It’s a mixture of confusion and horror. Seokjin knows the feeling.

“Wow,” Dongwook says. “You really – how are you human?”

“I’m a human with benefits,” Seokjin says, taking a little satisfaction in the moment. “I wouldn’t get very far capturing demons and ghosts if I’d let a bullet stop me.”

Dongwook looks back down at the spear. “I’ve seen a weapon like this before,” he murmurs softly. “It’s from the Underworld. The only other like it I’ve seen was wielded by a Guardian.”

Seokjin spins the spear. “This weapon was forged from the waters of Yeomra’s well. I was chosen by it. And I’m damn good at using it too.”

“You wouldn’t have it if you weren’t…It seems I’ve made a mistake,” Dongwook says. “I deserve your hatred. I deserve your killing blow, I think.”

“Well, good thing for you that I need your help,” Seokjin says. “If you ever pull a weapon on me again I’ll slice your hand right off. And unlike me, your limbs won’t grow back.”

“Understood.”

“Unlock these handcuffs.”

Dongwook gets up slowly, pulling the key out of his pocket. Seokjin is on edge as he gets closer, but the detective makes no attempt to attack, unlocking the chains. Seokjin pulls them off, rubbing his sore wrists.

“Get into the car. You’re driving me back into the city. And give me my things.

Dongwook pulls out his phone, wallet and keys, leaving them on the grass before climbing into the vehicle. Seokjin picks them up. Six missed calls from Yoongi. Shit. He sends him a text to say he’ll be home soon before climbing into the car – in the passenger seat this time.

He shuts the spear down into its smaller version but keeps it in his hand. “Any funny business…” he warns.

Dongwook just nods, starting up the car.

***

The drive is tense. Seokjin still isn’t sure about letting Dongwook live, but he yet might be more use to them alive than dead. Besides, he seems to have finally convinced him that he’s not the one behind the murders. Seokjin wonders if he can get any Underworld-approved ID.

The skin on Dongwook’s neck is torn and bloody. Seokjin really could have killed him.

“So,” Dongwook asks, eventually, grip tight on the wheel. “What does a person like you need from a person like me?”

“What?”

“You said that you needed my help.”

“Yeah.” Seokjin taps his thigh. “Sometimes the cases I follow cross paths with the police. You drove me out here to kill me with no witnesses, away from all those officers you were so chummy with earlier. Why?”

“Some things can’t be explained. Not to…the people who don’t know. Any my interactions with the Underworld have made it very clear they want as few people as possible to know.”

“Yeah. Sometimes I get involved in cases and crime scenes. You remember the murders at that station—”

“I knew it,” Dongwook says. “I saw footage of – that woman, and I knew there was something off about her. I tried to track her down, but—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Seokjin says. “She’s dead. Destroyed. Completely.”

“You fought her?”

“Badly. Her name was Gain. She was a succubus.”

Dongwook inhales slowly. “Makes sense.”

“Anyway, sometimes it’s hard to avoid the police. Which is where you come in. How much interaction do you have with the police?”

Dongwook sighs. “I have old contacts.”

“They’ll give you information? Files?”

“For the right price. Don’t look so surprised. There are very few people in power who aren’t susceptible to bribes. I joined the force to help people. Most of the time, that didn’t happen.”

Seokjin studies him. “So you left. Struck out on your own. Taking cases with supernatural elements when the police won’t listen? Bribing the same officers you disliked for corruption?”

“Like I said,” Dongwook says. “I want to help people. I’ll do what it takes. What kind of information are you looking for?”

“Well, right now, Investigator Lee, I would really like the phone records of Han Minhyuk, Im Kwangsoo and Joo Kijung. I need to find out who sent them the messages and who they sent it to in order to deal with…whatever it is that’s killing them. I’ll need more information about the state of the bodies. If you could get me one of their phones, that would be ideal—”

“They’re in evidence at the moment.”

“Well it’s a good thing you have old contacts then, isn’t it?”

“I guess so,” Dongwook says, a hint of amusement in his voice. “So it is something related to that chainmail message?”

“I think so,” Seokjin says. “There’s a reason there’s a lot more supernatural activity of late. We’re at uh…a closer proximity to the Underworld than usual. I think there’s a lot of things like this – things that are usually bullshit, but might actually work now. Speaking of, did you see that YouTube video—”

“Song Hyungchul and Choi Junil?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve watched it personally, but they haven’t been named as official suspects yet. I think it’s only a matter of time, however.”

“The police aren’t already investigating them?”

“Apparently the Chief doesn’t want to look desperate by going after kids on YouTube as our primary suspect.”

“Ah. Well, if possible, I need to get to them before the police do. They might be in really bad danger.”

“Do you think they’re dead?”

“I don’t know. I hope not. But I can’t do anything for them if they’re locked in a jail cell.”

“What do you need?”

“An address, personal phone numbers, anything. I just need to make contact with them. If I can talk to them and get to the source of this, I might be able to deal with it.” Seokjin watches the city rush closer through the windows. “I have a working theory that if I – or one of my friends – receives this message and is targeted, we might actually be able to defeat it. I’d like to know more about it before going in blind, though.”

“You’re going to fight it?”

“Well, maybe not me. Depends on what it is. If it’s really dangerous, I’ll get a Reaper to handle it. If it’s within my range…” he taps his spear.

Dongwook is silent. Evening has truly fallen. The streetlamps send yellow light pooling through the windows at regular intervals. “I’ll send you my case notes tonight,” he says. “I’ll keep you involved directly. Strictly confidential, of course.”

“I mean, who would believe me if I told them?”

Dongwook cracks a smile at that. “Where should I drop you off?”

“Bongcheon-dong station,” Seokjin says. He’s not sure why that’s the first place to come to mind. Maybe because he’s still suspicious and doesn’t want to give Detective Lee his full address in case he wakes up to a gun in his face during the night. Bongcheon-dong is full of spiritual energy after-all, and Seokjin doesn’t know the extent of Dongwook’s spiritual prowess, but even an expert would have trouble tracking him through Bongcheon-dong.

Dongwook just nods, flicking his turn signal.

“I’m sorry about earlier, by the way.”

“It was pretty traumatising and terrifying, but hey. It’s not like you could kill me. Besides, it makes a nice difference from getting threatened by undead entities. Turn on me again and I’ll kill you for real.”

He can see Dongwook’s wince out of the corner of his eye. “You clearly are good at this,” he says. “I assume you have the proper tools and resources, too. But I want as little to do with the Underworld as I can, and I told them as much. I’ve mostly been working this out alone.” He beeps his horn at a careless pedestrian that comes a little too close to his bumper. “In most of my encounters, it’s kill or be killed. If I give them half a chance, they’ll have my soul for breakfast, not to mention other victims. It’s a difficult pill to swallow, but sometimes I have to act fast in the hopes of saving others and myself. It’s not much of an apology. It’s just the truth.”

Seokjin thinks of Taehyung bursting in on the scene, destroying Gain in a misguided attempt to save Seokjin.

“It’s understandable,” he finds himself saying. “I’ve done things I’ve regretted too. I’m kind of glad you’re out there keeping an eye on things. I didn’t even know people like you existed.”

Dongwook snorts. “We’re usually pretty rare,” he says. “I don’t know too much about any of this. I want as little as possible to do with the Underworld, especially when I was younger,” Dongwook says. “I wish I didn’t know. People join the police force for many reasons and not all of them are good, but I wanted to help bring about justice. Where’s the justice in a family dying because of a being from another dimension slipping through? I had to get involved.”

“And here you are.”

“Here I am.” Dongwook pulls in. “Your stop, sir.”

“Thanks for the ride. Give me your phone.”

Seokjin taps his number in and sends a text. “I’ll call you later,” Dongwook says.

“You better. Thanks, I think.”

“Sorry for shooting you.”

“No biggie. Sorry for trying to strangle you.”

Seokjin hops out of the car, pauses, and sticks his head back in. “This help goes both ways,” he says. “If you see something suspicious on a case or need help tracking a demon…” he nods towards the phone Dongwook is slipping into his jacket pocket. “You know where to find me.”

Dongwook gives him a tired smile and Seokjin takes his leave, quickly descending the steps to the subway. He slumps into the train seat he falls into, closing his eyes shut briefly, taking a few slow breaths to try and process everything that just happened.

Fuck.

He opens his eyes and unlocks his phone to read Yoongi’s latest text.

From: medium min yoongi

you really have to stop worrying me like this

***

“While I am getting a kick out of reading classified police information, I’m not sure how much any of this is helping.”

“Getting the precise times of deaths have helped rule out a pattern,” Seokjin says.

“Point taken,” Yoongi says. “But aside from that…”

“You’re right,” Seokjin says, turning a page. Nothing, so far, has jumped out at him as similar to their demon. “But hopefully Dongwook will be able to secure one of the phones and we can get the message for ourselves.”

“Do you trust him?”

“Not really. But our motives align right now, so there’s no reason he shouldn’t.” The phones in question are still in the labs. Dongwook had told him that they were being tested for any foreign fingerprints. Once they go back to evidence, he’ll snag one of them.

“If a cop reads one of the messages, will it target them?” he muses aloud. “Or do you think it has to be sent to you directly?”

“I don’t know. You would think we’d know by now, if it did. Maybe each message only works once.”

“So like, if I was sent it and read it and showed it to you, you’d be fine?”

“A possible theory.”

“Hm. I don’t think that’s likely, though. I don’t think it’s arbitrary. There has to be a reason.”

Seokjin flicks through another page.

“How’s the reading going?”

“Slow. I don’t…everything in this documents demons that have been around for centuries. I’m not even sure if this was updated since mobile phones became commonplace. I don’t know how much help it will be, but I don’t know where else to go.”

Yoongi moves over to wear Seokjin is lying on the floor. “And there’s nothing more recent?”

“Jungeun says that every known demon that’s attacked humans has been documented.”

“Maybe it’s an unknown demon. How often…” Yoongi trails off.

Seokjin props up his chin in his hand. “You’re onto something.”

“It has to have encountered humans before,” he says, “otherwise how would it know to use social media? Unless…”

“Unless?”

“Can demons change? Over time. Can they evolve.”

“What?”

“Maybe it’s a matter of perspective.” Yoongi kneels down in front of him. He jabs one of the old ink illustrations. “If you look at something upside down, it often makes no sense until you look at it from another angle.” He turns the book so that the illustration has flipped.

“We need a new angle?” Seokjin is honestly a little lost.

“We’ve been looking at this as some sort of technology demon. It spreads through the web and through chainmail and phones. But maybe we’re limiting it by the fact that it uses technology.”

This means nothing to Seokjin. “Please explain it simply,” he says, “because I still have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Yoongi huffs. “Maybe this demon’s defining factor is that it spreads itself among lots of humans in order to kill.”

“And not that it exploits technology?”

“There you have it. It might have evolved from one way of spreading to another, in which case…”

Seokjin looks back down at the book. “It could be recorded in here, we just haven’t recognised it yet.”

“Exactly.”

Seokjin can’t help but smile. He looks up at Yoongi. “You’re a genius.”

He shrugs. “Everyone knows it.” He’s pretending to be casual, but Seokjin can see the pleased smile at the corner of his mouth.

“No, really. Sometimes it amazes me, how clever you can be.”

“That sounds a bit backhanded.”

Seokjin grins. “I don’t want you getting a big head.”

“Oh, sure. At least I’m not the one who proclaimed myself most handsome man in all of the universes.”

“That’s just a truth.”

“Whatever you say, hyung.”

Seokjin takes the book back off him, flipping back to the contents page. “I know you want to compliment me some more, but I have work to do.” He feels a flush rising on his cheeks, so he does his best to cover it up by sending an exaggerated wink at Yoongi. Yoongi takes the bait, making a faux-disgusted noise before standing and moving back to the files Dongwook gave them. Seokjin waits until his heartrate has slowed down before reading.

***

Sometimes it’s surprisingly easy to forget the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Seokjin watches the smooth surface of the pond. The water is clearer than any he’s seen. Colourful fish dart across his vision, lily pads and other flora floating above and below the surface in vivid greens, some familiar and some utterly foreign. There’s no sun in the sky above him but he feels warm. There’s music playing somewhere in the distance. Seokjin doesn’t recognise the instrument or the tune, but the sound makes his chest ache.

Finally, Taehyung speaks. He’s lying back on the grass, wings unfolded from his robes and spread out either side of him. “That human of yours is clever.”

The absence of the sun means Seokjin has no excuse for the heat that rushes up his neck. “He’s not my human.”

“Oh?” Taehyung opens one eye. “Your ears are red.”

“You’re seeing things.”

“No need to get flustered. I only know him through you. So he’s your human. I only met him the one time, but he seemed very worried about you.”

“I was injured.”

“Yes. He didn’t leave your side the entire time I was there. I’m glad you have someone like that.”

“He’s a friend.”

“Yes,” Taehyung says. “That’s what I meant. What did you think I was talking about?”

Seokjin doesn’t answer, focusing instead on a small blue fish swimming lazily in a circle.

“Anyway,” Taehyung continues after a moment has passed. “He’s clever.”

“His theory on a demon evolving,” Seokjin says. “Is it possible?”

“Definitely. It’s not something that happens very often to demons in the human world, but there are precedents.”

“It happens often elsewhere?”

“Some species adapt a lot quicker than humans,” Taehyung says. “Some are a lot harder to kill. You humans are remarkably constant. A good and a bad thing.”

“But you think it’s possible.” Seokjin strokes the feathers of the wing nearest him, smoothing them out and untangling any knots or ruffles. They’re even softer than they look.

“Absolutely. It might have spread itself through something else before. Something that would have interacted with a lot of humans. Money, for example, that makes its way into many pockets. And in this incarnation, it chose a faster method. If there is an urban legend website dedicated to a supposed demon, it would be relatively easy for a real one to infest it.”

“It doesn’t make it much easier,” Seokjin admits. “But it should narrow down the possibilities.”

“I believe in you,” Taehyung says, and Seokjin attempts a smile. Taehyung jumps to his feet. “I have just the thing!”

Seokjin watches as he runs to a familiar well. It’s the same one Seokjin used to pull out the weapon that chose him, back on one of his first visits. Taehyung lowers a bucket down and up again before carrying it back over to him. This time, it really is full of water.

“Isn’t that the water they use to make weapons?”

“Yes. But it’s also good to drink.”

Seokjin shifts onto his knees, peering into the bucket. The water is still, and he can see his reflection clearly in the surface.

The image is shattered when Taehyung puts his hands in, sipping from the palm of his hand. “They say a sip of the water from this well will bring clarity and organisation to your thoughts,” he says.

Seokjin could use some of that. He drinks. The water is cold and sweet to taste, but after a few mouthfuls no glorious change has settled over him. Even that would be too much to hope for.

“It’s not going to work immediately,” Taehyung says, as usual picking up on what Seokjin doesn’t say. “A good night’s sleep will help too.”

“I hope you’re right.” Seokjin turns back to the pond. He inches closer, right on the edge. The blue fish is still visible.

“These lands are all enriched with the Elder Yeomra’s power,” Taehyung says. “The grass. The water. The pond. Even the fish that swim here.” His eyes follow Seokjin’s. “You like that one?”

“He’s different to the others,” Seokjin says. “He’s beautiful, but looks a little lonely.”

“It’s a blue betta,” Taehyung says. “If the others came closer, he’d kill them.”

It’s warm, but Seokjin shivers.

Taehyung clicks his fingers, and when Seokjin looks at him there’s a long glass jar in his hand. As quick as a snake Taehyung darts forward, jar dipping beneath the surface and pulling up again, full of water, the blue betta swimming around in its contents.

“Can you do that? Won’t Elder Yeomra be angry?”

“What do you think they’re here for?” Taehyung smiles. “You like this one. I like it too. Solitude and loneliness aren’t always the same thing, and sometimes it’s better to be apart from the others. I’ve felt like that too, before. But I always find peace sitting here, watching the fish swim.”

He pushes the jar into Seokjin’s hands. “You can’t come here as often as I can, but maybe he’ll bring a little bit of peace into your own home.”

Seokjin switches over dimensions that day with a blue betta in a jar. Jungkook is excited about getting a pet, and spends hours watching the fish swim around its newly purchased tank. It’s cute. And Seokjin appreciates the gesture, but feels trepidation build in his stomach when he looks at it. Sometimes it’s better to be apart from the others.

He walks out onto the balcony to breathe in the evening air. It’s humid and hot, not at all the ideal temperature of Yeomra’s gardens. No. It feels like thunder. There’s going to be a storm, soon. Seokjin is going to need a lot more help than an aggressive fish.

***

He’s collecting the soul of a pastor – one who thinks he is the devil and screams for holy retribution as Seokjin prises his soul into a cylinder – when it happens. The dog runs up to him as soon as he’s pocketed the cylinder, barking loudly.

Its eyes are wide, frenzied. For a moment, Seokjin thinks it’s about to attack, but it runs a few steps away, barking again and jerking its head. It wants him to follow? Seokjin swallows as he straightens up. There’s something not quite right about this dog. It’s been touched, touched by an energy not quite human – or dog, for that matter. Seokjin has read stories of dogs who ran to firemen when their owner’s houses were on fire, or dogs who got help for injured or endangered children.

Is this something similar?

 There’s only one way to find out. Regardless, Seokjin has to deal with the source of this supernatural energy.

He follows the dog.

It trots along in front of him, quieter now that it has gotten Seokjin’s attention. It leads Seokjin out of the shadow of the church he was in, bringing him down the street in the general direction of the river. They reach the Han, busy with citizens in the early evening, but ignores them all. Seokjin keeps a quick pace following it, darting in and around passerbys and getting quite a few dirty looks in order to keep the dog in his sights, having to break into a jog to keep up at some points.

After about thirty minutes, the people have begun to thin out. Seokjin half suspects he’s being led on a wild goose chase and half expects he’s being led into a trap but thinks he can handle the outcome either way. He can’t falter now, not after wasting half an hour on the animal. It pulls away from the river then, darting back towards the streets. They’re in an industrial area now, filled with warehouses and companies, mostly empty after sending their employees home at five pm. The dog leads him to one of these buildings. It looks a little older than the others surrounding it, a few stories high but not particularly wide. There are windows, but the lights are turned off within, so Seokjin can’t see much aside from his own reflection. A polished wood door lists the name Park & Son with opening hours underneath.

The dog scratches frantically at the door. It barks loudly.

“Alright, alright,” Seokjin says. There’s no buzzer. He gives it a tentative push and to his surprise, it opens smoothly.

The dog runs inside. Seokjin takes out his spear and follows.

It’s dark inside. His hand bats along the wall until it finds a light switch.

Unlike the polished outside, the interior of the building is in shambles. There’s nothing in there – very little, at least. It looks like a building that’s been gutted; the walls between rooms have been crudely knocked down, creating one large space. Piles of brick and plaster are lit by harsh florescent lights swinging from the ceiling. The only furniture is a large mattress in the centre of the room. A young girl sits on top of it, and the dog runs to her.

She’s familiar with it, hands reaching out to scratch the animal between its ears while it surges forward to lick at her cheek. She lets out a small but pleased huff.

Seokjin is confused.

“Hello?” he steps forward. “Are you okay, Miss?”

The girl looks up at him. She looks vaguely familiar, but Seokjin can’t pinpoint where he’s seen her face before.

“Are you in trouble?” he asks again. “Your dog…it seemed like it was trying to lead me to you.”

“He’s not my dog,” she says. “He belongs to someone else, but doesn’t live far from here. He comes my assistance when I need him.”

Seokjin is pretty sure he didn’t ask for her life story, but whatever. “Is there anything I can assist you with?” He takes another step towards her. The dog growls. Seokjin doesn’t come any closer.

“Oh, great, you’re here! There is something you can help us with.”

The voice comes from behind him. Seokjin whirls around. There’s another girl standing in front of the door – the only entrance or exit – with a beaming smile and her hands clasped in front of her. “We’ve heard so many rumours about you, it’s so good to finally meet you!” If possible, her smile grows wider.

Despite their non-threatening auras, Seokjin has a bad feeling about this.

“Who are you?” he asks.

“You don’t know?” The second girl pouts. “I thought you would have been better prepared than that.”

“Maybe they didn’t tell him about us,” The first says. “It would be just like them to keep him in the dark.”

Seokjin turns to face her again. He looks between the two of them and puts the pieces together. He knows where he’s seen them before. He’s seen their faces projected from a magical stone tablet during Miryo’s meeting.

“Well, we should get some introductions underway,” the second girl says, seemingly in a perpetual state of cheer. She’s very smiley despite the bow and quiver of arrows on her back. Her hair is a different colour and style than in the images Seokjin had seen, but he’s kicking himself for not realising earlier. “I’m Chuu! And that’s Olivia Hye.”

“YYXY,” Seokjin says. He swings his spear out into its full length. He keeps it close to him, not sure which one to point it at.

“So they did tell you about us,” Olivia Hye says, sounding amused. “Maybe their communication skills are improving.”

“Good for them!” Chuu tilts her head. “But you can put the spear down. We’re not here to hurt you.”

Seokjin ignores her. “What do you want with me?”

“To talk, of course. I’m sorry about the setting. I can’t even offer you tea! But unfortunately we have to lie low due to the Underworld hunting us down relentlessly. You can take any issues with hospitality to General Miryo.”

Seokjin raises his spear in a defence position. Chuu takes a step towards him, he takes a step back (too aware that a step away from her is a step towards Olivia).

“I knew this would be a waste of time,” Olivia says with a sigh. “He’s not going to listen to us.”

“And why should I?” Seokjin asks, side stepping so he doesn’t have his back turned to either of them. “You’re conspiring to destroy the Boundary. You want to wreak havoc in the Underworld. I work for the Underworld.”

“It’s not as simple as that,” Chuu says patiently. “There has been a lot of misunderstanding between our group and the Underworld. It’s true that we wish to move in a new direction, but we have no ill will for anyone in or of the Underworld.”

“And what about those who would die if the Boundary collapses? What about those who are dying or in danger as we speak because of your group?”

“We have nothing to do with that,” Olivia Hye says. “We’re not fucking around for shits and giggles.”

“Language, Hye-yah. What will our guest think!” Chuu coughs. “Anyway. As I’ve said, there’s been a lot of miscommunication. We want to extend an offer from our leader, Yves, to talk with you and explain our goals and principles, in the hope that you could deliver these to your General.”

“Why doesn’t Yves meet me herself?”

“Because you have a Stygian ring on your finger,” Olivia Hye says, as if it’s obvious. “We don’t want to risk you contacting the Underworld. We want to facilitate communication; not let you mess everything up.”

“We can’t trust you yet, I’m sure you’ll understand. But at your convenience – and with certain guarantees – we would arrange a meeting with the full group, and you can hear our side of the story.”

Seokjin doesn’t trust them. Seokjin thinks about what Miryo said, about them using the magical energy inside him to blast open the Boundary. He thinks about the ring, how Olivia Hye mentioned it being used for communicating. She doesn’t seem to know this one’s particular abilities. Seokjin thinks about how he could drag them both down to the Underworld, but he doesn’t want to waste that opportunity when the ringleader isn’t even here.

But still – he can’t exactly let them escape, can he?

Especially if they’re the ones behind the Cracks in the Boundary widening. If he could even secure one of their souls, he could use that as bait for the rest of the group and bring them all back to the Underworld.

“And how do I know Yves won’t kill me as soon as she sees me?”

Chuu laughs. “If Yves wanted you gone, you’d already be destroyed, silly!”

If these two are acting as her diplomats, they mustn’t be as dangerous as her. Seokjin can take them. There’s a bow slung over Chuu’s shoulder, but she hasn’t moved for it once. He can throw a spear faster than she can notch an arrow and loose. And Olivia is still slumped on the mattress with no identifiable weapon. They’re both considerably smaller and lighter than them. Seokjin’s instinct doesn’t like the thought of fighting beings that appear as young women, but he reminds himself that they’re centuries old immortals.

He swallows. “I can’t trust you.”

“Kim Seokjin,” Olivia Hye says. “Has it ever occurred to you that you might be fighting for the wrong side?”

Seokjin refuses to even let that thought grow roots inside of him. “I’m fighting for the living,” he says. “And I will continue to do so.”

“If you want to fight for the side that fights for the living,” Chuu says, “you’ll get on very well with Yves.”

“When I meet Yves,” Seokjin says, “I’m going to drag her back through that crack she created.”

“She created?” Olivia Hye asks sharply, but Seokjin is done talking.

He lets his weight fall onto his back foot, pushes through and launches the spear at Chuu, hand already flying for a soul cylinder. Chuu pulls the bow off her back and doesn’t even bother to sling an arrow. She swipes the bow through the air and it hits the spear mid-throw, knocking it off course. It embeds itself in the door behind her, inches from her face. She’s unfazed. “Seokjin oppa,” she says, pouting, “this could have been so much easier.”

Before Seokjin can even recover, she has an arrow notched and aimed. She shoots, and Seokjin attempts to dive away but the arrow wasn’t even aimed at him. It hits the ground and a small shockwave emits from it, knocking Seokjin stumble back away from her.

He prepares for another, but Chuu doesn’t seem interested. She slings the bow back over her shoulder. “Don’t go too hard on him, Hye-yah.”

What?

Then there’s a low growl and Seokjin’s heart nearly falls out of his stomach. He’s never heard an animal growl like that before. Slowly, he turns to where Olivia Hye sat on the mattress.

The beast’s claws tear into the white fabric now, and Seokjin hears a spring burst under its weight. The dog is cowering in the corner.

It’s a wolf, he realises, as it steps toward him. A huge, black wolf. He scrambles to his feet. It’s almost as tall as him, with great long teeth and sharp claws and Olivia Hye’s grey eyes.

Fuck.

Seokjin turns and makes a run for it. He hears the clattering of claws on the floor and gets about three steps before a great weight knocks into him. He goes crashing into the ground and turns around on his back just in time to see the great wolf face lowering over him.

The wolf – Olivia Hye – growls. It makes every hair on Seokjin’s body raise in fear. His spear is still embedded in the doorway. He breathes rapidly. The wolf growls louder, leaning down. Seokjin squeezes his eyes shut.

The wolf opens her mouth and snaps it millimetres away from Seokjin’s face.

Chuu walks up alongside them. She has an apple in her hand. “It was nice to meet you, Seokjinnie oppa,” she says. “If you ever decide you want to defy the gods’ will,” she places the apple on the floor beside him. “Bite an apple.” She winks.

The wolf snaps at him again. Seokjin squeezes his eyes shut, bracing for the bite, but—

Nothing.

Seokjin opens his eyes, and he is alone.

***

Has it ever occurred to you that you might be fighting for the wrong side?

Seokjin considers throwing the apple into the Han river. It somehow doesn’t look real. It’s too perfect, like how an apple is drawn in art or in a cartoon. It’s perfectly symmetrical, a rich red in colour, no blemishes or bruises. It even has a short stem with two green leaves growing from it.

It’s possible they’re using this to track him, or spy on him, or…something. But Seokjin’s gut instinct tells him to keep it, and he’s been relying on his gut instinct more and more lately.

He leaves it on the windowsill in his bedroom.

***

“Look at this, hyung,” Yoongi says, almost as soon as Seokjin sees him. He grabs Seokjin’s wrist and pulls him over to the couch where he has their book of demons open. Seokjin hopes he can’t feel how his pulse quickens.

“A well curse,” Yoongi reads. He looks back up at Seokjin. “It’s an entry about a demon that infests a well. Everyone who draws a bucket of water from this well has the potential to be harmed, with the demon specifically targeting the person who has most recently taken water. It waits until the victim is drinking, washing or cooking, and when the victim is close enough to see their reflection on the surface the demon strikes. If nobody else has since taken water, it will then move to the person who took water before the most recent victim, and so forth, until all who draw water from the well have been slain.”

“It’s the same method,” Seokjin says. “It chooses its victims in the same way, it’s just operating through a different medium. Are we sure it’s the same?”

“Look.” Yoongi points a finger at a footnote. “This demon, known as a Water Plague, has been known to evolve according to its surroundings. Known examples are iterations that spread through rivers, currency and sexually transmitted diseases. They are incredibly adaptable and cunning.” Yoongi looks up again. They’re sitting shoulder to shoulder over the book, and his face is so close to Seokjin’s. “Sounds like our boy, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah…” Seokjin says. He needs to stay focused. Fuck. Why couldn’t the Guardians have removed the bit of his brain that experiences attraction? “Anything about killing it?”

“It says that in the case of a single source, like a well, supressing it will be sufficient. Destroying the well won’t save victims who have already drank from it, but it will stop it spreading. We don’t have a definitive source though, to which it says it can only be killed when it reveals itself to strike.”

“Like our initial plan,” Seokjin says. “Get a copy of the text, kill the demon, then destroy the phone it originated on for good measure.”

“Will Lee Dongwook be able to help us there?”

“He should. I’ll call him.”

Yoongi smiles. “We’re getting places.”

“Finally.” Seokjin leans into him. He can’t help himself. He feels the press of Yoongi’s arm against his own, counts to three, then pulls away. He needs to be more self-disciplined. After the confusion of dealing with Olivia Hye and Chuu yesterday, he’s caught off-guard by Yoongi’s open and trusting smile.

His heart hurts, just a little bit.

He’s more than able to ignore it. He’s good at this, has had a lot of practice.

He stands, pulling out his phone and clicking on Dongwook’s number.

“Seokjin.” Dongwook answers on the first ring. “I was just about to call you.”

“Any news?”

“I still don’t have access to the phones,” Dongwook says, “but the boys in the office have been doing a lot of tracing. None of our three victims sent the message on before they died. Song Hyungchul sent it to seven people initially, two of them victims.”

“And Jane Nakayama didn’t read it or send it. So at least three out of seven didn’t spread it,” Seokjin says, “which lowers the amount of potential victims.”

“I also have met and interviewed another three of the original recipients who came forward willingly,” Dongwook says. “One said she deleted the message after seeing just the first line. Apparently Song Hyungchul used to do this somewhat regularly to annoy her. The next had broken his phone. It was in repairs during most of the incident, and he didn’t realise he had received the message until he had gotten his phone back, after the first murder.”

“So he knew it was suspicious?”

“It would seem so. The third we spoke to had read the message and sent it on to the third victim.”

“Oh. That’s rough.”

“She was overwrought,” Dongwook says, voice soft. “And blames herself. However, it should be noted that it’s now been over two weeks since she read and sent the message and is unharmed.”

Seokjin frowns. They haven’t worked out why the timing of the killings have been so inconsistent, but two weeks is a long time. It’s already been six days since the last murder, the longest interval since they started. “Do you think she gained immunity because she sent it to someone else?”

“I think it’s a possibility,” Dongwook says. “The message encourages the reader to send it to as many people as possible because the last reader will die. It’s pretty in line with many other chainmail messages. Send this or something bad will happen, if you send it something good will happen.”

“The good thing in this case being that you live.”

It certainly sounds possible.

“Do you think that could be the case?” Dongwook asks.

“I don’t know for sure,” Seokjin says, “but it would explain why some are being effected and others left unharmed. None of the victims sent it on, did they? So that just leaves the seventh of the original recipients.”

“So, here’s the bad news. The seventh is alluded to as being Song Hyungchul’s younger brother, Song Hyungjoon. The rest of the video includes Hyungjoon and his friend’s reaction as they read the text together. We went to the Song residence to try interview both of them, but nobody was home.”

“Ominous,” Seokjin says.

“It’s not unlike kids to run when they get in over their heads,” Dongwook says. “But shortly after, there was a missing person’s report filed by the mother of Ham Wonjin.” He swallows. “Hyungjoon’s friend. Apparently, he was going over to stay with the brothers and she hasn’t heard from him since. Originally, we hadn’t connected Song Hyungchul to the murders and regarded it as a separate incident, but now…Choi Junil’s girlfriend has made a similar report, saying she hasn’t seen him since a few days after they filmed that video.”

“That’s not good.”

“No, it’s not.”

“You said that was the bad news. Is there any good news?” Yoongi raises an eye at him from the couch. Seokjin desperately Dongwook has something better to tell them.

“We’re still locating Song Hyungchul,” he says. “But I believe that this demon has currently run its course. Those who received it either sent it, didn’t read it, or have been killed. Provided it isn’t spread further, I believe this will be contained. We still have to deal with the root of the problem, of course, but for now I don’t think this demon will be killing anyone new.”

Seokjin feels a huge weight slipping off his chest. There’s still guilt there, tucked into his stomach, guilt for those who’ve already died, but he breathes a sigh of relief. If the message has stopped spreading, it buys them time. Nobody will die while they’re waiting for the opportunity to confront this demon. There won’t be any more names added to Seokjin’s list.

“Any update on when we’ll be able to get a copy of that text?”

“Tomorrow, hopefully. I’ll keep you updated.”

“Okay. I think I’ve worked out what type of demon it is, by the way. I’ll send you the information.”

“Excellent. Hopefully, I’ll be in touch tomorrow.”

Seokjin hangs up, flopping over to the couch. “My head hurts,” he whines. “I’ve taken in too much information today.”

“Poor hyung.” Yoongi puts a hand on his shoulder. “Any progress?”

Seokjin grabs their demon book and snaps photographs of the information on the well demon. “Dongwook hyung thinks it’s worn itself out,” he says, sending the photographs to him. “It’s run its course, for now. As long as nobody else spreads it – which is unlikely, seeing as most of those who received it have been talking to the police about it.”

“So it’s over?” Yoongi frowns. “Anticlimactic.”

“We still need to kill it,” Seokjin reminds him, putting the book onto the floor before curling up on the couch. “But we’re not under time constraints now.”

“We can breathe again.”

The phrase hits Seokjin a little too close to home. He hums, sinking back into the cushions and closing his eyes.

Yoongi rests a hand on his knee. “Hyung,” he says. “You’re exhausted.”

“I’m so tired,” Seokjin says, and it’s more of an admission than he means it to be.

“You’ve been putting too much pressure on yourself,” Yoongi says. “We both have.”

“I’m s—”

Yoongi pinches the flesh of his thigh. “If you apologise, I’ll hit you. How many times do I have to tell you that I’m here because I want to be?”

“I don’t know how I’d do this alone.” Seokjin opens one eye to steal a glance at Yoongi’s face, determined and earnest and his heart aches. Seokjin has always been good at wanting what he can’t have.

“Well, it’s a good thing I’m staying by your side then, isn’t it?”

Seokjin wants nothing more than to take Yoongi’s hand in his own and squeeze it, but he restrains himself. “Thank you, Yoongi-chi.”

Yoongi looks away. “There’s no need to thank me.” He sounds bashful. “I’m going to make some tea. Would you like some?”

Seokjin says yes, but by the time Yoongi comes back he’s fallen asleep nestled into the corner of the couch. Yoongi wakes him gently, shaking his shoulder.

“Come on, hyung. If you fall asleep on my couch again your necks never going to forgive me.”

“My neck can suck it up,” Seokjin says, with his best puppy eyes and pout. “I’m too lazy to go home.”

“I’ve a big bed. Come on.”

Seokjin is so sleepy he barely protests. He lets Yoongi pull him by the wrist to his bedroom and flops down beside him on the bed after folding his jeans neatly. Yoongi throws some of the blanket over him, and Seokjin snuggles down into the bed. The pillow smells of Yoongi and Seokjin inhales deeply. Yoongi moves around on the bed next to him, the mattress shifting under his weight. Yoongi was right, this is much more comfortable, why didn’t he think of this before? He yawns loudly.

Yoongi finally settles down. In his current position, his knee knocks against Seokjin’s thigh. Seokjin can feel the rough skin against his own. He doesn’t move away. Neither does Yoongi. Seokjin falls asleep to the sound of his breath.

***

“Hyung,” Yoongi says the next morning. The first thing Seokjin notices is that his leg – and that inch of skin contact – has moved away and he misses it. He chases the bleary thoughts away. “We have a new mission,” Yoongi says seriously, shoving a cup of coffee into Seokjin’s hands.

“What?” Seokjin blinks the sleep from his eyes, still half-asleep. “What’s up?”

“A family friend of mine needs our help,” Yoongi says. “It’s nothing too serious, I think we’ll manage it fine, but we should leave as soon as you’re ready.”

Seokjin is far too sleepy for this. “What are you doing up earlier than me?”

“Just because I sleep in on my days off? I keep much more regular routines than you do, hyung. You shouldn’t lecture me. It’s ten am already.”

Seokjin sips the coffee. It’s too hot and burns his tongue, but it begins to shake him awake. “Okay. What?”

“If the chainmail curse has spread itself out, we can’t do anything productive on that case until Investigator Lee finds us an address or sends us the message. In the meantime, we should help others. Do you feel any other spirits nearby?”

“Wait…no.”

“Then go up! Get showered!”

“I don’t have a change of clothes.”

Yoongi raises an eyebrow. “As if several pieces of your clothing hasn’t made it into my laundry basket. You even have a toothbrush here, hyung.”

Seokjin yawns. “You’re a good host,” he says, stumbling into the shower. The water does wake him up a little and by the time he’s dressed and groomed Yoongi has breakfast made. It’s all ridiculously domestic and he tries not to linger on the feeling.

“If someone’s in danger, why are we stopping for breakfast?” he asks, mouth full of egg.

“First, it’s not like you to complain about food,” Yoongi says. “You should be thankful I’m feeding you.”

“Thanks for the eggs, Yoongi-chi.”

“Second – just because theoretically you can go without food doesn’t mean that you should. If there’s anything I’ve learned, keeping good habits is essential, especially around eating.”

“But you often neglect meals when you’re working.”

“Exactly. That’s how I learned that lesson. Anyway, third – I said someone needs our help. They’re not in danger.”

“Oh.” Seokjin is a little lost. “What type of ghost did you say it was?”

“It’s a terrifying one. It’s very important that we tend to it, now that we have the time.”

“Okay. You make a really good breakfast, Yoongi-chi. Why don’t you make it for me more often?”

“Because then you’d never leave my apartment. I don’t want Jungkook to get lonely.”

“Ah. Well, next time I’ll make you breakfast in my apartment.” Seokjin winks.

“Ugh, hyung. Don’t use your cheesy old pickup lines on me.”

“It wasn’t a line! It was a promise.”

“Alright. Did it hurt when you fell from heaven? That’s not a line. Genuine question.”

Seokjin grins. “Well, technically I didn’t fall from heaven. I walked through a portal and arrived back—”

“Hyung. You’re the worst.”

“Your life would be so boring without me.”

“I know. I can’t even remember what filled my days six months ago, when I wasn’t running after a superhuman with magical powers.”

“Technically, none of those things are true. But I’ll take the compliment.”

Yoongi does his thing where he rolls his eyes but the effect is completely ruined by the fond smile spilling over his face. “Right.”

After breakfast, Yoongi leads him not to a subway station or taxi, but to an old bus stop. An old coach rocks alone a while later and Yoongi nods encouragingly as they step on. Seokjin doesn’t get a chance to check where it’s heading, but it doesn’t matter because Yoongi seems to know exactly where they’re going.

The bus is mostly empty. They’re the youngest people on it. They find seats together down at the back, where Yoongi immediately turns up the air condition. It’s sticky and hot and they all but melt into the faux leather of the seats. Yoongi wordlessly gives him one of his earphones. Seokjin takes it, smooth vocals and rap flowing out of the tiny speaker.

it's an endlessly long journey

you might be nervous, dizzy and trying your best

but you’ll shine so bright in this moment

Yoongi has good taste in music so Seokjin is content to lean back in the seat and listen to his choices. He soaks in the warmth and the touch of Yoongi’s skin next to his.

“Nice song,” he comments, closing his eyes.

“I listen to good music,” Yoongi says. “The bus is going to be about two hours, if you want to sleep.”

Seokjin doesn’t sleep, but a feeling of peace washes over him, and he is content.

***

The bus stops in a small town which Yoongi seems to know very well, if the way he marches to a bike rental shop without once having to look for a street sign or at his phone is any indication. “It’s not that far from here,” he promises, throwing a leg over his saddle, “but it will be quicker than walking. If you aren’t good on a bike you can sit on my handlebars.”

Seokjin coughs. “I’ll be fine.”

Out here, it’s almost like another world. He knows that in theory, they’re not far from Seoul, but the countryside feels like its own universe for a city kid like Seokjin. They cycle down a road that cuts through tall fields of grass. The sun is hot but there’s a cool breeze that prevents the heat from being too uncomfortable. The sky is as blue and endless as it appeared in the Underworld; neither cloud nor plane cracking through the blue.

It’s easy to pretend everything is okay.

They pass a sign for a farm, and not too long after Yoongi pulls into a long driveway. Their bikes shuffle down the gravel path to a farmhouse, behind which are fields of planted crops and to the east lie long greenhouses.

It doesn’t look haunted, but Yoongi said the owners weren’t in danger.

“This is the place?” he asks, hopping off the bike.

The door opens. “Ah, Yoongi-yah!” A man, in his early fifties if Seokjin had to guess, walks towards them. “It’s been so long, you’re still growing!”

“I’m not sure about that, uncle,” Yoongi laughs, moving forward to accept the hug the man – presumably the owner – offers. “This is my friend from the city.”

Seokjin bows, a little unsure of where he stands. “Hello. I’m Seokjin, nice to meet you.”

“Ah, two good strong boys are exactly what I need for today,” the farmer says. “Thank you both for coming all this way. Very kind of you. Hold on, I’ll get that wife of mine.” He disappears back inside.

“Yoongi,” Seokjin says, turning to him. “What are we here for?”

“Very serious business,” Yoongi says. “Farmer Kim’s strawberry crops have come into season earlier this year and his children are still away for college. He needs help getting the first batch picked and packed and ready to send.”

Seokjin blinks. “So we’re here to pick strawberries?”

“Yes,” Yoongi nods. “I told you he was a family friend. And I figured you could use a break,” Yoongi lowers his voice, “now that the immediate pressure’s off.”

“I—”

“And honestly, I could do with one too,” Yoongi says, ducking his head.

“This is like when you took me fishing, huh?”

“Except this is as much for me as for you, so don’t feel too bad.” Yoongi nudges him with his elbow. “You can pick the next date, hyung.”

Seokjin knows it’s just a joke but his ears burn.

He’s saved from the awkwardness by the return of the farmer, this time accompanied by a woman Seokjin assumes is his wife, armed with two tall glasses of lemonade. “It’s a warm day, boys,” she says with a cheerful grin, “and we don’t want you tiring out before the day’s work is finished.”

“Thank you, auntie,” Yoongi says, showing a sweet smile before taking one of the glasses. “This is—”

“You must be Seokjin-ah!”

“That’s me!” Seokjin bows.

“Your shoulders are so broad,” she says, pushing the glass into his hand. Seokjin gratefully gulps it down. “I can tell you have a strong heart!”

“This tastes so good, ahjumma,” he says. “The nicest lemonade I’ve ever tasted.”

“And a flatterer too! Come here, Yoongi-yah, let me see you. You’ve grown so much since I last saw you!”

The farmer laughs. “That’s what I said!”

“I haven’t grown in years,” Yoongi says, “but I would very much like to gain a few more inches.”

“Well, that just shows how long it’s been since you’ve been out here. Has the city been treating you well?”

Yoongi is so soft and his voice is so warm with them, Seokjin feels his heart growing three sizes in his chest. It’s not long before they’re kitted out with trays and set to picking fruit in one of the long greenhouses.

Seokjin closes his eyes and breathes in. He’s never been to this farm, yet nostalgia wafts through the air so thick he can smell it. The smell of soil, the lighter ting of the fruit, the fertiliser from the fields outside. There’s a barking of a dog and the clucking of a hen, and Hong Jinyoung’s Love Battery can be heard playing on a radio somewhere in the distance.

“Chop chop,” Yoongi says, already picking berries and placing them in his basket. “Or do you need me to show you how it’s done?”

Seokjin glances up and down the row. “Bet I can finish my row first.”

“You’re on.”

Yoongi doesn’t know what he’s undertaking, though, because Seokjin has spent almost every summer in his life picking strawberries. He works efficiently and quickly, half expecting his brother to appear in a corner or behind him at any moment to show off how he’s picked more, or one of his cousins to tease about how city boys aren’t that bad.

He finishes his row first.

“I made a mistake, huh,” Yoongi says, fixing his hat. “You’ve clearly done this before.”

“So have you.”

“My father was born in this town,” Yoongi says. “His parents lived here until they got too elderly. The farmer uncle is one of my father’s childhood friends. We spent a lot of days playing in those fields. He has two sons, and they were able to run faster than any of my friends. One’s studying in Busan now, the other’s in Melbourne.”

“Which is where we come in,” Seokjin says, “to help with the farm.”

“When I first moved to Seoul, I was broke,” Yoongi admits. “So around this time every year, I’d take the bus and stay here for a week to help out. I did it four summers in a row, but this is my first time back in maybe two years. They were glad to give the work to the son of a friend, and when I was talking to my dad last week he mentioned they were looking for help…”

“I didn’t know you had a hidden farming past.”

“I think I probably was more of a nuisance,” Yoongi says, his fingers delicate where they touch the berries. “But I enjoyed it, nonetheless. It was nice to get out of the city and away from university. Anyway, you seem pretty deft at fruit picking.”

Seokjin grins. “My uncle had a strawberry farm. Has. Every year, my cousins and I would all go over and help out. Especially during strawberry season, though I ate as many as I picked.”

“Every year?”

“I didn’t go last year,” Seokjin says. Last year he couldn’t face it after publicly melting down at a family reunion. He never did work up the courage to face them again. “I didn’t feel up to it. But every year before that…” He wonders idly if they’ll continue the tradition this year, if they’ll share a glass of wine after they finish picking and drink to his memory, if his brother will go without him, if they’ll miss him. Strangely enough, the thought of them all still picking strawberries together fills him with a sense of peace. Some things never change, and maybe that’s a good thing.

“I’m sorry,” Yoongi says, hunkering down to let his tray rest on the ground. “I didn’t mean to bring back any sad memories for you, I didn’t-”

Seokjin smiles, waving him off. “You don’t have to apologise for anything,” he says, “I don’t feel sad. I thought I would but…it’s strangely comforting. To be able to think about before without being sad, to be able to remember while being happy with the present.”

Yoongi stands up and smiles at him so genuinely that Seokjin finds it difficult to catch his breath. “Well,” Yoongi says, “I’m glad of that. You deserve to be happy.” He picks up his tray. “Will you take a photograph of me, Strawberry Captain? I need a proof shot for my parents.”

He holds his tray up higher and poses for the camera with an open-mouthed smile that shows all of his teeth and fluffs his cheeks. Seokjin pulls out his phone to snap a photo. God, he loves him.

He freezes.

Did he really just think—

“And a distance shot?” Yoongi asks, walking back down their row, disappearing between strawberry plants.

Fuck, Seokjin realises. He loves him. He’s in love with him. He’s in love with Yoongi.

“Smile for the camera,” Seokjin calls cheerily, as if he isn’t filled with dread.

***

Jiyoung sighs, closing her laptop. When she blinks, she can see the code she wrote scrawled across the back of her eyelids. It’s too late for this, and her deadlines have all been pushed back. Her boss is decent even at the worst of times and was very understanding that her best friend was grotesquely murdered and she had to participate in the police investigation.

She glances down at the mobile phone switched off on the other side of the table.

What her boss doesn’t know is that she might be implicated in her death.

The cops aren’t saying much, and Jiyoung knows she shouldn’t be reading sensationalised tabloid crap, but she can’t help but wonder about the text. She thought it was a grim chainmail, exactly in line with Hyungchul’s usual crap and thought Kijung would get a kick out of it.

She never expected any of this. She never expected that those who didn’t send it on would actually die.

Jiyoung wishes she never sent the chainmail to Kijung. If she hadn’t, would Kijung still be alive? If she hadn’t, would she be dead in her place?

She doesn’t sleep much anymore, so she works on her code.

Jiyoung doesn’t feel tired, and she doesn’t particularly want to go to sleep and marinate in her grief. But her eyes are aching and she can feel a headache coming on and she can’t look at a computer screen for a minute longer.

Maybe somebody’s up, and they can keep her company.

She picks up her phone, scrolling through her contacts…

Her finger hovers over Song Hyungchul’s name.

Jiyoung pauses. It’s not like she hasn’t called him before. He didn’t pick up. Didn’t even show up to Kijung’s funeral. Bastard.

She presses on it. It goes straight to voicemail.

Dickhead. She opens up Snapchat instead. Minho always comes over when she asks and is always quick to respond. She stands up, taking a blurry photograph of her surroundings and adding the caption you up?

She pauses before clicking send. It’s just a photograph of the room in front of her. The kitchen counter and laptop, the living area ahead. Her hand wasn’t steady while clicking, so colours and shapes blend into each other. However, in the centre there’s a strange dark shape, almost as if there was a shadow in front of the counter.

She looks past the phone. There’s nothing there.

Jiyoung needs some fucking sleep, but she’s already decided she’ll ask Minho over. She likes Minho. His chatter is easy and he never brings up sentimentality when they fuck. It’s easy to be around him, and she needs easy right now.

So she sends the snap. Almost immediately she can see that he’s opened it and he sends a selfie back. Yeah. Can I come over?

Always direct.

She stands up, walks toward the bathroom, snaps back a picture of the hallway. Yeah sure I’ll be waiting.

But when she looks at it, there’s that shadow again. She frowns. It’s not even a photograph of the same space, so why is the same darkness here too? This time, the shadow looks more like a figure, an almost-human shape in front of her door, but all dark. She puts the phone down, and there’s nothing.

Frowning, Jiyoung sends the response to Minho before opening her camera again. When she looks through the camera – there, she can see it. No defined edges or lines, but a darkness in the shape of a man. A man with too-long limbs and a too-long neck.

Jiyoung raises her gaze above the phone and sure enough, there’s nothing there. She moves her phone around, viewing the entire apartment through the camera. Every time, it shows up on the image, but there’s nothing actually there.

Jiyoung is afraid, but there’s nobody there. She’s alone in her apartment. The door is locked. She’s being paranoid because her closest friend has been murdered, but she’s safe. Maybe there’s something wrong with her camera that’s causing distortions. Or maybe – and more likely – this is the result of barely sleeping for a week.

Yeah, that’s it. She almost considers texting Minho and telling him not to come, but she doesn’t like the thought of an empty apartment. Besides, he’s just sent her another snapchat, telling her he’s on his way. It’s a cute selfie. He’s grinning obnoxiously and sporting an enthusiastic thumbs up.

Despite herself, Jiyoung smiles. She clicks open her front camera to take a selfie to send back in return. She poses, but as she clicks she sees the darkness over her shoulder, rushing towards her.

She drops the phone.

***

The couple on the farm send them home with as many strawberries as they can carry. Yoongi insists on bringing him to a homely lamb skewer place in the town, one he claims is better than all of the lamb in Seoul. It’s an exaggeration, but it’s still tasty so Seokjin lets him away with it.

Their legs ache on the bus home and Yoongi drifts off into a snooze on Seokjin’s shoulder. Seokjin reprimands himself for the way his heart thuds.

You’re his friend, he reminds himself. Don’t make it weird. He doesn’t think of you like that. If you’re not careful, you’ll lose him forever.

Seokjin thinks of Yoongi pulling him into his bed the night before, concerned for his back on his rackety old couch. There’s no way he would have done that if he knew how Seokjin’s heart aches for him.

Seokjin pinches the inside of his thigh. You are not in love with Min Yoongi he tries to convince himself.

But it’s futile. Now he knows it, he can’t deny it. He thought it was purely physical, a projection of pent-up inaction, but no, it’s love and…

And Yoongi doesn’t deserve that. Yoongi didn’t sign up for any of this, he certainly didn’t sign up for a…for a fumbling zombie to fall in love with him. Seokjin is barely human anymore, something he’s never let forget. His feelings, therefore, aren’t human. They aren’t good and they serve no purpose but to weigh them – both of them – down. He knows he promised himself he wouldn’t repress everything anymore, but how can he not?

He’s just a reanimated corpse.

(besides, even if yoongi somehow did reciprocate, as soon as seokjin’s job is finished he’s being hurried along to the next stage of the afterlife. he’s on borrowed time. yoongi doesn’t deserve bereavement. he doesn’t deserve the grief that will come. no, the less attached yoongi is to him, the easier it will be for him to move on when seokjin eventually moves into the underworld permanently)

(Seokjin is so scared.)

Before, Seokjin had to cling to his scant humanity to stay sane. Now, he clings to his inhumanity in order to quell the feelings rising in his heart. He can’t destroy them, but he can stop them from growing. Yes, that’s what he has to do. He can keep this love and enjoy it himself, in private, in the safety of his own walls without witnesses. But Yoongi…Yoongi can never know. Besides, Seokjin is just a zombie. Can zombies even really fall in love? It’s probably not even real love, it’s probably just a result of loneliness and trauma mixing together on the nearest person. No need to trouble Yoongi needlessly.

They trudge back to Seokjin’s apartment when the bus stops. Jungkook is nowhere to be seen when they return. “You can take the bed,” he tells Yoongi. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“Grow up,” Yoongi teases. “You’re like a blushing maid. We’ve already shared a bed together. There’s no point in ruining our backs now.”

“I guess,” Seokjin says, trying to hide his hesitance. “You should be flattered to share a bed with a man as handsome as you.”

“Whatever you say, hyung. You sleep on that side, right?”

Seokjin nods, climbing between the sheets. When they turn the lights out, he’s rolls over to the edge of the bed, as far from Yoongi as he can be without risking tumbling out of the bed.

But later, when the nightmares come and he wakes with a shuddering gasp and a cry, Yoongi’s hand reaches out to grip his shoulder. He doesn’t say anything, for which Seokjin is immensely grateful, but he rubs gentle patterns into Seokjin’s shoulder until he’s breathing normally again. Seokjin is so wrapped up in the haze of sleepiness and fear that he doesn’t have the wherewithal to pull away. He still doesn’t pull away when Yoongi’s hand moves down his arm to intertwine with his own, or when Yoongi squeezes his hand gently until he falls asleep.

He doesn’t let go of Yoongi’s hand until the next morning, when Jungkook shouts in his ear to wake him up. Seokjin jumps and waits for the comment about them sleeping in the same bed, but Jungkook just looks grim-faced. “The morning news is on,” he says, worried lines in the face of his apparition, and Seokjin knows that can only mean one thing.

His stomach sinks as he scrambles out of bed. “There’s been another murder?”

As if on cue, his phone rings.

***

“The victim’s phone was found on the ground beside her. There was a cracked screen, but it looks like she managed to take a photograph of her assailant,” Dongwook says, sliding a print-out over the counter. “It’s low quality, but it’s the best I could do.”

Seokjin grimaces. It’s a printed photograph, probably taken on Dongwook’s own phone, of the newest victim’s phone screen. Snapchat is open, and from the looks of it, she clicked the camera button just as she noticed the dark shape behind her. It comes from the top right corner of the screen, a blurry swooping mass of dark. There’s what looks like a long claw, reaching out for her. Her face in the left half of the screen is twisted into a look of pure terror. Ultimate horror.

They’re standing in Seokjin’s apartment. Yoongi is sitting on the kitchen counter nursing a coffee, Lee Dongwook stands awkwardly while Seokjin leans near Yoongi. Jungkook is in the bedroom, doubtlessly listening to every word they’re saying, but Seokjin doesn’t want Dongwook to know about him. Not yet, at least.

“We were wrong about the theory, then,” Yoongi says bitterly. “She had sent it on, but wasn’t safe.”

“Which means any of those who sent it before could be at risk,” Dongwook says, “including the original perpetrators. The family of Song Hyungchul were travelling in Europe, but we’ve contacted them through local police. They haven’t heard much from their sons and have no idea of their whereabouts. We can’t put out an official arrest warrant, but we’ve convinced the chief that they need to be questioned. The boys at the station are on it now.”

Something is annoying Seokjin. He’s missing some pieces of the puzzle – rather, he has them, but can’t remember where he left them.

“Who knows how long that might take,” Yoongi says. “We fucked up. We thought we had time, but…”

“It was a reasonable theory,” Dongwook says, “as regrettable as it turned out. This does raise the question of its killing habits…”

Seokjin jumps to his feet. “The reflection,” he says, almost falling over his chair in his haste to grab the demon encyclopaedia. He flicks through the well-worn pages, finding the entry on the well demon like it’s a second nature. “In its original form, through well water, it doesn’t attack until the cursed victim until they’re close enough to see their reflection in the water’s surface.”

“So you’re saying it’s attacking them when they take a selfie?” Yoongi raises an eyebrow, but Dongwook’s eyes widen.

“It’s infecting their phone until they open their camera, until they see their reflection.”

“Just like in the surface of the water.”

“It makes sense,” Dongwook says. “The periods between kills…it’s nothing to do with the demon’s patterns. It’s to do with the victims.”

“The most recent victim was in mourning and so didn’t use her camera for much longer than the rest. That’s why it took so long – and nobody received the text more recently, so it lay in wait for her to show herself.”

“Whereas some of the earlier victims were wannabe-influencers. Using social media more frequently meant that the demon got its chance much sooner. The very first victim, when we took his phone in it had recently undergone repairs. We followed it up with the shop in case of any clues. He had sent it in to repair his camera.”

Yoongi starts nodding. “That explains the delay between the filming of the video and the first kill,” he says, “he was the first to read it but wasn’t able to show his reflection until after the repairs.”

Seokjin is buzzing with nervous energy now. “That’s how it’s been killing. Or, planning its attacks, anyway. It infects the phones the message is sent to, and lingers around the person who’s read it most recently until they show their reflection through the camera. Then it strikes, kills them, and moves to the next person in order…”

There’s still something else worrying him.

“This is good,” Yoongi says, turning to find Seokjin’s gaze. “Well, not good, but we know how to provoke it now. We can end this, once we can get a copy of this message.”

“I’ll go in today,” Dongwook says. “I won’t take no for an answer. But,” he looks at Seokjin, concern written in his features. “Are you sure you can kill it?”

No.

“I can ask Hoseok for back-up,” Seokjin says. “One of us can act as bait and the other can strike.”

“I’ll go now, then,” Dongwook says. “Hopefully, this thing will be dead by midnight.”

“I hope so too.”

“The only thing I don’t get,” Yoongi says, “is why the original sender has disappeared. This demon has to work its way through everyone else who received the message before it gets to him. It can’t have killed him instantly after he sent it but before anyone else read it, because his body would have been found in his home. What’s he hiding from?”

“Maybe he’s hiding from something else,” Dongwook says, “or someone else.”

***

“A well demon?” Hoseok’s voice is shrill down the line. “Why didn’t you tell us before now?”

“I fight a lot of weird creatures without telling you.”

He hears Namjoon’s voice on the other side. “You’re right, you’re right,” Hoseok says. “But these things are notoriously hard to kill. They’re incredibly cunning and adaptable.”

“Well,” Seokjin says. “If it managed to hack an entire technological system of killing, it has to be smart, right?”

“Is it coming for you yet?” he asks.

“No. But I should receive the chainmail soon.”

“Don’t do anything until I’m there.”

Seokjin blinks. “They’re that bad?”

“I’ve dealt with a few over the centuries,” Hoseok says. “I’ve always made sure that Namjoonie has my back, just in case. I don’t doubt your skill, but this is a creature I wouldn’t like to take on alone.”

Seokjin swallows and nods, before remembering he’s on the phone and his nods are no use to Hoseok. “I see.”

“We’ll come over soon. We’ll deal with it together. Oh and uh…not to be a dickhead about it, but Yoongi probably shouldn’t be there.”

“What? If he doesn’t read it—”

“An animal is most dangerous at the end of the hunt,” Hoseok says, “there’s no telling what a cornered animal might do. It’s a lot easier to kill Yoongi than any of us.”

“He won’t like it.”

Hoseok laughs. “I’m sure he won’t.”

***

Hoseok is tense. It makes Seokjin uneasy.

He drags the full-length mirror out from Seokjin’s bedroom into the main space of the apartment.

“Mirror selfie?” Seokjin asks, an eyebrow raised.

“I’m not letting it sneak up on me,” Hoseok says, propping it up against the wall. “It attacks the image of the person in the camera…”

“I see,” Jungkook says. He’s a little shy around Namjoon and Hoseok, but floats nearby, wanting to be useful. “If it attacks the image it’s shown it’ll attack your reflection in the mirror instead, and you’ll be able to attack it.”

Namjoon locks the door. “Jungkook-ah,” he says, and Jungkook swivels towards him from his spot in the corner. “Can you do us a favour? I want you to observe as best as you can. If this descends into a fight we might miss some details. Will you keep a close eye on things?”

“Yes! Yes, absolutely.” Jungkook seems excited at the prospect of a job.

“I don’t think it will be able to harm you,” Namjoon says, “but keep your distance just in case.”

His eyes fall on Yoongi, who has refused point blank to leave, but agreed to compromise. “Time to lock me up?”

He marches into Seokjin’s bedroom. “This isn’t my idea,” Seokjin reminds him before closing the door. “You know that.”

“I know. And I understand. I just don’t like being a liability.”

Seokjin makes a noise of understanding – because he does understand – but can’t find the words to articulate it. “I need you safe.”

“And I need you safe,” Yoongi says. “I’ll see you in a few.” He closes the bedroom door softly. Namjoon traces a symbol on the door.

“To stop anything getting in,” he explains, before moving to the front door. “Or out.”

“What do you want me to do?”

Hoseok looks around the space. He moves the mirror, propping it instead against a chair in the centre of the room. “I want you behind the mirror,” he says. “If it moves out from the reflection, you’ll be able to get it from behind. Namjoonie, I want you to have my back. Ready?”

Hoseok unlocks Seokjin’s phone, reading the unopened text message Seokjin had received earlier. He shifts his weight from one foot to another, sinking lower into a fighting stance, grip taught on his sword. Seokjin is afraid. He extends his spear out to its full length.

“I’m opening the camera now,” Hoseok says. From over his shoulder, Seokjin can see Namjoon standing more alert than he’s ever seen him, can see Jungkook floating near the ceiling looking both apprehensive and excited.

Hoseok raises the phone until the mirror and his reflection is in the frame. It looks normal at first; a simple of reflection of a nervous looking Hoseok, Namjoon over his shoulder. Then he sees a flash of black, hears Jungkook cry out, and by the time he turns it’s too late.

***

What happened, Jungkook tells Yoongi later, when the other three have gone and Yoongi picks up the shards of broken mirror, was this.

Namjoon and Hoseok aren’t overly familiar with technology beyond what they need to exist or understand the mortal world. They made the mistake of assuming demons wouldn’t have a better understanding than them.

Before, the demon attacked the person in the image taken by the camera. They had assumed by using the mirror they would draw it into a trap. They failed to imagine that the demon was far too clever for this.

Hoseok had stood, filming his own reflection, and the mass of black being had first gathered exactly where they assumed it would; in the top corner of the mirror. Hoseok had shifted, ready to knock it down once it surged forward towards his image inside the mirror.

But it didn’t, because the demon could differentiate between the reflection and the person. It came rushing from behind them all. Jungkook had seen it as it rushed forward, had called out as it moved past Namjoon. By the time Hoseok had turned around to strike it, it had its teeth in him. Hoseok got a swing in, his sword pierced some of its mass as it pushed him into the mirror. There had been the shattering of glass, there was the sound of an awful tear, and Hoseok shouting in pain—

They topped backwards over the chair the mirror had been propped against. Vaulting over that, Seokjin was able to stab forward with the spear, catching the dark mass in its side. It dissipated soon after that, damage done.

“The mirror trick didn’t work,” Yoongi says, solemn-voiced.

“He was bleeding so much,” Jungkook says. “There was…well, normal blood from his meat suit. But there was something else, a sort of yellow colour oozing out of him and he was writhing in pain—”

Yoongi had heard the screams. “It must have been his soul,” he says, anxiety growing in his bones. “It was able to attack his soul…”

“Does this mean he’ll…”

“I don’t know.” Yoongi stands, hands cupping the shards of broken glass.

If Jungkook had physical hands, they would be trembling. As it is, his whole apparition seems to shiver. “It was like it took half of his stomach out,” he says. “I could see all of Hoseok hyung’s organs. And that didn’t scare me much at first, because it’s not like he’s a real human or anything, but the way the yellow glow was flowing out of him, the way he was screaming…”

All Yoongi had heard was the screaming. It wasn’t Seokjin screaming, he was well enough acquainted with his screams to know that, but he still banged on the door, demanding to be let out. A few moments later Seokjin had opened it, breaking the seal locking it, panic fresh in his eyes.

Hoseok…

Hoseok didn’t look like any semblance of a person. Namjoon was scrambling with a cylinder, scooping up some of the spilled yellow light. “We need to go to the Underworld now,” he was saying, fighting to remain calm despite the panic pulsing under his skin. “If we don’t…”

“Is it dead?”

“Injured, I think. But none of the rest of you have read the message, you’ll be safe.” Between Seokjin and Namjoon they had bundled him up, and were gone.

Yoongi tips the shards of the mirror into the trash can. One piece catches on his palm, a bead of blood rising up.

“Do you think he’ll be okay?”

“I don’t know,” Yoongi says. It sounds like some of Hoseok’s soul got damaged. How easily can the Underworld repair that? “I’m sure he will be.”

“You sound worried.”

“Even if he is…isn’t he the expert at this stuff? You said he still got a few attacks in, but the demon survived. It took a blow from Seokjin hyung too. It must mean it’s strong. It also means that it knows where their weaknesses are.” If it attacked Seokjin like that, would his soul survive? “It sounds like it’s above Seokjin hyung’s paygrade, let’s put it that way.”

Seokjin’s phone lies on the table. It’s strange how such an ordinary, everyday object can seem so sinister now. It feels like a disaster waiting to happen.

“Will you be able to kill it?” Jungkook asks.

Yoongi doesn’t want to lie to him. “Well, we’ll have to, won’t we?”

***

Seokjin has never seen Namjoon so stressed before. He kneels, hands fisted in the fabric of the human jeans he still wears even in the Underworld. His knuckles are white.

“Hoseok is strong,” Seokjin tries, uncertain,

“He is.” A ghost of a smile. “But we were outsmarted by that thing.” Namjoon sighs like the weight of the universe is pressing down on his shoulders. “I thought I was so smart. It attacks the image from behind, so if we can use a reflection of an image, it will be tricked, right?”

“It was a good idea,” Seokjin tries.

“Maybe if working with a demon that had never touched a smartphone before. Hoseok’s stronger than it. I’m stronger than it. But we were blindsided by something as trivial as localised human technologies.”

Seokjin raises an eyebrow. Before he can formulate a response, Namjoon punctuates the silence with a bitter laugh. “That’s the crux of the problem, isn’t it? We don’t see it as something that can affect us. That sounded so condescending. I’m sorry.”

“I mean, from what I’ve seen of people here, you’re definitely the one most invested in humans. I wouldn’t feel too bad about it.”

“Thank you for saying that.”

“It’s the truth. You can’t know everything. Nobody can.”

It doesn’t help. Seokjin searches for the words. He hates conversations like this. Namjoon may look human but he’s an entirely different species than him, with centuries of knowledge locked inside him that Seokjin couldn’t even begin to comprehend – yet he can still recognise what Namjoon is feeling. Nobody, it seems, is immune to the crushing suffocation of staring down your own incompetence and failures. “You’re a Reaper. There’s a reason you enlist the likes of me, isn’t there?”

“Huh?”

“I’m the human one,” he says, and he can feel the determination like a stone that has sunk to the pit of his stomach. “I know…I know things like this. Maybe this is an area of expertise I can use better. I don’t have the technological skills of a grandfather, after all.”

Namjoon’s smile is hesitant. “What are you saying?”

Seokjin doesn’t meet his eye. “I know this demon is strong. It’s a lot stronger than me. You two are both a lot stronger than me. But I think my humanity can sometime be a strength. I’ve good instincts, after all.”

Namjoon nods. “You’re going to fight it yourself,” he says.

“I know you say not to tackle them alone,” Seokjin says, “but I can’t just let it go, or wait for Hoseok to get better.”

“Do you think you can do it?”

“I have a few ideas. Do you believe in me?”

There’s a long pause.

“Yes,” Namjoon finally says. “I do.”

Seokjin cracks a smile. “You don’t sound too confident in that,” he teases, even as a wave of relief crashes through him.

“Hoseok and I are literally created for this job, and we still face losses like this. Anything can happen. And I think you can make anything happen. Every time someone sets an expectation for you, you seem to crash straight through it.”

“I hope that’s a good thing,” Seokjin murmurs, right as someone exits the door they’re kneeling in front of.

“Reaper Hoseok will be okay,” they say. “A large transfusion of spiritual energy was needed, and he still needs medical attention, but he’ll make a full recovery shortly.” Namjoon bows low, and Seokjin follows suit.

“Can I see him?”

“No,” the person – the Underworld equivalent of a doctor Nurse? Healer? – says, firmly but kindly. “Reaper Hoseok is in his natural state as he heals.”

“You wouldn’t be able to handle it,” Namjoon says. “No, I don’t mean you specifically, don’t make that face. Our natural forms are incomprehensible to humans. That’s why everyone you see here appears in a human form. To see one of us naturally would deal irreversible damage to your mind and brain, so it’s best to wait until he’s strong enough to re-enter his human skin.”

Another ever-present reminder of the gulf that lies between them. Seokjin may not ever be able to cross it, but he wants to do his best to prove that even from this side of the gulf, great things can be done.

“Do you love him?” he asks.

Namjoon takes a moment to respond, the lines between his eyebrows furrowing slightly even as a fond smile graces his lips. “It’s complicated,” he says, eventually. “We don’t…we don’t experience love in the same way as humans do.”

“You don’t experience love?”

“No, that’s not it. We do. But our feelings don’t translate seamlessly across species. What I feel for Hoseok isn’t akin to human concepts of love, but our relationship isn’t and can’t be defined in human terms. I do love him; it’s just not the same way as human beings love each other. I guess…the closest way I can describe it in human terms, is that he’s like my soulmate.”

“Soulmate…”

“Universes change, time goes by, but Hoseok and I…will always be a constant.”

No matter what happens.

It’s comforting, Seokjin thinks, to know that whatever happens Namjoon and Hoseok will be there, together, working towards what’s right. For some reason, his mind drifts to Yoongi, back in his apartment, and his heart trembles in his chest. The wonder of existence seems so apparent to him now – feelings like these are worth protecting.

“Stay with him,” Seokjin says. “Be here when he recovers consciousness.”

“What about you?”

Seokjin stands. “I have a demon to kill.”

“Alone?”

“I have Yoongi.”

Namjoon makes a face. “I mean—”

“I won’t be alone,” Seokjin says, the weight of this realisation – through six months of the most pervasive, bone shattering loneliness – giving him courage. “I can do this. Trust me.” He has a skeleton of a plan in his mind, built with the bones of Namjoon’s failed attempt. “What’s the worst that can happen? It’ll kill me?”

Something in Namjoon relents. “Don’t be reckless,” he says. “I’ll find you as soon as I’m back.”

“Tell Hoseok I’m sorry,” Seokjin says quietly. “And thank you.”

***

Seokjin has barely re-entered his apartment when he’s bombarded.

“Will Hoseok be okay?” Yoongi.

“Is everyone safe?” Jungkook.

“What are we going to do next?”

“Are you okay?”

Seokjin’s phone is ringing somewhere in the background. “Please!” he raises his hands. “Can you give me a minute?”

Yoongi’s fingers are wrapped around his wrist. Seokjin didn’t even notice until he pulls away. “Sorry. We were worried.”

Seokjin would really appreciate it if his heart didn’t clench painfully whenever Yoongi said something remotely caring. It’s not helpful. Besides. Friends care about their friends.

“Hoseok will be fine. Namjoon’s with him now – he needs some help recovering. They should be back in a few days. Hopefully by then we’ll deal with this demon. How long as I gone?”

“About a day,” Yoongi says.

“Twenty-seven hours,” Jungkook pipes up.

Seokjin inhales slowly. “Okay. Okay.” He follows the sound of his phone ringing. It’s Lee Dongwook.

“Hello?”

“How did it go?”

“Not particularly well,” Seokjin says with a frown. “We’re not in the clear yet. Any updates?”

“My contact in the force said they’ve traced everyone who read the message. They have brought those who received it but didn’t read it back in for questioning.” Silence. “Aside from the original sender and three others, those who claimed to have read the text have been found dead.”

“And the original sender, along with some friends, is he still missing?”

“Yeah. They tried to track Song Hyungchul down using his cellphone signal, but its latest signal is from his home a few weeks ago. It’s either out of power or broken.”

“Well, that’s something,” Seokjin says. “Maybe they knew – they have to be hiding somewhere.”

“It seems to be the case,” Dongwook says. “So far, both YouTubers, XX’s little brother, and three of his friends have all been reported as missing.”

“What are they hiding from? The demon tracks them down via technology. What difference is hiding from everyone else going to make?”

“I’m not sure, but the pressure is on to find them at the force – these boys have money linked to their family.” There’s disgust in Dongwook’s voice. “Obviously, I wish for missing children to return to their family, but it’s disconcerting to see how much harder the Chief works for those from affluent backgrounds.”

“You don’t sound particularly surprised.”

“There’s a reason I work as a private investigator and not as a uniformed detective,” Dongwook says. “But back to the matter at hand. Three people have read the text – I might be able to get names and addresses for you if you want to find them.”

“No,” Seokjin says. “I have a different plan. But I am eager to see the original senders – I’m worried that this mightn’t pewter out until the demon gets them.”

“You want to give them up?”

“No. I want to protect them. And I want to know exactly what they’re hiding from.”

“As soon as an address is found, you’ll know.”

“Thanks.”

Seokjin hangs up, then takes a deep breath before opening the text.

“What are you doing?” Yoongi hisses.

The Blind Maiden has been made aware of your presence and will be sending her helper to find you and consume its fill. Send this message to as many others as you can, for the last reader of this message shall meet this fate.

The gif jumpscare is – it’s unsightly. But Seokjin has dealt with a lot fucking worse.

“Hyung!” Yoongi knocks the phone out of his hand. “What the fuck?”

“There are still people out there who will be targeted. But now, as the most recent sender, it will be following me. And I know how to avoid it – I can buy time.”

Yoongi groans. “But we don’t know how it works. What if it has more tricks up its sleeve?”

“Well, it’s not like I can die.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“If it’s coming after me, it’s not coming after anyone else,” Seokjin says firmly. “I just need to avoid using the camera until I work out a plan.”

“What can you do that Namjoon and Hoseok can’t?”

“I don’t know,” Seokjin admits. “Nobody knows what I can do.”

Yoongi’s face softens. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I know.” Seokjin shifts awkwardly on his feet. “I’m going to…I’m going to need some time to plan this out. We won’t be fighting tonight.”

“No,” Yoongi says, “unless it works out a way to attack you.”

“It won’t,” Seokjin says. “Not so soon, anyway. It had longer waits between kills.”

Yoongi sighs. “Are you okay? You look a little…shaky.”

“I’m fine. I can do this. And if I’m next on the hit list, we don’t have to worry about other victims—”

Jungkook makes a worried noise from the side.

“I know that,” Yoongi says. “You look so determined right now, it’s almost kind of scary. But are you okay?”

Seokjin swallows hard, and thinks about that. How can he ever be okay in this line of work? He brushes some hair out of his eyes, and in the process notices the faint trembling of his fingers. “I’m okay,” he says slowly. “I’m just…really stressed. I’m going to shower and eat and do some research, I think.”

Yoongi nods, blearily. He looks tired too.

“You can go home for now,” Seokjin says. “You look exhausted.” Of course it’s stressful for Yoongi, too.

“Will you be okay?”

“Yeah,” Seokjin says. It’s not quite a lie. He doesn’t know what he wants – but he doesn’t want his friends worrying about him too much. “I think I need to be alone for a while and clear my head.”

Yoongi nods, and reaches out to squeeze Seokjin’s shoulder. Seokjin tries very hard not to lean into the touch. “Call me if you need anything,” he says. “And I mean it – anything. I’ll come over tomorrow.”

“I can make myself scarce too,” Jungkook says, “if you need a while.”

“I don’t want you to be bored, or alone—”

“Spying on your neighbours is always fun,” Jungkook says, giving Seokjin a cheeky wink. “When it’s not the only thing I do twenty-four hours a day. I’ll give you some space.” That wasn’t Seokjin’s goal, but Jungkook floats through a wall almost as soon as Yoongi clicks the door closed behind him, one more urge to call him should he need him left behind.

And then Seokjin is alone.

***

He stays awake all night.

He spends an hour on an internet deep dive on how to get a website removed – this demon virus was downloaded from a very real website that, even if supernatural in origin, is technological in its nature. Can he pay a hacker to take it down? Can someone block it from all internet browsers? Will this even be a problem if he kills the demon?

The text had only said its helper went to collect, after all.

Seokjin ends up tapping out a frantic blogpost.

Staying safe

Hi ghoulfriends. Today I want to talk to you about something serious. I know you all have a great interest in the supernatural and paranormal and that a stranger online telling you to stay away won’t do anything to abate that curiosity, but you need to be warned: some of this shit is dangerous.

I mean it. I almost lost a close friend today. My hands are still shaking.

It’s not a lie, after all.

There are names of the dead on the news, dead that have departed because of normal people like you, tampering things you shouldn’t with. This is not a game. This is life and death. I wish I was just being melodramatic.

At the moment, things aren’t looking good – save your rituals for another day, for now. Don’t go onto any website that claims to provoke demons. Don’t spread any malicious texts you receive. Delete them without reading them. If you know what I’m specifically referring to – stay away. Please. You’re going to have problems much worse than malware.

Stay safe. Stay home. Don’t mess with things you can’t control – not now, especially.

-- The Ghost Detective

Seokjin feels so useless, not knowing how else to protect the people. That done, he tries to do some actual research.

When the sun rises, Seokjin is still hunched over his demon encyclopaedia, looking for something, anything, that will explain how to kill this thing. Some demonic manifestations don’t die unless you kill the root. Some never go away until all those touched by it have died. Some never truly go away unless they’re thrown into the void of the Boundary. Some are like weeds – for every one you pull, new ones will have grown the next day.

What if he kills the thing that attacked Hoseok, but nothing changes? What if another just grows to replace it?

The more he reads, the more confused he feels. The opportunities, the possibilities, the potential of demons is staggering.

However, one word keeps cropping up in many of the texts on demons that spread like this.

Source.

Destroy the source.

There are two potential sources Seokjin can think of. The website itself, and the phone of the original sender.

The original phone is the one that downloaded the virus and spread it. If it can be destroyed, the virus won’t spread. The website needs to be dealt with to stop a new version of this virus being spread again in a month’s time. And he needs to stop the being doing the actual murdering. As for the original phone…Seokjin knows that the police were able to access the original senders’ phone records but not the phone itself. Perhaps it’s still on the person of Song Hyeongchul , which means Seokjin will need to go on another wild goose chase.

Seokjin feels the stress pull at his temples.

He’s not alone, he tells himself. He’s not. He pulls out his phone, hovers over Yoongi’s contact image, before he changes course.

He texts Dongwook, kicking himself for how much he’s relying on this – this stranger. But who else can he ask?

To: almost-murderer lee dongwook

need someone to take down the original website. do you know anyone who can do this discreetly?

From: almost-murderer lee dongwook

lucky for you, i have just the man

To: almost-murderer lee dongwook

who?

From: almost-murderer lee dongwook

my half-brother

Seokjin pauses.

To: almost-murderer lee dongwook

half-guardian?

From: almost-murderer lee dongwook

more importantly. he’s a hacker

Seokjin sits up. If it’s someone who knows about the supernatural side effects of this particular coding, while having the skill to deal with it himself – that’s a better combination than he could have asked for.

To: almost-murderer lee dongwook

he’ll do it?

From: almost-murderer lee dongwook

yes. however – we should consider the possibility of the being attacking. it may have self defence systems in place?

To: almost-murderer lee dongwook

if i text you as soon as i’ve eliminated the murdering part of this thing, will your bro be able to do it then?

From: almost-murderer lee dongwook

i don’t see why not. text me as soon as you think it’s safe. we’ll take care of it.

Seokjin is still uneasy. He doesn’t trust Dongwook, not fully, he can’t – he can’t trust anyone except for himself and maybe Yoongi. No matter how much easier it would be to rely on others – this is his job. Yet, despite this, he feels a swirl of relief disperse through his body. Maybe he can trust Dongwook to do this one thing – this one thing on his endless to-do list.

That’s the last thought he was before he finally falls asleep, the sun peering in through the window.

***

Seokjin doesn’t wake until the late afternoon. He feels like he’s hungover, despite not having touched alcohol in days; his head throbs, his whole body aches with exhaustion despite his long rest, and faint nausea settles into his stomach. He’s not sure when the last time he ate was, but the thought of food only makes him feel worse. He’s still alone in the apartment.

He drags himself off the couch, decides to compromise by making himself some tea. It’s fresh and hot in his hands when someone bangs on the door. Thinking it’s Yoongi, he opens without a thought.

“You look like shit,” Jimin says.

“I know,” Seokjin says, standing aside to let him in.

“Are you alright? When did you last sleep?” A hand comes up to poke his cheek. “Those dark circles are something else.”

“I just woke up,” Seokjin admits, pouring tea for Jimin who follows him into the kitchen. “I’m just – I’m stressed.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

Seokjin turns to Jimin, taking his appearance in. He’s a little sweaty, like he’s just come from the gym, but there is something off. His knuckles are scraped raw, the skin around them grazed and a little bloody, and there’s a red mark on his cheek he hadn’t noticed earlier. “What happened to you?”

“I beat someone up,” Jimin says, voice serious, before he descends into giggles. “Nah. I’m fine. Had a bit of a scuffle with a friend, but it was mostly friendly.”

“Friendly?”

“We used to do kickboxing together,” Jimin says. “Old habits, and all that.”

Seokjin isn’t sure if he buys it. “I thought you were a nerd. Didn’t know you could throw a punch.”

“Don’t lie, hyung, you’ve seen me in the gym. I may be on the shorter scale of things—” Seokjin laughs, it turns into a grunt, “—but I’m strong! Besides, you’re the bigger nerd and you come in looking far worse.”

Seokjin swallows hard. Maybe he should watch the trail of blood he leaves in. What if someone sees him and wonders how he heals so fast? It could lead to some uncomfortable questions—

“Calm down, hyung. I can hear you overthinking from here. Now, answer me – have you eaten?”

Seokjin looks at his bloody knuckles. “Have you cleaned them out?”

“I rinsed them under cold water.”

“Jiminie.”

“What? It’ll be fine.”

“They might get infected. Let me help you.”

“Only if you eat something. I’m starving, I’m going to order some food. Fried chicken or japchae?”

Seokjin sighs. “Japchae.”

“Okay.” Jimin taps quickly on his phone. “While I’m ordering, why don’t you tell me what’s stressing you out?”

Seokjin drags one of the kitchen chairs closer to the wall. He keeps a small first-aid kit on top of one of the cupboards, and climbs up to get it. It’s pretty pitiful – he doesn’t need any first-aid after all. He mainly bought it for Yoongi, although the one in Yoongi’s apartment is much better stocked.

Seokjin prefers going to Yoongi’s apartment in the case of injuries anyway. He knows his Medallion is there, and while Yoongi still has no idea as to its healing properties, being closer to it helps Seokjin.

“Work stuff,” he says eventually, grabbing the small box and setting it onto the counter. “My…my friend—”

“Hold on. Is this actually about a friend, or is it a story about yourself that you’re pinning on a fictional friend to save yourself embarrassment?”

Seokjin blinks. “No. It’s about an actual friend.”

“What’s this friend’s name?”

“Namjoon.”

“Fine. Continue.”

“So, uh…Namjoon…Namjoon was dealing with a competitor at work. From a different company. And he tried to deal with this competitor by confusing them and distracting them, but it didn’t work. And now it’s being left to me.”

Jimin is silent as Seokjin unpacks a roll of bandages and some disinfectant from the box.

“Do you need some form of distraction to take on this competitor?”

“Yeah. It’s unlikely we can beat them without having some form of upper hand.”

“Well, if you need to gain an upper hand, try again. Double down on whatever you did last time. It mightn’t have been enough to confuse them before, so you need to up the ante until they fall into the trap.”

“What if they’re expecting it?”

He hops up onto the counter beside Jimin, who obediently splays his hands for him. “You just have to go above what they’ll be expecting. This sounds like a very dirty business you’re involved in.”

Seokjin is thankful that Jimin doesn’t press forward. He dabs disinfectant on a cotton pad and starts cleaning out the grazes.

“Ouch, hyung, that stings.”

“Stop wriggling.”

Jimin pouts, but lets him carry on.

Seokjin sighs. “You don’t get knuckles like these from a friendly punch,” he says. He knows now, knows from experience.

“It wasn’t so friendly,” Jimin admits, sounding petulant. “But you should see the other guy.”

“Should I be worried?”

“No.”

Seokjin hesitates, unrolling the spool of bandage. “Can I help?”

Jimin sighs dramatically. “Wow, so cool, hyung. Totally the knight in shining armour.”

Seokjin takes his hands and starts wrapping the bandages. It’s awkward at this angle, and he’s not doing a particularly good job at it. It doesn’t have to be pretty, though, it just has to be clean. “I can help.”

“I know you can. And If I needed help I’d let you know. But sometimes you have to fight your own battles.”

Jimin has a pensive smile when Seokjin looks up. Seokjin doesn’t hold his gaze.

“I’m in no danger,” Jimin says. “I promise. And even if I was, I can handle myself. I’m stronger than I look.”

“I believe you. I know what it’s like to be underestimated.”

“If I get in over my head, I’ll let you know. You have to do the same, though. Promise?”

“Promise,” Seokjin lies, finishing the bandage. Jimin doesn’t let go, squeezing his gently. It’s a purely platonic gesture, one that Seokjin appreciates. It feels like a lifeline thrown from solid ground.

And then the door opens.

“What’s he doing here?” Yoongi asks.

Seokjin drops Jimin’s hands.

“Ah, Yoongi-ssi,” Jimin says, smiling sweetly at him. “We just ordered some food – technically we only ordered for two, but there definitely will be enough to go around…”

Jimin trails off, confused by the angry intensity emanating off of Yoongi. Seokjin knows it when he sees it. And this feels strangely like jealousy, although Seokjin’s not sure what Yoongi has to be jealous of. Perhaps he thinks it inappropriate that Seokjin is confiding in an outsider.

“Jimin is my neighbour and my friend,” Seokjin says. “He came by earlier.”

Jimin raises a hand, flexing his bandaged fingers. “Seokjin hyung was fixing up some cuts for me. I’m useless at taking care of myself sometimes!”

Yoongi exhales in a sharp huff, eyes dark and fixing on Seokjin. “We have work to do,” he says quietly, “or did you forget?”

Yoongi looks really cute in his beanie, standing in Seokjin’s kitchen, but Seokjin doesn’t like his tone. A spark of irritation spikes inside of him. “How could I possibly forget?” he asks, surprised at the bitterness in his own voice.

“I called you,” Yoongi says.

“I didn’t know,” Seokjin says, quite honestly. He hasn’t checked his phone since waking up. He doesn’t think he remembered to plug in its charger before falling sleep. “I’m sorry. I didn’t check my phone.”

Yoongi looks away. “I was getting worried.”

“Sorry.” Seokjin doesn’t know what else to say.

“Well, are you done?”

“Done what?” Jimin asks, unsure. He laughs a little, a failed attempt to dispel the tension.

“Whatever this is,” Yoongi says, gesturing in their direction.

“There’s no need to be rude, Yoongi,” Seokjin says. His stomach is all tied up in knots.

There’s a knock on the door. All of three of them stay still.

Eventually, Jimin hops off the counter, disappears to the front hall and returns again. Yoongi stares obsoletely at the fridge. “Food’s here,” he says, with a wan smile, leaving the delivery bags on the table. “I’m just…I’ll leave you to it. My treat.”

“Jimin,” Seokjin starts, but has no idea how to continue.

“Don’t worry, hyung. Take care of yourself, remember?” A click of the door, and he’s gone.

A beat of silence passes.

“What the fuck was that about?” Seokjin asks, sliding off the counter to face Yoongi. “What’s your problem?”

“What’s my problem?” Yoongi asks, heat in his voice. “What do you think you were doing?”

“I was having a conversation with a friend!” Seokjin says.

“Really? It looked more like that—”

“I told you all of this before,” Seokjin says, frustration building in his temples like a migraine. “We went on a date or two, then decided to leave it at that and stay friends. That was months ago. Anyway, what does that have to do with anything? How is that any of your business?” He walks over to the couch, roots out his phone to jam it into its charger. He needs to give himself something to do so he doesn’t look at Yoongi.

“It’s your job to protect humanity, not get in its pants. And in case you haven’t noticed, you haven’t been doing a great job of it lately.”

“You’re going to lecture me on this?” Seokjin is incensed. “What happened to both of us needing a break? Those breaks you take me on? What happened to needing time to be normal, peaceful humans?” It’s a lie, Seokjin realises, it always has been. There’s nothing human about him, and now there’s nothing peaceful about him. He takes a step back as if he’s been pushed.

Yoongi shrugs. “I wanted to make you feel better,” he says, “nobody performs at their best under too much pressure.” He crosses his arms. “It’s not like I don’t care, hyung, but we’re in the middle of our toughest case yet, and you’re having dinner with a friend?”

“I didn’t realise it was wrong of me to have friends. You’re being hypocritical.”

“I’m not! I’m your friend, hyung. But I know what’s going on, I know what the stakes are, I know what you ar—” Yoongi pauses. “No, I’m phrasing that wrong. What I mean is that—”

Yoongi continues on, voice softer, the placation of a man who is embarrassed of a reaction. Seokjin doesn’t hear any of it. I know what you are. His mind zeroes in on the phrase until he can’t think of anything else.

“—I don’t think now is the best time. This thing is waiting for a chance to attack you, and—”

What you are.

 I tried calling you and there was no answer! I thought you were going to be—”

Not who you are.

“—fucking, dead or something I don’t know – and you’re just having a grand old time with your friend? Maybe I overreacted, I’ll apologise to Jimin at a later date, but right now we need to work, we can’t waste any more time...”

“Get out,” Seokjin says.

Yoongi stops mid-sentence. “What?”

The sun has begun to set. It dips between two of the buildings in front of Seokjin’s balcony, a deep golden light peeking through and falling into the apartment.

“Get out of my apartment now.”

“Hyung…” Yoongi says, frowning. He steps forward. “Hyung, I know some of that came out wrong, but we need to—”

“Get out.” Seokjin’s voice is louder this time, but still wobbly. “Get out, or I’ll throw you out.”

Yoongi’s eyes widen at that. Finally, he takes a step back. “Hyung.”

“How many times do I have to say this? Leave me alone.” Seokjin swallows down the urge to sob. “Just – just go, Yoongi. Go.”

“We—” Yoongi looks at his feet, then looks back up at him, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. Seokjin loves him so much it hurts. “We have a job to do.”

“I can do it myself,” Seokjin snaps, and it’s a lie, it’s a lie and he knows it, but he can’t stop himself. “When have you ever been of use during these jobs? In the start, when I was new at this, but not anymore.” He’s a killer, now. “I can handle this myself. I don’t need your help.”

Yoongi’s face begins to crumple. “Listen—”

“How many times do I have to say it? Stop bothering me. Leave me alone. Leave.” Seokjin turns around so Yoongi can’t see his face, can’t see the pain he’s failing to hide. He’s hurt Yoongi now, too, and a deep shame wells inside him but he says nothing. What you are. He waits, letting the silence hang until he hears Yoongi’s footsteps receding, hears the front door close behind him.

He doesn’t even know what you are.

Is this how Yoongi perceives him? A machine sent to do a job? Maybe Yoongi enjoys his companionship, but Yoongi’s only human, it’s natural for him. It’s unnatural for Seokjin, or at least it is now; Yoongi’s right, he’s here to defend and not to make friends, and he’s so completely, utterly stupid for fooling himself into thinking otherwise. His own feelings for Yoongi feel wrong and disgusting now, completely and utterly unwarranted and unnatural. He’s not a human. He’s not, not anymore.

It’s like Yoongi said. Jimin can’t be his friend. Jimin doesn’t know what Seokjin is. If he did, he never would approach him. Yoongi’s the only one who could stomach what Seokjin really is – a lump of flesh animated by Underworld magic.

He isn’t a person.

He’s a killing machine now.

Seokjin lets out a shout of frustration. He picks up the bags of food, hurls them across the room. The containers smash against the wall, spilling noodles down the side. He doesn’t need to eat, Jimin was wrong. He has no need for human functions. Food. Sleep. Friendship.

Seokjin can’t stop the cry that escapes his throat. He curls up around himself on the kitchen floor, fingers rooting into his hair. Why did he ever think he could do this? Yoongi’s right, he’s here with one purpose only, one he’s been failing miserably, all of these people have died (a knife in his throat, gasping for air, cold cold cold) and unlike him, none of them will ever get a chance to come back. Why did Taehyung have to pick him, the most useless excuse for a grim reaper? He can’t do this. Not alone, but he is alone, he’s so completely alone and he always has been since he came back.

And of course he’s alone – he’s not human. He doesn’t belong with people like Yoongi or Jimin, and he’s not from the Underworld, so he doesn’t belong with Hoseok or Namjoon or Taehyung. His feelings for Yoongi – he knows they’ll never be returned, and for the first time he realises how fortunate that is. Yoongi deserves someone real, someone genuinely human, someone who isn’t tied this far up in death magic, someone who brings things other than death and disaster and danger into his life. Someone who isn’t on a timer in a false body, counting down to the day he returns to the dead. Yoongi deserves someone so much better than him, and to even hope he’d resign himself to a zombie like Seokjin is cruel and selfish, and he needs to remember that.

Seokjin opens his mouth and cries. He gasps as sobs claw their way up his throat, he chokes them out into the space between the floor tiles. He’s not sure how long he cries for. At one point, Jungkook is there too, with placating words that Seokjin rejects, telling him to leave too. Not even Jungkook, a ghost of a human, fits with him. He’s more human in his ghostly form than Seokjin can ever hope to be, now.

He squeezes his eyes shut. He can hear them, now, the voices of all of the people who died because he failed to protect them, the voice of Minsong who he deliberately let die, the groans and snarls of all of the things he’s killed. What’s the difference now, between Seokjin and the person who murdered him? His murderer attacked him in a moment of panic, unplanned and unpractised. Seokjin’s sole purpose is dispatching creatures and ghouls and spirits back to the world of the dead. How is that not worse? Maybe they’re also damaging people, but if it’s in their nature, isn’t he in the wrong too?

By the time his breathing returns to normal, the sun has begun to set. Seokjin feels worse than he has in a long time.

He sniffles loudly, tries to wipe the mess of snot and tears from his face. He’s no closer to solving anything. He’s alone. He can’t do this alone.

Seokjin needs to apologise to Yoongi. He was cruel, and it was unwarranted – Yoongi was right, after all. He served Seokjin some hard to swallow truths, and in return he threw him out. Seokjin was so wrong, he needs Yoongi.

He shouldn’t, but he does.

Seokjin wishes the Elders didn’t return him to his human body with the capacity for humanlike feelings. This would all be so much easier if he didn’t regularly forget the nature of his existence. He was far too used to being a human. A monster for hire has no business getting so emotional like this.

Seokjin dries his tears and pulls himself to his feet. He will apologise to Yoongi. He will apologise to Jungkook, too. But there’s something else he needs to do first. Maybe he should get a tattoo. Get the word zombie inked on the back of his hand so whenever his mind starts running away with emotions and other things he has forfeited rights to, he’ll remember who he really is again.

No. Not who he is.

What he is.

Seokjin feels like hell. He presses his hand into his back pocket, his spear is still there.

There’s someone else, someone he had forgotten about, someone who is caught between the worlds of living and dead almost as much as he is. He needs to pay them a visit.

And then – then he’ll make things right with Yoongi.

He wipes his eyes one last time.

***

The subway roars along its track. It’s not that busy. The work rush is over, but the night is still young, and humans are going out to eat, drink and play. Seokjin weaves past them, clutching his delicate cargo.

It’s easy to find her. Sometimes, during the day, he looks about casually for her. He never sees her. But when he needs her—

She’s there. Blonde hair, blue uniform. He sits beside her.

“What do you have for me this time?” she asks.

Seokjin hands her the plastic bag. It’s filled with water, and inside it a fish swims. “A blue betta from the Elder Yeomra’s pond.”

Jinsoul smiles. “You do bring me lovely gifts,” she says, with a smile. “I’m glad you’re still here. I thought Olivia would have taken you out.”

“You know about them, huh. I got my ass kicked.”

“I know that they don’t want you dead,” Jinsoul says. “Or…more dead than you already are.” She ignores Seokjin’s grimace. “We wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“So you’re saying I wouldn’t stand a chance against them.”

“No. You’re saying that. I’m saying thank you for the lovely gift. And now, what is it you want to know?”

“Song Hyeongchul and Choi Junil. Are they dead?”

Jinsoul pauses for a moment. “Have you ever heard of Tuscany Hills?”

“Tuscany? Like, in France?”

“Tuscany is in Italy. But Tuscandy Hills, it’s a complex of luxury villas in Gyeonggi-do. Extremely expensive, of course – but Song Hyeongchul’s parents own a summer home there. The whisperings have told me that both men – and Song’s little brother, and some of his friends—”

“The missing kids?”

“—Were seen there.”

They’re hiding.

“What’s the address?”

Jinsoul puts a hand on his wrist. “They’re not hiding from what you think they are,” she says. “They opened more than one ritual that night.”

Seokjin blinks. Then he remembers.

“Then?”

“They try playing the Midnight Game.”

“Oh. Anything happen?”

“Not much. A few things fall over, a door blows open, all easily staged. But they don’t close the ritual.”

“Isn’t that the most important part? To ensure whatever you invited is gone, and won’t come back?”

Fuck.

***

He glances at the time. If they leave – if they leave soon, they can make it to Gyeonggi-do before midnight. Seokjin calls Namjoon, calls Hoseok. Nothing. He considers calling Minki. No.

He calls Dongwoon instead. “Can you drive me to Gyeonggi-do?” he asks.

“You found them?”

“Yeah. It’s complicated, though. I need to stop this text message killer for good. They need to close another ritual before they’re safe, though.”

“Fucking kids.”

“To end this tonight, we need to be ready by midnight.” He runs up the stairs of his apartment block. “Which means…”

He needs to lure the demon out – he knows how to do that, he saw Hoseok do it. He needs to destroy the phone of the original sender, get Dongwook to get his brother to bring down the website. Then—the midnight game. Fuck. It’s so much for one person—

He pushes out onto the hallway, and, oh.

Yoongi is standing at his door. His eyes are red.

“Hyung—”

Seokjin can’t do this. “If you’re coming with me,” he says, “we need to leave soon.”

“Where?”

“Gyeonggi-do. Where Hyeongchul and Junil are hiding out.” Seokjin can’t meet Yoongi’s eye as he unlocks his apartment door. What does he need? Hoseok’s phone, the one with the text still on it. “There’s something you need to know,” he says. “The Midnight Game. They didn’t close it. That’s what they’re hiding from. We need to close it.”

“Fuck.” Yoongi sounds out of breath. Seokjin pauses. He turns around.

“You don’t have to come,” he says. “I know…I don’t really know. But you’re afraid of the Midnight Man. You don’t have to come. It’s fine to stay here.”

Yoongi bites his lip. He looks at the mess Seokjin made when throwing his furniture around in anger. “I’m not letting you go alone.”

“Yoongi.”

Yoongi meets his gaze, defiant. “Fuck what we just fought about,” he says. “I’ve been waiting to reunite with the Midnight Man for years. Do you have salt?”

***

They stand on the curb, waiting for Dongwook to pull up.

Seokjin rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet. “I’m sorry,” he says. Yoongi opens his mouth but Seokjin shakes his head. “I said I could do this without you. The truth is that you’re the one thing keeping me sane. I wouldn’t have made it two months without you. The truth is that you’re right: I’m not good at this job. And I need so much help, and some of that help is you. I’m sorry.”

There’s silence.

“Sometimes I want you all to myself,” Yoongi says, and Seokjin’s traitorous heart jumps in his dead chest. “I have spent my life so detached from so many people, because I know they’ll never see what I see, and – and sometimes, I feel like I’m drifting through this gigantic space without purpose but…but with you, it’s easy. Get up, fight ghosts, send demons back to hell. I can do this. I like having this sense of purpose. I like working with you. And I’m scared to go back to…how it was before. I get scared when I get reminders of how I’m just tagging along. I think you’re my best friend.”

Seokjin looks at his feet so he doesn’t cry. “Yoongi,” he says. “I’m not going to be here forever.”

“You said yourself that you don’t know how long you’ll be here.”

“I’m only a temporary fix,” he says. “For the Underworld. And for you and your sense of purpose.”

“You’re more than that, hyung.”

“You just.” Seokjin inhales sharply. “You just need to be prepared. I’m already dead.”

cold alleyway a knife in his throat hot blood—

“I know. I know.”

It was so selfish of him to push into Yoongi’s life. Now, neither of them will ever be free of…whatever this is.

Seokjin smiles, just a little. “And you have no reason to be jealous of Jimin, Yoongi-chi.”

“I know that too.” Yoongi scrunches up his shoulders. “I’m just…not always rational. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too.” Seokjin looks down. “You hurt me accidentally so I chose words to hurt you on purpose. It was cruel of me.”

“You’re not cruel, hyung,” Yoongi says, as if Seokjin isn’t little more than an automatic killer. “Are we good?”

He nods. A raindrop splashes on his forehead. Then another.

Yoongi pulls his hood up. “It’s going to pour,” he says. “You should get a jacket, hyung.”

“No need.” Seokjin’s already dead. The rain won’t hurt him now.

***

On the drive to Gyeonggi-do, they form their plan.

“You have a plan? On how to kill that thing?” Lee Dongwook’s knuckles are white on the steering wheel.

Seokjin nods. “I need space,” he says. “And some mirrors. Then I think I can get it.”

“You need to get it as soon as possible,” he says. “So it doesn’t have time to kill anyone else.”

“As soon as we close the Midnight Game.”

“That ritual lasts for three hours,” Yoongi interrupts from the back seat. “Someone else could die during that time.”

“I could try this…Midnight Game,” Dongwook says. “I don’t know much about it, though.”

Seokjin shakes his head. “We need you to make sure nobody enters. And when I give my signal, you need to be ready to pass it on to your brother so he can take the website down. You’re on the sideline for this one.”

Dongwook doesn’t look happy about that, but he doesn’t argue.

“Let me deal with the Midnight Man,” Yoongi says. Seokjin’s eyes flicker to him in the rear-view mirror. But he terrified you before, he wants to say.

Yoongi leans forward. “Listen. All my life – since playing that game the first time…I’ve always felt him. I’ve always felt like he was coming for me. And now, he is. Now, I have a chance to shut him out for good. I never closed the ritual. Neither did those kids. Now, we have a chance to. Do you understand?”

“Something bad could happen.”

“I know. Trust me.”

Seokjin bites his lip. If Yoongi takes care of those kids, Seokjin will be free to fight the demon. They could have this wrapped up by 3am. It’s tempting. But Yoongi…Yoongi is opening himself up to danger, and once the ritual starts Seokjin cannot enter. Seokjin will not be able to protect him.

Yoongi has never asked Seokjin to protect him.

Yoongi can handle himself, but it’s not about that. Seokjin loves him.

Seokjin also has a duty to perform.

He rubs his eyes. “I trust you,” he says. “I’ll leave it to you. But you have to promise me not to do anything stupid, alright?”

Yoongi rests a hand on his shoulder. “I promise. You have to promise too.”

“Alright.”

Seokjin comes from a comfortable family, but even he feels dwarfed by the luxury of Tuscany Hills. There are security guards at the gate, but Dongwook flashes his expired Seoul Metropolitan Police identification card. He tells them they’re here for a stake out, that there shouldn’t be any disturbance until the morning, and slips them a thick wad of 50,000 won notes in exchange for them turning off the CCTV and the alarm system on one of the empty houses, opposite their alleged stake out location. “One working man is more inclined to help another,” is what he says to Seokjin as they drive down the avenue.

And fuck, yeah, Seokjin gets it; this place is insane. Each house is like something out of a magazine, the type of house Seokjin has only ever seen on television. Faced with beautiful stone, and pretty windows, and all far enough for each other so their rich occupants won’t be disturbed by one another. Only about half of them look occupied; these are the getaway houses for Seoul’s elite. These aren’t even for permanent living.

Dongwook stops three houses down from the address under the Song family name. “Ready?”

Seokjin shrugs. He pulls out his spear. He checks his watch. Eleven. They have time. He pads softly over to the door. He rings the doorbell.

Silence.

Nobody answers.

He looks behind his shoulder to Yoongi, who shrugs.

Seokjin bangs on the door this time.

“Hello? We’re here to help.”

Again, nothing.

Seokjin sighs. They’re wasting time. He takes a step back from the door, walks around to the nearest window on the ground floor before slamming the blunt end through the glass.

“Are you trying to get arrested?” Yoongi hisses, but Seokjin stays silent for a moment. There’s no noise from any of the houses. “Wait until I give the all clear.”

He clambers in the window first. The streetlamp from outside shines into what looks like a living room. Seokjin feels around for a light switch. He finds one just as a voice calls out.

“Don’t move!”

He flicks the switch.

Song Hyeongchul, is wide-eyed and unwashed and pointing a gun at him. It’s an old-fashioned revolver, probably a family heirloom. He’s terrified out of his wits.

Seokjin raises a hand – the one that isn’t holding a weapon. “Listen,” he says. “Hyeongchul, right? I’m here to help you—”

There’s the crack of a gunshot. Seokjin stumbles back. He hears Yoongi calling his  name.

“What the fuck!” Seokjin says, bringing a hand to the blood at his jugular. “I told you I was here to help!”

“Sorry! I panicked!”

“Drop the gun!”

“Why aren’t you dying?”

“Drop it!”

Yoongi clambers in, followed by Dongwook.

“For fuck’s sake,” Seokjin says, doing his best to shake off the pain. “This is the second time I’ve been shot this week. By someone I’m trying to help, no less.”

Dongwook shrugs. “Don’t worry about it, kid. Mr. Song, I assume?”

“Who are you people? Are you the police? Listen, we didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt—”

“We’re here to help,” Seokjin says. Yoongi’s fussing over him, using the sleeve of his sweater to mop up some of the blood. He’s breaking into a sweat at the sensation of pushing the bullet out. Again, not something he wanted to deal with twice in a week. “I understand you summoned a demon or two? The police can’t help you. We can.”

***

In the end, it was the Midnight Man they were running from. The night, he appeared in one of the boy’s dreams. The next night, in another. Getting closer. He began appearing in their homes. So they ran.

This was before the first death from the text messages had even happened. The Midnight Man was coming after them, so they ran from their homes, terrified it would attack them, attack their families. They ran to the Song’s vacation home, and by then they knew about the phone demon, so Hyeongchul let his run out of battery, in the futile hope that because it was originating from him, if his phone was dead, well…the demon would be too.

They knew the police would be after them too, but if they were taken into custody they wouldn’t stand a chance against the Midnight Man. They’ve been lying low; Hyeongchul and Junil, Hyeongchul’s little brother and three of his friends, too afraid to turn on the lights. They’ve been spending most of the time in the basement. They don’t sleep at night. They sit in a circle of salt together. They can feel the Midnight Man approaching, even during the day. The Midnight Man is stalking them, waiting for one of them to separate from the group.

“You should leave,” Hyeongchul says. His teeth chatter. He’s too thin. “It’ll come for us.”

“And what are you going to do about it?”

“Try to protect the kids. This is my fault.” He pauses. “I thought we could wait it out. If we hid and stayed quiet, it would give up on us. But it won’t. My little brother’s down there.” His eyes are bloodshot. “I’m going to give myself to it, you know. To try appease it, so it’ll leave the others alone. I just…need to work up the courage.”

“It won’t,” Yoongi says quietly. “It won’t leave them alone.”

Hyeongchul’s face crumples, but he doesn’t cry. “You should leave,” he says, “before it marks you, too.”

“Nobody is dying tonight,” Seokjin says with a sigh. “Trust me. This isn’t even the worse fuck-up you’ve let into the world. We know how to fix it.” They think they know how to fix it, but Hyeongchul doesn’t need uncertainty.

He looks up at him now. His eyes drift to the healed bullet hole in his chest. “Who are you?”

Seokjin winks. “I’m just the cleaner. Are you going to introduce us to your friends, or what?”

***

“Minhyuk, Kwangsoo, Jiyoung, Kijung…they’re all dead?” Choi Junil rubs a hand over his face. He doesn’t look like the man that was in the video, not anymore. Dongwook rests a hand on his shoulder, begins speaking to the two men about – legal proceedings, or something, and Seokjin looks up.

There are four kids in the basement, sitting in the corner, watching them with wide eyes.

Well, they’re not kids. Teenagers.

He walks over to them and kneels beside them. “What are your names?”

“I – I’m Song Hyeongjun,” the first one says, all big brown eyes and curly hair. Damn. Was Seokjin this tiny at age sixteen? He dearly wishes that Hyeongjun didn’t have an older brother that was willing to scare people for content.

The other boys are his best friends; Wonjin, Jungmo and Minhee, all dragged into this mess by circumstance. Seokjin can see the fear written into the way they sit, hunched shoulders, squeezed close together, eyes that keep darting towards the door.

“Will we be able to go home after this?” Jungmo asks. “I…I didn’t want…the thing to get my parents. So I didn’t tell them where I was going. I knew they would follow me.” He sniffs. “I want my mom.”

Seokjin swallows the lump in his throat. “You’ll all be able to go home soon,” he says. “I promise.”

“Who are you? Are you police? Are you going to arrest us?”

“What? No. No. First of all, you kids are completely innocent in all of this. The police are looking for you but only because your families miss you. You’re not going to be in any trouble.” Hyungchul and his friend, however, will be a different case. Seokjin doesn’t need to say that now, though. “I’m not police. I’m…I’m a ghost hunter.”

Wonjin’s eyes are the size of dinner plates. “A ghost hunter?”

Seokjin tries to smile. “Yep. Sometimes ghosts get a little lost. I help them on their way. That’s one of my jobs. My other job is to keep people safe from things like the Midnight Man.”

“You’ve fought him before?”

“Not the Midnight Man, but things like him. I’ve fought monsters, demons, you name it.”

“Vampires?”

“Not yet.”

The boys share a collective shudder.

“Are your friends ghost hunters too?” one of them – Minhee? – asks.

“Kind-of. The tall one, he used to be a police officer, but he left. Now he’s a private detective. He tracks down cases that have supernatural elements to it. The other one…” Yoongi is exchanging quiet words with a shaken Song Hyeongchul, “he’s psychic. He can talk to the dead or perform rituals to keep them out. He’ll be the one helping you most.”

“What?”

Yoongi makes eye contact and nods. Seokjin stands up to address everyone. They don’t have much time left.

“You have two problems right now,” he says, “and both want to kill you. You’re being stalked by the Midnight Man because you didn’t close the ritual – this is the most important part. If you invite something in, you need to close the door after it leaves. That’s why he’s still tracking you.”

“How do we close it now? The original game was weeks ago…” Junil trails off. Seokjin can see the cogs turning in his brain. “Fuck.”

“The only way to shut him out is to play again.”

“No way.”

“We can’t—we can’t do that.”

“Listen. Yoongi – uh, Yoongi is a bit of an expert in the Midnight Game.” Yoongi raises an eyebrow at his exaggeration but doesn’t call him out on it. “Yoongi has been playing with rituals far longer than I have. He’s going to play with you, make sure it goes alright, and then close the ritual properly. After that, the Midnight Man won’t be able to get through to you.”

“Wait,” Hyeongchul says, hands still jittery. “You’re not even going to play with us?”

Seokjin shakes his head. “Right now I’m being stalked by a different demon. I read that text.”

“The one that’s killing people?” One of the kids.

Seokjin nods. “The longer it’s out there, the higher the chances of someone else reading it, someone else getting killed by it. I’m going to trap it in the house across the street, and I’m going to kill it. By the end of the night, both of these demons will be back where they came from.” He forces himself to meet Hyeongchul’s eye. “After this night, it will all be over.”

“What if something goes wrong?”

“We’ll deal with it.”

“I don’t want to put the kids in any more danger,” Hyeongchul says. “Junil and I – we can play this game, close it ourselves.”

Yoongi shakes his head. “That might prevent the Midnight Man from hunting you,” he says, “but it won’t protect them.”

The two friends look at each other for a long moment before nodding at each other. “We’ll do it,” Junil says.

Seokjin looks back at the teenagers. “This is really scary,” he says, “and it probably feels like a nightmare. I promise it will end soon. If you can be brave for just a little longer – play this game for another few hours – it will all be over. Can you do that?”

“We don’t have much of a choice, do we?” Wonjin says, rubbing at red eyes.

Seokjin looks at his watch. For the Midnight Game to work, they need to start at 12:00 exactly. They have a few minutes left.

“How many mirrors are in this house?” he asks.

“What?”

“Every mirror – from bathrooms, bedrooms, whatever – I need help bringing them to the other house.”

Yoongi shoots him a look. “It didn’t work with Hoseok,” he says.

“One mirror didn’t work with Hoseok,” he says.

The house across the street has the same floor plan as the Song house but is currently unoccupied and only half-furnished. Ghostly white sheets cover the sofa and chairs, keeping the dust off of expensive leather. Seokjin pulls three full-length mirrors from the bedrooms and another two from the bathroom walls and sets them up in haphazard pattern in the empty living room. They bring over more from the Song household; long thin ones broken off of wardrobe doors, three small cosmetic mirrors (the kind that magnify your reflection), a decorative carved hall mirror, along with a bunch of pots and pans, the wing mirrors from the car, anything you can see yourself in. Seokjin spaces them out through the space, a shabby homemade house of mirrors.

It’ll work.

“I see,” Yoongi says. Seokjin looks at him. “It’s a good thing rich people are so vain. I never thought they would need so many mirrors.” From where they stand, Seokjin can see Yoongi in three separate reflections. In his peripheral vision, he can see himself many times over.

“It’s good for us,” he says.

It’s almost.

“Keep your phone on,” Yoongi says. “If you need a moment – if you’re hurt, or – need to get out of there – send the text to me. I’ll read it and it will leave you alone. Besides, I won’t be taking any photographs.”

Seokjin nods. “Alright. But you have to send it right back to me. I’ll read it when I’m ready.”

“I’m serious. Send it to me if you can’t handle it.”

“Be careful.”

Yoongi shrugs. “You too.” He leaves the house. Seokjin watches him cross the street, watches him nod to Dongwook who’s positioned at his car. Seokjin holds eye contact with him briefly. They nod.

Inside the Song household, all of the lights are off. Seokjin knows that all of them – Yoongi, Hyeongchul, Junil, the four kids – will be writing their names on pieces of paper, pricking their fingers to let a drop of blood splatter on the name. After a moment, Seokjin sees them open the door. They lay their pieces of paper on the front step, light their candles on top of it. They go back inside.

For a moment, nothing. Yoongi will be knocking, now – twenty-two knocks, the last falling on the stroke  of twelve – the door opens again. They blow out their candles. Seokjin’s stomach is tied in a knot. They go back inside, and Yoongi closes the door. The Midnight Man will be in with them now, and he won’t be leaving until 3:33am. Three hours. Thirty-three minutes.

Be safe, Seokjin thinks. He watches the door of the other house for another moment, then sighs, centring himself in the middle of his constructed maze, standing opposite the largest of the mirrors.

He opens his camera.

***

A grim silence falls over the premises. Yoongi is nearly bowled over by the presence he can feel.

He has to subdue a tremble in his hands as he relights the candle.

Last time – back then, when he played – he could feel him there, he could feel a gaze on him that had no source. But it was distant. Back then, he knew nothing. Now he does know, and he can tell the presence – the Midnight Man – it’s a lot stronger and it’s a lot closer. It fills the air, the gaps between the furniture, the very oxygen molecules themselves. And it’s angry. And it’s hungry. And it’s been waiting – it’s been waiting weeks to finish the job with these kids, and it’s been waiting years for Yoongi to walk back into this trap.

The most important rule, according to the ritual, is to avoid provoking the Midnight Man. It’s too late for that.

Yoongi exhales slowly. He’s not a scared little boy anymore.

He’s not.

He’s not.

So he breathes in slowly again, does his best to settle an air of authority around himself. The others are looking to him, after all.

“Okay,” he says. All of his hairs are standing on edge. “Remember to stay close. Hyeongchul and Hyeongjun, stay together. Junil and Jungmo. Wonjin and Minhee, stick near me. Keep moving.”

Yoongi starts them off by taking a tentative step toward the kitchen. He can hear the shuffling of the boys behind him. The corridor is dark. He inches forward. His stomach coils in a knot.

Three hours. Thirty-three minutes. But the Midnight Man is restless, is aggressive, and Yoongi knows it’ll make a move long before that.

The trio make it into the kitchen. One of the streetlamps shines through the window and glints off marble countertops. The two boys with him are clinging to each other with the hands that don’t hold their candles.

“You need your hand free,” Yoongi says, as kindly as he can. “If your candle goes out…”

As he says it, he feels a chill at the back of his neck.

His flame goes out.

The rules of the Midnight Game clearly state you must keep your candle lit at all times. The candle will go out when the Midnight Man approaches. You have ten seconds to relight the candle, or…

One. Two. Three.

“Hyung!” One of the kids points.

Yoongi stays calm, pulls the lighter out of his pocket and relights his candle before he counts to seven. “It’s alright,” he says. “If it happens to you, stay calm. Let’s go.” The Midnight Man is still in the area.

***

The text demon had known the difference between Hoseok and a mirror image. Hoseok had used the front camera, to photograph ahead of him; Seokjin wonders if this tipped the demon off.

So opens the Snow app, selects one of those filters which causes his own image to triple, so it looks like there are three of him, not one – and he angles his selfie in front of one of the mirrors. The filtered versions of himself appear in the mirror, too – which reflects off another, then another—

And Seokjin waits until the darkness moves in the corner of the screen, his hands sweaty—

Movement.

He moves first. He dips to the side, sliding his spear to full-length in one fluid motion. The demon, the heavy sprawl of smoky limbs – it falls for it. It lands at the spot to the right of Seokjin, where one of his filter-doubles would have been, if they had been real.

It squeals when it realises there is nothing there, that the image fades away, and Seokjin slices.

The creature pulls away just in time, and Seokjin ducks out of the way. It’s injured, a sickly green fluid coming out of its side, and Seokjin feels a grim satisfaction thinking about how much Hoseok had bled. It’s disorientated as it looks around – in the centre of the room it’s seeing Seokjin and about six full size reflections of him – not to mention distorted glances in the smaller mirrors – and for a moment it doesn’t know which one to strike.

This is smart. This is a demon infamous for its cleverness, one that even Hoseok couldn’t beat. It will work it out. The disorientation will only last a second.

It’s all Seokjin needs. He dashes towards the centre, sees all of his reflections break into a run, and with a double-handed grip on his spear he stabs it into the dark mass. It yowls, brown teeth gnashing, and Seokjin begins to let energy thrum down his hands and into the spear, to focus on separating its soul.

One powerful limb trashes out and knocks his feet from under him. He crashes to the ground. He keeps his grip on the spear, but not his force, and the moment’s slip is all the creature needs before it slips away, leaving Seokjin alone in the centre of the room.

He inhales sharply.

***

Yoongi controls his exhale in an effort to keep himself calm. In, two, three, four. Hold, two, three, four. Out, two, three, four. Hold, two, three, four.

The whispering has gotten louder. He keeps seeing a humanoid shape in the corner of his eye, but whenever he looks it’s gone. These are all symptoms of the Midnight Man being in the area. In theory, this means if you leave the area they should lessen.

They aren’t lessening.

His candle has blown out five times already.

The Midnight Man is following him. It doesn’t want him getting away this time.

Yoongi tries to keep his breathing under control, tries to take even steps and look unperturbed, even though his heart is hammering in his ribcage. He feels sick. He’s grateful for the dark so the kids can’t see the line of sweat beading at his temples. Is this how Seokjin feels when he goes up against a ghost or demon? Maybe Yoongi isn’t built for bravery after all.

Maybe he should leave the kids to wander on their own. He originally wanted all of them to stick with an adult, but if the Midnight Man is following him, he might be more risk to them than help. What can he do if the Midnight Man attacks one of them?

He digs his fingernails into his hand. You need to calm down. He needs to keep a level head.

“Hyung!”

Yoongi whips around. Wonjin’s candle has flickered out. His stomach drops. One. Two.

Wonjin fumbles, fishing out the lighter from his back pocket. He clicks it on, but it just coughs.

Three. Four. Five.

“It’s not working.”

Yoongi’s insides are cold. He takes out his own lighter, throws it to Wonjin. Wonjin fumbles but catches it.

Six. Seven.

“Hurry,” he says, voice betraying the urgency he’s feeling.

Eight.

Wonjin’s hands are shaking so badly. His thumb keeps slipping.

Nine.

“Wonjin-ah, hurry!” Minhee is shielding his own candle with his hand.

Ten.

The temperature drops lower.

“Fuck the lighter. Get your salt!”

If a player fails to relight their candle ten seconds after it has blown out, the only way they can avoid the Midnight Man’s attack is to draw a circle of salt around themselves. Wonjin drops the candle completely, diving for the cellar of salt in his pocket, and spins in a circle, creating a haphazard circle.

He repeats the rotation several times, frantic. He’s breathing fast.

“Hey,” Yoongi says, his own voice shaking. “Hey, it’s okay – it’s fine. You’re alright.”

He dares not step over the circle of salt.

“Is everything okay down there?” a voice shouts from upstairs.

“Wonjin got salted!” Minhee shouts back. The noise makes Yoongi jump.

He crouches down, mindful of his own candle. “Listen,” he says, “you’ll be fine. You’re safe now. You can’t leave the circle until the game is finished, and you can’t fall asleep. Can you do that for me?”

Wonjin nods. His face is sticky. He’s so scared. “Don’t…I don’t want to be left alone down here. With him.”

Yoongi nods. “I have to keep playing,” he says. “So I have to keep moving. But I’ll keep to this room, or the kitchen. I’ll only be a few feet away. You’ll be able to hear me at all times, I promise.”

Wonjin nods.

Yoongi straightens up. “Minhee, go up and stick with Hyeongchul. Tell them to stay upstairs, if they can.”

Minhee glances at his friend, clearly torn. Wonjin nods. Minhee scampers up the stairs.

“Are you okay?” he asks Wonjin again.

Wonjin is clearly scared out of his wits, and Christ, all of these kids are going to need therapy after this, aren’t they? Still, he nods, so Yoongi straightens up.

“If you’re scared, call me. I’ll come closer, okay? I’m going to keep moving now. I’m just going to walk as far as the kitchen, then I’ll come back, okay?”

Yoongi glances at his watch. It’s only been half an hour. Fuck.

***

Seokjin sees the dark shape move to his right and he leaps to his feet, but it’s just the shape in one of the reflections, which means—

He drops and rolls, missing the attack by a hair’s breadth. The demon lurches forward, slams straight into one of the mirrors, and seemingly disappears.

Seokjin takes a tentative step forward. Can this thing dive into the mirror itself? He looks around. He sees it in three, four of the mirrors, but he doesn’t know which one is the real deal—

It dives forward, coming  out of the mirror on his right as quick at lightning. It doesn’t attack him, though; it ducks into one of the mirrors opposite. Seokjin lowers into a fighting stance. He was right; this demon is too smart. It’s already catching up on his plan. It jumps forward again and Seokjin tries to slash at it but it doesn’t move in the way he expects. It’s so fast, it’s a blur.

Fuck.

It moves again, jumping across the room and snagging Seokjin’s thigh with its claws. It jumps from one mirror to another, until – it’s on his right, now! Seokjin prepares for an attack on the right, but no—

It was its reflection darting to the right, the real thing is to his left—

He cries out as its tears into his left shoulder, staggering but staying on his feet. He’s being trapped by his own maze. Panic thrums up his gullet. He turns frantically. He has fallen into his own trap, fool, fool, fool—

Movement. Seokjin tries to move quick enough, but a force crashes into him from behind. It takes him off his feet completely; he slams through the air, crashing against one of the mirrors and into the wall. The broken shards dig into his skin and pain bursts across his back where the beast touched him, really touched him. It’s a mindnumbing pain, the aftereffect of an attack designed to gouge out his very soul. The world spins.

Get up. Get up.

Seokjin can’t move. So far, the demon has been focusing on speed over strength. If he stays down, he’ll be hit with an attack of the same calibre that took Hoseok out of action. He can’t afford to take that hit. He’s sweating. His spear has fallen out of reach.  

***

Yoongi hears a crash and a shout of pain. He rushes to the window to peer across the street.

Through the net curtains he sees the lights are still on in the other house, the house Seokjin’s fighting in, but he can’t see anything else. Dongwook stands facing the house, tension written into his stance. Another person who doesn’t like being left on the sideline.

Is Seokjin okay?

Yoongi, in his worry, barely notices his candle has gone out. The realisation hits him like an ice cube trailed down his spine. How long has it been? How many seconds?

He goes to grab his lighter. It’s not in his pocket. He gave it to Wonjin earlier. In the corner, he sees the shadowy humanoid shape.

Yoongi runs.

It follows.

He skids into the room where Wonjin is trapped behind the circle of salt. Wonjin lets out a cry. It’s not good if even he can see the Midnight Man now, it means the Midnight Man has taken a strong enough shape that he’s visible to non-psychic eyes—

“Behind you!”

***

Seokjin isn’t fast enough to make it to his spear in time to deflect the attack. He sees the form taking shape, about to launch across at him and end it. He needs time – not much, just enough time to get back on his feet, take a few breaths, enough to get his hands on his weapon again—

He takes out his phone. Double taps the message. Forward. The demon launches towards him—

***

Yoongi’s phone buzzes. He swallows tightly, stopping in his tracks to open the message.

He doesn’t read it. He whirls around. As he raises his phone, the light of the screen illuminates the form of the Midnight Man. It’s an accurate name, Yoongi thinks, because this was definitely a man once. Its big dark eyes reflect the jumpscare gif Seokjin had sent him. It’s a good thing that Yoongi is a millennial that spends far too much time on his phone. Muscle memory enables him to open his camera app even as the Midnight Man launches toward him—

***

The demon disappears. Yoongi has read it. Has he opened his camera? Seokjin doesn’t want to give it a chance to harm Yoongi. He breathes deeply, lets the feeling of magically induced adrenaline pull him to his feet. He grabs his spear.

Fuck this demon so bad. It really wants to mess with reflections. Well, he’ll let it.

Seokjin came up with this trap. The demon adapted it for himself. Well, Seokjin’s not going to let himself be outsmarted by a fucking demon.

He prepares himself to read the text again.

***

If the Midnight Man catches you, it will paralyse you in a hallucination of your greatest fear, all the while tearing out your organs one by one. Yoongi is glad it doesn’t catch him. He has many fears. He doesn’t want to know which is his greatest.

The Midnight Man reaches for him, and then there’s another shape in the darkness that crashes into it. They go down, and a yowl comes out from the Midnight Man as demons clash. Yoongi wastes no time. He runs toward Wonjin, pulls out his own salt, and protects himself inside of a circle. He can’t see what’s happening, but he hears the crashes, noises that make his hackles rise, a sickening squelch, a growl. He feels that constant presence hover. The Midnight Man is hurt. Yoongi wants to sob. At the same time, he feels a sick satisfaction at manipulating the evil violence of the well-demon and directing it, however briefly, at the Midnight Man.

***

Seokjin reads the text message again. This time, he doesn’t bother with the Snow filter – the demon won’t fall for the same trick twice. The energy shifts, heavy with humidity, and the dark shape appears in his camera.

This time, it goes straight for one of the mirrors. It wants to confuse him, use the same tactics to disorient him until it can get a clean hit. Seokjin won’t let it. He follows the mirror it dives behind, follows closely, and slams his spear into the mirror so hard it shatters underneath the weight of the spear. Seven years of bad luck be damned. The combination of his fear and rage, the energy thrumming through his entire body, the conductive weapon underneath his skin, and the mirror shatters into a million tiny pieces.

The demon has to move to a new refuge. It darts into the next reflection. Seokjin follows, breaks this one too. And the next. And the next. As the demon moves from mirror to mirror it tries catching Seokjin out, but Seokjin’s ready for it; he twists away from its mass, attacking the mirrors instead.

He’s eliminating its options.

Two mirrors remain. The demon flies into one of them.

Seokjin isn’t sure what it is, that connection between the image of victims in cameras and reflections, mirrors and technology – it’s something for Jungeun or the Reapers to work out, not him.

He rips the sheet covering the sofa off the furniture, tosses it over the mirror the demon is hiding in.

It only has one direction to go: the mirror Seokjin stands in front of.

Time seems to slow down.

The demon leaps from the mirror before it’s covered by the sheet. It soars through the air, towards the last remaining mirror, towards Seokjin. It knows as well as he does that it has only one choice. It moves towards Seokjin with killing intent, teeth and claws and violence. Seokjin’s soul is tucked away in a medallion in Yoongi’s apartment. Who knows if this thing can destroy it? Seokjin doesn’t want to find out.

Hoseok’s voice. You’re never pushing offense.

Seokjin doesn’t let it get that close. He lets his weight fall to his back leg, aims carefully, and throws his spear. It strikes the demon in the centre of its body, and it squeals, carried forward by the momentum as the spear launches itself in the wall, pinning the demon to it. It’s screaming. Seokjin pursues it, puts his hand on the spear and digs it deeper into its body. He could try prying its soul into a cylinder, but he thinks about Taehyung destroying Gain, thinks about how he needs to get rid of it as soon as possible. His body vibrates with the magical frequencies running through it, and he sees the demon’s soul, a brown, oily, thing, and he crushes it.

***

A three thirty-three, Yoongi and the others leave the building.

The boys stand together, hugging each other tightly.

“After the demon left,” Yoongi says, “the Midnight Man was injured. I saw him. He dragged himself into the room, and he looked at me for a long time, and I could feel it – his resignation. The game didn’t end. But he had withdrawn. I could feel it.” Seokjin doesn’t think Yoongi realises he’s crying. He doesn’t point it out. “He’s gone. He’s not coming back. Not for me, anyway.”

“You did well,” Seokjin says. “Thank you. I couldn’t have done this without you.” He feels a bone-deep exhaustion. Yoongi doesn’t need protecting. Never has. Still, underneath his weariness he feels proud of him. He loves him so much he burns with it.

Hyeongchul approaches him later. “I don’t know how this is going to be resolved,” he says, “but I’m willing to do jailtime, if the police think it’s me.”

“It wasn’t you,” Seokjin says. He just wants to sleep. “You started it. But you didn’t kill them.”

“I didn’t. I don’t know how I’m going to explain this, though. How can I explain this? But don’t worry. I won’t mention you at all.”

“Dongwook will help you with the legalities,” Seokjin says. “He knows the police.”

Hyeongchul pauses. “There’s something I want to tell you,” he says. “Earlier, I told you I let my phone die, believing the curse wouldn’t spread further. I hoped for that. I didn’t believe it, though. After the first death…a part of me knew how real it was. I knew people would die from it.”

Seokjin tilts his head. “Then why didn’t you warn them?”

“The more people you pass it on to, the safer you are,” Hyeongchul says, voice grim. His mouth is pulled into a tight line.

“You let them die to keep yourself safe?” Seokjin asks. His hand clenches.

“The first person to read it after me was Hyeongjun,” Hyeongchul says. “I couldn’t let it get my brother.”

Seokjin falters.

“I know what my decision has resulted in. I know I’m responsible for the deaths. And I wish…I wish I never did any of it. I wish I never had to make that decision. But the decision itself…I don’t regret. My little brother…” he trails off. “Anyway. You saved me. You saved all of us. I wanted you to know who I am. Thank you, again.” He bows, before walking away to rejoin his friends. The police are on their way. Seokjin and Yoongi need to slip away before they get there. As Hyeongchul walks away, he turns back one last time. “I don’t think we’ll meet again.”

“No,” Seokjin agrees.

***

“I can’t believe you killed it!” Hoseok has looked better, but it’s a great improvement on the shape he was in recently. “I couldn’t even do it! I mean, I always had faith in you…it’s just really impressive.”

Yoongi tips his soju glass against Seokjin’s. “You’re doing well.”

Namjoon smiles at him, full of thought. “You were able to use your human experiences and knowledge to overcome this challenge,” he says. “You did something we never could have done. Nobody should ever underestimate you again. You’re stronger than you know.” Seokjin is awkward with the praise. Something doesn’t sit right with him. “If you put your mind to it, nothing – nobody – will stand in your way.”

Hoseok chuckles, clapping him on the shoulder. “We’ve created a real monster, huh!”

Seokjin smiles, but his insides feel cold.