Archive of Our Own

This love is good
This love is bad
This love is a life back from the dead.

- Taylor Swift, This Love

When Heejin comes back from the dead, Hyejoo’s sitting on the nearest gravestone, examining her nails. 

There’s a lot less grave-breaking involved than Heejin would have liked. She’d been buried in a cheap, flimsy wooden coffin, something that she’d normally be upset about, but at the moment she’s glad—it made for far less kicking than she’d expected. And it paid off, because she’s finally out of the ground; albeit with dirt under her nails and all sorts of scratches covering her body. 

“Took you long enough,” Hyejoo says, and Heejin knows her well enough to tell by her expression that she’s been practising the line to try and sound as detached as possible. It doesn’t work. 

Heejin opens her mouth to quip back, but finds herself closing it again almost immediately—her throat’s choking up. Rusty after not being used for so long, she supposes. Hyejoo notices, because of course she does, and Heejin can spot her holding back a laugh. She scowls and tries to pretend like it doesn’t hurt her face. 

Hyejoo hands her a bottle of water. It takes some time before Heejin can even drink it properly, opening and closing her mouth like a fish. 

“Why’d you let them bury me in this dress?” is the first thing Heejin asks when she can get her vocal cords to work again. 

“Auntie insisted,” Hyejoo replies, the faintest hint of a smile gracing her face. 

Heejin looks down disdainfully at the dress again. It’s all torn and muddy now, thanks to her fight with the ground, but she assumes that it had been a pristine white at the funeral. The thought makes her feel queasy. 

“Next time, tell them to bury me in that glitter pant suit I bought last week,” she says instead. Hyejoo hits her on the shoulder for that, a tad harder than she usually would have.

“There won’t be a next time,” Hyejoo says sharply. “I’m mad enough at you for dying without a warning as it is. Do you know how much effort it takes to collect crow’s blood on such short notice?” 

“I don’t, but I trust you will be complaining about it for the foreseeable future,” 

Hyejoo sniffs. “You trust damn well.” 

“How much time was I gone for, anyway?” Heejin asks, changing tracks. She’s focused on slipping the straps of her dress under her shoulders, in an attempt to confirm the source of the precise incisions running down her chest. 

“Two weeks, give or take,” Hyejoo sounds distracted. “I’m sorry, what are you doing?”

“Trying to figure out where the hell these scars came from,” she grunts, “Did you let them autopsy me?”

“I needed the information on what killed you!” 

Frowning, Heejin slides her dress back into place, but not without stopping to prod at the cuts. Hyejoo’s watching her every move with a curious sort of intensity, and she asks, “Do those hurt?” 

“No,” Heejin says, after a moment. “Are they supposed to?” 

This time, it’s Hyejoo’s turn to frown. “I don’t know.” 

“Why did you ask, then?” 

“Felt like the right thing to do.” 

“And since when have you ever done the right thing to do?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake—” Hyejoo breaks off, exasperated. “Shouldn’t we be focusing on catching the people who killed you?” 

Heejin perks up at that, newly interested. As much fun as it was getting on Hyejoo’s nerves, getting vengeance felt like a far more pleasurable option at the moment. “Right, did you get any leads?” 

Hyejoo reaches silently into the bag leaning against a gravestone, pulling out a large knife covered in what looks like dried blood. Her blood, Heejin realises. 

“The murder weapon,” Hyejoo presents with a flourish.

“I wasn’t murdered,” Heejin corrects, irritated. “It was a casualty of battle.” 

“Whatever you say, dear,” Hyejoo replies, but Heejin’s barely paying attention. She takes the knife from Hyejoo’s hands, running a sly finger along the blade—it’s far colder than any human blade would be. She knows that if she slid her hands to her back, she’d be able to find a wound that matched the sharpness of the weapon. She doesn’t. 

Hyejoo’s watching her with a strangely disarming look of concern on her face, so Heejin clears her throat before things can get weird. “Right, so what does this tell us?” 

“There are inscriptions on the hilt in some sort of demon language that I haven’t been able to decipher yet,” Hyejoo explains. “I tried texting Amira for help, but she’s busy, so we’re going to Mark’s instead. They can probably help us with a translation.” 

“Wait, you haven’t visited Mark yet? Did you just get the weapon?” 

“Yeah, stole it from the police station on my way here,” Hyejoo says it like it isn’t a big deal at all. “Relax, I didn’t get caught or break anything. Well. Except the law.” 

Heejin nods slowly. If she wasn’t still struggling with regaining control over her facial features, she would probably have laughed. 

“The point is we have it now,” continues Hyejoo, in the same authoritative tone her voice takes on whenever she’s talking about her forensics, “and we have the information from your autopsy as well. There were faint traces of poison in your blood, likely a result of demon scratches.” 

“Demon scratches,” Heejin repeats. She can only barely remember the fight; all her memories of her actual death are pretty fuzzy. She does remember that those were the same bastards that they’d been hunting for a while now, and she isn’t about to let something as measly as a little death get in her way. “Did you manage to get anything out of the demons before they fled?” 

“No, most of them were already running away by the time we arrived,” she replies. “It looked like you interrupted them in the middle of a ceremony.” 

“Perfect timing as usual, Jeon,” Heejin murmurs it mostly to herself, but she catches a twitch of a smile from Hyejoo. 

Hyejoo’s phone buzzes with an alarm, and the other girl is quick to dismiss it with her free hand. “Speaking of perfect timing,” she says, hopping down from the headstone. “Time to go visit Mark.”

Mark’s apartment is exactly as Heejin remembered it: which, to be honest, isn’t that weird at all, seeing as it’s barely been two weeks. Mark answers the door almost immediately, startling when they see the two of them. They stare for another moment before finally stepping back to let them in. 

“Ah, ma chere, it’s so good to have you back!” Mark greets, hugging her once they’ve recovered from their surprise. Heejin sinks into the hug easily, she’d missed this. “I went to your funeral, you know.” 

“Thank you? I think?” She laughs, but she’s not really sure what the proper response is to someone saying they went to your funeral. Hyejoo isn’t there to save her either, having already moved inside, hunting for something. 

“It was rather drab,” they continue, musing. “You would’ve hated it.”

“That’s probably why people don’t go to their own funerals,” Heejin replies awkwardly. She thinks some part of her social skills died with her. 

Hyejoo abruptly returns to the doorstep, effectively cutting their conversation short, and wielding a banana: which she hands to Heejin. She wrinkles her nose in disgust. “I hate bananas.” 

“I know,” says Hyejoo. 

“I don’t want to eat it.”

“I know.” 

Heejin sighs, and takes a bite of the banana. 

“I suppose it’s good to know what you needed all that crow’s blood for,” Mark adds, watching the exchange with a quirk of their eyebrow. “I was starting to get worried.”

Heejin almost chokes on her banana bite. Whirling on Hyejoo, she asks, “You didn’t tell them what you were doing?” 

“I didn’t know if it would work,” she says, staring fixedly at a point on the floor. “I’ve only ever brought back small birds and animals to life before.” 

“You could’ve gotten hurt!” 

“But I didn’t, did I?” 

Hyejoo fixes her with a stubborn look, the kind she gets when she’s trying to cover up a particularly nasty emotion. Heejin doesn’t know what to say to that, so she doesn’t. 

“Well, as fun as it is watching you two bicker incessantly in my house and steal my food,” Mark interrupts, “why exactly are you here?” 

“We found the murder weapon,” Hyejoo explains, and extracts said weapon from her satchel. “We were hoping you could tell us what the inscriptions meant.” 

“Not a murder,” Heejin grumbles, voice muffled by the banana. They ignore her. 

“Mon dieu,” Mark’s voice sinks to a whisper as they take the knife from Heejin’s hands. “You two never told me you were hunting demons.” 

“It’s no different from any other bounty,” Hyejoo says, and the sharpness in her voice makes Heejin startle. Hyejoo’s never been anything but fond of Mark—what changed while she was gone?  

Luckily, Mark doesn’t seem to pick up on it. “I recognise the language, but I’ll have to look at my dictionaries to decode it further. You two should probably rest here for the night.”

Hyejoo turns to Heejin, a silent question in her eyes, and Heejin nods in response . She has no interest in dealing with her mother’s no doubt burning questions that night; she never approved of Heejin’s career in bounty hunting in the first place, and she’s too tired to deal with a tirade. Besides, they’ve crashed at Mark’s for as long as she can remember. It’s home. 

“Jeno’s out now, but he should probably be back within the hour,” Mark adds, “it would be good for you to get yourself checked by a medic before attempting anything else.” 

“Oh, I feel fine,” Heejin assures, because she does. Aside from the initial issues of getting her joints well-oiled again—so to speak—she isn’t in pain or anything. Being a zombie is much easier than expected. 

“I wasn’t talking about you,” they say, and nod in Hyejoo’s direction. “I meant her.” 

Hyejoo rolls her eyes. “I’m fine.” 

“You just raised a person from the dead, ma chérie . You should be unconscious by now.”

Heejin narrows her eyes, really looking at Hyejoo for the first time that night. Her features are arranged in careful innocence, but the dark circles under her eyes paired with the constant caffeine-induced twitching betray the extent of her tiredness. Still, Heejin’s used to her best friend overworking herself and lying about it, and this doesn’t feel like it’s anywhere near the red zone. 

“Most of the spell was done in parts across the week, I’m fine,” Hyejoo repeats impatiently. 

Mark still doesn’t look fully convinced, but they drop the topic. 

“I’ll just—” Hyejoo leaves for the guest bedroom without finishing her sentence. Heejin should probably follow after her, check again to see if she’s really alright, but she has a more pressing question on her mind:

“What’s up with you and Hyejoo?”

Mark blanches, an imperceptible flinch that Heejin would never have noticed had she not known them for so long. “What do you mean?”

“Come on, don’t pretend,” Heejin sighs, crossing her arms over her chest. “Did you two get into a fight at my funeral, or something? Why is she avoiding you?” 

“Hyejoo didn’t attend your funeral,” Mark says absently, and Heejin doesn’t quite know what to make of that information. They twirl a strand of their hair between their fingers before continuing, “She was really distraught after your death. I mean, we all were, but Hyejoo specifically. She isolated herself from everyone, stayed locked up in her room for days—now I know what she was doing, but I was really worried for her. We both said some things we didn’t mean.” 

Heejin wants to press for more—what things?—but she knows it wouldn’t be fair to ask that of Mark. They look genuinely distressed, in the way they only get when someone they care about is hurting. 

“You should talk to her,” Heejin says gently. It feels strange to know that indirectly, she was the cause of their fight, but she pushes the thought away. “I know you’re both too stubborn to reach out first, but I also know that you’ll regret it if you don’t do it now.”

Mark sends her a rueful grin. “I really am glad you’re back.” 

Heejin smiles back, about to head after Heejin, when she suddenly remembers what else she had to ask them. “Oh, also, could I borrow some—”

“Clothes?” Mark finishes, with a twinkle in their eye. “Yeah, the whole zombie princess look really isn’t doing it for you. I’m sure you can find something in Jeno’s closet that’ll fit you.” 

She perks up instantly at that: Jeno has the best fashion sense out of any of the witches she’s ever met, but he barely ever lets anyone near his closet. But knowing his boyfriend has its perks, and getting free passes is one of them. “Thanks, Mark!” 

“Anything for you, mon coeur. ”

Once Heejin showers and is done playing dress-up with Jeno’s clothes—she found a dress that she made a mental note to steal in the morning, after donning a pair of his heart-print pyjamas for the night—she heads back into the guest room to check on Hyejoo. 

Mark is leaving the room when she reaches it, and judging from their grin, she assumes the conversation went well. When she said they should talk soon, she didn’t mean that soon—but oh, well. At least it’s one less thing to worry about. 

Hyejoo is sitting on the bed, book in hand. She looks serene enough that Heejin almost doesn’t want to disturb her: but it’s too late, because the other girl already heard her come in. Dropping the book, she sends her a smile. 

“So,” Heejin starts, easily seating herself next to Hyejoo. “On a scale of one to ten, how much were you bullshitting being fine back there?”

“Not more than a four,” Hyejoo replies immediately. “I took a shower while you were gone, so now it’s more of a two, really.” 

Heejin’s satisfied. Tilting her head towards the book, she asks, “Whatcha reading?” 

“The spell I used to bring you back,” Hyejoo says, flipping it open to a page. “It mentions all sorts of possible side-effects and consequences.” 

“Oh,” Heejin is suddenly wary. “You didn’t say anything about any consequences.” 

“Relax, it’s not what you’re thinking. You’re not going to start sprouting warts.” 

Before Heejin has a chance to reply, Hyejoo reaches out for her hands without warning. The suddenness of the move sends a jolt of electricity racing up Heejin’s spine, and she forces herself to control her heart rate as Hyejoo closely examines her hands. 

“Are your hands healing up?” 

“Yes,” Heejin manages. If her voice sounds oddly wrangled, Hyejoo doesn’t notice it. “Are they not supposed to?”

“I don’t know. You’ve never been dead before.” 

“There’s a first time for everything,” Heejin says weakly. 

Hyejoo looks up at her. “Do they still hurt? Don’t lie.”

“They don’t,” she answers truthfully. “I can barely tell that they were cut up.” 

“The book said that it would be fine, but I wasn’t sure…” Hyejoo mutters, trailing off. “Have you been feeling numb, since you came back?”

If Hyejoo had asked her this question just a few moments ago, Heejin would have nodded without a doubt. “Numb” was the perfect word to describe the odd decrease in sensation that had been plaguing her all evening. But now, with Hyejoo’s hands hot like iron brands on either side of her own, “numb” was the exact opposite of what she was feeling. 

“I think so,” she finally says, extremely unhelpfully. Hyejoo purses her lips, which isn’t really helping Heejin’s situation either, but she doesn’t push the topic. 

Luckily for Heejin, a well-timed distraction comes by way of Jeno pushing open the doors to the room.

“Heejin!” he exclaims, eyes crinkled in surprise. Hyejoo seems to realise that she’s still holding her hands, and drops them as if she was scalded. “It’s good to—are those my pyjamas?”

Heejin grins, getting up to return Jeno’s hug. “Yes.” 

He shoots a betrayed look at Mark, who blows him a kiss from where they’re leaning by the door frame. Hyejoo laughs, for what Heejin realises is the first time that night.  

“You leave for one hour and your dead friend steals all your clothes,” Jeno complains, ruffling Heejin’s hair. “You’re lucky I like you.” 

“Not all of them,” Heejin points out. “Yet.” 

That earns her another head ruffle, and Hyejoo takes the opportunity to bring up the dagger again. “Mark, did you get a chance to look at the inscriptions?”

“Not in too much detail, but I have a fair idea of what it’s saying,” they say, “we should be able to figure it out by tomorrow morning.”

Jeno sends Heejin a questioning look, and she explains how Hyejoo was hoping that the dagger that killed her contained some clues on the demons they’d been hunting. He furrows his eyebrows at the mention of the demons, but doesn’t say anything. 

“Have you both gotten yourself checked by a medic yet?” he asks, echoing Mark’s concerns from earlier. The two of them were far too telepathic for their own good. 

Hyejoo shakes her head. “We’re fine.” 

“You may feel fine, but this is a new experience for both of you,” Jeno says, firmly but not unkindly. “Hyejoo shouldn’t be doing any more magic for at least a few days, and Heejin still needs time to get fully used to her new body. You can’t go off demon hunting first thing in the morning.”

“But—” Hyejoo starts to protest, but Jeno is quick to end it.

“No buts. You guys came here because you trust us, and I’m asking you to trust me a little more when I say you’re better off waiting than rushing in head first. It’ll give us time to make a plan of action as well.” 

Hyejoo falls silent at that, and Heejin can tell she knows that Jeno is right. He usually is—it’s what makes him such a great witch, and an even better healer. People always listen to him, and Hyejoo and Heejin are no exception. 

“Now that that’s settled,” Mark says, breaking the silence. “Who wants to watch Shrek?”   

As it turns out, resting is not the hell that Heejin had expected it to be. 

The next few days after her return pass by in a blur. Heejin finally visits her mom, though it takes a great amount of explaining and convincing that she hasn’t turned into a demon for her to even be let into the house. She spends most of her time at Mark’s, though. Mainly because Jeno insists on keeping a close look on her, but also so that she can split her time between shitty movie marathons and researching.

Still, most of the research is left up to Mark and Jeno, as they’ve always been the brains of the group (Heejin is the brawn, obviously, and Hyejoo is a strange mix of both). Jeno is strict about his no-magical-or-physical-exertion rule, and Heejin finds that it’s not too hard to follow it. She’d forgotten what it felt like to rest , instead of constantly being on the hunt for another bounty.

Hyejoo seems calmer, too. She’s not as harried as she was on the day she brought Heejin back, nor as tense as she tends to be during hunts. Strangely enough, she’s started talking to Mark more often—Heejin keeps catching them whispering furtively to each other only to stop as soon as she enters the room. She wishes she was in on their secrets, but she’s more happy that they’re back on good terms. 

Soon enough, it’s time for them to finally head after the demons. Jeno still seems hesitant when it comes to letting them go, but Mark quells his worries with one of their silent eye-contact conversations. 

Before they leave, Mark presses a vial of some sort into Heejin’s hands. 

“It’s for strength,” they explain, “just in case things go awry. Even a few drops should be enough to last you until you have the time to see a medic.” 

“But—” 

“Please take it,” they say, and their voice sounds almost… strained. “I don’t want to lose you again.” 

The sheer emotion in their voice startles Heejin, and she finds herself at a loss for words to say in response. Some part of her still hasn’t registered the fact that she died—that her death had affected other people. She doesn’t get any more time to mull over it, though, because Hyejoo is already pulling her out the door. 

They end up at Mont-Royal Park: or Parc du Mont-Royal, as Mark would have corrected them. (They were a French snob.) Jeno and Mark had tracked the demon hive’s locations over the past few weeks and found a pattern of them seeking higher ground; when Heejin had been trailing them before, she’d found them at Mont Rigaud. 

The hike to the top is supposed to be a short one, but Heejin hesitates. There’s something off about the whole thing, like it’s a trap set up for them to fall directly into. It all feels too easy. 

Hyejoo glances back at her. “You coming?” 

Heejin blinks, shaking herself out of her reverie. She’s probably just on edge from so much time spent at home, resting. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” she calls out, and follows Hyejoo up the mountain. 

By the time they reach the top, a small clearing amidst a grove of trees, Heejin hasn’t even broken into a sweat. Being undead has offered her a plethora of pleasant surprises, from increased stamina to almost non-human durability. Well. Technically, it is non-human—but she doesn’t like to dwell on that bit. 

She’s about to make some witty quip when Hyejoo raises a finger, indicating silence. Heejin is immediately on alert: the same uneasy feeling she’d had at the base of the mountain has returned tenfold to her now. 

“There’s no circle,” Hyejoo mutters. From their intel, there’s supposed to be another gathering of demons here, attempting to summon whatever it was Heejin had stopped them from summoning last time—but there isn’t a single demon in sight now. 

Heejin’s hand hovers over the sword at her waist. “They could be hiding.” 

“Right,” says Hyejoo, nodding. “You take the left side, I’ll—”

Before she can finish her sentence, Heejin is slashing her sword through the air behind her in one clean move. The head of the (now-dead) demon falls to the floor. 

Hyejoo pales. “Or not.”

They don’t get much time for conversation after that, what with all the demons pouring out from their hiding spaces and into the clearing. Turns out killing one of their own is all it took to get them to reveal themselves. 

“Protect the sacrifices!” One of the demons that Heejin vaguely recognises from the last encounter is shouting, flailing his arms in the air. She turns to where he’s pointing, eyes widening when she takes in the children tied up behind a tree. Hyejoo’s fighting her own battle to the side, so it’s up to Heejin to take care of this. Without hesitation, she lops off the demon’s head before heading in the hostages’ direction. 

The demons are fairly humanoid, which makes the killing bit somewhat unsettling, but Heejin’s grown past that squeamishness a long time ago. It’s also why she prefers using a sword. It helps detach her from modernity, allowing her to see the demons for what they really are: scum.

She makes her way to the children, unscathed, slaying demons left and right like a knife through butter. One of them throws a blade at her, but instead of piercing through her side like it would have just a week ago, it simply stays stuck. Heejin winces as she pulls it out, but there’s no blood—and no sign that she’d been attacked at all. It’s almost enough to make her smile.  

But she can’t let herself do that until she’s sure that the children are safe. They’re all staring up at her, wide-eyed and scared for their lives as she carefully cuts through the rope tying them to the tree. 

“You’ll be safe,” she tells them, and she means it. “Don’t move from here, and before you know it, all the demons will be gone.”

They nod, fearfully. Heejin wishes she could stay for longer and soothe their worries, but there is still a fight for her to return to—it’s times like these that she wishes she’d taken up Hyejoo’s offers to teach her basic protection spells.  

Speaking of Hyejoo: she seems to be holding up plenty well on her own, contrary to Heejin’s worries. Her partner tended to avoid the messiness of battle, usually preferring to use long-distance spells and her bow. This time, she’d abandoned the both of them and thrust herself right into the heat of the fight, dagger in hand. 

The demons go down easily all around Hyejoo, and this time, Heejin lets herself grin. Her heart’s swelling with pride at the sight, and she waves to Hyejoo in acknowledgement. She grins back, abashedly, before her eyes go suddenly wide and she’s jumping forwards.

The next few moments pass by in slow-motion:

Hyejoo leaps towards Heejin, knocking her to the side before she can even understand what is happening. She lands flat on her back.

A demon, who must have sneaked up on Heejin without her realising, lets an arrow fly loose from his crossbow. He hisses when he realises he missed his original target, immediately turning around to run in the opposite direction.  

The arrow pierces Hyejoo, right where Heejin was not a moment ago, and Heejin can only watch through a blank haze as blood trickles out from the wound.

Hyejoo crumples to the ground.

Hyejoo.  

Heejin growls, a low sound that starts from the base of her throat and turns into something foreign even to her. She pulls herself up from the ground and steadily catches up to the demon—he says something to her, probably some sort of plea for mercy, but Heejin doesn’t hear it. She slices him clean in half. 

She rushes back to Hyejoo’s side, choking back a sob. Her mind’s running on full steam, a mess of thoughts and emotions and whys , but she’s conscious enough to gently cradle Hyejoo’s head in her lap. The arrow is protruding from her chest, yet the wound isn’t gushing, which Heejin thinks is a good sign. 

“He,” Hyejoo croaks, attempting to sit herself upright. “He was—” 

“Hush, it’s okay,” Heejin soothes. Desperately, she looks around for something, anything that she could use to ease the pain, before remembering what Mark had handed her right before they left. I don’t want to lose you, they’d said—and looking at Hyejoo, that was the only thing that Heejin could think, too. 

“Here,” she says, fumbling for the potion, slowly trickling the contents of the vial into Hyejoo’s mouth. 

Hyejoo coughs, eyes widening in relief. Whatever was in that bottle seems to have worked, because her death grip on Heejin’s hands slackens. 

“How’s the pain?” 

“Four,” Hyejoo replies, which Heejin translates to a six. It’s not as bad as it could be, but Heejin still finds herself wishing for a way that she could make sure Hyejoo never felt pain in her life. At least Mark and Jeno would be getting here any minute now, as they’d planned earlier. 

“Idiot,” she mutters, gently moving Hyejoo’s hair out of her eyes. “What were you thinking, jumping in front of me like that? I’m invulnerable.”

Hyejoo offers her a weak smile. “Habit.”

“God, Hyejoo,” Heejin breathes out. “You can’t just—”

“You died,” she interrupts, and Heejin blinks. 

“And you brought me back,” 

“You died,” Hyejoo says again, fiercely. (As fiercely as one can manage when suffering from an arrow wound.) “I won’t let you do it again.” 

Heejin’s not sure what’s going on with her whole organ situation at the moment, but she’s pretty sure her heart just skipped a beat. 

Mark and Jeno come to pick them up shortly after, with minimal I-told-you-sos. If anything, they look mostly relieved to see that the two of them are still in one piece, and Jeno reassures Heejin that Hyejoo’s wound could be healed within the week itself. (It doesn’t stop her from worrying, though.) They manage to safely escort the children out from their hiding place, too, and Heejin feels a faint sense of guilt for briefly forgetting about them after the fight. 

All in all, it was a successful mission. Heejin makes sure to collect all of the paraphernalia the demons had been using for their rituals—the people paying for this particular bounty were sure to be happy. It’s a job well-done, and Heejin knows that fact alone will make Hyejoo think it was all worth it. She’s just not sure if she thinks the same.

It’s late by the time they reach Mark’s apartment, and Jeno insists on treating Hyejoo alone. Heejin is loath to leave her side even for a minute, but Jeno claims that “I can’t focus with you breathing down my back like some overprotective bodyguard all the time.” 

Which leaves Heejin with nothing to do but stare at a wall and worry. 

“Hey,” Mark says, dropping down on the couch next to her and handing her a bowl of guacamole. “You should eat something.”

Heejin shakes her head. “Not hungry.”

“Worrying on an empty stomach will get you nowhere,” 

“Neither will worrying on a full one,” she mutters bitterly.

Mark pauses, studying her for a moment. “I know it can be frustrating, not knowing how to help or fix something,” they start. “But the best thing you can do right now is have faith in Jeno’s skills and take care of yourself. If not for your sake, then for Hyejoo’s.” 

Heejin stays silent. Objectively, she knows they’re right, but she just doesn’t know how to convince herself of that fact. 

“I struggled with that too, when Jeno and I first started working together,” Mark continues. “He’s a healer, and all I’m good for is deconstruction. I didn’t know the first thing about helping people, helping Jeno —but that didn’t matter, because I didn’t have to. I only had to be there for him.” 

“That’s different,” says Heejin, shaking her head. “That’s you and Jeno. Hyejoo and I are… different.”   

“Is it really that different?” Mark’s gaze softens. “When you love someone, sometimes all you need to do is trust them.” 

And Heejin wants to argue, to say that she doesn’t love Hyejoo the way that Mark loves Jeno—but she’s not sure if she can lie to herself like that. The two of them have always toed the line between platonic and romantic, never quite one but never quite the other. It works, because it’s them. They’ve always worked. 

But maybe Heejin is starting to realise that she doesn’t want to work in the same way forever. 

Out loud, she says, “You’re so gay.”

Mark winks at her. “Only for you, ma cherie.”

Their conversation is interrupted by Jeno finally stepping out of the room he’d designated a temporary “healing room”. He looks relaxed, which Heejin assumes is a good sign for anyone dealing with a potentially life-threatening injury. 

“I’ve cleaned up most of the wound, and given her a potion that should help with the pain,” he announces, and Heejin almost sighs with relief. “She should be fine for some conversation, so you can go see your girlfriend now,” 

Heejin doesn’t bother correcting him. (Honestly, “girlfriend” doesn’t even begin to encompass everything Hyejoo means to her.) She gets up immediately, and Mark pats her on the shoulder—a reminder of the conversation they’ve just had. 

“Thank you,” she tells them quietly, and they smile back. 

She slips into the room silently, so as not to disturb Hyejoo. The other girl is sitting upright on the bed, book in hand—the same book she’d been looking over the last time the two of them were alone together like this.

“Still reading?” Heejin asks, as she seats herself on the edge of the bed. 

“You can never know enough,” Hyejoo says solemnly. Her tone is light, but Heejin thinks she can detect a faint strain running under her voice. 

She turns a concerned look on Hyejoo. “How are you holding up?”

“I’m fine,” she insists, and after a look from Heejin, amends her answer to, “Not more than a four.”

“Some things never change, huh,” Heejin murmurs, mostly to herself. Hyejoo catches it, though, and surprises her with a laugh.

“I suppose I’m lucky you can read me so well,” she muses. “Imagine if I had a partner who actually believed the things I say.”

There’s a joke about Sagittariuses and lying on the tip of Heejin’s tongue, but she stops herself from making it. Instead, she finds herself focusing on the first part of Hyejoo’s sentence, and looks down at her hands. “The thing you said, back at Mont-Royal…” 

“What thing?” Hyejoo asks. Heejin can feel her go tense. 

“About,” she falters, and looks up again. “About me dying. And you not letting me do it again.”

Hyejoo blushes, but she doesn’t break eye contact. “I wasn’t lying then. That is something you should believe.” 

“I know,” Heejin replies hastily. “I just—” 

“You just?”

Heejin doesn’t know if she’s imagining it, but something in Hyejoo’s voice sounds almost… hopeful. It’s all so much: the tension in the air, Hyejoo’s clear-eyed stare, the distance between them being close to nothing at this point. 

“Why didn’t you come to my funeral?” Heejin asks, softly. 

Hyejoo doesn’t reply immediately. She looks like she’s weighing two options in her head, deciding what the right thing to say is, and Heejin wishes she would just tell her what was on her mind. 

“Because I didn’t want to deal with the idea of losing you,” she says at last. “Because I don’t know what I’d do with myself if I lost you.” 

Heejin reaches out a hand, gently tucking a stray lock of hair behind Hyejoo’s hair. She can feel her heart beating erratically underneath her stolen ribcage. 

“I don’t want to lose you, either,” she says, and kisses Hyejoo right on the mouth. 

Hyejoo’s eyes blow wide open at the contact, before she relaxes and kisses Heejin back with just as much fervour. Her arms wind their way around Heejin’s neck, and she’s starting to think that this could be her forever when Hyejoo lets out a sudden yelp of pain. 

“Are you okay?” Heejin asks, worried, quickly pulling away to let Hyejoo breathe. Maybe she should’ve held back a little.

“Very bad injury,” she manages. “Probably shouldn’t be—kissing girls.”  

And even though she definitely shouldn’t, Heejin bursts out laughing. It isn’t long before Hyejoo is laughing, too, and the two of them are doubled up like a couple of idiots together on the bed. They don’t say anything about the kiss, because they don’t need to. It’s them. 

The sound of their laughter carries over to Jeno, who walks into the room with very judgingly raised eyebrows. “Do I want to know?” 

“No,” Hyejoo says, which only makes Heejin crack up again. 

“Women,” says Jeno, sighing. “But I take it this means that the pain isn’t as bad as it was?”

Hyejoo flashes a grin at him, and she looks as happy as Heejin feels. “All gone, actually,”

“Well, it’s still better if you stay here where I can keep an eye on you at least for tonight,” Jeno advises. “And maybe get some rest instead of giggling like a maniac.”

“No promises!”

Heejin swoops in to give Hyejoo another kiss on the cheek this time—a move which makes Jeno’s eyebrows rise even further into his hair—and pulls herself up from the bed. 

“I should probably leave and let you sleep properly, then,” she starts, but Hyejoo’s tugging on her sleeve before she can continue.

“Stay,” says Hyejoo, pouting ever so slightly. 

So Heejin does.