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Ni-ki knows he is dreaming before anything else.
He feels his bones throb dully, like boggle pieces clattering back into place. In here, his limbs are dislodged from their sockets until they aren’t, body congealed and seeping through the cracks of darkness. There’s a sudden yank in his stomach, and his organs writhe in response as he opens his eyes to regard the scene before him.
In this dream, the corridors are narrow, and Ni-ki has to duck under several arches that seem to stretch endlessly before he finally reaches the back door. He knows his way through here and has memorized the path like the back of his hand, something he wishes he could have just forgotten. Still, it calls to him like a childhood nightmare—familiar around the fringes, yet altogether terrifying.
The door stands in front of him just like before, and when he opens it, he finds himself in the underground parking area, the air damp. His footsteps echo through the empty lot, grains of asphalt crunching under his feet. The whole area is dark, lit only by small overhead lights painted red. They cast eerie shadows on the parked vehicles, and Ni-ki has to squint to see where he is going. He knows he is getting farther away from the entrance of the building when the temperature drops, and he’s shivering in his clothes.
In this dream, he's looking for Sunoo, which isn't really far from what he usually does when he's awake. It’s relatively easy to spot where his hyung is. When he turns on his heels to cast a quick glance at everyone in the practice room, Sunoo is always right there with him. But tonight Sunoo is not where he's supposed to be—on his side of their shared bed in their dorm. He shouldn’t be here, really. Maybe he should have just waited for Sunoo in the safety of their room. But Ni-ki has never been good at sitting still, especially when it comes to his hyung.
“Sunoo?” Ni-ki calls for him. It’s darker in this part of the area where the blinking fluorescent light of the exit door can’t reach. “Where are you?”
He’s met with only the sound of water dripping from the pipes and the murmur of the nearby woods. No one should be here. The producers don’t like it when they wander by themselves. It’s dangerous, a kind staff member explained to him once. There are wild animals from the forest that sneak into the property at night.
“Hyung, don't come crying to me when I leave you here alone.”
He thinks of throwing another insincere threat to drive Sunoo out of his hiding spot when the red light from the overhead beam across from him flickers. Ni-ki looks at the car below it. It’s plain, and inconspicuous enough to not attract any attention, but he still takes notice of it.
“Who’s there?” The question echoes back to him, but his legs drag him towards the car even so. He sees movement from the reflection of the car’s window glass. He blinks at it, squinting his eyes so he can see better. The surface is dark and flat as a puddle of rainwater. He blinks again, and this time his mind tells him not to open his eyes, but he does.
There is Sunoo standing behind him, face deathly pale and a grin stretched too wide to be human.
Ni-ki turns, but there’s no one there.
The red light flickers once more as if to taunt him. He looks at the window again—it bears no reflection besides himself, black glass smooth and undisturbed. Ni-ki looks over his shoulder to check once more. Just as before, he’s met with only his presence and the empty parking lot. He does a quick sweep of his surroundings.
It’s only him down here. He’s sure of it.
But it feels like there’s something else there with him, peeking through the dark windows of the parked vehicles.
“Riki,”
Ni-ki whirls, and the abrupt turn of his head thrums out an audible crack. The voice had come from behind him, from somewhere inside the car. He peers through the glass, anxious eyes searching for the silhouette of a person inside, but there’s none. There’s no one inside.
The breath rushes in and out of his lungs.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Breathe—
The first crack is a warning.
He should have turned around and run back towards the exit door as soon as he saw the lightning cut across the dark glass. But this is a dream, and in this dream, he’s forced to follow a script. Then he hears an ugly sound, like ice shattering, and the window fractures in front of him, glass splintering into a wide cobweb.
Ni-ki’s body falls back, stumbling, and everything in him screams for him to run away! Quickly before it’s too late.
He spills into the ground, limbs failing to hold him together. The car’s alarms start howling a shrill noise, and each parked vehicle in the area soon blares the same loud siren. Eventually, the headlights flash open, bathing his vision in white. He shields his eyes with his hand and scrambles away from the flashing lights, seeking solace between the two pillars behind him.
“Riki!” the voice calls again, but it’s a desperate gurgle this time.
Don’t turn around.
It always starts with a corridor that stretches endlessly. No matter which door Ni-ki chooses, he’s bound to end up in the underground parking lot. The car that sets everything in motion may change its facade every night—sometimes it’s their company car, other times it’s his mom’s minivan—tonight brings him a sleek, black sedan. Everything else seems to stay the same.
It’s this next part of the dream he wishes had changed instead.
Another cry of his name has him twisting his body, palm grazing across the cement.
“Riki!” His breath hitches at the horror in front of him.
The headlights offer their brilliance on the pool of blood seeping from the mangled body of Yoonwon. He’s slumped against the wall, neck at a stiff angle, and his eyes have grown sunken. He’s croaking out Ni-ki’s name, and each time he utters a syllable, he coughs out blood.
“H-help…me,”
Move, Ni-ki tells himself. Go help him!
Unfortunately, he stays rooted to his spot as he’s forced to hear the sickening crunch of bones and tendons. A choke gets stuck in Ni-ki’s throat when an unearthly growl rips through the deafening sirens reverberating through the parking lot.
It’s the thing perched on Yoonwon’s body, mauling at his spilled guts, that Ni-ki should be worried about.
What did the staff tell him? Something about wild animals.
But it’s not a wild animal. Ni-ki can see a person's torso, their slim arms holding down Yoonwon’s corpse, and the back of their head lit by the car’s high beams. The squelching noises of entrails being clawed open is enough to make his stomach churn.
Against his better judgment, Ni-ki whimpers, and the creature whips its face toward him.
Everything up to this point had been disturbing. But even after reliving the same nightmare each night, nothing could ever prepare him for this.
The monster feasting on the dead body is wearing the face of his lover.
Sunoo’s face is twisted in gore. Blood smeared across his pretty features, the red a contrast to the whiteness of his skin. His pupils, licorice-black, are dilated to the point of crowding the whites of his eyes. A fresh trickle of blood worms out of the corner of his mouth when he smiles at Ni-ki—sweet and predatory.
Ni-ki is pushed to the ground before he can even react, body slamming against the hard concrete he briefly feels his vision go white. The cars melt away from his periphery, and the shrill sound of the sirens gradually fades like he’s underwater.
He’s brought back by the scent of peach left out in the sun for too long, baked by a thousand summers, strangely foul but sweet. Almost rotting if he’s concentrating. Ni-ki swallows the muted fear caught in his throat, and when he opens his eyes, Sunoo is grinning down at him.
Ni-ki’s heart is pounding in his ears, waiting for something to break the silence that stretches between them. Sunoo’s hand wanders close to his throat, stroking over his Adam's apple before deciding to have his nails dig into Ni-ki’s cheeks instead.
“You saw me,” the monster tells him. It’s almost a perfect mimicry of Sunoo’s mellow voice, ringing through Ni-ki’s ears like tiny bells.
Ni-ki shakes his head vigorously. “I won’t tell anyone!” he responds weakly, body shuddering against the fear taking hold of him. “I promise!”
Sunoo only leans his face closer, so close that a droplet of blood dribbles down from the side of his face to Ni-ki’s mouth. “I know,” Sunoo whispers back. “But until when?”
The choice was made for him a long time ago. Ni-ki is only replaying a film.
Sunoo breaks apart from where he's straddling the younger, arching his back, his nails extending to claws.
Ni-ki blinks through the dizzy haze, and he watches as Sunoo snaps his jaw open, wide enough to show rows of sharp teeth, before bringing down his mouth to tear at Ni-ki’s throat.
He wakes up in cold sweat, a hand to his throat, and halfway between the sheets of his bed and the haunted parking lot. It takes a while for him to get all of his senses back. The sensation of icy needles prickling his skin is gradual—he feels it first in his feet, then his legs, and somehow he registers the weight of someone on his chest.
Ni-ki blinks, jagged teeth and claws sliding in his vision for a brief moment, but the image dissolves to welcome the outline of Sunoo’s serene face cradled by the moonlight. No smeared blood or bits of flesh stuck to the ends of his mouth. Half of his body lies on top of Ni-ki’s—their limbs melt together like cathedral spires.
Gently, to keep Sunoo from rousing from his sleep, Ni-ki removes the arm holding him by the waist. He gets up, and his feet drag him toward the pitch-black hallway and the kitchen.
He reaches the fridge by its persistent humming, and light filters into the room when he opens it to take a bottle of water. There’s only one left, hidden at the back of the refrigerator, the last healthy beverage among the packs of soda cans and other garbage the members have been consuming. Jay likes to wash down his drowsiness with a bottle of cola early in the morning. His hyung explains it’s a personal ritual—one that eases his nerves and guarantees him a stroke of good luck throughout the day. It doesn’t need to have any logical reasoning behind it, something Ni-ki has trouble believing, considering Jay is the person he least expected to follow through with superstitious beliefs.
When the icy water hits the floor of his stomach, Ni-ki lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.
He doesn't want to go back to sleep. Here he is, standing in front of the fridge, one hand holding the half-empty bottle and fingers damp from condensation, waiting for daylight to sweep away the monster that lurks behind his eyelids.
He is half in his thoughts when he feels slim arms wrap around his waist—the same ones from his dream.
Ni-ki’s throat goes dry. The water did nothing to quell the apprehension in his gut. Still, this warmth is familiar, so he raises a shaking hand to lace his fingers with the person behind him.
“What are you doing out here?” Sunoo asks him. He moves to rest his head on Ni-ki’s back before swaying the both of them to a rhythm he can only hear. The gentle movement is a welcome interruption to the younger’s thoughts, almost comforting.
“Just couldn’t sleep,” Ni-ki whispers. “It’s almost morning, so I’ll just wait out here.”
Sunoo hums before placing his lips on Ni-ki’s shoulder. “You can do that in our bed.”
Our bed.
Ni-ki bites the inside of his cheek, fighting off a small smile. Even the most terrifying of dreams can’t seem to hold a candle to the way Sunoo makes him feel.
He unlatches Sunoo’s hold on his waist and then turns around, but he doesn’t let go of him. Ni-ki brings his hand towards his mouth and presses a kiss on each knuckle. His lips stop shivering when he reaches the second hand, warmed by the gesture. He looks up, and the tender adoration on Sunoo's face is hard to miss even with the dimness of the fridge light.
This is how Ni-ki chases away his nightmares—his own ritual, so to speak.
“Was it a bad dream?” Sunoo asks, reaching out to run a thumb over Ni-ki’s bottom lip.
"Still the same one as before," Ni-ki admits. "I'm back at the parking lot. Yoonwon's corpse is rotting ten feet away from me, and there’s blood everywhere."
They don't talk about it. At least not in a place so public. Sometimes it's the sheer terror of the whole incident, and burying it deep beneath the tilled earth seems to be the only way to move forward.
It is only during moments like this that he gets to rattle the skeletons he keeps in his closet. And only Sunoo has the privilege to glimpse at the things he's buried. At least the ones he's willing to share.
“It’s not your fault,” Sunoo insists. “You just happened to be there.”
“I know,” Ni-ki murmurs. “But it doesn’t make me feel any better.”
He lets Sunoo drag him back to their bed. The sheets are still warm when they get back. Sunoo crawls first before pulling Ni-ki in, their limbs fitting like puzzle pieces once they’re settled. They lie quietly together, the calm before the storm, as Ni-ki tries to bury the memory of the demon with his boyfriend’s face. Sleep doesn’t come as easy as expected, so he resorts to staring at the ceiling above him while Sunoo drifts off to sleep.
There’s not much he can do now but wait for dawn.
And so he waits until the sun spills into the room, bathing everything in light so that not even the shadows hiding under the floorboards are spared.
“Ni-ki.”
Someone snaps their fingers in front of him, and Ni-ki blinks, vision coming back to focus—he’s sitting in front of the mirror of their company gym, his reflection hazy from the cloud of mist running down the glass. Jake is there beside him, waving a hand at Ni-ki’s face to call his attention back to earth.
“Are you okay?”
“Why?” Ni-ki raises a brow. Jake throws him a disbelieving look from where he sits, rolling his shirt sleeves up to the shoulder seams.
“You’ve been distracted the whole day,” he tells Ni-ki. “And the bags under your eyes are getting darker the way they do whenever you stay up late to play games with Heeseung.”
“They are?” Ni-ki moves to wipe down the mirror with his sleeves, rubbing it with enough pressure to get a clearer view of his face. Bloodshot eyes stare back at him, his skin a pallid complexion.
To be fair, he hasn’t had a decent sleep for two weeks now.
He's not entirely sure where he's getting his energy from considering he's been up since three in the morning. Jay had to force him to eat a protein bar when he refused to have anything occupy his stomach. Every time he takes a bite out of the crisp, sweet granola, the crunch reminds him of teeth gnawing at bones.
“You look like the walking dead,” Jake says. “Our tour is approaching, you know? You won’t get another chance to rest again for a long time.”
“I know, I know,” Ni-ki assures him, settling back in his spot. “But it’s not like I can do anything about it.”
“Are you having trouble sleeping again?”
The younger falls silent, and that’s enough of an answer for Jake, whose face twists in gentle concern. “Ni-ki—”
“Jake hyung,” Ni-ki sighed, fixing his hyung with a gaze that meant he’d rather drop the conversation than let it fester like an open wound. “I'm fine. It's not as bad as you think.”
"Last time you said that you passed out during practice from lack of sleep. I won’t take your word for it.”
“I’ll deal with it after we wrap up the preparations.” At least until they wrap up the preparations.
“But wouldn’t it be better if you settle it now?” Jake insists. He fishes out his phone from his pocket and swipes it open to show Ni-ki their schedule. “Look, we have a break this coming weekend. Why don’t you arrange an appointment with the doctor by then?”
“I already have something planned for that day.”
“Yeah, like what?”
“Bowling with Sunoo hyung.” Ni-ki shrugs.
“Ni-ki.”
“What?”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I am. I’m a man of priorities.”
In fact, he’s not. He once gambled away his precious beauty sleep on a flight from Seoul to Frankfurt just to watch all six installments of the Harry Potter series. Sunoo is definitely a priority, no doubt about that. Still, Ni-ki can turn anything into a priority if it means not having to deal with a visit to the shrink. He doesn’t sleep well. He never does. Sometimes he wonders if the last time he had a good night's sleep was two years ago. It’s nothing new, and even the members know this as a fact. They know he struggles with sleep, but they don’t know what plays through his mind whenever he dreams about that night.
Jake sighs like a disappointed mother facing his difficult son. “You really wouldn’t budge at all, huh?”
“It’s not happening, hyung. I won’t change my mind about it.”
“And if I tell Jay?”
“You wouldn’t.” Ni-ki crosses his arms. “You’d never snitch on me.”
A few seconds pass, and Jake eventually shuts his eyes, breathing in deeply, trying to collect his thoughts and the remaining bit of patience he still has.
“Okay fine,” he says. “You’re right. But you really need to consider it, Niks.”
“Mhm. I’ll think about it,” Ni-ki responds with finality.
And he does think about it, at least in the moments when he’s not stressing about their new choreography or other scheduled activities. It’s just not high on the list of things that he cares about so it’s taken a space in the back of his mind.
The rest of the week for him is packed, back to back—he has to get up early every morning for vocal lessons, followed by their dance practice that takes up the bulk of his day, and then he still has rehearsals that only end until the sky outside is oily and pitch black.
The night air is humid and tenacious, the kind that sticks like fruit peelings on the skin when Ni-ki steps outside the company building.
The summer heat is unbearable enough to have him shake off his jacket, and Ni-ki berates himself for not listening to Jay’s advice to dress lightly this morning before they left the dorms. It’s just that he’s been experimenting with his fashion choices lately and once he finds a clothing item he likes, he tends to wear them constantly. Sunghoon calls him a slob for repeating his clothes and voicing his concern that their fans might think Ni-ki isn’t doing his laundry (he does, he’s a clean freak). But he does admit that there are certain items he couldn’t leave their dorm without—one of them being the padlock charm necklace that Sunoo gave to him on his birthday. It sits prettily on the dip of the base of his neck, a small but meaningful reminder of what they have. The only thing he’s allowed to carry as a keepsake of their relationship.
There are a lot of things they need to hide because of the nature of their job, but the necklace at least is a compromise.
He shifts restlessly from where he’s standing under the waiting shed. The streets are empty, only the harsh, caustic glow of the streetlights occupies the road. It’s quiet too, save for the incessant chirping of crickets. His hyungs have gone home ahead of him, but Ni-ki stayed behind to perfect his routine for a few more hours.
He really shouldn’t be overworking himself since his constitution has been failing him the past few weeks. But despite his carelessness and tendency to put things off until the last minute, Ni-ki has admittedly always been a controlled perfectionist.
He has to be, at least he thinks he should. No one gets this far in the industry without trading a part of their soul.
Ni-ki would like to think that he had at least a grasp on life the moment the agency called to confirm his successful audition, and he’s suddenly thrust into a life not everyone can afford. He’s shy of fourteen when he steps into a foreign land, grappling with a strange language and an even stranger emotion that yearns both for home and ambition. He’s too young, they say, too young to gamble his youth away for a few years of fame and glory in front of millions of people that await like vultures ready to prey on anything they deem unsatisfactory.
When he first saw the massive structure of I-Land seated in the middle of a sprawling forest, Ni-ki had been ecstatic. He had already taken a few hundred steps of perseverance which led him to Seoul, but becoming a trainee under a company as prestigious as the one Ni-ki is part of was the turning point of his life. There wasn’t a single trainee in their establishment that lacks the kind of determination needed to bulldoze their way to the top. But passion can die in the struggle for survival, and anyone unfortunate enough to sign their name away on a piece of paper knows that a trainee’s life is a manufactured rat race.
So he fought his way through the ranks of eager yet belligerent competitors who would throw him under the bus just as quickly as they would befriend him, hoping they could take advantage of his naivety. But he wasn’t naive—maybe a little reckless, a bit more daring than most. The kind of foolish bravery that entraps him into terrible situations that he could have avoided if only he had the wariness of someone who valued their life.
The same wariness he should have had the first moment he noticed the chirping noise had stopped. The deafening silence is like chatter in his brain—a greasy feeling of unease.
Ni-ki fidgets, eyeing the empty streets for the familiar hood of their company car. Nothing approaches, not even the shadow of any passing vehicle. Above him the moon is full, peering dolefully over the lonesome pavements. It’s too quiet for his liking.
A gust of wind plunges his immediate surroundings to a frigid temperature, raising gooseflesh all over his skin. It is when he is slipping his hand through the arm hole of his jacket, intending to just wait inside the building, when a loud thunk falls onto the roof above his head.
The sudden sound breaking through the uncharacteristic silence has him whip his head towards its origin. He sees an unmoving dark lump through the frosted acrylic glass of the roof. A squirrel? He’s not sure. But before he could even make out what tiny creature managed to give him a slight heart attack, it jumped awake and scampered quickly across the roof and into the shrubs behind the waiting shed. As if on cue, a flurry of critters began to scurry past him in a blur, a haze of brown and black colors desperately fleeing the scene. Almost as if they’re all running away from something.
He decides not to stay long enough to know what it is, and so he turns on his heels, desperate to run back towards the entrance of the building, when he hears another sound—a terribly familiar snarl.
Panic locks him in place, and his limbs melt through the dark asphalt. His thoughts are a messy scribble of incoherent words screaming at him to move, to do something. Ni-ki hates that his dream is piercing through his head in hot flashes. It forces him to remember the parking lot, the cars, and the grating sound of claws on cement.
The tall foliage behind him quivers, and Ni-ki feels dread gnaw at his insides with its sharp teeth.
There’s no wind.
He finally gathers the courage to sprint across the street just as the suffocating pressure of the thing’s unwelcoming presence becomes too much. Quite foolishly, he turns his head to look back, and he’s met with horrible darkness beyond the shrubs. It seems as though the light was being sucked into the pitch-black void, which is enough for Ni-ki to realize that there is something creeping in the darkness even if he can’t see it with his own two eyes—just waiting, deliberating and finding the perfect opportunity to pounce on Ni-ki’s frozen frame. He forcefully swallows down the lump in his throat when he sees a dark silhouette dart behind the shed, and he blanches, his head turning back to look hopefully at the well-lit windows of the company building.
A sound came to him as he ran, swift but heavy footsteps and a snarl increasing in pitch. It’s running towards him—fast, and as time ticks by, Ni-ki starts to wonder if he’s ever going to reach the steps of the foyer without being caught by it.
He’s close, close enough to hold his hand out to the metal railings of the stairway, when he trips over the uneven pavement and falls onto the ground. Fuck, fuck, fuck, he thinks, forcing himself to his feet, but the burning sensation has a vice grip on his leg. He must have twisted his ankle when he fell down. He could hear the monster surge toward him triumphantly, fear curling at the edges of his mind. Left with no choice, Ni-ki shuts his eyes, not wanting to see its face. Sunoo’s face.
“Ni-ki?”
Relief is cold water dunked on him when he tentatively opens his eyes and sees Jungwon’s figure hovering above him, a worried look twisting his usually pleasant face. Whatever hellhound was chasing him was now gone from his sight.
“H-hyung,” Ni-ki chokes on his tears. God, he wasn’t even aware he was crying. “In the shrubs—there was—I saw—”
“Breathe, Ni-ki,” Jungwon comforts him, one hand on the younger’s shoulder while Ni-ki clings to his hyung’s clothes. “Just breathe. Tell me what happened.”
“The waiting shed—the thing—it was chasing me.”
“What is?”
Ni-ki feels the bile rise up to his throat. What should he say? How should he tell it to Jungwon?
“What’s wrong, Ni-ki?”
What’s wrong? The obvious question is asked, and it just fills him with anguish. There was, he thinks, a time he believed that nightmares were just bad dreams—and not living, breathing creatures stalking him during the day, sleeping in the corners of his mind to force him to hold his breath and lighten his steps in fear of waking them.
“I… I don’t know,” he resigns, defeated.
Jungwon kneels down in front of him and cups his face tenderly, swiping the dark circles underneath his eyes. “When was the last time you slept, Ni-ki?”
“I don’t know.” Because he truly doesn’t know.
We think of our homes as our territory, separate and sterile. Mother nature made no such agreement. We invite ourselves into spaces that do not house a human soul and wonder why demons have crawled into the cracks and fissures of our lives.
Ni-ki has always been told cautionary tales of treading unknown paths. He learns from his mother that he’s a sticky bait. Unwanted entities and shadows cling to him like flies to honey. Once, on his way home from dance school, an old woman approached him and asked for directions to the bus station. He had met her by the riverfront, and gullible at six—perhaps still even now—he gladly offered to help. It was raining, so they shared an umbrella. But after only a few minutes, he noticed something strange: all he could hear was the steady patter of rain and his own footsteps. The space beside him had gone unnervingly quiet. The old woman was still there beside him, matching his pace. But when he glanced down, there was nothing—just the empty space where the old woman’s feet should have been. He ran the rest of the way home without ever looking back.
On his first day in his apartment after landing in Seoul, he tried desperately to seal every gap in the room. Tape lined the edges of the walls and cabinets in uneven strips, covering cracks no one else would have noticed. When Taki visited, he laughed at the mismatched patches. “Was the cold really seeping in that much?” he asked. Niki let out a weak, defeated laugh—he’d forgotten Taki was sitting on the couch. There was still one gap he hadn’t managed to cover, a small space beneath it where he hadn’t been able to tuck a cloth in time.
And staring right back at him was the smiling face of a girl.
Perhaps he should have listened more. Listened when his mother told him, Pray, Riki-kun. Don’t forget to pray. Or when the priest at their local shrine warned his family that their son’s life would be bright, his fortune limitless, but at the cost of attracting too much attention from them. He had thought he would be safe, miles away from the infested cities of Japan where encounters like that were almost routine. But luck had never been on his side. Even here, in the middle of bustling Seoul, something from folklore had found him. Even inside the concrete compound he had willingly trapped himself in.
He shouldn’t have gone out alone. He shouldn’t have followed Sunoo into the parking lot. But he didn’t listen, not even when Sunoo pleaded with him, “Whatever happens, don’t follow me out at night.”
And now, he’s brought something back home with him.
He doesn’t remember everything that happened that night, and he considers that a blessing. One gruesome sight was all he could bear, and even that was enough to leave him in catatonic shock. The members don’t ask him about it, not even Jake, and he’s grateful. He doesn’t want to think about it.
The authorities have asked him too many times already. Each time, Ni-ki gives the same polished, rehearsed version: He went out to get some fresh air. He needed it. I-Land already felt suffocating enough. Then he saw him—Yoonwon, sprawled on the pavement, bleeding out, his voice raw as he called his name. Over and over, until it stopped. Until there was nothing left but the faint buzzing of the overhead lights and Ni-ki’s terrified scream. They called it an accident. Told the audience Yoonwon broke his leg. But how do you explain a body torn open like that? Animals, they say. Wild animals. The staff seem convinced. He never told them what came after. He never told them about the figure perched on top of one of the cars, hidden in the shadows. About Sunoo—the lovely older boy that had become Ni-ki’s companion in the sick, twisted reality show they were in. Or about how he had seen him calmly lick the blood from his teeth, his tongue grotesquely long, as several shadows writhe behind his back. Tails, maybe. Ni-ki isn’t sure. He’s only ever seen them in illustrations, read about them in passing—demons so beautiful they lure men in, only to tear their hearts out.
It’s a miracle he still has his own intact.
“It likes you,” Sunoo confessed, his hair spread like a pink halo on Ni-ki’s pillow. Ni-ki kisses him once, unable to resist, and Sunoo giggles into his mouth. He kisses him again for good measure, even when the topic of their conversation is haunting at best.
“That’s not a guarantee.” Ni-ki sighs, resting his forehead against Sunoo’s chest. It feels safe there, warm. His heartbeat falls into a rhythm Ni-ki loves to hear—ta-dum, ta-dum. But even that is no guarantee. The warmth of Sunoo’s blood will fade. His heart will fall silent. And when the moon is full, he’ll become something that hungers for flesh.
“But I can guarantee I won’t let it hurt you,” Sunoo says, dropping a kiss into his hair as sleep begins to take hold of them.
And Ni-ki believes him. At least in that. It’s the one thing he has faith in, more than gods or rituals ever offered. Because that night, when he was certain he would be sent home as dust in a porcelain urn, he saw it happen. The creature—no, Sunoo—fighting for control of his own body. He saw him break free long enough to throw himself outside, before Ni-ki could feel fangs sink into his throat.
And when Sunoo holds him just as tenderly, Niki feels himself come undone. He wishes they could always be like this. Familiar and safe. Sunoo has always been his home, but now the walls of his skin house a demon that Ni-ki sees in his sleep.