Work Text:
The First Coffee
Almost like magic, almost like demons, the moment Zoey first set foot in the training studio at the age of thirteen, voices began talking in her head.
There were too many voices in there, all loud and contradicting. There was the disappointed, cigarette-thinned shrill tone of her mother, and the commanding, overly-confident baritone of her father. There was the soft, authoritative voice that left no room for argument and was so distinctly Celine, and sometimes — even almost ten years later — there were the brisk commands of all her coaches and her teachers and her trainers. And then there were the whispers. A mismatched sea of distant ringing in the back of her mind, sometimes weak, sometimes so loud they were almost screaming. Zoey could never quite pinpoint who these voices belonged to, but she’d come to associate them with the mass of Huntrix’s fans.
Since she first stepped on stage, all of them talked, all at once. All of them wanted different things.
It was getting harder and harder to give all of them what they deserved.
Her notebook swam in her vision as the voices grew stronger, drowning the bubblegum rap song blaring in her earphones. Her fingers still hovered guiltily over the return button on her phone — she should’ve been focusing on writing their new diss track. She should’ve been dedicating her whole attention — her whole being — to the lyrics.
But, as always, Zoey was failing everyone.
Soda Pop had only released yesterday, but it was already in the Melon Top 10. Now that there was a demon boy band on the loose (hot, sinfully sweaty, muscly boy band with their broad shoulders and velvety voices and luscious hair) — it was her duty to the fans, no — to the whole world, to write the best lyrics. To create the best song. To finally seal the honmoon.
Her scabs and bruises from yesterday’s scabble in the men’s bathhouse were a painful, itchy, ugly reminder of it.
But the title of the Naver article taunted her — bold black letters across the blinding white screen.
Latest Huntrix performance sparks debate — should Zoey change her rapping style?
Well… should she?
To her credit, she tried not to read the comments for all of five seconds.
Over the years she became really, really good at reading comments. Like, Olympic-level good. Her eyes scanned the slightly blurry pixels on her screen with lightning speed, left to right to left to right, her fingers swiftly scrolling down as the voices grew louder and louder.
Opinions were, as usual, divided.
Her mother would’ve said that this was a clear indication that she was once again doing something wrong. Just come back to the states, you won’t have to deal with comments anymore, her voice said in Zoey’s head, so clear it was almost like she was sitting next to her in the vacant coffee shop, sipping bitter tea.
Her father, naturally, would’ve immediately disagreed. You worked on your idol career for years, giving up now would mean losing.
And Celine, of course, would not care about this at all. As a hunter, you have a duty to the world. Letting some ill-thought words distract you like this is a sign of weakness, Zoey.
Other voices, quiet but incessant, told her that the best way to do her duty was to change her rapping style, like the fans demanded. Happy fans, happy honmoon, they reminded her. Unfortunately, it seemed that the fans could never be happy all at once.
Honestly, it might sound really sad, but Zoey was used to it. It was fine. She was okay with it. She’s long since given up on trying to count all of the voices in her head. She never even tried to silence them — there wasn’t a way to do it, anyway.
But sometimes it was like she was sitting tied up, frozen, watching TV, and the remote controller got possessed by a vengeful demon.
And the demon raised the volume up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up , UP — until her ears rang, and the TV screen flashed the Naver article, black blurry pixels against a blinding white.
And there was nothing she could do except sit glued to her chair and watch the channel of her darkest thoughts consume her, the contradictions tearing her apart.
Don’t let the world see the worst part of you, said Celine on the TV.
You are just like your mother, said her father at the same time.
When will you finally listen, her mother asked.
She really doesn’t belong in Huntrix, you know, the fans said.
Her breath grew short as tears welled in her eyes, still staring at the comments.
She’d worked so hard on her raps. Despite what Celine always dictated, she put a tiny shard of the vulnerable part she had been trained to lock away in every lyric.
She was grateful for the facemask she wore because she was sure her mouth was frowning like crazy, forming premature wrinkles in her laugh line. Her face really was too expressive. No wonder some fans thought she shouldn’t be an idol. Her face always betrayed her emotions no matter how much time she spent in Media Training learning how to hide her feelings. She never learned. Even three years of training and five years into her career, Zoey wasn’t enough.
The fans asked, Why can’t she be more like Rumi?
And Rumi said, You really should try to be more like me and Mira.
And her mother said, You are just like your father sometimes.
And her father said, All I want is for you to follow through with the dream you begged to pursue.
And Celine said, I should’ve picked someone better to save the world.
Something was placed on the table in front of her.
Zoey jumped in her seat, knocking her knees against the table, yelping.
It… must’ve been a pretty loud yelp.
Her earphones blared a different song now, cancelling out the noise of the cafe. She couldn’t tell how loud she’d yelled.
The waitress looked at her funny, head cocked to the side and eyebrows furrowed in confusion. What a sight Zoey must’ve been — a random crazy, yelping girl wearing a hoodie and sweatpants, a yellow bucket hat, and a face mask, sitting in the far corner of the coffee shop.
Honestly, Zoey really didn’t blame the waitress for turning around and bolting straight through the white staff door before she could apologize.
She watched the staff door swing forward and backward. Way to go. As if the underpaid, overworked uni student needed more shit to deal with on her shift.
Zoey sighed and let her phone down. Her notebook was still open, pencil laying next to the last lyric she had written, the cute, half-used panda eraser staring up at her with its innocent, taunting smile.
These lyrics really aren’t good enough, an ugly, scraping voice said inside her head. Nowhere near good enough to defeat a demon boy band.
A glance at the clock above the cafe’s coffee machine told her that it was almost midnight already — four hours since she’d come here in hope of using the public environment as a stimulant for productivity.
And what a tremendous success it’s been, the pencil panda looked at her with one half-used eye.
She closed the notebook sharply, the pencil still stuck between the pages.
The coffee she had ordered had been packed to-go as if the poor waitress was sending her silent signals about the hour. Zoey packed her notebook into her pink backpack, shoved her phone into her pocket, guilt gnawing at her insides.
She was almost by the door when she took a sip of her coffee and almost spit it on the floor.
What the awful fuckity fuck was that.
How — HOW could a coffee taste so bitter was mindboggling. That was definitely, definitely not what she had ordered.
Face distorted with a grimace, she almost lowered her face mask to wipe her tongue with the back of her hand to get the taste away. Her tastebuds screamed bloody murder as she looked closer at the cup in her hand. Steam was rising from it, carrying the unmistakable stench of…
Unsweetened black coffee. The worst thing to ever exist on the face of the earth, second only to… demons.
There was deception at play.
Zoey tensed in the way only a hunter could, looking around the coffee shop in search of clues of subterfuge. The waitress still hadn’t returned, and at this hour the place was completely empty sans for a single guy in an oversized sleeveless hoodie and a black face mask sitting in the far corner, looking at her like she was a crazy woman (which, honestly, Zoey couldn’t blame him for because she was still wearing her headphones and god knows how loud she’s yelped this time). She’d been so focused on the lyrics she hadn’t even noticed when he came in.
A scribble on the coffee cup caught her eye. More black against white. Zoey squinted at the handwriting, making out a single word: Jimin.
… Huh. That was a very butchered “Zoey” indeed.
She looked around the coffee shop again, catching sight of the mysterious guy in the back again. This far away, she couldn’t quite see his eyes, but he was unmistakably looking at her.
Suddenly, it all made a lot more sense.
She knew from her association with Mira that some psychopaths did, in fact, drink their coffee black, no milk, no whipped cream, no three spoons of sugar.
Meeting his stare sheepishly, Zoey knew the guy knew that she knew that he knew.
The waitress was nowhere in sight.
Zoey knew that because the guy knew that she knew that he knew, there was no way that she could leave like this.
She debated for a whole minute whether or not it was worth talking to some psychopath who drank his coffee black. Somehow, killing demons seemed a lot easier.
He stared at her as she approached.
Don’t be weird, Zoey, said Mira’s voice in her head.
Up close, his eyes were very… intense. They were heavy-lidded, narrowed, observing her almost unblinking. He had yellow contact lens. Through his heavy lashes, light bent strangely around his dark grey irises, making them almost shimmer in the lamp light.
They were, um, very nice eyes. Framed by very nice lashes. Sitting atop a very nice, swan-like neck. Connected to some very nice, broad and muscular shoulders.
The rest of his face was hidden behind a face mask, and his hair was neatly covered with a black baseball cap. His hands tapped once before laying almost motionlessly on the table, not even playing around with his rings awkwardly like she always did. His fingernails, she noticed, were painted purple.
He probably was an idol like her, she realized.
“Um… hi.” Zoey said awkwardly, trying very hard to remember how to talk to cute guys without sounding like a lunatic.
The stranger kept staring, unmoving.
They stared at each other silently. Zoey shifted on her legs, waiting. The stranger kept looking.
Belatedly, she noticed that he had the same earphones as her — same top quality sound, same 8D bass vibrations, same… top of the industry noise cancelling capabilities.
And she was also wearing these earphones. And she was also wearing a mouth-covering face mask.
Coughing awkwardly — god, why did she have to be so awkward all the time — she removed her earphones and lowered her face mask. “Jimin, right? I think this is yours.” she told him, gesturing to the cup in her hand.
If he recognized her face, nothing about him gave it away. He looked at her for a few awkward moments too long before his intense eyes lowered to look at the cup she presented him. He clicked on his earphones but didn’t remove them. Well, at least the noice cancelling was off.
“There’s lipgloss on it.” he said in a soft, almost apathetic voice.
Zoey might’ve been a lyricist, but there weren’t a lot of words she knew that could describe the absolute fucking mortification that reverberated through her very being.
You can never behave like a normal human being, sighed the voice that belonged to her mother.
I’ve trained you better than this, said Celine.
“Oh. My. God. I am — I am so, so, so, so so sorry —” Zoey all but screeched, “I only found out because I tried it and it tasted like absolute trash — not that, not that what you drink is trash, it’s just it’s so bitter and, like, I like my stuff sweet and not tasting horrible, you know, so I immediately knew that this wasn’t mine, but I couldn’t have known without me trying first, but let me get you a new one, where’s — where’s the waitress I’ll order it for you, um, black coffee, right? Anything else? Do you want me to get you something el —”
He snatched the coffee cup from her before she could turn around. Horrified, Zoey watched in comical slow motion as he lowered his face mask to his chin and took a long, sweet sip.
Her jaw dropped to the floor.
The stranger put the cup down and met her eyes with the same intense stare. And — there it was. Her lipgloss. Pink and glittery, faintly smeared across his perfectly shaped full lower lip.
Holy freaking fuck.
“Oh my gosh, you’re exactly my type.” her mouth said before her brain could register anything.
Silence stretched between them. The stranger licked his lips.
And because she hated silences with her whole body, and because the entire situation was beyond mortifying at this point, and because she had to make it not weird, Zoey added, “But what you did was, like, really weird.”
In retrospect, she should’ve figured it would make things even weirder.
“Not that you’re, eh, weird, I’m not saying that,” she said, “I don’t know you, so I can’t tell if you’re weird or not. Also, I totally didn’t mean to say you’re cute. I mean you are cute, but I didn’t want you to think that I approached you because of that, the cups really were mixed up, and honestly I also didn’t know what you look like because you had the hat and the face mask and the whole mysterious vibe going on and — are you an idol, by the way? You just look it.”
Slowly, he looked her up and down again. “Yeah.” he said in the same soft voice, the corner of his mouth lifting upward ever so slightly. She would’ve missed it if she wasn’t staring at his lips.
“Oh my god, really?” She perked up immediately, a bright smile spreading from ear to ear. “Me too! I’m —”
“I know. I used to idolize you when I just started.”
There was something weird happening inside of Zoey’s stomach. There were butterflies fluttering around. Her heart was beating rapidly. Her face was growing hot. She didn’t know if it was from excitement or disappointment. Her smile grew smaller.
“Used to?”
“I grew up.” he said. But that made zero sense because he looked like he was her age at least, if not a couple years older.
Was it her rapping style? The Naver article sure seemed to think so.
“Oh, I see.” she said, trying to control her voice — but man, she always was so bad at it, and she could tell that she was already frowning, and that her eyes probably had the “kicked puppy look” Mira always teased her about. Celine always warned her she’d have to get botox way too early. “Welp, it was nice talking to you, Jimin, I’m really, really sorry about the coffee, I can send you the money, or wait, let me get the waitress.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s really not, there’s lipgloss all over your cup, and I’m sure it’s really gross, even if you did do that… weird thing.”
It caught him off guard. “Why was it weird?” he asked, stopping her before she could turn around and run far, far away.
“What do you mean? You… drank it even though my lipgloss was there. I could have, like, herpes or something.”
And it was still there, on his lower lip, smeared slightly until the lines of his lips blurred softly like his voice. His features were so sharp otherwise. He looked almost surprised.
“I don’t think it’s weird. You’re cute.” he said like it explained everything. His tone still lacked any emotion.
“I’m… cute?” she repeated, dumbfounded.
Jimin shrugged and rose to his feet, grabbing the cup. He was… quite taller than her. The butterflies in Zoey’s stomach did a somersault.
“I’m really confused.” she told him honestly. “Are you hitting on me?”
“I don’t know.”
“You… don’t know? How can you not know if you’re hitting on someone or not?”
He raised his eyebrows at her. “Are you hitting on me?”
Zoey gulped, trying to calm her heart. Everything Celine had drilled into her told her to turn around and leave. But she didn’t remember the last time she talked to a cute boy. She didn’t remember the last time a cute boy called her cute back.
“I… think so?”
Jimin blinked slowly, looking at her so intensely Zoey coughed awkwardly, instincts screaming at her to bolt.
“Can I walk you home?” he asked in his soft, emotionless voice.
In retrospect, it was a terrible, terrible idea.
The first red flag should’ve been that even though he said he was an idol, Zoey didn’t recognize him from anywhere. And Zoey knew her K-pop.
“So, have I seen you perform before?” she asked as they walked.
Despite the hour, the streets of Seoul were brightly lit and so busy that the two of them had to squeeze between ongoing partygoers in their fancy glittery clothes, tired-looking students with their heavy backpacks, and tipsy office workers with their ties half undone. Every once in a while Zoey would brush against him, and even through the fabric of her hoodie she would feel — or imagine feeling — his warm skin. He smelled like his bitter coffee and something soft and flowery, but every once in a while a whiff of something… rougher would come through. Almost like smoke, or wood, or sweat.
He was too good-looking for his own good.
He took another sip from his coffee and shrugged noncommittally, “I’m a rookie.”
“Ooh, so I’m your sunbae?” she grinned up at him, eyes twinkling.
The corners of his gloss-stained lips turned up again, the tiniest of smiles. “Obviously. You’ve been going at it for a while now.”
For five whole years now, almost six. Ten, if you counted her training. Almost as long as an idol’s entire career. She was just a kid when she selfishly decided to debut. She still felt like she was a kid even now.
And soon the honmoon would be sealed and her purpose would be fulfilled.
And she would be able to do whatever she wanted, no voices, no whispers. She just had to figure out what that was.
But — it didn’t matter, not now. The honmoon had to be sealed. She’d save all of her fans, all of the world, forever. She’d worry about her own personal demons once the real ones were gone.
The hand that held his coffee cup brushed against hers again. Zoey shivered.
“Have you given a thought about what you’ll do once it’s all over?” he asked, as if reading her mind.
But he couldn’t have. “Oh, no, not really,” she waved the question off, voice overly perky, “I still have a year left in my contract, it’s so long from now, and there are lots of options! And I love my fans, I love my team, I love performing. I would love to keep doing this!”
“I would’ve grown tired fighting for my dream for so long.”
She looked at him, squinting. “You sound so jaded for a rookie. Where’s your youthful passion for the stage?”
He laughed quietly, but for some reason it sounded more like a sigh. “It’s not my first debut. Guess I grew disillusioned with the industry.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” Zoey suddenly felt like a total idiot. “I know most teams don’t have the same level of freedom and control as us. It must’ve been very hard.”
“Just a lot of sacrifices.”
The buzzing streets were replaced by a quieter, hillside residential neighborhood that ran along the Han river and was vaguely familiar to Zoey. With the nightlights of clubs and open food courts in the distance, Seoul grew almost peaceful at night, the dark waters of the river shimmering like starlight. The cidacas had come early this year, filling the silence of the night with their buzzing rhythm, and the soft spring breeze carried with it the smell the city took on before rain.
“Were they worth it, at least? The sacrifices?” she asked softly.
He stopped walking as they reached the top of the hill. In a small cove between two house, by a blooming tree, there was an outlook to the river and the city. He leaned with his back against the railing and looked at her with the same intense stare from before. In the dim lamplight, shadowed by the baseball cap, his eyes glinted in an almost golden hue. “I don’t know.” he said. “I thought they’d get me to my dream, but in the end there will always be things getting in the way.”
The second red flag should’ve been that Zoey had no idea where she was. But it was very much not in the direction of her dorm.
“Is Jimin your stage name?” she asked quietly as she came to stand by him, her heart beating in her chest like a caged bird.
“It was just some random name I gave the waitress.”
And because the atmosphere was too intense for her, and because Zoey never hit on guys before, and because she didn’t know what else to say, she told him, “That’s good. There are way too many Jimins in the industry already.”
The stranger looked at her for a very long moment. And then he started laughing.
His laughter was soft like his voice, and just as quiet. It came from somewhere deep inside of him, his eyes losing their intensity for just a moment as he laughed, his head cocked to the side in almost disbelief, as if he was laughing despite himself
“Yeah, you’re right.” he told her, chuckling.
It was a good thing that it was so dark, because Zoey was one hundred percent sure that the soft praise reverberated through her entire body, sending a hot flush straight to her cheeks. She choked on her own saliva.
“So, uh, what’s your name, then? If it’s not Jimin.” she asked, coughing awkwardly and probably looking very not alluring.
“Why do you want to know?” he asked, still amused. “Because I’m exactly your type?”
Zoey choked again.
“N-No!” she said hotly, “That’s — That’s totally not what I meant. I just — well, it’s only fair, since you know my name —”
“I can tell you.” he said, lifting himself from the railing with one, smooth motion and taking one, long step towards her. “If you really want to know. But it’ll cost you.”
He was quite close now.
“Cost me?” she asked nervously. “Cost me what?”
“What do you have to offer?”
She swallowed. “Why do I need to offer anything to know your name?”
“We all have to make sacrifices.” he smirked at her, taking another step.
She smelled flowers, and the bitterness of coffee, and freshly washed fabric, and firewood and smoke.
“That’s such a sad way to look at life.” she whispered.
It killed the mood immediately.
The cicada buzz filled the silence between them, deafening the world. He looked at her like she’d struck him across the face, like she’d taken one of her knives and thrust them deep into his chest.
She didn’t understand what she’d done wrong.
And maybe that should’ve been the third red flag — the fact that she didn’t understand. The fact that he didn’t want to tell her his name without some stupid sacrifice.
“Not all of us got to… how did you put it so eloquently in your song? ‘Find our place to shine?” he said, voice still soft, but there was a cruel edge to it now. The softness cut at her tendons, glueing her to her place as his eyes narrowed and his soft, full lips twisted into a mockery of the smile he wore before. “Most of us don’t get to have our perfect golden honmoon dream without sacrificing something in return, Zoey.”
He spat her name like it poisoned him to say it.
Her knives were in her hands in moments. If he was a human, the stranger would’ve had all six of them impaled into his heart.
But the stranger wasn’t next to her, anymore. He was standing on top of the rooftop of one of the houses now, looking down at her, eyes gleaming beneath his black cap. They shone a bright yellow below the shadows of his face.
The coffee cup was still in his right hand.
“You’re a demon!”
He shrugged at her. “We’re all demons to someone, Zoey. You should be the first to know that.”
The hot, finger-licking body, the rookie idol persona, the golden eyes. Suddenly it all clicked.
“You’re not just a demon. You’re a Saja Boy, aren’t you?” she accused, three blades pointed at him.
“It doesn’t sound very demon-y when you say it like that.” he pointed out nonchalantly.
“It’s not enough that you lure us into the men’s bathhouse, you’re stalking me now!? That coffee shop was my sacred sanctuary! You’re a total creep!” she yelled. “Which Saja Boy even are you!?”
He shrugged again. “Mystery.”
She threw a blade at him. “I don’t have time to play your games, demon! Tell me which one you are right now — Oh.”
The Saja Boy docked his head as the blade flew past him, rematerializing in Zoey’s hand before it could hit the ground.
They stared at each other. He took another sip of coffee.
“Oh my gosh. You’re literally Mystery.”
“I didn’t get to pick my stage name.” he said like it explained everything.
“Why were you stalking me in this coffee shop?” she demanded. “Why did you follow me here?”
Mystery put his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “I was ordered to. So I did.”
“But why?”
“I don’t get to ask questions.” he told her simply, suddenly sounding very tired. “Another sacrifice of mine.”
“Stay away from me!” she warned him. “Don’t think that just because I said you’re hot that I’m not going to kill you. I will! I know what you look like under your luscious hair now! You and your stupid boy band and your stupid abs and your stupid catchy songs are not going to stop the honmoon. I’m going to stop you.”
Mystery only looked down at her, rigid and apathetic.
And then he was gone, and she was left standing on the hill, suddenly quite chilly in her sweatpants and hoodie.
The Second Coffee
Zoey knew that he was following her from the shadows. Even if he was nowhere in sight, she knew. She felt him. She smelled that stupid black coffee stench.
“GUYS!” She screeched as she burst into their dorm. “THERE WAS A SAJA BOY STALKING ME!”
Silence greeted her in the darkness of the apartment. Either Mira and Rumi were sleeping, or they were gone, too.
She spent the next ten minutes searching their dorm for any demonic interference. No glowy yellow eyes, no purple marks, no coffee smell. The only thing remotely related to the Saja Boys was the makeshift shrine/target range she had erected yesterday after they returned home from the Soda Pop performance.
Mystery’s stupid half-hidden face stared at her from one of the posters, smiling his stupid half-smile softly.
Zoey groaned in frustration and plumped down on the floor, still looking at his poster.
He just had to be her ideal type from head to toe.
She hook her head, trying to erase the thoughts of his sharp features and soft brooding vibe and intense eyes from her memory. Hot stalker demons were still stalker demons, even if they were hot.
You’ve lost your composure today, Celine’s voice said in her head. Rumi and Mira would’ve never shown such weakness.
She was right, of course. Zoey knew that Celine always wanted her to keep her cool, to not let her emotions get in the way. It was Media Training all over again. She would’ve probably chastised Zoey for her rambling. She would’ve definitely told her that she should’ve been able to kill Mystery if she wasn’t so focused on being duped by hormones.
She threw her yellow bucket hat at Mystery’s poster. It plumped down softly to the floor.
This guy, really? her head filled with Mira’s voice.
And Rumi said, Zoey… How could you fall for this so easily?
Realization hit her like a cold bucket of water.
She’d have to tell them how she ended up in the situation in the first place. She’d have to tell them that all it took for her to fall prey to a demon was a hot face and a few flirty words.
Zoey doesn’t belong in Huntrix, a sea of whispers rose inside her mind. Bad on stage, bad with demons, bad, bad, bad.
Zoey doesn’t belong.
Zoey shouldn’t belong.
“You knews this would happen!” she told the poster accusingly, pointing her finger at his smug face. “I lied. You’re not even that cute!”
But anxiety was already gripping at her gut like crawling, thorny vines.
She couldn’t tell them.
She was in bed, room lights turned off and door firmly shut, when the door of the apartment opened quietly and the familiar, confident steps she’d grown to associate with Mira sounded softly against the floor. An hour later, Rumi came back.
Through the window of her room, the honmoon shone across the Seoul landscape, sickly purple patches spreading.
In her head, through the sea of contradicting whispers, Soda Pop was playing on repeat all night.
She smelled the stench almost everywhere she went.
In the back halls of music stages. On the quiet streets of Seoul after a demon hunting session. In all the other five coffee shops she’d tried. Even on the balcony outside her room. If Rumi and Zoey noticed, they didn’t say anything.
The smell of black coffee infiltrated her life almost as often as the voices in her head. Zoey could almost taste it on her tongue.
But Mystery never showed up. He never approached her again.
From time to time, she thought she saw a glimpse of purplish silver hair or the flash of yellow in the corner of her eye.
Every time she stopped, her brain short-circuited, knives at the beckon of her fingertips.
But the demon was good. Zoey wondered if he knew his coffee addiction was giving him away.
She smelled the stench before she saw him.
Zoey chose strategically this time. She’d spent the previous night scheming until the early hours. Her plan was perfect.
MCountdown’s backstage hallway was filled with staff and nervous artists mingling and practicing, but her teammates were nowhere in sight — fast asleep back in their waiting room. Hunkered on the floor in the corner between the closet room and the staircase, Zoey was conveniently hidden from everyone else, which had been her plan. It had always been her favorite spot to work on lyrics during promotion periods. She knew that he knew that.
But he didn’t know there was no way to spy on her here other than through the staircase behind her. He didn’t know this was the exact reason she’d spent the last five years here.
She could see him in the corner of her eye — lurking in the shadows on the mezzanine between the first and second floor, leaning against the railing, studying her. She shifted in her corner ever so slightly, as if adjusting her posture, inconspicuously looking at the page of her notebook that was dedicated to the song. It was filled with scratched out words and doodles that drowned the abysmal amount of lyrics that were fit to be kept intact.
She still hadn’t managed to come up with lyrics that were good enough to save the honmoon, no matter how many darts she threw at the Saja Boy’s stupid handsome, glistening faces. Mira and Rumi — the entire world, really — was depending on her, and Zoey was failing. Her Mcountdown corner, where the lyrics of Golden had been birthed, was usually her last and only hope. In this corner, deep in a zone between inspiration and anxiety, Zoey had written so many of Huntrix’s hits before.
But she had more pressing matters at the moment. No matter that the last 2 hours of her time were wasted on staring at the page.
Is there anything more pressing than the honmoon? Celine mused in her head at all times.
And her father’s voice added, You’re still not giving it your all.
The worst part was that no one but Zoey could’ve recognized Mystery. His hair was tied back, and he wore the same cap and black facemask he had worn at the coffee shop. The simple white t-shirt and jeans he had on made him rather inconspicuous. Holding a paper coffee cup and leaning like he did, Mystery looked like just another worker of the industry taking a short break between the chaos and deafening buzzing of the limelight.
It took her a long, long time to get up. Once she did, there was no way back. Her feet carried her up the stairs, one step, two steps, three steps and then she was on the mezzanine beside him. Her earphones still played the hip hop rap track she had been distracting herself with. With a flick of her fingers, she lowered them to rest around her neck. The noises of the hall flooded her ears immediately. Distracting whispers, laughter, noise. So much noise her ears rang.
To his credit (and Zoey hated giving credit to demons), Mystery didn’t attempt to run away or hide. He still leaned against the railing, whole body motionless. He still looked out of the window, not even acknowledging her. His eyes, still intensely yellow, looked softer in the sunlight. He barely blinked. If Zoey didn’t know better, she would’ve thought he hadn’t even noticed her.
That is, until a cream-colored coffee cup was shoved into her face.
If Zoey was a better woman, she would’ve steeled herself against the assault. Unfortunately, Zoey was a jittery, antsy woman. Zoey jumped in her spot and yelped.
From the single eyebrow Mystery raised, he had anticipated this reaction.
She stared at him incredulously.
He stood there, looming over her with his eyebrow raised, hand still extended with the coffee cup he had assaulted her with. “Hyunjin” was written on it with a black marker. The smell of black coffee filled her nostrils until she wanted to retch.
“Get that monstrosity away from my face!”
“Let’s be civil. I’m just returning the favor.” His voice was as soft and emotionless as last time. “There’s no lipgloss on it, though. Sorry.”
Zoey glared daggers at him, burning at the memory of… that. “I don’t need any favors from a —” she lowered her voice so that only he would hear, “demon! And stop stalking me!”
“I can’t do that, sorry.” he shrugged, clearly not sorry at all. “You sure?” He gestured at the cup.
The stench of bitterness was getting too much. “It’s black coffee. No.”
“You don’t like black coffee?” he asked, almost innocently.
But Zoey knew that he knew.
“What do you want from me?” she asked.
“I told you I was ordered to keep an eye on you. So I do.”
But Zoey had been thinking. “Yeah, yeah, evil demonic plan to destroy the honmoon and kill us all, whatever man. I’ve given it a long thought. You don’t seem too happy to destroy the world. There’s too much talk of sacrifice and not enough maniacal laughter coming out of you.”
“And you’ve conducted such a thorough study of my character based on our only conversation?”
“I’ll have you know that I’m pretty good at judging character.”
“Are you?”
“Well — yeah.” She stumbled on her words. But she’d been thinking. And she had practiced this conversation before. “I asked you not to approach me again, and even though you still stalked me, you… You didn’t do it creepily. As much as you can stalk not creepily.”
He shrugged. “Maybe I also didn’t want to approach you.”
She’d practiced this angle, too. “But you said I was cute.”
“People lie.”
“Well, duh! Of course they do sometimes! But you didn’t.” She said, suddenly very convinced of her own words. She had thought about it thoroughly. “You didn’t want to tell me things. But you could’ve lied about your name. Or about being an idol. Or about recognizing me. And you didn’t. When you told me things, I’m pretty sure you only said the truth.”
Mystery’s features softened, and at last he turned to look at her. Through the statuesque expression, Zoey saw a sliver of surprise, of curiosity. It danced inside his irises like specks of sunlight reflecting through the window.
“Yeah, you’re right.” It felt like he was confessing it despite himself.
So Zoey pressed. She leaned forward, leering into his stare with wide eyes. “Why?”
Mystery didn’t take his eyes off of her as he lowered his facemask and took a long sip of steaming coffee. Even though all around them Zoey heard noises, in this corner between the hallway and the second floor, it was like the two of them were hidden from the rest of the world, a tiny bubble of existence.
“Honestly?” he said, smiling ever so slightly. “You’re just my type, too.”
She gaped at him, mouth on the floor, as he sipped his black coffee nonchallantly.
“At least I think you are.” he added, seemingly not noticing her state of utter fucking shock, “Sometimes it’s hard to tell, being a demon.”
Zoey tried to talk. She tried to move her tongue, to form words with her lips. But her jaw clenched and unclenched involuntarily, and her fingers gripped the pages of her notebook until it tore around the edges, and her heart was beating like a caged hummingbird, and she was feeling hot for some reason. Her ears still played his words, swallowing the noise around her.
“What?” he asked when the silence filled the space between them.
His eyes were more golden than yellow up close.
“You know, you — you don’t stalk someone who’s your type! You don’t… try to kill them.” Zoey managed to get out.
“You tried to kill me.” he pointed out.
“Because you’re a demon!”
He shrugged like it didn’t actually matter at all.
“What exactly makes me your type?” she asked finally.
Mystery ignored her question, instead taking another sip from his coffee cup.
“Why did you walk me home that time?” Zoey tried asking instead.
In all honestly, she shouldn’t have asked him at all. She shouldn’t have talked to him. She should’ve remembered Celine’s voice inside her head, what it would’ve said, and gotten up and left. She shouldn’t have listened to anything a demon might tell her.
Instead, she looked at Mystery as he studied her. “I wanted to.”
“Demons don’t want things.”
“All demons do is want.” his voice was soft, and even, but it shimmered with… something below the surface. For the life of her, Zoey couldn’t figure out what. All she knew was that he looked at her so intensely she wanted to run away from his watchful golden gaze.
She looked down, feeling like she had lost another battle. The cover of her notebook swam before her, worn stickers blurring around the edges.
“I saw your lyrics earlier. They aren’t very good.” she heard him say.
“Oh, and you are such a lyrical genius, Mr. Demon Saja Boy?” she deadpanned, rolling her eyes.
“I used to write my group’s songs.”
Zoey didn’t have to ask which group he meant. She wanted to, though, quite desperately. Instead, she huffed out, “Well, no one asked for your opinion anyway. And I hope you didn’t write Soda Pop because even though it’s catchy as hell, it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. When you’re in my arms, I hold you so tight. How were you able to come up with that.”
Mystery laughed, softly and quietly. Zoey pretended that her heart didn’t skip a beat.
“Memorized our lyrics, have you?” he asked, the laughter still in his voice.
“It’s too fucking catchy.” she admitted begrudgingly, still not looking at him. “And your voice is… nice. For a demon.”
Mystery didn’t say anything for such a long time that Zoey was beginning to feel even more uncomfortable than she had felt before. She almost raised her eyes back to him when she felt him shift next to her, the slightest of movements.
But his sleeveless arm now touched hers — and unlike before, she was wearing a flimsy shirt for Huntrix’s upcoming stage, and its sleeves were long but the material was sheer, and his arm was warm. So warm that it made her whole body warmer. The smell of coffee mixed with cotton, and flowers, and wood, and smoke, and suddenly it didn’t stink as much anymore.
“Can I kiss you?” he asked her emotionlessly.
Zoey’s head whipped as she looked at him with wide eyes. “What!? No!”
Her heart was beating in the rhythm of a marching band. The whole world had gone silent, except for his words.
Mystery didn’t seem offended, although his eyes softened and his mouth turned down ever so slightly, like the muscles wanted to frown but couldn’t remember how to do it.
“Why do you even want to kiss me!?” she asked incredulously.
“I just do. I want to do more than kissing.”
Zoey choked. Mystery waited patiently for her to finish coughing the spit that had gone down her windpipe.
“But — But demons don’t want… those things!”
He cocked his head at her, genuinely curious. A few strands of his purplish-silver hair fell on his eyes, framing the intense gold of his irises. “Are you sure?”
She wasn’t sure at all. “All the demons I fought were mindless monsters. Sure, you Saja Boys look different, but you’re still demons!”
“They’re not mindless monsters,” said Mystery.
He said it like it was such a universal truth that Zoey paused. Her whole life since she’d joined Huntrix, she knew one truth — demons were evil. Mindless cruelty and desire for destruction was in their nature. All Celine talked about was how demons’ sole desire was to destroy their world and kill humans.
But then again, wasn’t that an emotion in itself?
In retrospect, she shouldn’t have asked it. She shouldn’t have wanted to know, shouldn’t have submitted to her own curiosity, and to his intense golden stare, and to the way his arm shifted against hers, sending sparks down her entire nervous system.
But she did. She always was Celine’s worst student. She asked, “What is it like? Being a demon? What do you feel, exactly?”
It was Mystery’s turn to avert his eyes. For the first time, he looked almost ashamed. His shoulder stooped, and his eyes became glassy as he looked at a faraway point Zoey couldn’t quite see. His fingers played absentmindedly with his cup of coffee, the motion so bizarrely out of character that it caught her eye the moment it had begun.
“It’s like… there is an abyss of voices in my head.” he said at last, taking another long pause. “And they are all screaming from the bottom. And I can hear these voices. Constantly. They tell me things about myself, and they command me to do things. Sometimes I can ignore them. But more often than not…” he paused again, his fingers pressing on the coffee cup until there were indents in the paper. “I never know if it’s me, or if it’s... They make it hard to concentrate.”
Zoey noticed, for the second time, that Mystery had the same earphones as her. Down to the light grey color. He wore them around his neck, slightly crooked and peaking through the face mask he had lowered, as if he had taken them down before she approached. If she concentrated hard enough, through the noises of the hall, and the ambience of the room, and Mystery’s shallow, even breaths, she could hear a distant soft melody coming from them, even now.
“But what’s another sacrifice.” he added with the resignation of a doomed man.
“Mystery…” she started, but words eluded her. She… wanted to tell him something. Anything. But her mind was blank, her head completely empty. She didn’t understand what it was she needed him to know.
“I don’t remember when was the last time I laughed before you spit my coffee in that coffee shop.” he sighed.
He stared at her, features soft, but eyes blazing. Up close, if she’d allow herself, Zoey could count all the shades of yellow his irises held.
She still didn’t know what to tell him.
Mystery put the coffee cup down on the silver railing of the stairs. He dusted at his jeans as if he just stood up and adapted a rigid sort of pose, almost like a mannequin. The noise of the hallway suddenly became quite loud again, intrusive, ringing, and almost painful.
“Sorry I can’t leave you alone like you want.” Mystery said, voice back to a calm, emotionless tone. “I’ll try to hide better.”
Instead of walking back, he teleported in a flash of purple haze, leaving Zoey with the half-drunk coffee cup.
Tentatively, she reached for it. Her fingers settled into the craters his grip had made in the paper.
Zoey took a sip.
It was still black, and still almost inhumanly disgusting. But there was sugar in the coffee now.
The Third Coffee
Zoey’s ears rang as Celine chastised her in her head all the way back to the waiting room where Rumi and Mira still lay motionless, asleep after a night of demon hunting and an early rise filled with makeup and rehearsals.
What are you doing, Zoey!? their voices filled her mind anyway.
He’s a demon! Rumi reminded her, incredulous.
Are you a hunter? asked Celine. Then act like it.
What about us? A whisper rose in the back, another fan, young and full-cheeked and freckled. Zoey had signed her photocard before. Are you going to abandon us?
Don’t do this to us, the fans pleaded.
But Zoey didn’t really understand what exactly it was that she was not supposed to do. Her ears rang too loudly for her to try to understand.
But still, Zoey could smell his coffee.
In the thrift store she had walked in because she saw a cute pink bucket hat.
Late at night in the park where she, Rumi, and Mira strolled leisurely after yet another demon raid.
On the balcony outside her room where she sat, shivering in nothing but an old, oversized t-shirt with her earphones blaring songs so loudly she couldn’t even remember what the noise of the city below her sounded like. Where she punished herself for the purple patches of honmoon fabric that were unraveling before her eyes, growing larger and larger with each day she couldn’t figure out the proper lyrics to the song.
She smelled the coffee whenever she would pick up her panda pencil and scratch off another awkward lyric off the page. Sometimes, when she forgot her notebook outside, she’d find short, matter-of-fact notes in it, commenting on any recent changes she had made.
The smell of coffee greeted her each morning, so strong and fresh it was as if she’d stepped into the coffee shop she loved.
And the honmoon grew more purple in the distance. But honestly, the more she thought about it, the more Zoey was convinced that Mystery didn’t like looking at it, either.
She stood there, in the cool evening air in shorts and tank top, and debated herself for a good five minutes.
She placed the coffee cup down on the discarded cardboard box in the corner of her balcony where she had kept her old instruments and lyric notebooks.
In the morning, it was gone.
The Fourth Coffee
She waited for him on the balcony, sitting on the floor, two cups of coffee on the floor beside her opened lyric notebook. Her earphones lay discarded somewhere behind her. She had been too nervous to even try to write.
The noises of the city below her deafened her, swallowing her until she could hear nothing but the ringing in her ears.
It’s not too late to change your mind, Rumi repeated in her head.
And Celine said, disappointed, I taught you better than this. You never listen.
Zoey let the voices drown her until she struggled breathing, fill her with anxiety as she stared at the lights and skyscrapers of the city through the railing. She did not avert her eyes as the honmoon devoured itself in purple shades against the darkness of the night.
It took him three whole hours to give in.
Mystery appeared silently out of a purple haze of smoke, expression blank and body brick-like. The sad part was, Zoey had grown so used to him she had expected nothing less.
“What are you doing?” He asked her slowly.
“Did you like the coffee?” She asked him.
“No.”
“No?” She said innocently, “You don’t like milk and three spoons of sugar in it?”
Mystery just stared at her from where he stood.
“That’s how I take my coffee.” She smiled.
“Do I look like I care?”
“Yeah, you do, actually.”
Hands in pockets, maskless, earphones around his neck, sleeveless white shirt and loose hair swaying in the spring wind, Mystery didn’t move an inch from where he stood.
“Why are you leaving comments in my notebook?” She asked.
Not a single muscle on his face twitched. “I couldn’t stop myself. It won’t happen again.”
“It’s been happening for two weeks, isn’t it a little too late for that?” She raised her brows at him. “You do realize it’s a diss song that’s supposed to defeat you?”
“Takedown is as informative a name as it is snappy.”
Again with his apathetic voice. Again with the statuesque stature.
Zoey looked down and read the words she had memorized by heart, written in neat, delicate letters next to one of her scratched off lines, “How can you sleep or live with yourself? A broken soul trapped in the nastiest shell.” And she looked up and met his eyes, adrenaline coursing through her veins. “What is this, Mystery?”
“Lyrics suggestion.”
“A very weird suggestion, don’t you think? For a demon.”
“It’s song lyrics.”
“You said you used to write lyrics, before.”
Mystery shrugged, but Zoey knew that he knew that she knew. Shamefully, she didn’t remember when it had happened, but she had learned to read him, to understand him through the apathy and rigidness and wordless answers.
So instead of answering, he attacked. “I was just suggesting a rhyme for your lyrics. How did they go?”
Zoey tried not to flinch.
But she really was so bad at hiding her emotions. Or maybe Mystery spent so much studying her he had learned to read her, too.
“Look at all the masses that you’re fooling, but they’ll turn on you soon.” He recited coldly from memory.
“It’s about you. Obviously.” She said quickly.
“Is it?” He took a step towards her, the wind blowing his hair into his eyes. “But the rest of your diss lyrics are so shit.”
“Well, I’m sorry my writing skills are not on par with your standar —”
“You’re a liar.”
Zoey glared at him. “You don’t know me.”
“It’s my job to know you.” he told her honestly. “I have spent the last month studying you. Learning all your weaknesses.”
The smell of coffee turned bitter as it mixed with the smog from all the cars below them.
In the moonlight, Mystery shone like the otherworldly being that he was. The glow of distant city light haloed his frame, turning him almost deceptively angelic. Cool moonlight reflected on his purplish-silver hair like a galaxy of stars. It reflected on his eyes, too, the same intense eyes Zoey had been searching for in every coffee shop, on every stage, in every shadow of her balcony. The same intense eyes she had been thinking of, day and night. The same golden eyes she had been dreaming of, despite herself.
“You know, I should’ve known that you were a Saja Boy back then, at the coffee shop.” she told him. The words came out with shame dripping from her tongue like sour poison. But they were the truth, she couldn’t lie to either of them anymore. “I guess I’m just that naive. I fell right into your trap, didn’t I?”
Mystery watched her silently, face devoid of any feeling.
“I have voices in my head too.” she confessed, the words barely a whisper. But she knew that Mystery could hear her. “And then a cute guy called me cute at the coffee shop, and for a moment I could ignore them, so I did. And I ignored all the red flags that came with it. It must’ve been quite funny to you, right?”
“No.” said Mystery.
“It’s okay, you don’t have to say nice things out of pity. I’m a hunter and you’re a demon. And I fell into your trap. It’s easy to forget sometimes when you look…” she gestured at all of him — his height, his muscles, his soft lips, his intense golden eyes, “Or when you say the things you say. But last night I had to clean up the body of someone’s grandma because a demon ate her soul. I don’t think it’s the world you want, no matter how hard you pretend. But even if you don’t, that’s the world your actions are striving to achieve.”
The tears came suddenly, despite her best efforts. She felt the wetness rolling down her cheeks. Through bleary eyes, she thought she saw Mystery recoil.
“It’s literally my job to not show any weakness, especially to demons.” She said weakly, choking on her guilt. “But you said I’m the first person that made you laugh since you became a demon. And your earphones… We have the same ones, I’m sure you’ve noticed. So I just…”
Zoey suddenly really didn’t want to look at Mystery anymore. She got up, legs wobbly, and stumbled on her feet, knocking down one of the cups she had prepared for them. The coffee spilled with a soft splash. Her socks were wet in seconds. The smell filled the space between them, almost unbearable.
Zoey stilled before she could turn. She looked up and met his eyes.
Mystery stayed silent, his body rigid like a rod. His jaw was set tightly, like he was physically restraining himself, but he could not contain his eyes. They glared at her, golden and simmering with emotion. But just like it always was with him, what emotion simmered was a mystery.
“Say something.” she whispered.
“What is it that you want me to say?”
His tone made her blood boil with more shame, more guilt, more desperation. “I don’t know, anything!”
“Anything?” he let out a short laugh, more a bark than anything. But at least it was emotion. At least it was something. “Then you’re wrong.”
“What do you mean, wrong?”
“I don’t care about the fucking world. I used to, but now it can burn for all I care.”
“But that’s not true, I saw —”
“But not you.” he stopped her, and for the first time Zoey could detect fury in his soft voice. His entire body shook. “You said yourself that I never lied to you. You are the only one who can make the voices quiet down, even if only for a moment. I don’t know how you do it. I thought they were just another sacrifice I had to live with. I accepted it. But I would’ve given anything for the fucking ringing in my ears to stop.”
He looked at her then like a starved animal.
“I don’t know how to explain the magnitude of the thing I feel for you.”
Zoey tried rolling her eyes, but blood was rushing in her face, her heart fluttering like it was about to give out. “You barely know me. You can’t feel this much, Mystery.”
“I wish you’d call me by my name.” he said solemnly.
“Well, I don’t know your name.” she huffed out.
Whether he didn’t know or didn’t want her to know, Mystery didn’t tell her. Instead, he said, “I’m a demon. I told you all we do is want, there’s not much else we can do with our existence. All I do is want you.”
“It doesn’t change anything!” She exclaimed.
“It doesn’t.” He agreed. “Tell me you don’t feel it too.”
Zoey’s stomach flipped as silence filled the space between them with such tension she could cut it with her knives. It was too much, all of it, the silence suffocating in a different way than the ringing she would always hear when he was away. It gave way to the emotions rooted deep within her gut, and in her veins, and in her nerves. Electricity that sent sparks down to her fingertips and made her heart beat too quickly like a marching band. Her whole body was on fire, overheating her already deeply fried brain.
She couldn’t think. Mystery was staring at her, eyes molten gold, and Zoey couldn’t think. “I feel — I … I don’t know what I feel —”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I — I feel something, alright!?” Her whole world shifted on its axis. “But I don’t know! I don’t know what I feel! I’m not lying! You’re — You’re a demon, Mystery! And I’m a Hunter!”
“And it doesn’t change anything.” Mystery repeated. “I want you. And it doesn’t change anything.”
“Doesn’t it?” She asked him desperately.
“Not to the world.” He said. “It’s just another sacrifice. I told you we don’t get to live our lives without those.”
“Well, I don’t want it, then.”
“Don’t you?”
She didn’t know. Her whole body was on fire, and she didn’t know.
“Can I kiss you?” She asked him.
He cocked his head in mock amusement, but Zoey knew him. She saw the fire in his eyes and in the way he swallowed. “So you can know for sure?”
“Yes.” She breathed.
“Then sure.” He murmured. He was so tense he looked like he was trying to hide a mortal wound from her.
Zoey had to take the four steps that separated them. Her socks were wet, stained with coffee. Each step felt like a betrayal.
She lifted herself on her tiptoes and almost tripped. Mystery grabbed her waist and steadied her.
There was nothing in the world that was holding her other than his hands, scorching the skin between her tank top and her shorts. There was no gravity other than the fingers that dug into her flesh and held her grounded to the balcony floor.
Zoey could hear his breaths.
Shallow. Ragged. Fragile. She looked up from where her hands landed on his chest, straight into his eyes.
Mystery’s breath shuddered.
Tentatively, she reached out and kissed him.
He went completely still.
His lips were soft. She reached to touch his cheek with her hand, cradling him, moving her lips against his gingerly. It sent a spark across her lips, spreading to her neck, and then her lungs, and then her heart. All the way to her fingertips and toes. She couldn’t hear the noises of the city below them, she had forgotten what they sounded like. There was just the soft, wet sound of her lips against his, and the uneven breaths he took between each time their lips met.
Then his composure broke. It wasn’t sudden. Mystery surrendered like the beginning of a song, slow and quiet with each kiss, as if each missed breath of his was an installment for the sacrifice he always talked about.
His arms tightened around her waist, pulling her closer to him until she was pressed flush against him, feeling his warm body through the thin fabric of her shirt.
He deepened the kiss, pushing against her lips with the emotion he never showed. Zoey gasped as one of his hands dipped lower, towards the curve between her waist and hip, gliding against her scorching skin. The sound reverberated between them.
Mystery broke the kiss, leaning away. But he was breathing heavily, like her. His eyes were hooded, dazed. His hands were still around her.
“Do you know now?” He asked her, panting.
She kissed him again.
Zoey had never been kissed like this before. None of her kisses felt like… this. Like she was being set on fire. Like she never wanted it to stop. Like she could hear his very heartbeat, beating in tandem with her own. Like each time his lips touched hers she melted, drowned, and satiated an unquenchable thirst she didn’t know she had.
“Do you know now?” He hissed against her lips.
“I… I shouldn’t want you like this.” She confessed, breathless.
“It doesn’t change anything.” He told her with conviction, tightening his hold on her waist.
Only it did. Maybe it didn’t for him — Mystery seemed to live a life of contradiction dictated by his own existence, and he seemed to have accepted it with dignity. But Zoey couldn’t. Everything about her had been trained to keep her feelings, her weakness, tightly locked and neatly compartmentalized. To put herself second. To feel like she was being torn from all the choices she could make and all the expectations she promised to fulfill, and to hide it with each smile, and joke, and bow.
And kissing Mystery changed everything. It was the most selfish, the most shameful, the weakest thing Zoey could think of.
“How can it not change everything?” She breathed against his lips.
“We can stop, then.” He said.
She could still only hear his voice, his breaths, his heartbeat, and nothing else.
“How?” She asked despite her shame, her guilt, her desperation. “I’m really bad at sacrifices.”
He cocked his head, an amused smirk against his lips, his eyes still glimmering with darkened gold. “You are extremely good at them, Zoey. You’re just bad at calling them for what they are.”
It was the way he said her name with his soft voice that made her lose herself completely.
“So nothing changes.” She said.
“Nothing changes.” He agreed.
“I want to have sex with you, then.” Zoey confessed.
Mystery went completely rigid.
“At least I think I do.” She added hesitantly.
“What.”
His tone was so devoid of the emotion he had shown her in their kiss that Zoey flinched. She tried taking a step back, but Mystery’s hands were still tangled around her waist like vines.
“Unless you don’t want to? In which case it’s totally fine, don’t worry, it’s totally, totally cool, I’m not offended, it makes complete sens —”
“Just so that I understand,” he cut her off, “You want to have sex… so you can know for sure?”
It was one of the longest sentences Mystery had ever said to her. Zoey suddenly felt very small and very stupid. Blush crept up her already red and hot cheeks, staining them a shameful crimson. Her gut twisted on itself as she looked anywhere but him and his intense eyes. “No? I… don’t know? My body just feels… hot all over, and it’s not like I have any experience with this so it’s kind of hard to tell…”
With her eyes averted, all Zoey saw was his chest, rising and falling unevenly beneath his sleeveless t-shirt, and her hands, clutching at its fabric. He stayed quiet for an unbearably long time.
“Fuck.” She heard him hiss through clenched teeth. “You’ve never had sex before?”
Her cheeks grew ever hotter. “Well, it’s not like I’ve had lots of free time and opportunities debuting at fifteen. We have a dating ban and all that.”
He chuckled, his chest rising with the sound, sending tingles through her palms. “Never stopped anyone before.”
“Why? Did you have lots of sex before?”
“Not lots.”
“It’s different for girls, though. With how Korea is and all the double standards.” She huffed out.
She waited for him to disagree, the way people always did when she pushed her “American beliefs”, but Mystery only nodded. “Are you sure, then?”
She wasn’t. Her brain and body were fighting for dominance, and her heart was drumming out a war march against her ribcage. “I think so?”
Mystery looked at her solemnly. “Tell me to stop.”
And then they were inside her warm, insulated room, and impossibly, Zoey’s body grew even hotter. If Mystery cared about the poster of his face that had been turned into target practice, he didn’t show it. He didn’t even look around the purple walls, and the messy pile of clothes sitting on her chair and on her drawer. He seemed to only notice her, shifting awkwardly as she sat on the yellow sheets of her bed and tried to take off her stained socks without looking like a gremlin.
His silence was oppressive and the room was just too hot.
”We have to be quiet.” She told him to fill the space between them with anything that wasn’t so intense. “Mira and Rumi aren’t home now, but I don’t know when they’ll be back, and I doubt it will be very… um, good for team morale if they find you here.”
”Why are you talking about your teammates now?”
One of the socks finally came off, and Zoey flicked it away. It hit the pile of dirty laundry with the learned precision of a procrastinating master. “Because we have to be quiet!”
Mystery only rolled his eyes, but the expression lacked its usual bite. His cheeks were too flushed. His eyes were too hooded. His breath was too shallow. “Lie on your back.” He instructed.
”But my sock —“
”I’ll do it for you.” He said, coming closer and kneeling in front of her.
Swallowing, Zoey leaned back until she couldn’t see his eyes anymore and felt the sheets against her hot skin. The ceiling spun before her eyes.
”Do you touch yourself?” She heard him ask softly.
”Duh, doesn’t everyone?” She huffed out.
”How?”
Embarrassment stained her cheeks crimson. “Mystery —“
”Tell me. Please.”
”Um…” the insides of her thighs were tingling. “I don’t know, I guess I just… like, rub myself. My boobs. My clit. Sometimes I put a finger in.”
She felt his gentle hands wrap around her ankle and tug at the wet sock. “Fuck.” He hissed again. “That’s hot.”
”Yeah, right —“
But Mystery didn’t let her continue her embarrassed rambling. “Do you want me to touch you like that, too?”
She felt the sock come off completely, leaving her foot suddenly free and cool. His fingers were still wrapped around her ankle, and they gripped her skin, rubbing circles into it. His pointer finger shifted slightly above the rest, almost reaching her shin. Itching to go higher.
She didn’t know what to tell him. Saying the words out loud was too embarrassing.
”Zoey.” He whispered, and his fingers finally let go only to brush against the sensitive skin of her leg. Almost dancing against it. Teasing in featherlight strokes. Too low for her liking. And his voice was too soft, too rich, too warm as he said her name. “Tell me.”
”… Yes.” She confessed, barely a whisper.
He murmured something that sounded like a lot of “fucks” being repeated, and then he let go of her leg and stood up to look at her. “You know, I thought I wanted nothing more than to hear silence again. Turns out, I want to hear your moans more.”
Mystery would’ve seen her spluttering and choking on herself rather ungracefully if he hadn’t proceeded to remove his sleeveless shirt.
His chest was perfect like the rest of him, smooth and pale and blushing, and maybe she would’ve stopped and stared, before, but Zoey was already flushed and thoroughly embarrassed. “You have to stop saying things like that, dude!”
”But they’re making you tremble.”
”Yeah, because they’re so cringe!”
Mystery smirked down at her, — barely a sliver of a tugging of his upper lip, an almost invisible motion if she didn’t know him by now — and suddenly Zoey felt his fingers on her pussy, sliding up and down against the fabric of her PJs. And then she really did tremble. And then she let out a shuddered breath she didn’t know she was holding. And then Mystery’s smirked grew a millimeter wider, but it was enough to tell her everything she needed to know. “I think they’re making you wet.” He said.
”They are — not.” She tried saying, but his index finger pressed against the exact spot where her clit was, separated by the layers of her panties and her pants. His touch made her skin light up, but it wasn’t enough. The tension was nowhere near enough.
”Why is my finger sticky, then?”
Zoey looked down, mortified, and Mystery took it as an opportunity to kiss her again. His lips caught hers, and his hand cradled her head until she was pressed flushed between him and the bed. His tongue teased her lips before he moved lower, pressing hot, wet kisses against her neck and collarbone. He licked the strip of her tank top, and then he pressed an open-mouthed kiss directly on her left nipple, sucking slightly through the cloth.
And then it was Zoey’s turn to curse a quiet, “Oh, fuck.”
She didn’t even have time to think of that sensation — and fuck, it felt so different from how she pictured it, it never felt this way when she touched herself alone — when Mystery pulled her tank top up and her breasts were hit with the coolness of the room.
And then his tongue was swirling around a nipple, warm and slippery, and his fingers palmed her other breast. And Zoey’s body jerked against his mouth as she moaned despite herself.
He popped her nipple out of his mouth, and the air instantly cooled down his saliva, making it pucker. ”Didn’t you say we have to be quiet?” He asked, and it would’ve been innocent if not for the arrogantly mocking tone he couldn’t quite hide from his voice.
But Zoey didn’t have anything snappy to say. Her brain wasn’t working properly. “Can you… do it again, please?”
All traces of mockery vanished from his voice. “Yeah.”
She couldn’t quite describe or understand the feeling of Mystery’s lips and tongue on her breasts. It set her nervous system on fire and made her shiver all at once. Soft noises escaped from her lips even though she desperately tried to keep quiet, and her body moved out of its own volition — lifting up to meet his tongue and press against his face, and press grind her hips against his own where she could feel his erection pressing through his pants, hard and throbbing. He hissed every time her hips hit his just right, until it seemed like he couldn’t take it anymore.
She whined when he lifted his head away from her, low and needy.
”Fuck. Look at you.” He whispered, breathing heavily, voice soft and raspy.
Zoey wondered what he saw. If he looked at her the way she looked at him, the way she saw his chest rise and fall, pale but flushed, his hair ruffled and messy, a drop of saliva running down his chin, erection throbbing hard, urging her to touch it.
”Can I suck you off?” She asked him.
”N-No.” He said before he reached for her PJs and slid them off her legs in one smooth motion, taking her underwear with them.
“But Mystery —“
”This first.” He kissed her thigh, and Zoey shivered. “Then do whatever else you want. Bite my dick off for all I care.” He kissed her other thigh, slightly higher, in the juncture where it met her hip.
Zoey’s insides tingled. “I don’t want to bite it,” she said as Mystery’s fingers trailed from her stomach up to palm her breast again. She felt his breath against her pussy, shuddering. “I want to suck it —“
Mystery licked her, and a moan tore from her throat, cutting off whatever she had been trying to say. He chuckled against her swollen lips, and she forced herself not to moan again.
“Do you know how long I’ve wanted to do this to you?” He asked before he licked her again and Zoey’s body convulsed. Her thighs spasmed and he gripped them with his hands, wrapping them around his neck like they were his personal dog collar.
She hid her face in her hands, too embarrassed to talk. But she couldn’t stop her panting. She couldn’t stop the moans Mystery tore out of her as he licked her again and again, swirling his tongue against her clit, swiping it up and down against her lips, and lapping at her as if he was a starved dog at a feast. The familiar tension of an orgasm built up along her nerve ends, but she had never felt this way alone. It was… so much more intense, as if her nervous system was attuned to hs each and every action, heightening her senses until it all got too much. It was too much, this feeling he evoked in her. In her pussy, and in her legs, and in her stomach, in her throat, and in her heart. She breathed and breathed, and moans escaped from her and tension built inside of her until Zoey thought she would explode. She needed more, she needed more, she needed —
Mystery put a finger inside of her. Just one finger. She’d done it to herself, before. It never felt like much. But Mystery’s finger stretched her from the inside, tight and slick, and it was unlike anything Zoey had felt in her entire life.
She thought first times weren’t supposed to be good. She thought it would be awkward and painful. Mira had prepared her for the inevitability of her having the talk with her partner about how it was nice, but no she didn’t come, and they would work on it next time.
But Mystery curled his finger and rubbed her from the inside, and he licked her clit in fast, short strokes, and Zoey came against his lips with loud moans, her legs shaking around his neck, her whole body convulsing on the bedsheets.
She couldn’t hear anything. She couldn’t remember what her breath sounded like, what her name was. Her eyes blurred with tears, her head light with lack of oxygen, her whole body tingling around the place where Mystery kept lapping at her. He kept and kept through her orgasm until it faded slowly.
He pressed a soft kiss against her pussy, like a promise to return, and looked up at her, his expression neutral, but Zoey could read him better now. His eyes were glowing ferally. He was much too pleased with himself.
His lips were swollen and glossy from her juices, the way they were after he drank from her gloss-stained coffee cup.
”That was…” Zoey couldn’t put words to it. Her mind was still not working. “Nice. Kinda nice, dude, like… yeah.”
What she wanted to say was — oh my god how are you so good with your tongue, and I didn’t know demons were actually this freaky in bed but maybe I should’ve expected it since you’re, like, demons. But her brain refused to ramble like usual. Her brain refused to work.
Mystery smirked ever so slightly, but he said in a casual, matter-of-fact tone, “I think it was a bit more than nice, wasn’t it?”
”It’s less nice if you’re going to ruin it by being cocky.”
”I just haven’t heard you yell so loud since that waitress surprised you.”
Zoey threw her pillow at him. He let it smack him square across his face. He was still smirking softly, lips and jaw glistening, as it hit her legs before dropping to the floor softly.
”You sound lovely when you come.” He told her honestly, and if it was even possible, Zoey blushed even harder than before. Her thighs were still wrapped around his neck, and there was no way to hide the way they clenched around him as he said it.
”I want to suck your dick now.” She said with a confidence she didn’t quite possess.
Mystery’s eyes darkened. “Are you sure?”
It was a chore to untangle her legs from him. They shook as she tried to get up and sit in front of him. Her thighs were sticky and spasming, and her brain grew distracted when Mystery started massaging them with his long fingers, digging into her flesh just right. But her left leg was lying against his own thigh, and she could feel his cock, hard and swollen, digging into her, and curiosity mixed inside her with a deeper, more carnal and intense desire.
She reached out and tentatively rubbed him against his pants. Mystery hissed out a harsh breath.
For some weird reason, Zoey didn’t feel exposed sitting naked before him. She thought she would, when she would lose her virginity. But Mystery had already seen a much deeper, much weaker, and much more embarrassing part of her. And he looked at her with such an hungry expression, taking her in, drinking her body with each breath like he couldn’t get enough.
She unzipped his pants.
He helped her, lifting himself from the floor and taking his pants down quickly. His underwear came next. And then he was completely naked, too. Each time her hands brushed against his skin, it slowly turned diaphanous, almost grey. His penis was erect, large and swollen and dripping precum from the tip.
Slowly, it appeared before her. A faint silhouette of purple marks ghosted around his skin like enlarged veins, blooming into view like the blush against his pale chest, snaking from his limbs, to his torso, to the edges of his face, to where his heart was.
Zoey stared at him. At the demon marks he hid so well before.
Mystery noticed her silence quickly. Then, he noticed the marks that had slowly spread across his skin. His face turned completely blank.
It sent a ping of anxiety through her gut. “What— what?” She asked him, suddenly feeling self-conscious.
”Just wondering if you’re having second thoughts.”
”What? Because of your marks? Mystery, I know you’re a demon. Can I please just suck your dick?”
He stopped mid-motion, eyebrows raised. He had never raised his eyebrows like this before. “You’re fine with this sacrifice, then?”
”My pussy juices are smeared all over your face, I think it’s a little too late for philosophical discussions tonight.” She deadpanned. But then she added, less confident, and much more vulnerable than she would’ve liked, “If you’re fine with it… ?”
They did have the same noise-cancelling earphones, after all. And their lyrical suggestions were too similar. And the faint scent of coffee still hung in the room, mixing with the smell of sex.
”Out of all my sacrifices, this one has been the easiest to make.” He said ever so softly, cupping her cheek and letting his fingers caress the edges of her swollen lips.
And that was all of the encouragement she needed to reach out and touch his cocked with trembling fingers. She wrapped her palm around him. It felt… firm. The skin was soft and hot to the touch, and veins ran up and down the length of it, pulsating under her touch. His dick jerked against her hand.
Mystery growled.
”Fu — ck,” he hissed, the word between a whisper and a wolf howl.
”Is this… okay?” She asked him.
”… Yes.”
She gave a few tentative strokes, feeling out the pressure and testing out the angle of her hand. It didn’t seem to matter to him all the much — he simply watched her with a starved, intense expression in his yellow eyes, lips trembling and teeth bared at her, breathing heavily, yet staying silent. Just shuddering whenever she would move.
It had occurred to Zoey, then, that he had been uncharacteristically talkative when he went down on her. Or maybe he was forcing himself to stay silent, now. Maybe he was savoring the silence. Or maybe he was busy chasing the voices away.
In the end, it didn’t matter. “I want to try to suck it, now.” She told him.
”Okay.”
She shifted on her knees until she was face to face with his cock. Up close, she saw the blueish tint of its veins against the reddish flesh. She saw the precum glistening against the head and on her fingers.
She kissed it, open-mouthed against the tip. It tasted salty, musky on her tongue, and she swirled it around the head, testing it out.
Mystery jerked violently against her, the way she did when he licked her just right. His palm dug into her head, half keeping her in place, half pushing her closer to his penis. It felt like a good sign.
She gave the tip another tentative lick, earning yet another hip jerk from him, and then, curious, she opened her mouth and sucked him in. It didn’t fit completely, she only got about a third of his cock in. But it didn’t seem to matter. Mystery’s hand on her head tightened until it almost hurt. He growled, low and feral and uncontrollable, as if it tore out from his insides and reverberated through his whole body. And Zoey didn’t think she was all that good at dick sucking, she’s only ever done it once. But Mystery reacted to her touch like it was divinity itself. Like he had not felt anything like it before. Like he was feeling nothing but her touch, like it consumed his very being until he didn’t hear anything other than his breaths and the noises her mouth made as she sucked him.
”Stop.” He growled forcefully when she shifted her lips and tried to take him deeper.
She looked up at him, cock still in her mouth, and said, “mwhah-?”
Mystery’s skin had turned completely a demonic grey. It was a deep color, like a thick fog that crept against the skyline during the hours between night and dawn. The purple marks of demons ran all across his body, thick and deep purple, like poisoned veins or like the markings of a venomous animal. They curved around his biceps and up his neck and spiraled across the spot in his chest where Zoey knew his heart was. His eyes were always yellow when he was with her, but now they all but glowed golden, almost white, like magma waiting to erupt.
He looked, for the very first time, like a proper demon. Like the predator she had been taught to kill.
But there was no restraint to him any longer. His face contorted into a scowl, full of lines and wrinkles and emotion. His body shook as he untangled his hand from her hair and flexed the claws that grew out of his fingers. And it was like she’d taken off her earphones for the first time.
”Wow.” She said, unthinking.
But Mystery understood. He knew that she knew that he knew.
He gripped her waist, his claws digging into her skin. Before she knew it, he lifted her like she weighed nothing and threw her against the bed. Her breath hitched, and he kissed it out of her, lips clashing against hers, before she could inhale again.
”Tell me to stop.” He murmured against her mouth, breath tickling her skin. “Kill me if you need to. Please.”
”Why —“
But Mystery had warned her, all those weeks ago. All demons did was feel, experience emotion until they became one with it.
He kissed her again, deep and desperate, and thrust his penis into her. It glided in, slick with her juices, and then she felt like she was being torn from the inside.
It was too much, too fast. She was too full, she couldn’t move, and she was being stretched until it burned.
Mystery’s whole body shuddered. He buried his face in the crook between her neck and shoulderblade, whole body crashing her as it moved without him even wanting to.
”Wait, Mystery, stop —”
She felt the conflict tear his body into two. But then he stopped, body turning into rock. Like he was the old Mystery again, motionless and rigid.
”It hurts,” she explained, although it didn’t seem like she had to. “Just… give me a moment.”
She felt him nod.
Time moved impossibly slowly. Zoey felt the seconds move in the particles of dust, in the droplets of sweat that glided down her back, in the heavy breaths he took. Until her body got used to him inside her, and it still felt full but not so painful. And there was a different kind of fire flickering to life where they were joined. And she wanted to let out the breath that she was holding.
Slowly, gingerly, she lifted her hips and gave them an experimental roll.
”Zoey.” He warned, still buried in her neck.
She wrapped her hands around her shoulders and felt his back muscles twitch in recognition. ”It’s okay. I — I think. Yeah. Let’s try now?”
”If you need more time —“
”It’s just a dick, Mystery.” She cut him off, rolling her eyes. “It’s not like I’ve been speared with a sword.”
He let out a sound between a snort and a huff. “Just a dick?”
And then he rolled his hips and sheathed himself deeper into her, stretching Zoey out until she moaned. It still hurt, but the burning wasn’t just pain anymore. She wanted him to do it again.
”I didn’t know demons have dick complexes too.”
Mystery punished her by digging his claws deeper into her waist and thrusting again. His mouth found hers and swallowed the moan that escaped from her throat. His tongue slipped into her open mouth, exploring it as he thrust into her again and again, and each time he went deeper and deeper, making her fuller, fuller, fuller until she knew she couldn’t take it anymore.
”Oh, fuck,” she whimpered, not knowing what she meant exactly. She felt too much, or maybe too little. Her whole body was burning and tingling and feeling — feeling the way his cock went in and out of her, the way her pussy clenched around it, the way his torso swallowed her and pressed against her, the way her head was light and dizzy, the way her whole being felt like it was on the brink of collapse. The way a tension built up deep inside of her with each new thrust and each new growl and each new time her hips lifted to join his.
Sex wasn’t supposed to feel like this. It didn’t feel like this when she would masturbate.
There was a silence that engulfed the whole world except for her and Mystery, and their harsh breaths, and the lurid sounds their bodies made as they were joined.
With a low grunt, Mystery grabbed the low of her back. Zoey arched into his touch, as he lifted her to sit on him. The angle of his cock changed inside her changed with the movement, making her moan.
Through half-shut eyes, she saw his face. He watched her with his golden gaze, not blinking for even a moment. The purple markings stood harshly against his grey skin, glistening with sweat and spit, curling around his fanged mouth and swollen lips, making him look feral.
”You’re mine.” He growled as he bit and licked her jaw and neck, sending shivers down her spine. And if she wasn’t being dicked into nirvana, Zoey might’ve rolled her eyes, or deadpanned, or said something incredibly rambly and embarrassing. But he thrust into her again and again with a feverish abandon, and her whole body trembled with each stroke, and her inside clenched because she thought that this was it, she couldn’t take it, she would burst at any moment. And as he said those words, it made her moan, loud and desperate. She dug her fingers into Mystery’s purplish-silver hair, tussling it in a way that must’ve hurt. He didn’t seem to care. With glossed eyes and feral grimace, Mystery was as far gone in her as she was.
”You’re mine, Zoey.” He growled again, voice husky with desire, and threw her on her back.
He looked down at her the way a tortured man looked at his captor, the way a half starved, half crazed wolf gazed at a plump lamb.
He devoured her whole.
And everything she felt — the tension that she knew she couldn’t take anymore — increased tenfold.
Mystery lifted her leg, gripping her shin and leaning it against his shoulder. It made the angle of his cock shift, making him go deeper into her until he hit a spot inside of her that made her roll her eyes until she saw stars.
”You — are — everything, Zoey,” he grunted between thrusts, and maybe before she wouldn’t have believed him. But she saw the way feelings had consumed him, and she had felt the way the feelings had engulfed her. And in this moment, Mystery was everything to her, too. It didn’t matter that he was a demon, didn’t matter that she was a hunter. She had forgotten what the voices wanted from her, and which voices even spoke inside her head.
She could not remember where her earphones were.
Everywhere she looked, anything she tried to hear, anything she felt was Mystery, Mystery, Mystery. His touch, his breath, the scent of coffee and fresh clothes and sweat and smoke, the way he burned his gaze into her body, worshipping, devouring. The way his voice sounded when he said her name and when he panted and when he growled as he sheathed himself fully into her.
He reached between her legs and flicked her clit, and he hammered into her with supernatural speed, and he bit into her shin until it left a mark, and the tension of an orgasm grew from deep within her, tensing and tensing and tensing until her body was a string that Mystery played like it was his second breath.
He shifted just right, he dug his cock into her, deep and hungry, and he kissed her lips and swirled his fingers on her clit, and with one more deep thrust Zoey came, crying into his mouth as he swallowed her moans.
There was nothing in the world but him.
Mystery ate her moans like a man possessed. His thrusts grew frantic and rabid as he let go, like her, and disappeared into their world. It heightened her orgasm, dragging it out of her, lengthening it impossibly.
He growled into her mouth, an animalistic cry, and then through the stars that she was seeing, through the tingling that engulfed her, she felt him come undone and spend into her.
The whole world shifted on its axis, a little to the right. And Zoey panted against Mystery’s shoulder, trying to regain her balance.
There was — there was something there, she thought.
Mystery’s breaths against her cheek still made her skin tingle. She listened to them as if they were his heartbeat.
”Zoey,” he murmured, out of breath.
She knew that he knew that she knew.
She didn’t have to say anything.
It just — there was something else, a dissonance against the rhythm of his breathing. And Zoey couldn’t understand exactly what it was as her body came down from the high of her orgasm and from the high of Mystery and from the way her world will never be the same again.
It was a … tap, tap, tap.
Mystery realized it before her.
”Someone is knocking on your door.” He rasped as he untangled from her.
Zoey sat abruptly in her bed.
And there it was — the tap, tap, tap against her door. Not soft. Hard, incessant.
”Fuck — it’s Mira.” She squealed, completely mortified.
The knocking became louder as the noises of the world returned. In the distance, she heard the whooshing of the wind against her window, and the distant hum of cars and city life. She heard the quiet buzz of electricity running through her lamplight. She heard her heartbeat, banging loudly in her chest.
”Zoey.”
Mystery’s voice cut through the noise.
She looked up at him, and saw him handing her her shirt and underwear.
”Nothing’s changed.” He told her, but his voice was different. He felt the world shift, too.
She couldn’t force the lie out through her lips as she accepted her clothes and dressed quickly.
”Please hide,” she begged him as she hubbled to the door. Her lower body felt too sore. There was something sticky dripping onto her underwear, and as she opened the door, Zoey realized with horror that it was his cum.
”Hi, Mira! Oh my gosh, did you guys get home already?” She squealed, too high, too loudly, like she totally wasn’t dripping demon cum from her sore vagina.
Mira and Rumi shared a glance that told Zoey they thought she was insane.
”Are you… okay?” Asked Mira, eyebrows raised.
She laughed, shrilly and sharply and like a totally guilty person. ”Ha ha, yeah, of course I’m okay! Why? Why wouldn’t I be okay?”
”We heard… something.” Said Rumi slowly. “But I’m not… sure.”
The two of them looked her up and down before their eyes swept across the room. And, mortified, Zoey realized that she must’ve had sex hair, and sex lips, and she probably smelled like sex, too.
”Oh.” Said Rumi awkwardly.
Mira squinted at her. “Were you masturbating?”
And it was less embarrassing than admitting the truth, and Zoey’s brain was still not working properly, and her vagina was still leaking cum and was still tingling from the best orgasm she had had her entire life. So Zoey said, cheerfully and very fucking fakely, “Ha, ha, yep!”
A silence stretched between them.
And because her underwear was growing damp, and because she thought that she could feel a bruise blooming from where Mystery licked and sucked and bit into her neck, Zoey said, “I got this new toy off of Naver, it, like, vibrates from the inside, and it has this sucking mode and a double mode for when you want to do a double thingy for outside and inside at the same time, and it, like, rotates sometimes so it hits all the spots. And you can control it with a phone app, and ooh also the app has voice choices, and you can tell it your kinks and it adjusts —“
”Oh my god, stop!” Rumi exclaimed, as red as Zoey felt. “We just wanted to remind you that the fan signing event is tomorrow, and you — you should get some sleep in case we need to fight demons again. So — yeah, get some sleep. Ahem.”
Mira looked her up and down again. “Send me the link.”
“Will do! Good night!” She said and closed the door.
She leaned against the door and sighed heavily.
Mystery was gone.
His clothes were missing, and the room was empty, but it bore memories of him wherever she looked. The messy sheets, the half-open window of the balcony. The messily discarded socks, brown and half-dry and still smelling faintly of his coffee.
They… broke the bed, Zoey realized with horror.
The Fifth Coffee
There was a cup of coffee waiting for her on the balcony, still steaming, a “Jooyi” scribbled in a thick, black marker across the cream-colored exterior.
Zoey sipped it as they drove in lazy, sleepy silence through the vacant streets. It had milk, and whipped cream, and two — no, three — spoons of sugar.
The world had shifted on its axis, but the fans still needed to be satisfied. The honmoon still glowed a dim, ominous purple as it reflected on the mirror-like skyscrapers of the city.
Her green halter top felt too exposing. The straps dug into the spot in her neck where she discovered, and spent the whole morning concealing, a hickey Mystery’s mouth left on her. And her thighs and hips and legs were sore. And it took twenty minutes to get the tangles out of her hair.
“Alright team, I know everything is Saja, Saja, Saja,” said Bobby as they stretched in their chairs, waiting for the sea of fans to swallow them. Zoey pretended very hard not to care, “But we’re going to turn it into Huntrix, Huntrix, Huntrix!”
Happy fans, happy honmoon. There were more important things than Zoey and her world and the way it would never be the same again.
So she did what she did best — she put her earphones down, and plastered on a smile, and let herself drown voices.
They rang in her ears until she remembered only them.
You have a duty to fulfill, said Celene sternly. One Mistake can still be redeemed if one works hard enough.
But you never do, do you? argued her father.
And you wouldn’t have to, if you just let this stupid endevour go and come back home, reminded her mother.
And the fans screamed, but they were real this time. And they demanded more and more and more. And maybe some of them thought that Zoey should change her rapping style. And maybe some of them thought it was perfect. In the end, as with so many other things in her life, it didn’t change anything.
“Happy fans, happy honmoon,” the three members of Huntrix repeated their mantra, clanking their pens like they were champaign glasses.
And then Zoey was in work mode, noise ringing all around her.
“And who should I make this out to?” she heard Rumi ask to her left.
“To our biggest fans,” said a smooth, male voice.
It sounded vaguely familiar. It sounded vaguely wrong.
Zoey’s hunter senses tingled. There was deception at play.
“It’s the Saja Boys!” screamed the fans.
And, to Zoey’s total fucking horror, it was the Saja Boys. All five of them, dressed in their perfect boy band clothes, wearing their perfect boy band makeup and their perfect boy band smiles.
And there was – there was a fucking scratch on Mystery’s neck, below his purplish-silver hair. Red and scabbing, as if a manicured fingernail had dug itself into his skin. And his hair was covering his face, eyes hidden – except his lips, soft and juicy, slightly swollen, coated in a natural-looking lipgloss boy bands liked to wear. It looked like exactly like her juices.
Zoey broke her pen.
Ringing filled her ears, dwarfing the fans’ screams, dwarfing Rumi and Mira, dwarfing Celene and her parents and everything else that yelled inside her head.
Dwarfing Rumi announcing that the Saja Boys will sit with them. Dwarfing her own incredulous reaction to it.
“I am not sitting with no Saja Boy –” she protested in vain.
Mystery sat next to her like it was natural. His sleeveless arms brushed against hers – and oh my god, oh my fucking god there were scratches on his biceps, too. That stood out starkly against his yellow-purple outfit. All she could doo is stare at them.
She was embarrassed to admit it. But Zoey giggled. Girlishly. And then she blushed. And then she looked at him and thought she saw a glint of golden through his silver hair.
“What’s up?,” she said extremely lamely.
And Mystery just looked at the coffee cup that she kept uner her chair. And then he looked at her. And Zoey knew that he was looking at the place where her makeup was hiding the hickey he had given her. And Zoey knew that he knew that she knew.
He remained motionless, rigid as a statue. But his lips turned up, ever so slightly, like a world shifting just a millimeter to the right.
The faintest smell of coffee cut through the harsh ringing of the world.