Chapter Text
There was no way that she could sleep now, not with the red-hazed reflection of Seoul staring in at her through her window and a two-week notice on the coming apocalypse. Mira scowled out at the cityscape, palm pressed against the cool glass, and slowly closed her fist.
How do we go from gold to this?
Look at all the weak spots. We’ve never seen the Honmoon like this before.
Not even when Celine’s solo career had been the only thing sustaining it through her long vigil as the last Sunlight Sister. Not during the dangerous liminal time when they were brought beneath the dangsan inhabited by souls of the first singers to seal the Honmoon and their voices bound to it—not even during that rough first year as idols, struggling to build momentum among fans and establish themselves in a crowded industry, all while not dying as they learned the combat synergy that was now as smooth as stage choreography.
But this color—they’d seen that before, hadn’t they? That weird red pulse that had been a shockwave through the studio right after Rumi had left for ‘five’ during Golden’s live premier and then couldn’t be reached—both she and Zoey had been convinced that something awful had happened, mysterious disappearances being the hallmark of a demon incursion.
Had that been when the Saja Boys had crossed the barrier?
Or….something else? She’d never seen the Honmoon react like that to a crossing, even when the water demons were oozing out of the walls like mold in summer. Something to do with how Rumi had seemed to almost freeze during the fight at the bathhouse? It hadn’t been the roughness of her throat issues—for a few heartbeats, her harmony had dropped entirely.
But she’d only caught a glimpse of her after she’d put that demon through the wall, too intent on not having her face eaten by water demons to keep watching.
It was unusual for their leader to falter like that. They’d been idols for over half a decade now—she knew what Rumi’s voice sounded like when she pushed past pain or illness. She’d never just…stopped like that.
Rumi sung the song of heaven, soaring and intuitive, her saingum marked with sacred constellations. Zoey’s daesinkal contained within them vivid shards representing the song of humanity, glowing with innovation and creativity, while she herself sung the song of earth, forceful and unyielding, her woldo bearing the five mountains along the blade. When these three things were in harmony, it was easy to raise the living energy that was sanctified as myonggi and bound the demons below.
But when they weren’t…
Mira scowled, then shook away the doubt. That was something she couldn’t afford. She had to trust that Rumi would be fine and she just had to create choreography that could compete with the Saja Boy’s stupid shoulder thing.
But for that she’d really need a song. Or at least a concept. Maybe a melody.
Looked like sleep was for the weak—she was going to need so much concealer by the time this was over.
She also couldn’t write rage lyrics in the super-soft and exceptionally comfortable pajamas that Zoey had thrust at her with a delighted cry after she’d found it, exclaiming, ‘This looks exactly like you when you wake up! I am so buying you this!’
Switching back into street clothes, she headed over to Zoey’s room. She knocked, not expecting a response. With a sigh, she pulled out her phone and texted her.
The response was almost instant—Yeah, sure! Sorry~
The scene that greeted her was exactly the one she’d expected, with Zoey perched on edge of her chair in the middle of her horseshoe-shaped desk, with at least seven screens playing content and stacks of notebooks arranged in what she could only assume was systematic chaos.
The latest fan-gifted turtle to join her flotilla of turtle figurines was ‘acclimating’ atop one stack—the rest took up several cabinets against one wall. Mira had no idea what Zoey was going to do when the turtles eventually overflowed, but for now every single friend gifted with good intentions had been crammed in.
From her angle, she could only see a few of the screens—two looked like they were MVs with aggressive choreos running on mute, while the other…
Yeah, Zoey was watching a live of one of her favorite boy groups, and from the look of her poor mangled pen cap that she’d been chewing on, she’d been pretty into it.
“Sorry—they announced this live days ago and I was really looking forward to it before the world literally started falling apart. I just needed a little late night pick-me-up, y’know? Cleanse my ears of Saja Boy by distracting myself with other hot guys. You’re so lucky that you get to do dance challenges against the members of boy groups so often,” she sighed. “All I get is trauma bonding with the other maknae.”
“Uh-huh. Sounds like torture. Says the girl who keeps giggling about it for hours and asked Bobby how much it would cost to install a ballpit.”
“That was like five years ago,” Zoey complained playfully.
Mira raised a brow in silent reply, which made Zoey giggle.
“Alright, guilty. But I’ve also been doing damage control online. Those leather squeaking memes are going to haunt us forevvvver,” she groaned. “And the fans are all asking why we were wearing the outfits from the ‘Killing It’ music video. The speculation is since 'Golden' got some criticism for being 90% Rumi—and some of them were being really mean about it, like, ‘if you’re going to release a solo track, just say so and don’t pretend’—that we showed up like that to hint at a new release with you as the center. But then they were like, ‘Huntrix is already so famous, don’t they have any shame stealing screentime from rookies like that?’ Though to counter that, there's like this conspiracy theory that they're some sort of Celestial shadow project since we showed up and called them our hoobaes. ...I wonder what a demon management company looks like.”
Zoey was the most active in managing and interacting with THE, Huntrix’s official fandom. Standing for ‘Til Hunt’s End, it represented their wish to accompany the fans until the Honmoon turned golden and their hunt was finished. It was also sort of fun to be able to refer to them as THE fans.
“To be fair, if they weren’t demons, it was kinda rude, though just having our name attached to the clip is going to get them some free views,” Mira conceded. “Next time we need to murder someone, we’ll make sure to do it safely backstage. Be waiting to ambush them in their prep room or something. With flowers.”
“Like at a funeral? Facts. I see you’re back in your ‘Rich Miss’ outfit. Are you going to the studio?” Zoey asked.
“Says miss ‘I’ve lost my tour group’,” Mira quipped. “But, yeah, I was going to head over.”
“…is that safe?” Zoey asked, tucking her legs up tight against her chest and wrapping her arms around them.
“I was going to drive instead of walk. I see a Saja Boy, we’ll have one less to worry about.”
“Not on your bike, though. Safety first! You have to take your car if you’re planning on running anyone over.”
Mira rolled her eyes. She turned to leave, when Zoey interjected, “Um, if you’re planning to print off a bunch of Saja Boys photos and punch them in the face until you feel better, could you bring some back? For, ah, research purposes.”
“Right. Research,” Mira replied dryly.
As she crossed through the penthouse, she glanced at Rumi’s tightly shut door. Rumi was a lot more private than Zoey, who hardly ever shut her door unless she was watching something late at night.
For all that the Han clinic had been run by a total quack—Zoey’s suggestions usually ended up being hilariously quirky, at least in part because she was still using Google out of habit rather than Naver—he had been pretty accurate in saying that Rumi had a lot of walls up.
The elevator took her smoothly to the underground parking garage, where she walked past rows of gleaming vehicles until she reached their allotted spots. As a workaholic homebody, Rumi rarely drove herself anywhere, especially since their studio was within comfortable walking distance and she was usually abducted and packed in the car like luggage for socializing—the convertible that had been featured in the Golden MV was Mira’s, and their positions reflected their usual seats.
Zoey could be (un)surprisingly aggressive about curating driving playlists.
For when the weather wasn’t bad or when she didn’t want to take public transport, Zoey had a cute little scooter. Parked next to Mira’s sportbike, it made for a sharp contrast.
It had been a choice made more for aesthetic than actual horsepower—Mira for all her ‘wild’ image was more about bold choices than actually breaking the law.
Her face just looked like that, which no amount of clever aegyo-sal makeup could soften, so her makeup artists made choices that played up her sharpness and won her lots of brand endorsements even in foreign markets—or maybe especially in foreign markets as far as makeup went, as the domestic one was focused on marketing a much softer look. Her stylists had compromised by deciding on her trademark hairstyle, which tied her into Rumi and Zoey’s softer pop aesthetic.
But she had taken stunt driving courses. After losing the third member of the Sunlight Sisters to a demon drunk on Gwi-Ma’s promises, Celine took the vulnerability of transport seriously. They could skydive without so much as a parachute—but only when they had time to react. And, though Celine was silent on the subject, the wreck had occurred in the same year that Rumi’s mother had died. It was hard not to suspect that something had gone badly wrong with the Honmoon back then as well.
Her leather jacket felt a little like donning armor as she snugged up her helmet and made her way out into the lightly slumbering city, though the night markets would still be bustling at this hour, the sidewalks full of relaxed shoppers who had no idea of the red haze that pockmarked the skyline in Mira’s sight.
With the light traffic, it didn’t take her long to reach their studio. Celine’s agency was for the benefit of Huntrix and the Honmoon, but it was a fully functional one, with two units besides theirs—it wasn’t cheap to replace things like private jets, though thankfully their recent incident was the first in which it was a total loss and nowadays the Honmoon was powerful enough that they could prevent the wreckage from landing in some unsuspecting neighborhood in Seoul.
Mira had no idea what sort of in Celine had with the people in KOCA, but it hadn’t even made the news, despite the fact that the pilot and all the flight attendants and an entire plane had ‘disappeared’. But then again, she had also deftly managed to cover up the fact that people tended to vanish during and near Huntrix concerts as well. That could be attributed to the mudang on the police force, who quietly dealt with such cases before they ever had a chance to cause a panic—and was probably the case with KOCA as well.
Though they were the only three whose voices could maintain the Honmoon, carefully selected for their power and their potential as idol talents, they were far from the only such hunters in South Korea—Seoul alone was a city of 9.6 million souls. It would be impossible to keep it clean alone.
The security guards were accustomed to Mira showing up and quickly waved her through. Celine had hired a specialty ‘cleaning firm’ to protect the girls from demons here—once a week, a group of aunties came in after hours and replaced the bujeok plastered on the back of promotional posters and photos around the agency. They did the penthouse once a week as well, warding it against evil, which meant they could sleep soundly at night.
You could ward vehicles as well, but because they weren’t static, their efficiency was compromised and the talismans had a short life cycle.
Much as Zoey had suspected, Mira’s first move was to find pictures of the Saja Boys and print them out—with the requested extras for Zoey—and tape them to her punching bag.
Then, tugging on a set of fingerless bag gloves, she put Soda Pop on a loop and really let loose, working through all her uncertainty and aggression, moving to the beat like she was dancing. Fear and rage tangled as she kept seeing that ominous glow, kept seeing the idol-perfect look on those pretty faces as they sang that bubblegum pink sex song, which took on a horrific irony when people really could be a ‘snack’ for a demon, and they’d drink you all up until you were gone.
Infectious like a disease with a 100% fatality rate.
And, faintly, she was still a little angry at Rumi, who kept pushing, pushing, pushing until things broke. That shockwave on the empty stage of the live premiere. The voice that might not be able to carry her part in the harmony that was all that kept humanity for being served up like a charcuterie.
Responding to her feelings—because the Honmoon glowed brightest when you sang with your whole soul, when your lyrics and your feelings where in alignment, she sang, Really a pity I couldn’t kill you before you tore up my city, look at you lying boy, you’re going to be crying boy, pull out your claws and mount you on the wall and the Honmoon was almost incandescent around her as she worked through her feelings until she was quivering with exhaustion and her hair was slick with sweat.
“Gross,” she grumbled to herself as she went to take a shower, feeling lighter and freer, but not really much closer to catching the melody for something that they could debut at the Idol Awards. And they were lucky it was a live vote or they wouldn't even be able to do that much, locked in to the songs that had released within the last year like most music awards.
But just because they could didn't mean there weren't risks. They would be depending on THE's momentum rather than on the popularity of the song itself, which when set against a viral domestic trend like 'Soda Pop' would require THE fans to overcome the barriers of things like time zones.
She finally killed the 'Soda Pop' loop, switching over to a live of Huntrix’s own debut song, which was like most debut songs—safe, without their later flair and flavor, rough around the edges. She’d been sort of stiff and stifled, trying to be less herself—less blunt and sarcastic, not just on-camera, but off-camera too. Afraid that her mother’s ungrateful child wouldn’t find any friends here either—she’d been the discordant note in her own family, the ill-fitting shoes that didn’t match the outfit. But if her parents weren’t exactly fond of her, they were even more unwilling to let her make a spectacle of herself in public.
In the end, it had been her maternal grandmother—a distant, somewhat cold figure in her memory, painting, always painting, in a wide studio on the second floor of the hanok her grandfather had built for their retirement to the country—who had forced her mother to sign the forms she’d needed as a minor to begin idol training. She was born with her eyes shut, while you will need to learn to live with yours open, her grandmother had said to the little girl who’d always seen demons.
But now she was free to be herself—at least when they weren’t being filmed.
That song was where they’d started—and she knew how far they’d already come. The song of earth was strong and steady. She knew where she was going.
So she wouldn’t let anyone stand in the way of them getting there.
She wasn’t vain enough to listen obsessively to the sound of her own voice—even if it was killer—so she switched over to a playlist of favorites. Zoey had a point about needing a palette cleanser for her ears after listening to 'Soda Pop' for so long.
Since she was already out and was looking on the other side of apocalypse, she decided to swing by Gyeongbokgung Palace for some night mood shots—it was only a ten-minute drive from Cheongdam-dong and was one of the safest places in the city so far as demons were concerned. Ever since seeing Rumi’s Irworobongdo set with the Eojwa for the 'Golden' MV, Zoey had been talking about writing a queen-themed song paired with a hanbok concept.
When they’d first become a unit, Zoey had produced a tourist checklist, and their tour of the Palace had produced hundreds of photos of a widely grinning hanbok-wearing Zoey—she and Rumi had been in hanbok as well, as Zoey had insisted for ‘the experience’—but Mira thought a more mysterious, palace-at-night sort of vibe might inspire her enough to start coordinating with their stylists on both their MV and stage outfits. That would be an interesting challenge—her mind was already at work trying to marry a modern edge to traditional styling, while also being functional enough to not interfere with choreography.
As the acknowledged visual of Huntrix, she felt obliged to deliver the very best for the internet to over-analyze.
Distracted by her thoughts—she knew Zoey had said ‘queen-themed’, but she thought she’d look pretty stunning in a jeonrip, head down as the MV opened, then bringing her up to catch the viewer in a look, with fierce eyeshadow, and leaning in on the curling smoke of incense, but the thought of incense made her think of drums and then her mind went to how Zoey would really be perfect for a spirited drum performance and actually it might be interesting in a palace-at-night themed MV to do something with mudang casting out demons instead as a sort of silent acknowledgement of their victory—as well as trying to catch interesting angles, she almost didn’t notice the couple at first.
But with his footsteps leaving ripples in the Honmoon like moonlight rippling across disturbed water, she had to look. At first glance, he was just a handsome uncle who was accompanying his companion on an after-dark walk, but when she met his gaze, his eyes were an almost luminescent pale blue that absolutely could not be cosmetic contacts.
She didn’t stare or immediately drop her gaze with the practice that came from a lot of PR activities, but she felt uncharacteristically off-balance as she turned her attention to his companion.
The woman was an extremely well-maintained auntie with a baby face that made her look even younger, but she had a certain level of presence that made Mira categorize her in the same age bracket as the man.
Because she’d made eye contact, she ducked her head in silent greeting and would have stepped out of the way, but the woman spoke first. “Congratulations,” she said in a voice as warm as her smile.
“Thank you,” Mira said automatically. Was she a fan? Not that Huntrix didn’t have fans of all ages, but Zoey and Rumi were really the ones with mom-fans.
The woman hummed, even as she leaned a little closer, carefully scrutinizing her face. “Your first meeting didn’t go well at all, I see. Very tangled. Which way will it end, I wonder? But it is a blessing to have more guardian spirits. And it’s not like you can’t afford to keep them.”
Mira began to suspect she’d encountered a cultist. Or at the very least a swindler. Any moment now she was going to offer to sell her something to improve her luck. She rolled her eyes and turned to leave, finished with the conversation.
“Everything that was once human has karma that it must resolve,” the man spoke for the first time, his voice a low, steady rumble. “To continue under Gwi-Ma’s gentle rule or to follow the one who can expunge it—it’s not so much a choice as an unconscious attraction. They won’t even understand their own impulses. It really should prove entertaining. Like all dangerous games. Enjoy being their bias.”
Mira turned sharply, but the couple were already walking away, her arm tucked snugly in his and his footsteps still leaving those ripples in the Honmoon.
“…so weird."