Instinct is a strange thing. When she hears her name, in that tone of voice, she doesn't throw herself flat on the ground. Maybe in a kinder world, that would have been her muscle memory.
Instead, she's leaping away from the wall she was leaning against, her sword materialising in her hands, the tip inches away from Jinu's face.
"What?" She hisses as she lowers the weapon, her racing heart slowing a little as she realises she isn't really in danger.
He should have known better than to startle her like that, especially considering how tense she was to begin with. He's lucky she hadn't speared him through, and it's only with a little bit of cruelty that she thinks of how easy it would be to just end him here where he stands; the Sun has only risen, the sky still milky with night, and there's no one around for miles. How easy it would be to set herself free of it all.
Jinu doesn't answer, staring in distress at her…forehead? Her neck?
With a sigh, she wills her sword away. She can't do it. Every day since she's met him, she's struggled more and more with the thought of putting him in the ground where he belongs. It's infuriating that she can't mete out what he deserves, not even when he's being stupid and weirder than normal.
Her sword vanishes without a sound, melting back into whatever otherness it comes from. That's just another unanswered question on her list, not as high up as all the things she doesn't know about her patterns, but it rankles the same that there's no part of this life that's intuitive.
"What's wrong with you?" She asks, fiddling with a loose thread at the cuff of her hoodie sleeve, unsure of what to do with her hands now that they're unoccupied, "Who sneaks up on people like that?"
"Your hair!" He blurts out, his stupidly perfect face crumpling with what looks like genuine worry, "What have you done to your hair?"
"My hair?" She asks, baffled. Jinu sounds like he's losing his mind. Is Gwima finally getting to him?
"It's gone!" He accuses, narrowing his eyes at her, "You cut it off. Why?"
Her fingers reach for where her hair curls by her neck, "Cut it off? What are you- oh"
Does he seriously not know what a wig is?
"The braid's not real", she assures him, struggling to hide her amusement, barely schooling her smile into something neutral, "it's just a wig. A fake. I have to take it off every now and then to give my neck a break"
Her neck and shoulders have been killing her for months, strained from the weight of the false hair that she had to bear while pulling off some borderline insane choreography. Not to mention the struggle of having to keep it in place when she was thrust into pre-show battles.
Just imagining living with that much of a strain on her muscles makes her shudder. Maintenance was easy when she could place it on a dummy for the night and send it out for cleaning to the discreet hairstylist Bobby had found. But doing all that by herself? Even just the hypothetical sounds worse than her reality of constantly battling a flood of demons.
"You can wear fake hair?" He sounds intrigued. The concept of a wig can't possibly be that recent, but maybe it had been restricted to the upper echelons of society during his time. Her stomach twists a little as she remembers his story, like it's tasting the endless, burning hunger he'd suffered for years.
"Uh…well, the fans aren't supposed to know it's fake", she hesitates, but he's already seen her at her very worst- seen her patterns- so she continues, "it's quite popular amongst idols though. It allows us to change our styles without hurting our actual hair"
"Baby's been asking for a change", Jinu hums to himself, like he isn't aware that she's listening, "maybe this will help him out"
This time, she doesn't succeed at hiding her laughter. The mental image of a six-hundred-something year old demon studiously memorising idol culture, styling his band and trying to work out aesthetics for each of them, is too surreal to process. And the band got to vote on what they wore?
She feels her lungs burn as she doubles over. Jinu's stopped his musing to stare at her in concern, looking around to make sure there are no passers-by.
If Jinu was the band's lead, did that mean he'd written Soda Pop? Oh, no. What if Gwima had written Soda Pop?
"What's wrong with you?" He asks warily, looking like he wants to be anywhere but here.
"You", she wheezes, unable to string together a more coherent sentence, "Gwima…Soda Pop!"
Jinu begins to walk away, glancing back at her with unconcealed distaste. She tries to pull herself together, but then she thinks of Gwima giving them pointers on their choreography, and she can't help but fall to pieces again.
"Come find me when you're actually ready to talk", Jinu wrinkles his slender nose imperiously, walking away faster.
"No, no, wait, it's okay, I'm good", she calls, jogging after him to catch up, gulping down breaths.
"Good", he says, sounding grumpy, "we're already short of time as it is. We can't afford distractions"
They really couldn't. She knew they couldn't. And yet, this was the first time in ages that she'd laughed that loudly and for that long. He really has seen every shade of her now.
It's a sobering thought, the fact that she's joking around with a demon. It sends a twinge of regret through her that she has to be the one to send him back to the underworld. So long as he's on this side of the Honmoon, so long as her arms are patterned, they're on the same side of this fight.
But once she gets her marks erased, she'll have no choice but to uphold her duty as a Hunter.
No matter how easy it was becoming to breath around him, Jinu is still a demon. She can't think of him as anything but, not when he looks at her with those golden eyes of his.
"You're right", she tears her own gaze away, studies the city sprawling out beneath them, waking up at last, people spilling out of their homes slowly, unaware of the siege they're about to come under, "no more distractions"
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