i'm a solution, looking for a problem

Meanwhile, Kaito was worried but also extremely anxious about what kind of message you could have waited for so eagerly. He kept mumbling rapid questions under his nose as you were all waiting for the class to be over. Questions that you were sure he believed neither you nor Luca could understand, which unfortunately wasn’t the case. Fuji Kaito was the easiest man to read in the whole wide world, because he couldn’t have hidden his feelings even if his life had depended on it. And honestly, this was what made him such an amazing guy and friend in your opinion.

In a world full of manipulation, lies and omitted truth, you were glad to know that you could always count on his overthinking straightforwardness. Even when it was a bit embarrassing to listen to him contemplating aloud whether you had anything going on with one of the ghouls on campus in secret.

‘Psst! Kaito,’ you leaned closer to him after stealing one more glance at your phone. Your hand touched his upper arm gently to gain his attention. The blond boy flinched, and the noise that left his throat in the quiet classroom made many general students chuckle. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,’ you apologised as soon as you noticed how red his face had become. It rivalled your burning ears that put on a vivid ruby colour due to the sudden attention on your duo.

Luca shook his head and kept answering the review questions in his book - it was something everyone should have worked on as per Professor Hyde’s request.

‘No, it’s… it’s okay, Y/N-chan. You didn’t… I’m not scared,’ Kaito protested in a voice that was barely above a whisper but still somewhat firm. You pressed your lips into a thin line to hold back a giggle.

‘Good. I just…’ you cleared your throat and leaned closer to his ear, so the rest of the class wouldn’t have been a part of your private conversation. ‘I wanted to tell you that I’m not really in the position to have anything going on with anyone on campus, ghoul or not ghoul,’ you pointed out, since Kaito was well aware that you were cursed, which meant that strictly speaking, you were pretty much dying.

Kaito flinched again as though he was slapped by your words, and he let out a sad whimper most probably unconsciously, which turned your reassuring smile a little sadder.

‘Y/N-chan…’

‘It’s okay. I know everyone is looking for ways to prevent the worst case scenario, so I’m still hopeful. I’m just saying, you don’t have to worry about my love life,’ you tried your best to keep the mood from getting too depressing, because while what you had just said was true and you were still more optimistic than pessimistic about your curse situation, it was also true that it had been months since you had arrived at Darkwick Academy against your will, and you were nowhere near finding a solution to your predicament.

Kaito gulped, clearly unable to get over his nervousness. He kept opening and closing his mouth in an attempt to come up with a different topic that would have allowed the two of you to keep talking in a more relaxed mood. But he failed, and you let the silence settle upon you willingly.

You managed to answer two more review questions out of those ten that were at the end of the current unit in your Anomalous History textbook. Then, the bell rang and Professor Hyde dismissed the class.

You quickly showed the textbook in your backpack and followed the chaos duo to the school cafeteria.

‘But seriously, why do you keep staring at your phone? You do realise that walking without looking ahead can be dangerous, right?’ Luca sighed as he gently pulled on your jacket sleeve and kept you from walking into another student.

You snapped your head in his direction and put the phone in your pocket with a defeated sigh.

‘I know. It’s just…’ you groaned. ‘Yesterday, during my mission with the Obscuary ghouls… So something happened, and I feel like Rui is avoiding me,’ you admitted.

Kaito shrieked.

‘What? So… so it’s really about another guy?’ He asked in a high-pitched voice.

You made a face, trying to lift your hands in front of your chest and shake them vehemently enough to dismiss the misconception, but it wasn’t working. Kaito was spiraling, and Luca just shook his head.

‘I don’t think he’s avoiding you. You two are close, I’m sure you couldn’t have done anything bad enough for Mizuki senpai to react that way,’ Luca reasoned, and you really, really wanted to believe him.

But then you remembered how he had rejected your offer to walk back to the old Clementia dormitory together last night, which was something he himself would have suggested on any other day, and you frowned.

‘Well, the thing is…’ you tried to explain what had happened the day before with Lyca and his innocent comment on how Rui smelled like death to his werewolf nose. But it was hard, because for obvious reasons, you couldn’t go into too much detail without crossing an invisible line that could have potentially damaged your friendship with Rui even more. ‘It wasn’t something I did. It’s just something that involves the both of us,’ you struggled with the words.

Just one look at Luca’s face was enough for you to know that you had ended up confusing him instead of helping him understand the situation better.

‘Nevermind. It’s too personal to talk about. Sorry,’ you backtracked in the end, because you felt apologetic to your friends that you had tried to keep up the conversation about your troubled mind without giving them the full context, and also to Rui for almost sharing his vulnerable moment with people whom he wasn’t necessarily close with.

So you changed the topic in the most uncool way possible: you asked Luca about his answers for the review questions, and also asked him if the three of you could have studied together in the library once your mission with the Obscuary ghouls was over.

‘Of course, we can study together,’ Luca agreed easily, and even Kaito seemed to like the idea despite how much he hated studying in general.

By the time you arrived at the cafeteria, your awkward conversation from before was totally forgotten. Just so you could remind both Frostheim boys of how eagerly you were waiting for Rui’s text when it finally arrived with a loud ping.

‘It’s him! It’s Rui!’ You exclaimed with slightly trembling hands as you showed your phone screen to Luca and Kaito. Your smile was wide and beaming, relieved even. Even though it was only an informative text in the group chat about Yuuki Tatsuya, who had been found by Darkwick and needed to be questioned as soon as possible.

Baby steps, right? Rui could have told you three about the change of plans on the Galaxy Express, too. Yet, the Obscuary vice-captain chose to text in a group chat where Ed-san rarely reacted with more than a bunch of emojis, and where Lyca took hours to respond to anything. So basically, he was messaging only to you.

» chapter completed « » reward: 10 diamonds 💎｡⭑･ﾟ «

You didn’t know when you had started preferring Jiro’s house visits and the Mortkranken lab over general hospitals, but as you walked down the corridors of Saint Luke’s International with Ed-san on your left and Lyca right in front of you, you felt goosebumps forming on your lower arms. Something didn’t feel right. Or could you have been still traumatised by your first mission with Jiro and Yuri when dead students on campus had come back to life just to commit suicide? That time, a dying student had fed mermaid flesh to unsuspecting students, desperate to gain immortality, and the allergic reaction had killed the innocent victims. When he had been questioned about his immoral actions, he had lost his mind and turned himself into a giant, immortal monster. He had destroyed a huge part of Darkwick General, and you had never stepped foot into any hospitals since.

Oh… had you been unconsciously avoiding hospitals? You hadn’t even realised.

‘It’s faint, but I can smell it. Like rotten apples,’ Lyca broke the silence as his steps came to a sudden halt then sped up exponentially. You were practically jogging with your short legs to be able to catch up with him by the time you arrived at Yuuki Tatsuya’s private room.

Except, the sign beside the door was saying “Haruto Ryo”.

‘Are you sure we are at the right—’

Before you could have expressed your concerns, Lyca opened the door and all four of you walked inside like you were authorised to be anywhere near the private wards to begin with. You envied the guys for their confidence. Your heart was hammering in your chest like it was about to explode in any second.

On the hospital bed, there laid a guy who looked just as young as you were, his bleached red hair already dark brown at the roots. He was objectively handsome even without make-up and the unfair enhancement that expensive clothes gave to well-supported idols.

The moment his eyes settled on your group, his frown deepened and his mood soured.

‘Who are you people? If you weren’t sent by my manager, you better leave before I call the fucking police,’ he spat, his anger almost uncontrollable as his slim fingers balled up into fists by his sides at the sight of you.

‘We were hired by your company, Mr. Yuuki. We are private investigators, who want to find out what exactly happened to you during the reality show shooting,’ Rui took the lead calmly, his voice so stable and convincing, even had to remind yourself that what he was saying wasn’t a hundred percent true. Sure, you were investigating, and you indeed wanted to figure out what had happened to Yuuki Tatsuya, but private investigators? What a creative way to put it!

‘My company, sure…’ the idol huffed, as skeptical as anyone would have been in his line of work, but somehow a bit unreasonably rude. At least, compared to what you had heard about him from your fellow make-up assistants at work. Sakura-san and Hana-san had both referred to Yuuki Tatsuya as “one of the less difficult ones”, which should have meant that the idol was able to control his emotions.

Maybe, he thought that you weren’t worthy of the effort.

‘Then tell me the name of the boss in my company,’ he challenged you, and honestly, even though you had done some research on him and his career before your first day on set, you couldn’t recall the CEO’s full name for the life of you. Yuuki Tatsuya was an idol under the Hanabi Lab label, wasn’t he? So that meant…

‘It’s Hori-san,’ Ed-san answered with a nonchalant confidence and a smile that was almost too charming. ‘She is the head secretary of your CEO and the person behind most of the major decisions,’ the vampire stated, and you couldn’t help it, your lips parted slightly in disbelief because seriously, what was he talking about?

And if he was right, how did he know?

You might not have been an avid fan of your country’s music industry, not anymore at least, but something this huge should have reached everyone, including people who had never listened to Japanese pop. So how came you had absolutely no idea? Was this just a shot in the dark? A very bold, very impulsive shot?

Yuuki Tatsuya’s body relaxed almost immediately and his shoulders sagged slightly as the tension slowly evaporated from his muscles. You bit into your right cheek from the inside, both to suppress the surprised noise that wanted to escape from your throat and to keep yourself from accidentally alerting the injured idol.

‘It was her. That lunatic with the camera,’ Yuuki Tatsuya started, his voice cracking under the pressure of his memories. He sounded traumatised, which he most probably was. Anyone would have been after an unfortunate encounter with a malicious anomaly. ‘I usually don’t mind people taking pictures of me, it’s free advertisement, after all,’ Yuuki explained, and you noticed that he was picking on the skin near his nails due to his anxiety.

You had seen many people with cameras on set in the past days, but none of them struck you for a lunatic.

‘Whenever she took a picture of me, I felt this weird… emptiness. Like, something, some parts of me were missing,’ the idol tried to describe his experience as precisely as possible, as though he believed that any minor detail could have been the key to put this person behind bars. ‘On the day I was eliminated, I found her camera unattended in the communal kitchen, so I turned it on and started to delete everything. Every picture she took. One by one. And that madwoman almost drove a knife in my chest when she noticed the camera in my hands,’ Yuuki Tatsuya raised his voice in agitation, the equipment that was monitoring his heart rate speeding up the beeping.

You wanted to reach out to comfort him with your touch, but Ed-san grabbed your wrist and shook his head silently.

Yuuki Tatsuya closed his eyes and took a ragged breath.

‘The thing is, I knew I should have run immediately and then maybe none of this would have happened. I wouldn’t have broken my leg and I could have still done the promotions with my group, but I felt this…’ he was clearly trying his hardest to find the perfect word. ‘Need. This need for deleting all of the pictures she has taken with that evil device.’

Ed-san cleared his throat before anyone else could have spoken up and made a comment.

‘How did deleting those pictures make you feel?’ He asked the idol, and his question seemed to surprise not only you but the other two ghouls as well. You assumed, asking the idol to describe the girl he was talking about was more urgent. After all, she could have been the very anomaly you were after.

Yuuki Tatsuya opened his eyes and smiled at Ed-san. It wasn’t a happy smile, nor a sad one. It was almost creepy. The sight of his face sent a shiver down your spine.

‘Like I stole back what’s mine,’ the idol chuckled with the corner of his lips curling upwards in an almost unnatural way. You had never seen a person smile like this outside of horror movies. Anomalies? A couple of times. But never living, breathing human beings.

‘I see, thank you Yuuki-san for your cooperation,’ Ed-san said with a pleased smile before he turned his back on the idol and walked out of the private hospital room.

You looked after his retreating figure until the door closed shut behind him, then turned back to the injured idol and the rest of the obscuary ghouls who seemed completely unbothered by the vampire’s behaviour.  

‘Uhm… guys? Shouldn’t we…’ you bit into your tongue abruptly, before you could have blown your cover story about being hired by Yuuki Tatsuy’s agency in front of the idol with your unsure attitude. Still, behind the clumsy mask you were so determined to keep on, your mind was full of question marks. 

Shouldn’t you have gone after Ed-san and asked him why he had left so suddenly? Shouldn’t you have asked the idol to describe the photographer to you in detail, so that you could have checked everyone on set who fitted the depiction?

‘We will be back if we have more questions, Yuuki-san,’ Rui bowed his head respectfully, reminding Lyca with a simple side eye to do the same, and you found yourself following along even though you had dozens of questions stuck in the back of your throat.

You were confused and lost as you walked back towards the main entrance of the hospital with the guys. Did you solve the case? Did Ed-san actually solve the case? What the hell was going on?

» chapter completed « » reward: 10 diamonds 💎｡⭑･ﾟ «

You let out an exasperated sigh when Rui pushed a glass of strawberry-banana milkshake in your direction with his gloved hand. His movements were careful as he served the drinks to everyone one by one, and you watched him in a daze while Lyca did not waste a moment to bounce on his own iced chocolate milk.

‘I still think we should have asked him to describe her,’ you mumbled under your nose, even though you made no real effort to stand up and walk back to the hospital from across the café and bakery where you felt like you were talking to yourself. ‘Even if he said something basic like that the photographer had dark, long hair, at least we could have crossed out a couple of possibilities. Some girls in the make-up team have dyed hair,’ you reasoned, and felt proud of yourself when Lyca nodded along.

‘He wouldn’t be able to give us a correct description,’ Rui shook his head and took a sip of his own strawberry-banana shake that matched yours.

‘How do you know for sure? I don’t understand,’ you furrowed your brow, leaning just a tad closer to Rui from above the table out of curiosity. If there had been something you had missed, you wanted to know what it was, so that next time you could catch the telltale detail, too. 

‘Because he’s still under the anomaly’s influence,’ Rui explained calmly, never once making you feel as though he was talking to a child. Your anomalous studies were obviously lacking, every ghoul on campus was aware of this, except for Lyca, maybe. After all, you had started to attend second year classes the moment you had been dragged into this world and no one had ever bothered with teaching you the basics.

Everyone thought your presence at the academy was temporary - in one way or another. You were basically taking your classes between missions primarily for the general students to not question your honorary student status. You couldn’t even possess a weapon of your own for self-defence, because the sage ring on your finger was a special artifact, and every student was allowed to have only one according to Darkwick policies.

‘That’s true,’ Lyca nodded as he finished his drink and looked around in the shop as though he wanted to figure out what else to have to satiate his hunger. ‘Otherwise, he wouldn’t smell similar to the other guy. Though, this one was less potent. More like a fading scent that was too stubborn to entirely disappear.’

‘Oh… I… didn’t catch that. You’re right, it… it makes perfect sense,’ you admitted between two sips of strawberry-banana milkshake, cheeks burning with a light shade of pink from the unintentional humiliation of Lyca’s additional observations. Sure, you didn’t have his sense of smell, but you knew that he had found the idol’s private room by following the rotten apple scent. Which meant that you had every piece of the puzzle to come to the same conclusion, yet, you hadn’t.

‘It’s okay, Y/N-chan,’ Rui tried to comfort you with a smile. ‘Everyone has their own pace, and you’re doing amazing despite the circumstances. Everyone acknowledges it,’ he said, and you really, really wanted to believe him.

You just nodded slowly, suddenly unable to look the blond ghoul in the eyes. You felt a little inadequate compared to the image he had of you in his head. But a part of you wanted to become that girl. Someone who tried her best despite the circumstances as he had put it.

You didn’t look up even when Rui pushed his chair back and stood up. You kept your gaze on your milkshake and kept your mind busy with this new piece of information. If Yuuki Tatsuya was still under the anomaly’s influence, but not as much as Kaji-kun - who had come in contact with the anomaly later -, then what you had previously assumed could have been a curse didn’t spread with time. It didn’t work like the Kyklos curse. 

You thought about the way Kaji-kun’s personality had changed from one day to another. Your first impression of him had been that he was an easy-going guy who could fill the silence in conversations on his own without making things awkward. He had also seemed passionate about his idol dream when he had asked you to make his eyeshadow more sparkly. Compared to that break, during his one-sided fight with the director, Kaji-kun had been a completely different person. Quiet. Dull. 

He had pulled a total one-hundred-eighty.

You recalled the other make-up artists’ stories about Yuuki-kun and after a few minutes that felt like hours, you came to the same conclusion. The injured idol had not only changed, he had become the complete opposite of himself. He wasn’t one of those whom people could handle easily, anymore. He was rough around the edges and a total handful.

‘Do you think there’s a pattern in how the anomaly is changing people?’ You asked the blond ghoul tentatively when he placed a small plate of fruit tart in front of you. Your eyes lingered on the dessert before you mustered up the courage to lift your chin. ‘I think the anomaly is switching their core characteristics.’

‘Switching? What makes you think that, Y/N-chan?’ Rui asked, showing genuine interest as he leaned forward, putting some of his weight on his elbows on the wooden table.

You explained to him and Lyca your train of thoughts. How the two idol victims you had encountered so far hadn’t changed in a similar manner at first sight, but had started to act entirely differently from their original personas. Sure, you were relying heavily on people’s descriptions of them who might not have known their real selves, but still. This would have been a strange coincidence, right?

‘So we might have an anomaly with the power of switching out certain parts of individuals. We are also looking for someone with a camera,’ Rui said, sipping on his milkshake. ‘Yuuki Tatsuya mentioned that he felt like he was stealing something back when he deleted those pictures, which could mean…’

Rui straightened his back and you finished his sentence, too eager to wait for him to swallow his drink.

‘The camera is the anomaly,’ you stated, excited to have a very plausible theory. ‘Kaji-kun was also very lively in the make-up room when I helped him with his eyeshadow. So the fact that he lost that same liveliness right after I saw someone taking a picture of us could mean it was the same camera,’ your voice cracked a little by the end of your deduction under your overwhelming emotional turmoil.

You studied your face for a couple of seconds then nodded.

‘Yeah, this is very possible. If every deleted picture gave Yuuki-kun back the lost parts of his personality, that means he actually made a partial recovery. That would explain why his scent is less potent than Kaji-kun’s,’ Rui added as he pulled out his phone and texted in the group chat, so Ed-san could also read your theory.

‘But there are like dozens of cameras on set,’ Lyca pointed out between two bites of his own desserts. ‘And none of them smells like an anomaly.’

Well this piece of information definitely took the wind out of your sails.

‘None of them? Are you sure?’ You asked Lyca, who nodded with confidence.

‘The stench of that rot is very unpleasant. Even if I hadn’t smelled any of the victims before, I would have been able to pick up on it easily,’ Lyca explained, making you drop your head between your shoulders as you grabbed your milkshake and started to chew on the straw a bit dejectedly.

Rui texted the new discovery to the group chat.

‘Cheer up, Y/N-chan,’ Rui pushed the untouched fruit tart closer to you with his gloved hand, offering you an encouraging smile. ‘This doesn’t mean your theory is wrong. We just haven’t discovered all the puzzle pieces yet.’

Your gaze remained on Rui for a couple of seconds longer than it was necessary, then you let out a resigned sigh and reached out for the fork that had come with the tart. You didn’t have a favourite dessert in particular, but you did like fruit and chocolate a lot, so it was actually a really successful choice of the blond ghoul.

‘Thanks, Rui,’ you mumbled under your nose before the first bite, letting the soft sweetness of the snack fill you with placebo happiness. Or was this a real hormonal thing? You weren’t exactly sure which approach was more scientifically accurate, but one thing was sure. By the time you finished the tart, your mood wasn’t that gloomy anymore.

» chapter completed « » reward: 10 diamonds 💎｡⭑･ﾟ «

The next day on set you couldn’t stop looking at everyone with a camera in their hands just a little more closely. Deep down you knew you were acting suspiciously, that a sudden change in your usually meek personality could have alarmed the person who owned the anomalous device, but consciously willing yourself to stay nonchalant was harder than it sounded.

You let out a frustrated sigh.

‘Are you in love with him or something?’ Sakura-san, your self-proclaimed mentor slash supervisor in your team, asked. Her voice was light and teasing as she shifted her gaze from your face towards the people of the catering team.

You flinched due to the sheer volume of her voice. Your eyes were shining with confusion and a pinch of panic.

‘Am I what? With who?’ You blurted out awkwardly, making Sakura-san giggle.

‘Mizuki-kun, who else? You are always having lunch together, and you are staring at him like crazy, girl,’ the make-up artist stated the obvious, which hadn’t been this obvious to you at all up until this moment. Had you been staring at Rui? When? And why were your shared lunch breaks a valid reason for your love for him when Lyca was also always sitting right next to you in your lunch breaks?

‘Rui and I are just friends. I’m not staring at all,’ you protested, and you really meant it. Just like when you had reminded Kaito that being interested in guys wasn’t something you had any spare time for. Not that you could have been this straightforward with Sakura-san, who knew nothing about anomalies and curses that turned people into anomalies.

‘Rui, hm, I see,’ Sakura-san let out a low hum as though she was graciously letting you go with your version of the story.

You looked at Rui. He was carrying boxes of bottled juices from the parking lot to the snack area where the idols and the crew members could pick up emergency food in case they were low on sugar. He was smiling at the same woman who had come into the communal kitchen to pick him and Lyca up when their break stretched too long or their team was in urgent need of two pairs of extra hands. Which was almost every other day. Still, she was always polite, apologising to you for needing the guys so much and cutting your shared time shorter.

‘She likes your friend, that senior caterer,’ Sakura-san shifted her gaze once more, looking at you instead of the catering team. You sucked in your lower lip without realising as you kept your eyes on Rui. Sure, he was smiling, but he was like this on campus, too, when some of the general students mustered their courage to approach him despite him being a ghoul. This, and the fact that you knew he couldn’t do as much as hold that woman’s hand, made it almost too easy to not get jealous.

Not that…

Not that you would have had any reason to get jealous even if he could have held her. You and Rui were just friends. You were.

The reason why your heart was hammering in your chest was because Sakura-san forced you into a corner.

Then, you saw a familiar figure. It wasn’t that you recognised her face or the clothes she was wearing. It wasn’t even her posture that made you experience this weird sort of recognition. It was the way her face was completely covered by her camera the entire time she was taking pictures of the idol who was currently shooting despite the soft ban on unscripted behind the scene contents.

You didn’t hesitate. Even though no aspect of your theory about the anomalous camera had been verified so far. Even though every single one of the guys had made you promise at one point in your mission that you wouldn’t investigate on your own without asking for assistance from one of them first. You spoke up without looking at Sakura-san.

‘Sakura-san! I will go and do a coffee run real quick,’ you claimed and rushed out from the make-up room the same moment the girl with the camera started to walk in the opposite direction.

The quicker your steps became, the faster this person was moving like she had already noticed that you had connected the dots and her fight or flight instincts had made her flee the scene immediately.

Deep in your gut, you felt like this was your one and only chance to catch her and solve the case, which was totally ridiculous. If you had only spent one second more to stop and think things through rationally, you would have realised how stupid you were acting. But you were too eager to act, and you followed her outside.

The sudden change of lighting made you squeeze your eyes, and that was enough for you to lose sight of her. You turned your head left and right, trying your hardest to catch a glimpse at her, but her silhouette was nowhere to be found. You were breathing heavily due to your lack of stamina and the rush of adrenaline in your system. She was gone. You had her and maybe, if you had been more subtle about it or if you had just called out to Rui who was by the snack tables, you could have caught her, and then…

‘Y/N? What are you doing here?’ You heard a husky voice from the near distance, which put a successful stop to your self-blaming.

‘Lyca! Quickly! Can you smell it? The anomaly,’ you grabbed the werewolf’s jacket, and to his credit, he did not flinch away or shake the touch off anymore when it came to you, even though he had a hard time tolerating sudden movements in general because of his time in the Ultio dungeon.

‘Ah… No, no rotten apple smell at all. Just some leftover perfume and grease from the hot dogs the caterers are preparing for the crew,’ Lyca noted with his chin lifted high so his nose could smell more of the area around. ‘Sweat and fumes, too,’ he added as an afterthought.

You let go of his hand, slowly getting back to your senses.

‘I’m sorry. I… I shouldn’t have just grabbed you like that,’ you apologised immediately, and Lyca nodded as he followed the movement of your hand with his eyes.

‘You look not okay,’ he started as tentatively as a middle schooler would. You looked at him as he started to scratch his nape out of embarrassment. ‘But you have to tell me what’s the problem, because feelings are still a bit advanced for me,’ Lyca admitted before he kept rambling about something Kagami-kun had told him about people and social cues. You listened to him patiently, and it actually worked. Just watching him try so hard to help you, when he was clearly struggling with comforting others calmed you down a whole lot.

You offered him a grateful smile.

‘Don’t worry, Lyca, you’re a natural at this,’ you said, then you took a deep breath and gathered your thoughts. ‘Actually, I made a mistake earlier. I recognised the girl with the camera, the one who took that picture of Kaji-kun and I, and I started to rush after her like a complete amateur. I lost her when she ran out to the parking lot,’ you admitted, apologetic about how stupid you had acted. ‘I’m sorry.’

Lyca tilted his head sideways and raised a brow.

‘Why are you apologising? Suba always says that people need to make mistakes to learn,’ he said, like he was sharing one of the many secrets of the universe with you. You looked at him a little baffled, but your face soon lit up with a genuine smile.

‘Kagami-kun is very smart, isn’t he?’ You asked, and Lyca nodded firmly as he adjusted his grab on the brown box in his hands.

‘We should tell the blond gigolo and the moth-eaten casanova about your findings,’ Lyca said as he took a step towards the double door then stopped in his tracks to wait for you to catch up with him. ‘Since that girl ran away from you, it means she’s really the one we’re looking for, isn’t she?’ He asked, making you realise that although you had messed up, her actions did prove something.

‘Yeah, I guess so,’ you hummed as you walked next to Lyca and followed him back inside the building.

The two of you headed straight to the snack tables, and you were waiting by the sidelines feeling a bit out of place as Lyca put the heavy box with bottles inside on the floor. You watched him walk up to Rui and exchange a few words with him before the blond ghoul snapped his head in your direction with wide eyes.

You turned away, letting your gaze wander around the interior of the set, landing on anything and everything but him.

‘Don’t worry too much. I saw you two playing tag and I know where she lives,’ the weight of Ed-san’s hand on your shoulder registered in your brain sooner than the meaning of what he had just said. But when you finally caught up with the moment, you turned towards him with shock and hope in your eyes.

‘What?’ You asked without meaning to, your question filling the air without any purpose. ‘How?’

Ed-san covered his mouth with his empty hand and chuckled. His eyes were twinkling like crescent moons as though he was genuinely entertained.

‘I am very fast,’ he explained, enjoying the slow speed your human brain was processing the information at. Oh.

Oh.

Ed-san was a vampire with inhuman speed. Why were you so stupid? You had already known which parts of old folktails about his kind were false and which ones were actually close to the truth.

Ed-san patted your shoulder.

‘We will search her home when she thinks she is safe,’ the Obscuary captain told you, then gently pushed you towards a different exit. ‘You are supposed to be on a coffee run, aren’t you?’

You nodded, twisting your neck a little to be able to look at the ghoul’s face even though in this position he was standing right behind your back.

It seemed, the conversation was over.

» chapter completed « » reward: 10 diamonds 💎｡⭑･ﾟ «

The apartment building the girl with the anomalous camera was living in was more luxurious than you had expected. It had an elegantly decorated lobby, two elevators and ten floors covered in an equal amount of brick and glass.

‘There are guards at the entrance,’ you said with a frown, wondering how you planned to sneak inside this place without being discovered. You could have pretended to be electricians or plummers, but would the receptionist have given you the green light without contacting the tenant who had supposedly called for you?

It sounded highly unlikely.

‘They will not even look at us, just walk,’ Ed-san stated and pushed you forwards with the same mixture or firmness and gentleness he had used when he had reminded you of your coffee run a couple of hours prior.

You took the first step towards the gates and then the second one, too. It was just as Ed-san had predicted: the guards, whose sharp gazes were observing the area and lingering on every passerby like they were expecting an attack or a break-in, did not acknowledge your presence at all. As if your group was made of ghosts.

You didn’t dare to ask any questions out loud, afraid that a single word could break the spell. Because it had to be a spell, right? A stigma or some sort of supernatural power that came with being the strongest vampire alive. Yeah, mind manipulation sounded pretty plausible, a rare power according to your studies, but nothing unheard of.

The same thing happened when you passed by the reception desk and when you took the lift along with two girls who didn’t even look at you. They chatted about their job, the annoying manager in the marketing team who apparently possessed the same flirting skills as a middle schooler, then they got off on the seventh floor.

‘Khm,’ you cleared your throat, trying to erase the explicit description of their manager’s actions from your brain. ‘Which floor is ours?’ You asked instead, to divert the topic back at what was important: the anomalous camera and the girl.

‘The fourth,’ Ed-san said calmly, while Rui took a step closer to the panel to push the button. ‘Working in a human office is more interesting than I thought. Rui said the dramas on tv were fictional, but they sound the same to me,’ the old vampire mused, covering his mouth with his hand as the corners of his lips pulled into an intrigued smirk.

‘That manager is the exception not the rule, Ed-san. Office jobs are boring in general and situations like these should be handled by a proper HR department pretty quickly,’ Rui sighed with a small shake of his head.

The corridors on the fourth floor were brightly lit. You followed Ed-san towards the door with the number plate 403 written on it, then watched as Rui opened the door. A part of you had expected him to knock like a gentleman - which was super unreasonable in hindsight -, so you were surprised when he picked the lock like a seasoned thief.

You held your breath and entered the flat with Rui walking ahead of you and Lyca watching the rare. The lights were off in every room, which had to mean that the girl wasn’t at home. Briefly, you wondered where she could have been.

‘What if she took the camera with her?’ You asked Ed-san, but the vampire only smiled at him in a way that made you feel like a clueless child.

Were you misinterpreting the purpose of your presence here?

You pressed your lips together and watched as the ghouls all headed towards different rooms inside the suite as though they were following a script you were unaware of. You didn’t like the possibility of this, so you told yourself that Lyca and Rui would have sure filled you in on the details if there had been a plan.

The suite was easily one quarter of the size of the whole floor, so there were numerous rooms to check. A master bedroom with a built-in bathroom, a kitchen, a living room, a guest room, another bathroom and a room that looked like a closet. You headed towards a random door that none of the ghouls had chosen.

With everyone in the same suite and the photographer girl away, you believed that you were safe even on your own.

You pushed the door to the closet open and let your pre-curse personality resurface for a fleeting moment at the sight of the clothes and accessories on the hangers and the dozens of display shelves. It was like a room out of a Korean morning drama with those crazy chaebol families as the main characters. You wondered whether Kamurai senpai had a similar closet somewhere in the Frostheim dorm, too. His family was well-off enough to be acquaintances with real royalty, after all.

You shook your head quickly to get back to your senses and left the door slightly open just in case the guys found something and called for you. You didn’t have hypersensitive hearing like vampires and werewolves did, so you had to make sure you didn’t do anything that would have shortened your hearing range even more.

You searched through every nook and cranny meticulously. You started with the drawers that were clearly designed with shoes in mind, then skimmed through the designer clothes on the hangers. It took you a solid minute to realise that every item was from male collections: the winter Prada collection, the summer Gucci line. You recognised some from that time when you had worked part time at a fancy department store.

You tried to recall the outfit the photographer girl had worn when you had seen her, but all you remembered was that she had been wearing a hoodie or something baggy. Were they guy clothes? Were they this big? The shirts and jackets in here could have easily fit Rui or Lyca or…

A male idol with a nice, attractive height and body shape.

You shuddered at this fleeting thought.

You had to find that camera and delete all the pictures on it, so that the victims could get back their real personalities. Assuming that you were really here for the camera, and that the girl hadn’t taken it with her to wherever she was.

‘Ah?’ You yelped in surprise when your fingers touched something behind a row of jackets, the object hard and cold against your fingertips.

You pushed aside the jackets with all your might then took a step backwards unconsciously as your mind processed what your eyes were looking at.

‘Yuuki-kun?’ You mumbled under your nose, and the grotesquely realistic doll opened its half-painted eyes in recognition. Your arms were shaking and your limbs felt like lead. You couldn’t even open your eyes to call for the guys because you were too scared the doll might have understood you.

‘Not… princess?’ The doll asked you in a voice way too similar to Yuuki-kun’s to not creep you the hell out. You took a tentative step backwards, then another one. The doll kept its eyes on you the whole time, its artificial head tilted to the left. ‘Where… princess?’

‘I… I don’t know,’ you raised your hands defensively right before your back bumped into something firm and cold. You snapped your head upwards to look at what was behind you, and the scream stuck in your throat when you recognised Kaji-kun’s features on the second doll’s head. This one was in an even more unfinished state, no hair, no skin, no clothes. But his face… his face was definitely Kaji-kun’s.

‘Then… die,’ the doll forced it through its teeth. Wood and metal blending into each other to create something that shouldn’t have existed.

You dropped to your knees to avoid the swing of its arm then crawled towards the door that you remembered you had left open. You supposed you would have been a lot faster if you had just stood up and ran, but standing up and finding your balance would have taken time, and you weren’t confident in your athletic skills.

The skin on your knees turned different shades of green and yellow while you tried to pick up the speed, and your muscles screamed when you eventually reached a point where you had to push yourself into a standing position, so you could reach the door handle.

Were these dolls smart enough to close the door on their own? Or had you been mistaken and the girl was home the whole time?

Your shoulder bumped into the doorframe hard enough to bruise as you opened the door with two hands, forcing the space between the wall and the wooden edge just wide enough to let you through.

‘Rui! Ed-san! Lyca!’ You screamed, moments before the doll grabbed you by your hand and pulled you backwards. Your head hit the floor first, then your shoulder and ass.

You groaned, trying to fill your lungs with air again despite your pained coughing.

‘Y/N!’

Your fingers dug into the doll’s metal wrist, his grip on you unchanging. You felt like you might have had to suffer from a permanent bald patch on the top of your head in case you actually survived this mission.

You groaned as you tried to solve this situation from a different angle and let him pull out as much hair as possible, but ironically, that didn’t work either, because those brown strands that covered your bedroom floor by the end of each week suddenly found their strength to insist on sticking with you.

‘Get away from her!’ Lyca’s roar filled your senses, and you closed your eyes on instinct while you waited for something to happen, because with your current self-defense skills, this was the most you could do against crazy metal anomalies.

You yelped when someone grabbed your upper arm and pulled you up from the floor, tears brimming in your eyes from how much your scalp hurt. Goodness. Sure, you were glad to still be alive, but Lyca could have done something about the doll’s hand in your hair before he dragged you by his side like you were a living, breathing ragdoll.

‘Thanks,’ you mumbled under your nose nevertheless, since you were grateful for the rough assist.

There was a magical, chiming sound coming from behind you. Then, another one came from your left side, where Lyca was growling like an upset puppy. Or… like a wolf pup, more likely. You had never seen a wolf in real life before, so you weren’t sure, but the resemblance sounded logical.

You stole a glance at Lyca’s metal claws, the artifact sharp and a beautiful shade of purple as he aimed them at the metal doll. You gulped and took a step back to further distance yourself from the fight.

Rui soon joined Lyca with his scythe, the weapon allowing him not only to strike but also to conceal himself in the shadows of the hallway. It looked like the two of them had everything under control, which was comforting until you realised you couldn’t see Ed-san anywhere near. Was the girl really in the apartment? Was Ed-san fighting in a different room?

You looked at the two ghouls who were working in perfect sync, then decided to look for their captain just in case he needed help. Not that you truly believed you could have aided the strongest vampire alive, but he was a ghoul, too, with a stigma. And the sage ring on your finger could amplify a ghoul’s stigma, so it was worth a shot.

You were so deep in thought, recalling all the missions in which you had been able to actively use the sage ring and that one mission when it had failed to boost Sho’s power, that you were caught completely off guard when the second doll rushed out of the built-in closet and threw you across the open living room.

Your head hit something hard for the second time under five minutes, which made you dizzy for obvious reasons.

‘Ouch.’ Hissing, you lifted your trembling hand to the back of your head, that was damp from your own, warm blood. ‘I really need to ask Alan to train me after classes,’ you mumbled to yourself, upset but also tired with this situation.

You knew it wasn’t necessarily your fault. You were a general student at best, a cursed one, but still an ordinary human when it came to physical strength, speed or even hearing. Unlike ghouls, you couldn’t dodge strikes efficiently, especially strikes that came out of nowhere.

The doll was in front of you before you realised or really caught your breath, and it lifted you by your hair as though these things had an obsession with your bob haircut.

‘Y/N-chan!’ Rui shouted from the other side of the space, from the hallway that opened from the living room that had no visible doors, only door frames.

You were trashing against the doll, hitting its metal and wooden chest with your fists, trying to peel its fingers off your hair, anything. But all you managed was your legs dangling above the floor frantically while the anomaly swung his hand that held you.

You felt the wind sooner than the small cuts of the broken glass shards that had been once the balcony door. Then came the scream.

Your brain barely registered that it was you who were screaming, the happenings were simply too fast for your human brain. The swing, the glass door, the fall. The tears in your eyes were falling due to the fall itself rather than the fear.

Until your body stopped with a jerk and you groaned because of the sudden, sharp pain in your shoulder.

You turned your head towards the sky and stared at the person whose upper body was more or less thrown over the railing of the balcony to be able to hold onto your wrist. The touch of the leather gloves was familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, because while there was nothing special about them, this was also the first time Rui touched you with them.

He usually avoided touching others even with this protective layer keeping him from making any kind of direct skin-on-skin contact.

‘Rui,’ you called out his name, quiet, as though you had forgotten how to speak at a normal volume, as though speaking too loudly could have put both of you in danger.

‘I’ve got you, just don’t move. Please, Y/N-chan, don’t move,’ he begged you, so you stayed completely still despite your instincts that were screaming at you to grab him with your other hand and try to help him pull you up.

Something or someone crushed into something or someone in the living room. You weren’t sure. You didn’t dare to even try to turn towards the noises and attempt a quick peek between the metal bars of the railing.

You stayed as unmoving as anyone was capable of while hanging in the air. You focused on your breathing, on the slight tremors of your body, you even closed your eyes at one point to shut out the sight underneath you.

Yet, when something unexpectedly made Rui lose his grip on you, and you could feel his glove slowly sliding off his hand probably due to his sweat, your body moved regardless of your will. Your other hand, that had been pressed against your side to keep it from dangling, swung upwards out of pure survival instincts.

The pure terror in Rui’s eyes was heartbreaking when he realised you had accidentally grazed his bare wrist. He almost dropped you, scared, panicked, but then Lyca rushed up to the railing and groaned.

‘What’s taking so long?’ The werewolf ghoul asked before he reached down and grabbed both of your arms, pulling you up with so much ease, for a second you believed you weighed nothing.

Before you knew it, you were back on the balcony, your feet resting on the wooden tiles and your side being supported by a strong arm that rested clumsily around your torso. Despite his reluctance to touch you at almost intimate places, Lyca tried his best to be the person you could have leaned on until you regained some of your strength.

You watched Rui staring at his own trembling hands before he started to meticulously fix the gloves over and over and over. As though his skin was still peeking out somewhere, as if his power could have hurt you from a distance, too, just because you were still present and very much alive.

‘Rui…’ the words stuck in your throat. You had so much to say, there was so much you needed him to know that when you opened your mouth, nothing really came out.

You looked up at Lyca and slowly pulled away, but before you could have taken a step towards Rui, he snapped his head in your way and hid his arms behind his back.

‘Don’t come here,’ he said, then looked around in the messy living room and bolted.

Lyca and you were so stunned by Rui’s artifact helping him in his escape, that neither of you were able to tear your eyes away from where Rui had been last visible until Ed-san cleared his throat at the door to the balcony.

‘I assumed Rui would contact Darkwick about the situation here,’ he started without taking as much as a glance at the unmoving dolls scattered on the living room floor. ‘But I am not so sure anymore. Would you please be so kind, dear, and do it? I would like to wrap this mission up before my favourite idol starts his stream in an hour.’

You blinked. Slowly. Twice. Three times.

‘I… Yes, of course. I… I’m on it, Ed-san,’ you stumbled over your words as you quickly fished your phone out of your pocket and messaged chancellor about the investigation, the dolls and the fight inside a very normal, very non-anomalous apartment complex that, in hindsight, might have been too loud for the neighbours to be completely unaware of your presence.

As far as you were concerned, there might have already been people texting and calling the receptionist to complain about the noise.

You really, really wanted to go after Rui.

» chapter completed « » reward: 10 diamonds 💎｡⭑･ﾟ «

Your limbs felt like lead as you dragged yourself off the Galaxy Express. Lyca was yawning next to you, stretching his arms like that could have helped him stay awake. Ed-san was quiet, too, his crimson eyes occasionally finding yours, but he never took the initiative to start a conversation.

As an inspector, you had numerous questions to ask: where had Ed-san been while the others fought against the dolls? How had those creatures been defeated? Was it the camera or the girl the institute had been after? Would the victims be back to normal now?

Yet, the words that fell from your lips were of a completely different nature:

‘Do you know where Rui went? Is he at the bar? I need to see him.’

Ed-san hummed without really looking at you or making his steps slower to adjust to your pace. For a split second, you wondered whether he would ignore you completely or he would dismiss you with a wave of his hand once he untangled his thoughts.

‘I will walk you home, Y/N,’ the vampire said eventually, choosing the path that led to your dormitory instead of the one that took people to the forest around Obscuary.

‘Then I’m coming with you,’ Lyca stated firmly as he positioned himself between you and his captain. You watched Ed-san chuckle as he lifted his hands in mock defence in front of his chest.

‘Very well,’ Ed-san noted, showing no interest in your opinion or in the conversation you had tried to start with him about Rui.

You pressed your lips together, into a firm line, and followed the two ghouls towards the freshly renovated cathedral. Mio had finished rebuilding the ruined ground floor two days ago, and he had promised to start working on your room soon, though he was currently super busy with a bunch of important things around campus. Like the fences around the anomalous bulls in Jabberwock and the pit in Vagastrom.

When Ed-san didn’t stop at your doorstep but let himself inside the cathedral, you furrowed your brows in confusion.

‘Hey, you moth-eaten casanova. What do you think you’re doing?’ Lyca raised his voice, ready to grab the vampire by his arm and drag him all the way to the Obscuary dormitory if needed.

You pinched the bridge of your nose and exhaled through your mouth.

‘Ed-san, Lyca…’ you started, unsure of how to tell them that while you felt comfortable around both of them most of the time, you really didn’t think this whole situation was appropriate. You thought that once carelessly chosen word would make you sound like a girl with a main character syndrome. ‘It’s really late. Maybe we should get back to whatever this is tomorrow?’

Lyca nodded in agreement, while Ed-san finally had the decency to spare a glance at you.

‘I assumed you would like to talk with Rui as soon as possible,’ the vampire said, his head tilted slightly to the left more in amusement than real confusion.

‘Of course I want to,’ you stated firmly, suddenly wide awake. ‘I need to talk with him about what happened on that balcony,’ you explained, because while you weren’t sure that either of the other Obscuary ghouls had noticed, you realised that the situation itself was serious and required immediate communication.

Ed-san turned back towards the freshly painted double doors of your dormitory and crossed the threshold with his second foot, too, without any further explanation.

You rushed after him.

The three of you walked towards the door behind the altar that opened to a small cemetery in the backyard, the tombs still a bit worn down, but in a lot better condition than a week ago. At least, as far as you could tell from the big, stained glass windows on the first floor.

This was actually your first time in the backyard since you had been cursed and abducted by the academy. It looked a little eerie, but not as scary as quiet cemeteries should have - or how they might have felt to you before you had learned about the existence of ghouls and other anomalies.

Your eyes widened slightly when you noticed a familiar, blond figure sitting by one of the newer headstones. Rui looked so small from where you were standing, almost ethereal due to the soft lights of the waxing Moon.

‘Rui…’

Ed-san stepped in front of his vice-captain without sparing a glance at the name on the tomb. You made a conscious decision to not look at it. Something in your gut told you that reading it would have been too invasive.

‘You don’t seem too happy about finding someone you can actually touch without blowing off their arms,’ the vampire said, his words suddenly making you recall that one time you had seen Rui touch him by accident that seemed more like a semi-accident because of Ed-san’s unbothered reaction.

Rui snapped his head in the vampire’s direction, his eyes red and teary.

‘That’s impossible,’ Rui protested in a small, hoarse voice, which made you take a tentative stop towards him, while Lyca remained near the backdoor as though he realised that he was not close enough to Rui to see him in such a vulnerable state. ‘Y/N-chan will die because of me.’

‘At the moment, it is a lot more likely that she is going to die in one of the laboratories under the institute’s command,’ Ed-san said, and you flinched because this was something you did not like to think about.

Lyca growled, visibly upset.

Rui turned towards the noise, but his eyes fell on you instead of searching for the source.

‘Hi,’ you offered him a smile, trying to resist this growing, inner need in you to wrap your arms around him in a comforting manner. He clearly wasn’t ready for any kind of physical contact despite the undeniable fact that you were still alive.

Rui’s lower lip trembled as his gaze loitered over you from head to toe.

‘The Kyklos curse is an especially strong one. This is why it is so difficult to break,’ Ed-san started, his calm voice informative in a cold but not unkind way. ‘It intends to fully consume her soul and transform her into an anomaly once the tattoo is whole on her nape, so it actively repels outside treats to preserve its prey,’ the vampire explained, making your blood turn to ice in your veins.

No one had ever explained this to you in such raw details before. And you weren’t sure you were ready to hear this.

‘It naturally makes her immune to mind alterations and additional curses,’ Ed-san added, his gaze unwavering. ‘I admit that I wasn’t a hundred percent sure about the extent of its twisted protection, but it seems, she cannot be killed by the reaper’s curse, either. That is, until she remains cursed, of course.’

You gasped in realization and took another tentative stop towards Rui. You sat on your heels next to him, and without a single glance at the tomb, you tilted your head sideways, silently observing him.

He flinched, but didn’t run away.

‘Rui… Can I… touch you?’ You asked in a voice that was barely above a whisper. You sounded like you were trying to please a very frightened, very cornered animal, and maybe you were.

‘What if…’ Rui turned his head away. ‘If something goes wrong, you die. I cannot risk that,’ he stated firmly, which honestly hurt, but you understood where his fears came from, so you forced a calm, almost unbothered mask on your face.

‘Ed-san said the Kyklos curse will keep me safe,’ you reminded him calmly, letting the facts marinate in the air for a couple of minutes before you added: ‘And we have already touched today. Nothing bad happened.’

It was obvious that he wanted to, but he couldn’t deny that you were correct. Still, he didn’t reach out to you or made any attempt at touching you.

You sat more comfortably on the cold ground, then turned towards Lyca and Ed-san.

‘We’ll stay here for a bit longer. I’ll go over to the Obscuary dorm tomorrow to go over the mission report with everyone,’ you said, meeting their eyes with confidence in yours. Even if you weren’t actually in control of the current situation, you wished they would let you handle it on your own.

‘If this is what you want,’ Lyca shrugged in spite of his reluctance to leave you alone with his vice-captain.

You were grateful for his protectiveness, but you were even more grateful for his willingness to walk away.

‘Thanks,’ you smiled at him, only then realising that Ed-san was already gone.

You sucked in your lower lip and bit into the soft flesh gentle to muster up the courage to face Rui alone.

‘I won’t touch you without your permission,’ you promised Rui before you leaned against the headstone’s edge in a similar manner he did. You tried not to be disrespectful about it, only a bit of support for your obviously tired body. ‘Would you like to talk?’ You asked just to break the silence, trying your best not to push Rui too hard while simultaneously keeping him from hiding in his shell.

Rui shook his head, and you acknowledged his decision with a nod.

First, you tried to ease him with stories about Luca and Kaito and their endless shenanigans. Then, you told him about your friends before Darkwick, about your mom’s cooking and your grandparents’ shop near the beach.

Half-asleep, you mumbled stories about the night you had gotten cursed by the Kyklos, how Taiga had almost thrown you off the subway and the only reason you had survived was Haku being there, too. You told Rui about your futile attempt at escaping Darkwick, about your very first mission, about the first time you had failed to amplify a ghoul’s stigma.

You told him how lonely you felt whenever you thought of a future where the friends you had made here would laugh together without you.

‘We would all be sad if you were gone, Y/N-chan. Even Taiga,’ Rui spoke for the first time in an hour, and you heard him, you really did. But your eyes were already closed and it was way past midnight. You were too tired to open them again.

So you mumbled a thanks under your nose, barely registering that something feather-like and warm was grazing your pinky.

Something was rustling from across you, but you knew Rui was near, so you were safe.

‘Let’s get you in a real bed,’ Rui exclaimed suddenly, and you were just about to ask for five more minutes when the blond ghoul slid his arms under your knees and the small of your back, gently lifting you off the ground.

Instinctively, you reached up to hold onto his shoulder, and you felt your fingers accidentally bump into his jaw before they settled on his jacket. You were still alive. You were still okay, still unharmed.

Rui’s heart was beating like crazy in his chest, right under where your ear was resting. It had a nice, steady rhythm that lulled you back to that sticky, syrupy half-asleep state that made you way too vulnerable. But it didn’t matter because you were with Rui, so you were safe.

You knew he would never hurt you.

You knew he cared.

And you cared about him, too. Enough to be happy about this side-effect of your curse, and feel a pinch of sadness at the thought that once you were cured, he wouldn’t be able to hold you in his arms anymore.

‘We’re here,’ you heard Rui exclaim quietly before he carefully placed you on top of your bed and moved you around just enough to be able to pull the fluffy blanket over you. ‘Sweet dreams, Y/N-chan,’ he said, and for a second, you thought he might leave immediately, but he didn’t.

Instead, he sat on the edge of your bed and let out a ragged sigh.

‘I… was really terrified today,’ he started, his voice barely above a whisper. You shifted under the blanket and opened your eyes just a tad bit.

He was sitting with his back to you.

Your palms were itching to touch him, even if only through his jacket.

‘I thought… my momentary carelessness killed you. And that broke my soul a little,’ Rui admitted, making your own lower lip tremble. ‘But you are alive. Unharmed. And I can really, really touch you,’ he dragged more air into his lungs than necessary, which created a sob-like sound.

You opened your mouth to say something, but nothing came out.

‘I like you, Y/N-chan. I have liked you since you started to show up at the bar with Lyca to help him adjust his part-time job,’ he chuckled, as though he had recalled a specific memory he didn’t feel the need to talk about. ‘I feel awful for being so happy about this situation, and I feel even more horrible for wishing things could stay like this for a long, long time, because that would mean…’ his voice cracked, and he couldn’t finish the sentence.

However, he didn’t have to. You knew exactly what he had been about to confess, because it had crossed your mind, too.

‘Anyhow…’

When you sensed that Rui was about to turn around - the muscles in his back got tense, and his shoulder had moved before the rest of his body did -, you quickly shut your eyes and held your breath.

A part of you were convinced he knew you were awake. But another part of you would have liked to believe that you were a good enough actress to pull this fake sleep act off.

‘Thank you for staying alive,’ he said, his hand gentle as it touched the top of your head. ‘I will work hard to find the curse for both of our curses, so that we could hold hands even after you are free from Darkwick,’ he mumbled.

The touched sob that escaped through your lips was almost as embarrassing as your attempt at pretending you were still asleep. You could feel Rui’s hand freeze for a split second on the crown of your head before his muffled chuckle filled the air.

‘Let’s talk tomorrow. About the mission report and… maybe, about us, too,’ Rui suggested, then pressed a gentle kiss against your forehead and walked out the door.

Your heart was about to break your ribcage to pieces with how frantically it was beating, and you needed another hour to actually fall asleep. But when you did, you dreamed of a life in which neither you or Rui were burdened by your curses.

Of a world where a comforting hug didn’t have to come with the weight of a countdown or a list of devoured souls that merged into Rui’s whenever his skin grazed another person.

These special admission students were also known as ghouls. According to some prophecy, they were champions destined to protect the world - an idea that Chancellor Cornelius along with many of the professors did openly support. However, the general opinion about them on campus was rather negative. Most ghouls were deemed dangerous, and there were barely any non-magical students who were willing to be friends with them unless they had a personal interest in a specific ghoul. (Most of them were fairly handsome, after all.)

What had been your first impression of them? 

It had been that Hoshibami Taiga was a predator ready to dig his sharp, shark-like teeth into your soft flesh and chew it off your bones. You had thought that Romeo Lucci was a lunatic who preferred to use his sniper rifle first and ask the necessary questions later. You had been convinced that Haku was your lifeline.

Then, you had made friends with many of them and your fear and overwhelming discomfort had subsided tremendously.

With each mission you had been sent on as an inspector, whose memories couldn’t have been altered by the mesmer matches, you had realised that they were just like everybody else your age. They had hobbies like posting on social media, playing video games and cooking. They complained about homework and had their own reasons for laughing and struggling. Some of them matched your vibe and were easy to talk to, while others were clashing with you at every chance they got.

They had once made a deal with a demon and survived. They were anomalies according to the rules of the world they lived in. Still, on days when reality hit you especially hard and you were overwhelmed with anxiety because of how inevitable your own turning seemed to be, these ghouls felt more warm and human to you than anyone else.

The bond you were slowly building with them tied you to the resemblance of normalcy. They created a space where you could complain about exams and enjoy a cup of hot coffee with cream before pulling an all-nighter. They encouraged you when you were feeling down, asked for your advice and opinion, and they also included you in their group activities when they were allowed to enjoy themselves during the downtime of their missions.

You had never thought of trying the insta-famous spicy donuts until Alan had bought a box for you and the two other Vagastrom ghouls during your last mission. It had tasted disgusting, but the memory never failed to bring a smile to your face.

‘It is really delicious, is it not? I’m glad we could grab some today. It was sold out whenever I came by last week,’ Kagami-san exclaimed with a shy smile, his lips perfectly clean despite the packed hot-dog he was holding in his hands.

You looked down at your own lunch, a mix of ketchup and mayonnaise soaking your fingers now that a piece of chopped boiled egg landed on your lap. Sho had been super generous when he had prepared your orders, stuffing the hot dogs full with cheese sausage, vegetables and two different sauces. It was beyond you how someone could look as graceful as the Hotarubi captain did while they were eating something so massive.

‘It is! But I might need extra napkins,’ you said between two bites, mortified when your nose bumped into another piece of fresh cucumber, successfully pushing more food onto the ground and your uniform. You groaned as you swallowed the rest. ‘A lot of extra napkins…’

‘Senpai! Your lemonades,’ Sho jogged up to the two of you with your drinks, his lopsided smile almost apologetic as he handed one of the plastic bottles first to Kagami-san, then to you.

‘Thanks, Sho. Do you think I could—’

‘Here.’ He took a bunch of napkins out of his apron pocket, chuckling at the face you made when he wiped the sauce off your nose with them. ‘I will think of a more convenient way to pack these. Until then, I might try to order bigger buns,’ Sho pondered. He lifted his left hand and scratched his nape as he was thinking, his gaze shifting from you to Kagami-san.

‘Attention! Attention, please!’ The chancellor’s familiar voice filled the campus, pulling all three of you out of your thoughts, although you weren’t that immersed in Sho’s impromptu brainstorming to begin with. For one, you weren’t a good cook. You could make cup ramen and simple yet filling sandwiches, but you had always enjoyed eating more than spending your time on the preparations. Therefore, you didn’t think that your input would have been that valuable.

Instinctively, you turned towards the nearest loudspeaker and shoved the rest of your lunch into your mouth in one go as if you had known: whatever was going on, it must have been connected to you somehow. After all, these days, it always was.

‘Y/N-san, please report to the staffroom immediately!’ The announcement kept going on and on, not going into too much detail as usual, but making sure the message got to you regardless of your location. ‘I repeat: Y/N-san, please report to the staffroom immediately!’

You let out a resigned sigh and wiped the bun crumbs and vegetable pieces off your skirt. As you stood up from the bench that was placed beside Sho’s food truck, you bowed your head in a silent goodbye to both boys.

‘Again? You’ve just finished your last mission with us last week.’ Sho furrowed his eyebrows, his facial expressions more upset than worried unlike in Kagami-san’s case who seemed quite concerned about the frequency you were called into the staffroom lately.

You forced a small smile on your face to ease the sudden tension and did your best to seem unbothered by the possibility of another draining mission in your packed schedule. 

‘It’s okay, it’s not like I’m contributing that much to these missions. Most of the time, I’m just a regular inspector,’ you shrugged, bitter about the truth behind each word that fell from your lips.

When you had been given your first few missions with the ghouls, you had been determined to find the cure for your curse that was hanging above your head like a sharpened blade, but ever since that incident with Sho when you had failed to increase his power with the sage ring on your finger, your doubts in your alleged power made you hesitant. You were supposed to be able to amplify the stigma of a ghoul with a single touch, so why had it not been working that time? If you had made the same mistake again, could your presence have put the whole team in more danger?

You linked your arms behind your back and squeezed your right wrist with the slim fingers on your left hand. Even though you couldn’t see any pity on either of their faces, your own incompetence made you feel smaller, which you couldn’t help. Even before you had been forced into your new living situation, you hadn’t been the most confident person out there, so whenever you were called stupid and ignorant, whenever you had gotten a C or below on your quizzes, and whenever you signed a case report where the anomaly was labelled destroyed instead of captured, you got a little less hopeful.

Useless.

Sho patted your shoulder and Kagami-kun gave you an encouraging smile. You tried harder for them and reciprocated it.

‘I am not sure if it means anything, but you are a very good inspector,’ Kagami-san spoke quietly, his shy demeanor bringing a genuine smile to your face. He was always so kind and gentle, you really liked being around him. ‘Other inspectors might never say it aloud, but they see us as monsters. They know we heal faster, so they do not care much whether we get injured until the wounds are not life-threatening. They are also very suspicious of every decision we try to make on the spot, without contacting the academy first,’ he explained like he was reading an article instead of talking about his personal experience with these people.

You bit into your lower lip, hurt by the mistreatment these ghouls had to put up with while they were expected to solve the most difficult cases around Tokyo without any complaints. It was unfair. 

‘Well, those inspectors are mistaken. You are no monsters. And if they want you to keep risking your live—’

‘I repeat: Y/N-san, please report to the staffroom immediately!’

You were cut off mid-sentence, and you swallowed the rest of your monologue. The chancellor was clearly impatient, so it might have been about a more important matter than you had initially thought.

You straightened your back and gave the boys a clumsy 90 degree bow while wishing them a nice rest of the lunchbreak.

As you were rushing towards the main building, you could hear them talking about you, but their voices soon got too far from you to pick up on the meaning of their words.

» chapter completed « » reward: 10 diamonds 💎｡⭑･ﾟ «

Inside the staffroom, Chancellor Cornelius and Professor Moby were already waiting for you with a case report in hand. First, they gave you a quick briefing like they usually did before a new mission, then they asked you to inform the Obscuary ghouls about your scheduled departure the following early morning. You just nodded and walked out the door.

Before and after your first couple of missions, you had jumped on every opportunity you had gotten to inquire about the progress that the academy might have made on finding a cure for your predicament, but you didn’t waste your breath on questions such as “How is this mission connected to the Kyklos curse?” anymore. A part of you wanted to believe that they would have informed you if they had found something. Another part of you simply didn’t want to hear the same, disappointing answer over and over again.

You let out a sigh and fished your phone out of your pocket. By now, you had a group chat with every ghoul of each house on campus, thus you opened the one with the Obscuary ghouls in it and told them that you were on your way to their dorm. As you were trying to summarise your next mission in one sentence to them, you let your mind wander, wondering why it was their team this task was assigned to despite how the entertainment industry suited the Dionysia ghouls more in your opinion, but then you remembered. Genkai Shion was a ticking time bomb on two legs. At a location where the cameras were rolling almost 24/7, his mere existence would have been a risk no sane person would have dared to take.

You chuckled at the thought of Shion using his stigma during a live broadcast just to spite the higher ups, then you remembered that time he had exchanged the phone in your hand with a frog that he had been holding onto and frowned. Kamurai senpai had advised you to keep your distance from the Dionysia ghouls, and while you did think Shion could come off as super intimidating (and that the captain of Frostheim was only looking out for you), you weren’t sure that they were that bad. Chaotic? Absolutely. But full of mal intent?

A single mission was hardly enough to make a fair judgement on their character.

‘Y/N-chan! This way, this way! What a nice surprise!’ Rui’s welcoming voice came from the garden in front of their rustic dorm building, his smile genuinely happy due to your arrival.

You waved to him with the case report in your hand and told him that you had already texted them in the group chat about the mission you had been assigned to.

‘Ah, I’m sorry! My phone must have been on mute,’ he apologised quickly, wiping his dirty hands in his apron. ‘Just give me a sec and I’ll wrap things up here. Lyca’s in his room, reading. If you would be so kind to call him down to the bar, I’ll drag Ed-san out of his bed, too,’ he said, the corners of his lips curling upwards as he showed you one of his kind smiles. Those ones that made many girls on campus fall for him despite him being a ghoul.

‘Sure, no problem at all,’ you reassured him, and asked him to feel free to take his time since the mission itself wouldn’t start until dawn. The four of you had more than twelve hours to get familiarised with the details, form a strategy and reach the shooting location.

With a small nod, you said your temporary goodbye and walked inside the Obscuary dorm. By now, you were familiar with both this building that sometimes served as a hotel, both the bar where Rui sold his anomalous plant-based cocktails, therefore you walked towards the first floor with ease, taking step after step on the stairs with an excited heart. If you could have chosen, you would have only taken missions that were surely related to your survival; however, it was hard to deny that leaving the Darkwick campus always filled you with thrill. Maybe, because despite the awaiting danger, it made you feel as though your golden cage was open.

As though you weren’t in a gilded prison already, waiting to turn into a vicious anomaly and be killed by those very people who had promised to protect you.

Had the academy personnel ever promised you such a thing? Or was it all only in your head?

You gulped when you reached Lyca’s room and knocked on his door. Since the werewolf ghoul was familiar with your scent and Rui was usually on top of everything that related to his house and the people in it, you didn’t feel the need to knock for a second time. Instead, you waited patiently until the boy opened the door.

Which he did soon enough, without wasting his time on fixing his dishevelled uniform and messy hair.

‘Hi!’ You greeted him shyly, unsure whether you should have pointed out the state he was in or you should have just let it go since he was at home, anyway. You also didn’t want to make him feel uncomfortable when you genuinely believed the two of you had grown closer in the past weeks. ‘We got a new mission. Rui wants to discuss the details in the bar.’

‘A mission? Oh…’ Lyca’s question lost enthusiasm by the end of it, his conflicted feelings written all over his face. You pressed your lips into a thin line and tried to look for a way to ease the growing tension, but your words failed you.

You understood the boy’s reluctance to go on another mission after what had happened at the Karuizawa Resort with Mr. Goto. The overwhelming feeling of betrayal and helplessness would have made anyone think twice whether they were able to spread their wings out there in the harsh reality. On the other hand, in order to be able to meet Neros again, you knew just how determined Lyca was to become a part of society. These missions outside of the campus were his best chances for fast improvement.

‘Sure. Let’s go, I guess,’ he decided before you reached the end of your train of thoughts, then he closed his door and started to walk towards the bar where he worked part-time from time to time to practice social interactions.

You nodded and followed him wordlessly, only asking him about the book he was reading when you were back on the ground floor, and he waited for you to catch up with his longer and faster steps.

In the bar, Lyca offered to make you a non-alcoholic cocktail, and after a brief contemplation, you accepted his kindness so that he could practice without the unavoidable pressure of paying customers. Not that you really thought Rui would have let his regulars harass the newest addition to the Obscuary House, but one could never know with people like Romeo Lucci around.

It took the rest of the ghouls two glasses of something sweet with fluorescent flowers on top to arrive, and when they did, they both greeted you with a small smile before they inquired about the case report on the counter.

You cleared your throat and wiped your damp palms into your skirt. Then, you picked up the necessary documents and started to read aloud, occasionally filling in the gaps with some of the unofficial information that you had been given in the staffroom. 

Long story short, according to numerous anonymous sources, promising rookie idols were losing their drive during the shooting of a new survival show in which they should have promoted their own groups to gain more fans. The Institute suspected an anomalous entity behind the sudden, weird changes in the participants’ behaviour and requested the Darkwick Academy ghouls to do further investigation.

‘What’s a survival show?’ Lyca broke the silence first, and he tilted his head sideways while he was waiting for an explanation.

‘It’s a tv show where people compete against each other through various types of challenges and face weekly eliminations to win a prize. Since in this case, the participants are already part of idol groups, their performance can affect their group’s reputation. Meaning, the longer they survive, the more opportunities they get to advertise themselves,’ Rui gave the youngest a detailed explanation while you nodded approvingly.

‘That’s also the reason why Professor Moby implied that we should start the investigation with digging up some more information on the first eliminated idol. Apparently, the strange happening on set started the day after he was officially out,’ you chirped in, reciting what you had heard in the staffroom.

‘Hm…’ Ed-san made himself comfortable on the chair next to you, turning towards you with his entire upper body. ‘The young man looked pretty upset about the decision in the behind the scenes videos,’ he nodded to himself, and while he clearly agreed with the deduction based on what he was saying, his tone sounded a tad bit skeptical.

‘Wait, Ed-san!’ You caught up with the meaning behind his words a second after Rui.

‘Are you watching this show, Ed-san?’ The blond guy asked, earning a long, affirmative hum from the Obscuary captain as an answer. 

‘The challenges are quite up to my liking,’ the vampire said then added: ‘I’m also following Kishimoto Haruka-san’s personal channel, he is one of the emcees of the show.’

Since you weren’t that active on any social media platforms (things like TikTok and Youtube seemed such a waste of time compared to the books on curses and anomalies now that you had only a few months left to keep your humanity), the emcee’s name didn’t ring any bells. But you remembered that one time when Ed-san had mentioned that he was saving money for a streamer he liked, so this new piece of information didn’t surprise you at all.

‘Ed-san, what else do you know about the eliminated idol?’ Rui inquired immediately, before the discussion could have gone off topic too much. You reached over the counter and poked Lyca’s hand to get his attention. Then, you pointed at the notepads and pens next to the cash register, asking him silently to give them to you, so that you could have jotted down whatever Ed-san had to say.

‘Not much, he wasn’t that interesting,’ the Obscuary captain shrugged, answering flatly. ‘The only reason I remember him is because he was acting rather uncultured in the behind the scenes videos that were trending after he had gotten voted out,’ Ed-san explained as you wrote “uncultured” and “personal conflict?” beside the main suspect’s name on the case report.

‘What’s his name?’

Ed-san claimed that his memory wasn’t as good as it had used to be; meanwhile, you pointed at the kanji characters on the paper and read them out loud.

‘Yuuki Tatsuya, stage name: Yuuki,’ the words fell from your lips quickly before you looked up from the paper and let your gaze slide to Rui’s standing figure.

The vice-captain of the Obscuary House was typing something on his phone’s keyboard, then groaned. He repeated the same process a couple of times, then turned towards the three of you with a deep furrow between his eyebrows.

‘I can’t find any of the videos,’ Rui told you, trying a few more times before he completely gave up on them. ‘Could it be the Institute’s doing? Was an actual anomaly caught on camera or something?’

You wrote down the question under your previous notes and circled it two times.

‘I’m not sure. It was a video of him throwing a tantrum on set, fighting with some of the staff members. The audio wasn’t high quality and the background music made it hard even for me to tell what they were arguing about.’

‘Could he have been angry about the votes? Maybe he thought it was unfair that he had to leave so soon,’ you gave your two cents into the conversation, unsure whether your shots in the dark could have been any help when you weren’t familiar either with the survival show or the idol in question. Still, most people didn’t take losing easily. So could Yuuki Tatsuya’s pride have been hurt so badly during the shooting that he had completely forgotten about the negative consequences, which he and his group would have to face if he had acted rude in front of an audience? ‘Or maybe not? Whatever there was in that video, it could have been taken out of context, so… He is a rookie idol, he must have been aware of… But sometimes people just cannot help it and…’

You lost confidence in the middle of your reasoning, so you bit back the rest of your uselessly long monologue and glanced at the case report as though the lines written on it could have backed you up somehow.

‘Human nature is really fascinating, indeed. It’s not impossible that the young man blew up in spite of knowing the inevitable consequences. Sometimes people jump in front of bullets even when they know the bullets can kill them,’ Ed-san said, and while you didn’t exactly understand how the last part of his pondering was related to Yuuki Tatsuya’s vanished scandal, you did not feel the need to pull the vampire’s attention to your incompetent comprehension skills.

Luckily, before your silence could have become too heavy (and your habit of fidgeting with the case report too noticeable), Lyca expressed his own confusion and all the attention was diverted from you to him and Rui, who was kind enough to translate from Japanese to simple Japanese for the werewolf.

When their conversation turned into childish bickering and all the remaining tension left your body, you cleared your throat and reminded the ghouls that you would have to leave the campus in the early morning. Thus, the four of you agreed on a concrete time and location (5am, in front of the Galaxy Express station) and wrapped up your meeting.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Are you sure you don’t want me to walk you back to your dorm?’ Rui asked you when you shoved the case report into your bag and started to walk towards the door.

‘It’s still early, I’ll be fine, don’t worry,’ you declined his offer, not necessarily because his kindness made you feel uncomfortable (it didn’t, not anymore), but because you didn’t want to put more on his plate when he was already doing so much. He had to make sure that both Lyca and Ed-san would be ready to depart first thing tomorrow morning, inform his regulars about the temporary closure of his bar, make additional precautions so the Sinostra students wouldn’t steal his things from the basement again in his absence, etc. Rui’s to-do list before an off-campus mission was always neverending, especially with the usual, permanent tasks on it such as cooking dinner and doing the laundry, which seemed to be a part of his job as the only socially functioning member of his house.

‘It’s not just about worry. I like walking you to your dorm,’ the blond ghoul objected, his soft smile a bit lopsided as he lifted his hand and scratched his nape.

You reciprocated his smile and bid your goodbye before you could have gotten tempted, hoping that you didn’t come off rude just because you didn’t want to become another person in his life whom he had to look after.

» chapter completed « » reward: 10 diamonds 💎｡⭑･ﾟ «

Waking up at the crack of dawn was hard, although you had gone to bed early the previous night to make things easier for yourself. It was just… There was something in being active before sunrise that didn’t match with you. Your limbs felt heavy and your body unwilling when you dragged yourself out of your bed.

‘Good morning, Y/N-chan!’ Rui’s greeting made you snap your head in his direction on instinct, your yawn so wide, it made your eyes tear up as you took in the trio in front of the train station.

‘Morning!’ You mumbled, grateful for the thermos that Rui pushed into your hands, the hot steam from the metal bottle warming up your cheeks that were red from the early morning chill. ‘Thank you!’

You spent the first five minutes of the ride sipping on your freshly made coffee while you were listening to Rui reminding Lyca of how he should have kept his opinion to himself and lied low on set since the Institute’s connections couldn’t make any of you untouchable. The entertainment industry had many unwritten rules and breaking them would have undoubtedly hindered your investigation gravely.

Lyca grimaced, but didn’t object much.

‘Here are your ID cards. Y/N-chan, you will be an assistant makeup artist,’ Rui handed you an ID badge holder, which you put on your neck without giving too much attention to your professional-looking photo. You had never liked looking at pictures of yourself. ‘Lyca and I will help the catering team, while Ed-san will be an assistant stylist. We received credible recommendations, so our qualifications and presence on set won’t be questioned, but try to avoid making big mistakes. As I said, let’s all keep a low profile.’

‘Understood,’ you lifted your empty hand up for a ganbaru, expressing your determination to do your best despite the inevitable obstacles in your way such as your basic makeup skills and shy demeanor, which might not have been the best fit for the entertainment industry. Still, acting as a strict prison guard was far from your everyday personality, too, and you had still managed to pull that off somehow during your last mission with Vagastrom.

Despite the lush greenery on set and the relaxing atmosphere of the shooting location, the new idol survival show was actually produced in the heart of Tokyo, in a studio that was a quick, ten-minute walk from the nearest Galaxy Express station in Shibuya. A year ago, you had visited this district quite frequently with your university friends on the weekends, but now, as you were following the Obscuary ghouls down the streets at the crack of dawn, those times felt like they were memories from a different lifetime.

You pulled the padded jacket tighter around your frame and sped up your steps.

Once you showed your ID badges to the security guards at the front gates and signed the necessary documents, you were allowed to enter the studio as easily as you had been promised. Not a single soul questioned your presence, and you were given a quick tour by your supervisor upon arrival as though introducing you to your future team members was a task on his to-do list: something he needed to get over with first thing in the morning if he wanted to start his real work as soon as possible.

You didn’t blame the guy for his lack of enthusiasm while he was leading you to the small changing room where you would spend most of your time. It was still early and the rules you had to follow were all written in your contract, anyway.

‘If you have any questions, it’s best to ask your team members. They are the ones you will work with, after all,’ your supervisor informed you flatly; however, despite his tone, he still made sure to give you his number just in case you needed him. ‘I might not be able to pick up the phone on the first ring, since I’m responsible for every team’s coordination. But if you leave a message, I will make sure to get back to you asap.’

‘Thank you, Kirigaya-san,’ you bowed out of respect, then watched as he led the rest of the guys to their own respective groups.

You straightened your back and took a deep breath. Then, you walked up to the other makeup artists and asked them if you could have helped them with anything since you had been advised to focus on helping them out with miscellaneous tasks on your first couple of days. Their requests kept coming, and before you realised, it was already way after lunch time.

‘Y/N-chan!’ Rui’s voice came from behind you, and you stopped in your tracks, hands full of lattes and coffee macchiatos. ‘Do you need any help? Have you eaten yet?’

‘Here…’ Lyca scratched his nape bashfully as he lifted up the plastic food containers in his other hand. ‘You like chicken more than beef, right? Suba said that we have to keep others’ preferences in mind when we give something to them instead of focusing on what we like,’ he explained, reciting the lesson that he had learned from his senpai.

You smiled at him gratefully.

‘Just give me a moment, Lyca. I need to deliver these to my team,’ you said, showing him the cups in your hand by lifting them up just a little. The paper box you were carrying contained four cups, so it wasn’t that heavy. Still, you didn’t want to risk breaking the box and spilling the drinks with your carelessness. ‘Let’s meet in the communal kitchen in five,’ you added before you rushed to your assigned changing room.

Although you couldn’t have said that you enjoyed being an errand girl, a part of you was glad that you didn’t have to show off your non-existent makeup skills just yet. Sure, blending the foundation into the skin and applying mascara weren’t that difficult in themselves, but to pick up the right brush at first try when the number of options seemed to be endless on the vanity table felt a tad bit stressful. You wanted to avoid real work until as long as it was possible.

‘Are they bullying you?’ Lyca’s unfiltered question came before you could have taken the first bite from your lunch, and your hands froze mid-motion as you shifted your gaze from the plastic box to the werewolf. ‘I can put them back to their places if they—’

‘No!’ You cut him off in a high-pitched voice, gaining the attention of not only the two boys but some of the other staff members, too. Groaning, your head fell forwards and your limbs got tense. ‘I’m not being bullied. I asked for these tasks.’

‘I-I… I didn’t mean to upset you, I…’ Lyca’s anxious answer came out clumsily, the panic loud and clear in his eyes. If he had been an anime character, you might have been able to see his sweat running down his temples, that was how freaked out he looked.

You felt bad about raising your voice.

‘I’m not upset, it’s just… Thank you, for looking out for me, but I can manage this much. My team members are very friendly, actually. And super chatty!’ You said, finally composing yourself enough to open the food container and pick up your utensils. The smell of braised chicken, steamed vegetables and jasmine rice hit you right in the face. ‘I asked them about Yuuki Tatsuya, but it seems that none of them had any conflicts with him. On the contrary, Sakura-san said that he was one of the less difficult ones.’

‘Use your spoon!’ Rui reminded Lyca before he leaned against the backrest of his chair and took a sip from his soda. He tapped his chin a few times, clearly deep in thoughts while you were munching on your lunch, waiting. ‘Could they have been instructed to not spread any rumours?’ He asked after a while, making you think back on your conversations with the makeup team.

As far as you could tell, none of your team members had been hesitant to answer your silly questions. In fact, they had been happy to fill in the silence with mindless chatting while you had been waiting for the next idols to take a seat in the chairs in front of the vanity tables. When you had first heard that you would be a part of the production team, you hadn’t thought people had so much downtime between certain scenes. 

(Or that the contestants of a survival show had a detailed script to follow, just like any actors and actresses would have had during a real drama’s shooting.)

‘Might have been, but they didn’t seem that reluctant to talk about the crew members and the idols on set,’ you said between two bites, earning a nod from Rui.

‘And the idols don’t put that much effort into concealing their real personalities, either, now that I think about it.’

‘They are trash. They complain about everything and think that we are their servants,’ Lyca gave his two cents, clearly annoyed with the work he had been given. Though, since you hadn’t heard about any commotion from that morning, you assumed that he was following Rui’s instructions as best as he could. His efforts made you feel proud of him, but you held yourself back and didn’t compliment him or patted him on the head.

For one, you didn’t want to make a big deal out of it and make him self-conscious. For two, he hated to be treated like and called a dog, and a head pat might have given him the wrong idea.

‘Some of them are a bit full of themselves, that’s true. But most of them look humble. I mean… It is in our job description that we have to serve them,’ Rui pointed out and you hummed along, because you shared the same opinion. You hadn’t interacted with many idols so far, but those you had encountered weren’t worse than you had expected them to be.

‘Where’s Ed-san, by the way?’

‘That moth-eaten casanova said his arms are too tired from carrying all those clothes, so he decided to skip lunch and look for a place where he can rest,’ Lyca said, licking his fingers squeaky clean with much delight in spite of Rui’s quiet scolding. They were like father and son, their dynamics way too entertaining at times like this to not giggle at the sight of them.

Someone opened the door to the communal kitchen with enough force to make a sound and you flinched when the handle crashed into the wall.

‘Ah! Mizuki-san! I was looking for you everywhere!’ One of the female staff members said. Her cheery smile was a bit too wide for your taste, not that your opinion mattered that much.

Rui was silent for a second before he stood up and waved at the woman. His characteristic, charming personality felt both familiar and unfamiliar as you watched the two of them from your chair, joking about their moody supervisor and all that work that was waiting for them to be done.

‘Lyca-kun! Please, come to the food truck in the back when you finish your lunch,’ the woman requested with a less bright but still somewhat sweet smile, which raised red flags in your mind and put a sour expression on your face.

You shoved a spoonful of rice into your mouth to make it go away.

Lyca didn’t speed up his tempo just nodded. He kept most of his focus on the food and mumbled under his nose with displeasure before he asked you whether you wanted to finish Rui’s food. When he realised that he could have it along with the drink the blond boy had barely drunk from, Lyca became a bit more cheery, which was cute.

The two of you agreed to meet in front of the gates when you finished work, and he promised to inform his house mates before he offered to throw your empty food container into the trash with Rui’s and his own.

You thanked him and stayed in the communal kitchen for a few extra minutes. You brewed yourself a cheap coffee with cream because you hadn’t bought yourself a fancy one from the food truck outside when you had gone on your coffee run for your team. Then, you got back to work.

» chapter completed «» reward: 10 diamonds 💎｡⭑･ﾟ «

By the third day, you felt like you had successfully adjusted to the unique atmosphere on set. You wouldn’t have said that you had made any real friends, but you got along well with your coworkers, and they never shamed you for making mistakes with the professional tools. In fact, Sakura-san was more than happy to take on more responsibility while you assisted her and the rest of them with minor things, such as looking for the right shade of lipstick in the endless sea of lip products on the counter.

‘Hey there, pretty! Do you think I can ask you for a small favour before the others are back?’ A deep, husky voice came from behind you, and you spin around on the balls of your feet at the speed of lightning. As though your conscience wasn’t clean despite not doing anything bad or suspicious. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.’

You shook your head frantically, then somewhere around halfways, you lifted your hands in front of your chest and started to shake those, too.

‘I’m not scared. I’m just a little surprised, that’s all,’ you objected, partly because you didn’t want another person to perceive you as a weakling. Partly, because you really, truly weren’t afraid of him.

Of the anomaly behind the weird behaviour changes that you still yet to see with your own two eyes? Absolutely! Of men your age who were surrounded by cameras and to whom, one mistake could have cost their dream (and income)? Not really.

‘Cool,’ the chestnut brown haired guy smiled at you happily as he took a seat on the empty chair between you and the vanity table. ‘About that favour I mentioned…’ He leaned close to the makeup products that were categorized by types, shades and undertones, then he pointed at an eyeshadow palette that contained colours that were a lot more vibrant than the carefully picked colours on his eyelids. ‘Could you please re-do my eye makeup with this?’

You furrowed your eyebrows, quite sure that giving in to this idol’s wishes would cause you a lot of trouble in the future with your team.

You told him this much as nicely as possible.

‘Oh, come on! Sakura-chan did the same for Minato senpai. This would only make things a bit more fair,’ the idol insisted, and while you were determined to stand your ground, when he turned towards you with his full body and tilted his head sideways, you couldn’t not laugh at his cutesy facial expressions. ‘Pleeeease~ Just this once, Y/N-chan!’

You narrowed your eyes and counted to three, seven, ten, before you let our a resigned sigh. If what he had said about Sakura-san was true, and certain idols did get special treatment from certain crew members, then maybe…

‘Fine! But let’s not use the blue ones, the last thing you want is me giving you a fake bruise ten minutes before shooting,’ you compromised and took two steps closer to the vanity table so that you could search for the right palette from a comfortable distance.

‘Whatever you say, pretty,’ the idol agreed easily, the cringe nickname he had picked for you making you feel weird even though the door to your changing room wasn’t closed, so you couldn’t have said that you were stuck with him inside a closed space.

You picked up a neutral palette with strong, shimmery pigments and reached out for a small brush.

‘I think these would make you look like fairies,’ you brainstormed aloud, voice a lot more confident than how you felt inside. You had seen Korean idols wearing similar makeup before, so you knew “girly” colours and products could look fabulous on boys, too, but it had been a while since you had followed any local bands actively, so you weren’t a hundred percent convinced that the audience was ready for it. Still, as someone who had a soft spot for pretty boys, you would have liked to give it a try. 

‘I trust your judgement, so please, have me in your capable hands,’ the idol smiled up at you with that sweet smile that could have charmed anyone easily in front of the tv, then he closed his eyes and made himself more comfortable in his chair.

Your grip got firmer around the makeup brush as you popped the palette open and started to apply the extra layer of eyeshadow. Luckily, the base makeup had already been put on his flawless skin and the original eye makeup had also been neatly done, so you really didn’t have to have much talent to comply with the boy’s request.

Looking at his long eyelashes, you wondered how Rui would have looked with pale ruby glitters on his eyelids or under his eyes. Absolutely stunning.

‘Woah! It looks amazing, pretty!’ You pulled away from the idol and cleared your throat, a hint of a proud smile hiding in the corner of your mouth as you watched him check himself out in the mirror.

You caught a glimpse at a camera and snapped your head in the door’s direction so quickly it hurt. Someone was taking photos of your interaction, but you couldn’t see the photographer’s face due to the Canon in her hands.

When you took a step towards the door, the idol grabbed your hand and pulled you back with a satisfied grin on his face. He shoved his hand in his jacket pocket and gave you a small bag of custard buns. You looked up at him, confused.

‘It was meant to be a bribe anyway. I need to pay attention to my weight,’ he said before he patted you on the shoulder and left the changing room.

You kept your gaze on the sweets and fished a fist-sized bun out of the bag. It was filled with delicious, pandan custard, which you quite liked actually. Munching on your reward, you shifted your gaze to the hallway where the idol had disappeared. There, you couldn’t see the woman with the professional camera anymore, either, but there were many others who were fussing over the contestants whose scenes were about to be shot.

It looked exhausting, standing under the blinding spotlight.

» chapter completed « » reward: 10 diamonds 💎｡⭑･ﾟ «

That evening, once the shooting was over, you agreed to stop by one of the nearby yakisoba places instead of heading straight to the Galaxy Express station. Apparently, the people at the catering team had been talking about yakisoba the whole morning and the young werewolf had failed to get it out of his head for the rest of the day.

‘Are we even allowed to stay out longer?’ You raised your concern, aware that it was very much in the academy’s power to monitor your movements whenever you entered and exited the campus. For one, to be able to get on the Galaxy Express, you had to use a specific app on your phone that no ordinary person had access to: Catsmo.

‘Don’t worry, Y/N-chan. Ed-san will take full responsibility for our detour. And it’s not like we’re doing anything that’s against Darkwick’s policies,’ Rui was quick to assure you, and his warm smile was enough to put your heart at ease.

Obviously, you knew that you weren’t going against either the Institute or the Academy with eating off-campus, but these days you just couldn’t shake off the feeling that the smallest mistakes or signs of misbehaviour could have gotten you and the ghouls in trouble. Serious trouble.

You pulled your jacket tighter around you and let the guys lead the way.

‘You’re right, I’m sorry for ruining the mood,’ you apologised on instinct as a pout found its way to your lips. Why had you questioned their decision in the first place? Clearly, no one needed your useless worries over an extra hour or two in the city. You must have come off as the chancellor’s lackey. Like the other inspectors, Kagami-kun had talked about the other day. Like someone who felt self-important just because she was given a stupid title. 

You felt smaller and smaller with each moment that passed in silence. You hoped that none of the boys thought that you felt superior to them despite how little you contributed to the investigation. You were just worried about yourself… and them. Especially with Lyca being under strict monitoring due to the murder he had been accused of. You might have been able to get him out of Ultio’s underground prison with the help of the Hotarubi ghouls, but Darkwick was still skeptical about his ability to live amongst ordinary people, so the tiniest mistakes could have led to his indefinite imprisonment.

‘We are here!’

Lyca’s excited exclamation reached your ears at the same time Ed-san put his arm on your shoulders.

‘Look at the boy! Do you really think you ruined the mood?’ The vampire asked with a lopsided smirk, his low voice coming super close from behind your left ear. You tensed up when his warm breath tickled the sensitive skin below your earlobe, then relaxed when you realised he was right. Your negativity seemed to be only in your head.

‘Ed-san, take your hands off her,’ Rui’s usually warm tone sounded rather cold, the warning loud and clear in every word he spoke. You appreciated his protectiveness, because while you weren’t afraid of any of the ghouls so to speak, it was undeniable that Ed-san was one of the strongest vampires in history. As far as you were concerned, it wasn’t an urban legend that vampires fed on human blood. Thus, since you were still practically an ordinary human, it was unwise of you to let him lean so close to your neck.

Ed-san took his arm off your shoulders and followed Lyca inside the yakisoba place that the werewolf had seemed to have his eyes on.

‘Three bowls of beef yakisoba,’ you heard Lyca’s order from the doorstep, which was soon followed by a hastily added ‘please,’ and Ed-san’s complaints about the nonexistent comfort of the provided chairs.

You scoffed, half-amused, half-speechless at their antics as you walked up to their table and asked for a bowl of chicken yakisoba from the granny behind the counter. The old woman acknowledged your order with a kind smile, then turned towards the built-in window that was directly behind her back, and which separated the customer area from the kitchen. Based on how similar she and the middle-aged cook looked, the diner had to be a family business.

Your grandparents had a sushi restaurant on your father’s side, too. A small, one-story place in Sendai with modest interior design but fresh, quality ingredients. You had used to spend your summer vacations with them, helping out at the restaurant during the rush hours and hanging out with your local friends when there hadn’t been a lot of customers.

What were they thinking about your sudden disappearance in September? Were they missing you? Had the academy given them and your parents a believable enough reason to not reach out to you at all? Or was there someone messaging them non-stop, pretending to be you?

‘Just as I thought, watching these types of shows on Youtube is a lot more entertaining than working on set. I’m exhausted,’ Ed-san sounded genuinely done with the investigation just when Lyca’s order was brought to your table.

The youngest of the group thanked the old woman happily and dug into the first bowl right away, even though Rui tried to remind him that it would have been more polite if he had waited for everyone’s food to arrive.

‘At least you could meet that streamer you like so much,’ Rui tried to lighten the mood, but his attempt was quickly dismissed with a disappointed sigh.

‘Don’t even mention him, such an uncultured brat,’ Ed-san started, not showing too much interest in sharing specific details as though talking about Kishimoto-san would have been nothing but a waste of time and energy. You supposed, there was a good reason why people said you should have never met your idol in real life. Some encounters were meant to be disillusioning from the start.

‘I guess, you either have to be completely disinterested in the celebrities on set or be a hardcore fan if you want to be able to do this job for the long run,’ you came to the conclusion; meanwhile, the rest of your orders were served as well.

You leaned closer to the food and inhaled the steam. You could feel something tug on your insides and the saliva pooling in your mouth because of how delicious it smelled.

‘That’s an interesting argument. What makes you say that?’ Ed-san inquired, his crimson eyes cold and calculative as he placed his chin atop of the back of his hand. You took a bite from your food and swallowed it. Then, you straightened your back as much as you could to give some confidence to your reasoning.

‘I’m just saying that most of my team members seem to be more enthusiastic about coming up with new makeup trends and using the best makeup products than about the idols themselves,’ you started. ‘They see this show as a good opportunity to build their career, which is a good motivation for them to stay on set.’

Lyca hummed along with your observation in silent agreement, but didn’t add anything else to the conversation. Rui, on the other hand, found it important to emphasise that people in the catering team stayed despite their complaints because of the crew members they themselves and their bosses were close to. If they had left because of the contestants’ attitude problems, it would have made them lose face and credibility in the industry.

Another reason for holding out for the sake of one’s career.

‘About the fans…’ you kept pushing through with your opinion, so unlike yourself that you stumbled over your own words when you realised what you were doing. Still, even though there was a possibility that you were wrong, it felt deliberating. It seemed, just like the guys in Hotarubi and Jabberwock, the ghouls in Obscuary had also managed to create a safe space for you without you noticing.

You lifted your chin just a tad higher and looked Ed-san in the eyes.

‘I saw someone taking pictures or videos of the idols when the cameras weren’t rolling. So I asked Sakura-san about the behind the scenes contents and she said that ever since Yuuki Tatsuya’s scandal, only videos are allowed to be taken and even those videos are strictly limited to semi-scripted interviews,’ you stated, thinking back on how overwhelming you had thought it was for the idols to watch their every move in order to avoid controversies.

‘Did you recognise them? If they’re the obsessive kind, it might be better to keep a distance from them,’ Rui advised, his eyes clearly worried despite his collected tone. You wondered whether he was trying not to scare you, and whether he believed that this matter was more serious than you had initially thought.

You shook your head with a small furrow between your eyebrows.

‘I didn’t, but I’m quite sure it was a female employee. She was holding a Canon in front of her face, but her figure was petite. I mean, she was wearing a hoodie, but it looked kinda baggy on her,’ you rambled then let your gaze wander from the boys to the bowl in front of you when Rui pulled your attention to your food with a single tilt of his head.

You shoved a generous amount of noodles in your mouth as Lyca started on his third bowl.

‘She might not be a fanatic, though. Maybe she didn’t know about the ban or she was only testing the lenses,’ you groaned. ‘Suddenly, I feel bad about jumping to the worst conclusion without confronting her personally,’ you confessed as your guilt didn’t need much time to leave a bitter taste in your mouth now that Rui’s warning made the whole thing feel that much bigger of a deal.

That idol who had asked you to check his eye makeup seemed quite friendly and eccentric. He might have asked that girl for a favour, too. What if he had known about the pictures all along? What if he had requested them so that he could have posted them on his group’s social media account?

‘Still, it’s better to be safe than sorry. I just don’t want you to be caught up in any unnecessary drama and get hurt in the process,’ Rui admitted, making you smile with his unfiltered honesty.

It felt nice that he cared so much about your well-being, going as far as being worried about ordinary people on top of the anomaly that could have been lurking in the shadows, preparing for taking a new victim. Sure, on most days it did feel as though you were just another item on the endless list of his responsibilities, but still. You couldn’t deny the warmth it brought you when you felt especially lonely.

‘Okay. I will just ignore her if I see her again,’ you chuckled, carefree, grateful.

‘Or you can just show me who she is and I can keep an eye on her. There are lots of smells on set, but if she doesn’t change hers with perfume every day, I can sense where she is in the building,’ Lyca offered nonchalantly as if it made no difference to him whether he memorised one more scent or not, which made you wonder if there was a limit to how many he could recall with his stigma or his storage was pitless.

You made a mental note to ask him about this later since you weren’t sure you were allowed to inquire about such personal matters in front of others (or at all). 

‘Thanks, Lyca,’ you smiled at him, and he hummed in acknowledgement before he pointed at Ed-san’s untouched food and asked whether the vampire intended to start on his dinner anytime soon or he could have had his portion as well.

The four of you finished the rest of your dinner in a good mood. You shared more stories about your personal experience on set to fill the silence and made up many different theories about the anomaly that could have been behind the occurrences mentioned in the case report. You expressed your concerns about the lack of new victims on set, then quickly added that what you meant was the growing pressure that came with the normalcy. As though you were experiencing the “calm before the storm”.

You were still rambling about the same theory, about how unsettling it was that none of you could sense anything off at the shooting location even after almost a whole week working as undercover crew members, when Rui offered to walk you back to your room in the Clementia cathedral. 

You accepted his offer this time mainly because you wanted to hear his opinion on whether the Institute was wrong about this whole case, and also because you were too tired to find an excuse to turn him down. Insisting that you were big enough to walk alone on campus in the dark sounded a bit stupid, and too much like you were uncomfortable with his company, which couldn’t have been further from the truth.

‘Thanks for walking me back. Have a good night, Rui!’ You said, wishing that your words could have had any positive effect on his sleep schedule despite knowing that he didn’t sleep at night due to his curse.

As much as you thought that having more time in a day to be productive without getting exhausted sounded nice (come on, which university student had never wished for an extra 12 hours before an important exam!), you couldn’t phantom how burdensome it could have been to not be able to sleep. A life without real rest and dreams, somehow, sounded quite pitiful.

‘Sweet dreams, Y/N-chan!’

Rui waited until you disappeared behind the cathedral’s front doors, and then some more: until you safely got to your room. You knew this, because you caught a glimpse of his figure walking towards the Obscuary House when you threw your jacket on the chair next to your bed and looked out your windows.

» chapter completed « » reward: 10 diamonds 💎｡⭑･ﾟ «

You pushed the metal handle of your team’s assigned changing room downwards with your  right elbow then opened the door by kicking into it with the tip of your toes just enough to not make too much noise. You were on your third coffee run of the day, balancing lattes and iced americanos in your hands, worried that the gloomy mood inside the room was somehow because of you. Had you made them wait for too long? Had you made a mistake when you had arranged the makeup tools on the counter?

Had someone finally figured out that you had changed an idol’s makeup two days ago? If you had wanted to be honest, you had thought (hoped) that the girls had already known and they just didn’t care.  

‘Uhm, Sakura-san…?’ You asked once you put the paper box, in which you had carried the coffee cups, on the nearest empty surface. You wiped your sweaty palms into your jeans, a tad nervous, but refused to show even more of your uncool side. If they were really annoyed due to the delay in your delivery, they should have blamed the unusually long queue in front of the coffee truck in the parking lot. They were the ones who didn’t like the cheap coffee beans that were in the coffee machine in the communal kitchen. Personally, you thought they were okay-ish. So when you mixed the espresso with enough milk, it was quite delicious.

Hana-san, who had long, chestnut brown hair and black eyes that she hid behind a different coloured contact lens each day, grabbed one of the iced americanos and took a long sip from it.

‘Unbelievable,’ she groaned, clearly frustrated. ‘Has he even managed to finish a single scene since lunchtime? If he’s not feeling well, he should have just said so and let someone change the shooting schedule,’ she complained as she took her anger out on the poor straw between her teeth.

‘He’s always been a weird one, sure, but Kaji-kun is a hardworking person who would never waste anyone’s time on purpose,’ Sakura-san clicked her tongue, clearly disappointed in this Kaji-kun, whoever he might have been. Although you had been working on this mission for over a week by now, you still didn’t know everyone’s names by heart. In your defense, though, most idols were referred to by their stage names and people on set rarely bothered with calling each other by name and mostly used titles instead.

‘If you ask me, he wasn’t in his right mind yesterday, either,’ Hana-san commented, the clear annoyance on her face making you follow her line of sight.

She was looking in the direction of a smaller group that had gathered around the open space where today’s challenge was being shot. You furrowed your brows when you noticed a familiar face in the crowd.

You looked around in the changing room where many of your team members were casually chatting and sipping on their drinks. None of them looked like they would get busy anytime soon (they were usually busy checking and picking out the products when they were about to receive a new idol whose makeup needed to be done), so you assumed that they would be fine without you for an extra ten minutes or so.

‘Sakura-san! I’ll get myself a coffee and walk around a little. I won’t take long, I promise’ you asked for permission in a similar manner to what Sho had suggested to you when you had mentioned to him the day before that you wanted to become a bit more assertive during this investigation. You hoped that your meek promise at the end of your statement didn’t make you sound ridiculous, as if you couldn’t have decided whether you wanted to walk around on set or wanted someone else to give you the green light for walking around on set.

You groaned internally, because honestly, you might have sounded indecisive just like that. Or worse… like a disrespectful brat. Not that you thought assertive people were impolite. If anything, you respected them for their confidence.

Agr… It sounded so much cooler when Sho was using grammar like this. He wouldn’t have chickened out last minute and added that unnecessary promise about being quick.

Sakura-san’s gaze loitered over your figure, then it settled on your face. You couldn’t help but wonder whether you were frowning. What if you had turned into a delinquent in her eyes all of a sudden? Someone who needed a week to shed her mask and show her true colours.

You pressed your lips together, into a firm line, and she laughed. You didn’t understand what she was thinking about. Was it even a real laugh? Some people were so good at concealing their feelings. What if she…

‘Sure. Take your time, Y/N-chan,’ Sakura-san agreed easily, making it clear that you had been spiraling in your head on your own. As heat crept up on your neck, you didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that your whole face, neck and ears looked like tomatoes.

You bowed your head and expressed your gratitude by an embarrassingly loud ‘Thank you,’ then rushed out of the changing room.

In the corridor, you gave yourself a few seconds to calm your heart, then took a determined, deep breath and walked towards the crowd. You knew, you had seen Rui somewhere around the left side of the mass (where the crowd was clearly less dense) when Hana-san had been complaining about Kaji-kun. Which meant, this commotion could have been related to your investigation.

You couldn’t have just sat around and waited for him to figure everything out.

It took you some time, but eventually, your eyes finally landed on Rui’s pretty, blond locks, putting a satisfied smile on your face as you rushed towards him. Unsurprisingly, he was trying his best to keep as much distance from the rest of the crew members as possible while observing the situation from the sidelines.

‘What’s going on?’ You asked, careful not to startle him with your sudden appearance.

He snapped his head in your direction with a facial expression that you couldn’t quite put your finger on, then he shot a small smile in your way as though he was trying to encourage you to ask as many questions as you wanted during your conversation.

‘I’m not sure yet,’ he admitted, then turned ahead, making you follow his line of sight, but the person in front of you was simply too tall for you to have a clear view. ‘It seems that the director and one of the idols are having an argument. Though, it looks one-sided.’

‘Kaji-kun?’ You inquired, making an attempt at slowly putting the puzzle pieces together. If there was a fight going on, which delayed the shooting, then it had to be the same person the girls in your team had been talking about.

You stood on your tiptoes to catch a glimpse at the idol in question, and your lips parted in surprise when you recognised the guy whose makeup you had changed not so long ago. Oh, so he was Kaji-kun. Now, you could agree with Sakura-san about him being a total weirdo, but also a very dedicated participant.

‘Based on the murmurs, he’s acting very out of character. Still, it’s not quite how I imagined it when we read the case report,’ Rui whispered, although you doubted anyone would have paid attention to or understood your discussion even if he had used his normal volume. The growing crowd was too occupied with the drama that was unfolding in front of you.

You heard the director’s thundering voice, but you couldn’t tell what he was saying due to the constant buzzing of the rumours around you. Rui took a step closer to the edge of the crowd, and you followed him on instinct.

‘So it might not be connected to the anomaly?’ You picked up your conversation where you had left it off, curious about his thoughts now that you had finally encountered something akin to what you were looking for. What made him so unsure about whether this commotion was connected to your case or not?

‘He looks like a zombie or a robot that’s been disconnected from a server,’ Rui explained, and you nodded eagerly, wanting to hear more. ‘What I’m trying to say is that he looks dead tired like he doesn’t even know where he is. He cannot follow directions and doesn’t react to the scolding in any way.’

You furrowed your eyebrows. The guy you had met in the changing room had been full of life. He had had a comeback for everything and expressed his opinion freely, almost too freely, considering his position.

‘So you’re saying that he might be just tired?’ You asked, already shaking your head in disagreement: a clear result of Sho’s training on assertiveness. Sure, you might not have known this guy that well, but your team members clearly had a certain picture of him in their heads, an image that matched your own experience. You had to put your feet down, even if you were wrong, because following up on a lead in vain would have been a lot better than dismissing real evidence simply because it looked unlikely to bear any fruit.

Rui nodded and you shook your head once more, more firmly.

‘Some people are saying he’s addicted to drugs,’ a familiar voice came from behind you, Ed-san’s crimson eyes twinkling with excitement. He looked amused, almost entertained as his steps came to a halt between you and the rest of the crowd. ‘But I agree with you, his blood doesn’t smell anything like the mentioned narcotics. In fact, he is as healthy as one can be in the prime of his life,’ he added, making it sound like Rui’s observation was just as false as the menacing rumours.

‘He smells like rotting apples,’ Lyca’s observation came out of nowhere, his face distorted due to his ugly grimace. Ed-san tilted his head upon hearing the werewolf’s opinion, his smile hidden behind his hand that he had lifted in front of his chin.

‘Does it smell like a curse? Maybe this anomaly is like the Kyklos and it curses its victims,’ you sounded hopeful, which immediately made you embarrassed, because it felt like you were happy for another person’s misfortune.

You cast your gaze and didn’t take your eyes off the floor. The guys must have thought that you were a horrible person. And the worst part was that you couldn’t have even defended yourself if they had decided to call you out on your behaviour.

‘I don’t know. If curses have to smell like you, then I don’t think so. But it is similar to the blond gigolo’s smell. More rotting and less death.’

The silence that followed Lyca’s words was deafening, and you felt partly responsible for the pained expression on Rui’s face that soon turned into nonchalance. When your eyes met, he smiled at you. Kind. Warm. Comforting. 

He was faking it. God. Why had it never occurred to you that his kind smiles could be hiding something so sticky and cold and miserable, something so so hopeless and helpless.

From time to time, Rui called you his curse twin. More than anyone else in the academy, you should have known how it felt to live with a curse that seemed to be impossible to break. Just because he wasn’t counting down the days like you did, harming people with a single touch didn’t hurt any less.

You pressed your lips into a firm line when he turned his head away. Did he think what you felt at that moment was pity?

‘Rui…’

‘So to sum it up, he could be either cursed, already under the anomaly’s influence or in a very bad place mentally,’ the blond boy counted the options on his fingers as he spoke, clearly drawing a line between this case and his personal feelings; between you and him.

Basically, he wanted you to drop it, and while you didn’t necessarily want to, you could admit that it wasn’t the best time and place for this conversation. You made a mental note to ask him about his feelings later. Maybe, once you solved this case.

‘Get out! GET THE HELL OUT OF MY FACE!’ The director’s aggressive yelling silenced the gossiping crowd, making you flinch. You took a step towards Lyca on instinct as he was the one standing the furthest from the commotion, which meant standing behind him would have distanced you from the situation a bit. ‘SECURITY! REMOVE THIS BRAT FROM MY SET! NOW!’ The man kept going on and on, instructing the men in neat guard uniforms to take Kaji-kun away.

You pressed your lips together, into a firm line, pondering over your options. If the director was ready to cut Kaji-kun’s scenes short for the day, that meant that the next idols would arrive at your team’s changing room soon. However, your work as a crew member couldn’t have been more important than the investigation itself.

‘We need to follow him!’ You came to the decision as the crowd slowly dispersed, your eyes stuck on Kaji-kun’s eerily calm demeanour. He didn’t put up a fight against the guards when the younger of the two pulled on his clothes roughly, although most people would have been naturally frustrated in a situation like this. Was he that concerned about his reputation?

No. If that had been the case, he would have never gotten on the director’s bad side on purpose.

Could he have been unable to showcase any emotion despite feeling wronged? Or was he in a trance?

You felt a familiar weight of a hand on your shoulder, it was squeezing you just enough to not feel threatening. You snapped your head in its owner’s direction and came face to face with Ed-san.

‘Let Lyca go after him. He’s good at following people,’ the vampire said in his low voice, his eyes not quite frightening, but commanding for sure. You stared into them for exactly one second before you took a step further from him and nodded.

Lyca acknowledged his task with a nod and rushed after the security guards, while Rui just stood there, deep in thoughts. 

‘You need to send me a message if it turns out to be a real lead,’ you tried to remind Ed-san that no matter how dangerous this anomaly turned out to be, you were still part of the team, that you were still an inspector who needed to be present at each turning point of the investigation.

He smiled at you like how parents smiled at their children when they were throwing a tantrum, and it tugged on your inside in an uncomfortable way, but you ignored it. Instead, you stole one last glance at Rui, unable to make eye contact with him, then went back to your team.

Just as you predicted, now that the shooting was back on schedule (somewhat), everyone had way too much to do.

At first, you had thought of the sign’s early appearance as a motivation: it had given you a chance to save up as much money as possible by the time you grew old enough to embark on adventures on your own. Whenever you had wanted to buy something silly on impulse just to follow the trends, you had looked at the small puppy tattoo on your arm with the initials “LDM” and kept yourself from throwing your money out the window. It had worked like a charm.

Throughout the months, your soulmate mark had served as a reminder that you weren’t alone in the world despite how lonely it had felt on days when your parents hadn’t seemed to be able to take your side against your teachers. It had become a source of courage when you had felt that something was wrong with your personality. It had made you look forward to every single day, even when you would have rather not gotten out of bed and taken those tests you had hated so much.

The infinite optimism and positivity that had oozed from your body wherever you had gone and with whoever you had encountered had complemented your outgoing personality well. At the start of your senior year, you had felt invincible: you had been confident in your moral compass, you had had a clear vision of your future, and you had managed to build a trusting relationship with your parents that allowed you just enough freedom for your friends to be envious of.

Life had been amazing.

Until one day your plans had completely disappeared along with the tattoo on your sun-burnt skin.

You had been on your way to the closest convenience store to buy some strawberry ice cream before your next shift at your part-time job. That time, you had ditched your friends who had gone down to Eurwangni beach in Incheon with the same excuse you had often used: “I want to save up some more to go backpacking before university.”. They hadn’t been too happy, but they had let you be. Some of them had already gotten their own soulmate marks, so they had been able to relate to you more.

Not to mention that what had mattered the most was that you, yourself, hadn’t felt left out, either. You had loved them, you had loved spending your free time with them, but you hadn’t been lonely without them.

In hindsight, you might not even have known how true loneliness felt like until your bouncy steps had come to a halt in front of that buzzing 7-Eleven, and the sharp pain in your chest had forced you to your knees.

Funnily enough, the darkest, most miserable moment of your life had been the one that had given you your best friend: Moon Gayoung had witnessed your mental breakdown along with many indifferent tourists and locals. And unlike the rest, she had rushed to your aid despite your brief encounters in the local cram school you had both attended to, and she had dragged you to the hospital with her noodle arms and lack of stamina.

Afterwards, Gayoung had stuck to your side like an overprotective big sister you had never had. She had made it her mission to sit next to you in every supplementary and college prep class you had taken and fed you when you had been suffering from a serious lack of appetite. She had never asked questions like “How do you feel?” or “Do you feel a little better today?” and never pushed for more details unlike your classmates who, initially, had wanted to know everything about your situation to understand your mood swings better. 

(Before they had given up on your ugly pessimism and started to distance themselves from you one by one as though your mere closeness could have killed their loved ones, too.)

Gayoung hadn’t needed to pry and pour salt on your open wounds, anyway. She had already learned everything there was to learn about your situation from the doctor who had treated you when she had taken you to the hospital.

No soulmate mark, no soulmate. The math had never been more simple.

Impulsively, you had quit all of your part-time jobs; sometimes, when you had been laying on your bed, wide awake despite the late hour, you had wanted to quit life itself as well.

If it hadn’t been for Gayoung, you might have never graduated from high school. She had kept you on track when she had noticed you had fallen behind in your academics and tutored you even though you hadn’t attended the same high school. You couldn’t have counted on one hand how many times she had pulled you back to the surface when your depression had been about to consume you entirely. Especially on holidays like Christmas, Valentine’s Day or White Day when couples were in the center of attention, reminding you that your perfect match was no more.

Maybe, these things were the reasons why you had decided to follow Gayoung to her dream university even though it didn’t offer the same program you had initially aimed at. These and the fact that you had stopped thinking of the future as positively as you had done before. Where there had once been endless opportunities, you had seen nothing. You hadn’t known what to do with yourself anymore.

And maybe these things and the undeniable fact that she had helped you heal so much were the reasons why, when she started to act like those main characters in romance novels you felt so indifferent about, you decided to help her with her own soulmate: a second-year student in your major who was so dazzling, you could understand why Gayoung was acting so shy around the boy whenever she walked up to him. She might have been unable to utter two consecutive sentences in front of Cha Eunwoo, but you had two elective classes with the guy, so nothing was lost yet. Now, if only you could have gotten back some of your friendly easygoingness! You could have befriended him quickly and set them up, so that fate could have taken care of itself.

It would have been an easy enough plan if you hadn’t counted the constant exhaustion that other people’s presence was giving you. Not to mention that despite his prince image, Cha Eunwoo wasn’t hard to approach, either. His smile might have been small and his facial expressions might have come off as cold when he was super focused in class, but he was also kind and friendly. At first glance, you would have said that he liked his alone time. However, you had never seen him turn down anyone when they started a conversation with him.

Was he what people considered as a pushover? You weren’t sure. You couldn’t tell just yet. Still, Eunwoo seemed like a genuinely good person, so you gave him the benefit of the doubt as Gayoung’s best friend.

You approached him like everyone else did although within your new boundaries. You took the empty seat next to him when you had the opportunity, which you only ever had when you headed to the lecture hall straight from your previous class. Then you stuck to neutral topics that most people could easily talk about whenever you struck up a conversation. You talked about your electives, your professors and the restaurants around the campus. You shared your experiences of the dormitory - both good and bad - and of those student associations that were always ready to recruit new members.

Cha Eunwoo liked dog cafés and basketball. He was the proud owner of a Bichon Frisé who had a cameo in almost every picture Eunwoo posted on his Instagram and went by the name Dongdong.

It took longer than it would have taken if the two of you had met in middle school or in your freshman year of high school, but eventually your conversations became less forced. Not that you had actually forced yourself to come up with something to talk about. It was just… before, you would have never considered talking about school in school when you wanted to get to know a new person. There were so many more interesting things to talk about after all such as movies, dreams, foreign cultures.

There had been a time in your short life when no one in your class could have escaped from you chatting their ears off about Italy. Was there still a part inside of you that would have died for a lick of real gelato?

‘Hey! Good morning.’ Slowly, you lifted your head from your book upon hearing a familiar voice, unsure whether Cha Eunwoo’s greeting was dedicated to you or he was talking to his friends who were scattered around your seat.

In the past few weeks, exchanging short conversations with him in the elevator, greeting him in the hallway even when he was surrounded by others and grabbing lunch with him in your shared empty period after your Wednesday elective all came so naturally, you often needed to remind yourself that you weren’t that important in his life. Cha Eunwoo might have been the closest person you had to a new friend ever since you had cut the high school gang out of your life, but from his perspective, you couldn’t have been that special.

Which was perfectly fine, you didn’t plan to become anyone significant for him, anyway. You just wanted to get close enough to him that introducing your best friend to him wouldn’t have felt forced or staged. 

Because at the end of the day, it was Gayoung with the basketball tattoo on her arm with the “CEW” initials, not you. And while you had no idea about Cha Eunwoo’s soulmate mark, the facts were pretty convincing that the two of them were meant to be.

‘Morning,’ you mumbled under your nose with a small smile, your right hand moving in front of your face for an uncertain wave like it had its own will.

The corners of Cha Eunwoo’s pink lips turned upwards when he saw your gesture, and he shortened the distance between the two of you with a few confident strides as though he was happy that you were acting so straightforward.

‘Is that the sociology book the professor mentioned last week? About social stratification?’ He asked, seemingly genuinely surprised by the fact that you were holding the library’s copy in your hands.

You shrugged and put your bookmark between the pages before you closed the book.

‘I didn’t understand his slides, and it’s actually kind of interesting. I like the writing style,’ you told him, not feeling comfortable enough to roll your eyes just yet, but you were damn close to cross that line when your eyes fell on his goofy smile.

‘Do you wanna study together this weekend? I’m planning to cut down on my shifts at my part-time job this month because of the upcoming midterms, so I have more free time,’ he explained casually as he took his laptop out of his bag and put it on his desk.

You pondered over his proposal. You did prefer studying on your own on most days, getting distracted way too easily by your company whenever you joined a study group, but it would have been nice to have someone around you could have asked questions from.

Unconsciously, you pursed your lips, your concentrated facial expression turning the boy’s smile even bigger.

‘I’ll think—’

Your shoulders became tense when the familiar sound of a kakao message registered in you. Not because it was so unusual for you to receive a text (you spoke with Gayoung daily, and your parents also liked to spam you with the most random articles they came across on the internet), but because you had thought that you had your phone on mute.

Quickly, you took the electric device in your hand and put it on silent. Then, you checked the notification and your breath stuck in your throat. It was Gayoung. She was asking you about your elective class and whether you had made any progress with Cha Eunwoo.

Oh. Right. For a second you had gotten too comfortable and almost forgotten. You were a best friend on a mission. You shouldn’t have given up on a golden opportunity just because you studied more efficiently alone. You sucked in your lower lip and shoved your phone in your bag without opening your chat with Gayoung.

‘I’m free on Saturday, but I like sleeping in on the weekends, so maybe… we can meet up sometime in the early afternoon?’ You suggested slash asked, not sure whether Cha Eunwoo himself was an early bird or a night owl. This topic had never come up between the two of you and you couldn’t really tell based on his personality.

‘Perfect. Let’s grab something for lunch first, then go over the slides in Mooncake. They have bookable booths on the second floor,’ the boy said just before the professor’s appearance silenced the buzzing atmosphere of the lecture room.

You nodded, signalling him that you were fine with those plans, then turned towards the podium in front of the gigantic four-panel-big white board and opened your notebook, so that you could jot down the most important pieces of information for later use.

You really sucked at Sociology.

And you sucked at being smooth as well, it seemed, because no matter how much you wanted to turn your study session into an impromptu chance to introduce Gayoung to Cha Eunwoo, you failed every time. Which made you feel immensely apologetic towards your best friend, your sour mood as clear as day in the furrow between your brows and your pouty lips during the lunch you shared with the boy on Saturday.

‘Would you rather have noodles instead?’ Cha Eunwoo’s voice made you look up from your beef rice bowl, the genuine concern in his eyes only adding to your guilt. 

‘No,’ you shook your head quickly, your shoulder-length hair falling into your face because of the sudden movements. ‘It’s delicious, I was just… thinking.’

Cha Eunwoo tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. He didn’t look any less worried, but his features hardened a little as though he was angry or frustrated maybe. You weren’t sure. It had been a while since you had been in a situation in which you had to read the feelings of others.

Gayoung was like an open book. You had never realised it before, but she made things very easy for you.

‘About sociology or…?’ He inquired with his left brow raised, and you shrugged while you shoved a spoonful of beef and rice into your mouth to steal some time for yourself to think. You could have easily gone with his excuse. If you had wanted to be honest, the way Cha Eunwoo had worded his question was rather convenient, but…

You thought of Gayoung’s smile when you had told her about the basketball anime the boy in front of you was currently enthusiastic about and unbeknownst to you, you frowned.

‘About tomorrow… I…’ the words that fell from your lips sounded clumsy even to your own ears, but you decided to push through since you had already started your semi-honest explanation. ‘I promised my friend that I will help her with some club stuff and then I made plans with you, too, because I completely forgot about it, so now I’m thinking whether there’s a way to sort this out without bailing on either of you.’

‘I see.’

Cha Eunwoo lifted a half-full spoon of beef and rice in front of his mouth, not taking his eyes off you as he was munching on his lunch.

‘Did you come up with a solution?’ He asked, and something in his voice told you that he did not believe a word you said, but that would have made no sense, right? He might have been kind of a pushover sometimes, but surely, he would have called you out on your bullshit if he had figured you out. Wouldn’t he have gotten mad?

‘We could study in the club room. That way, I could help her and revise with you at the same time,’ you suggested, willing yourself to hold the boy’s burning gaze as he was slowly, ever so slowly, chewing his food.

You reached out for your water cup, unsure whether the lump in your throat was the result of the rice or your nerves.

Then, Eunwoo put his elbow on the wooden table and placed his chin on top of his hand. He smiled at you, but there was something in that smile that made you feel both comforted and uneasy.

You decided to suppress the latter.

‘That works for me. But are you sure you can afford multitasking during our study session? I mean, Sociology is not your strong suit,’ he chuckled, his teasing easing the tension a little as the corner of your mouth twitched.

For the first time since the two of you had become acquaintances, you rolled your eyes, and he let out a hearty laugh at the ridiculous sight.

Your study session on Saturday had ended way too quickly, though, the two of you had managed to cover almost half of the topics that you had learned about so far. You had also made a decent amount of notes afterwards in your room much to your roommate’s dismay, who would have preferred the lights completely off after 10PM. Still, sacrificing both of your beauty sleep had been necessary, because you had needed to test your current knowledge and made sure that you wouldn’t have asked the same questions over and over again next time.

You wouldn’t have said that you sucked at multitasking, but helping Gayoung with her club and focusing on your studies before midterms might have been a teeny tiny bit too much for you. Agrr. You hated that Cha Eunwoo had been right to doubt your plan; however, you had told yourself before going to bed that once those two got to know each other better, you would become a supporting background character in their love story anyway.

Then, you would have time to prepare for your exams in your usual, pre-exam solitude.

‘Deep in thoughts?’ A familiar voice pulled you back to the present, Cha Eunwoo’s eye-smile appearing to be unfairly attractive even to you, who was (well… had to be) immune to his boyish charms.

‘Oh… hi!’ You blurted out the first thing that came to your mind, then shook your head with an awkward smile. ‘It’s okay. I was spacing out while waiting,’ you said, tightening your grip on the straps of your backpack before you tilted your head towards the main building’s gilded entrance.

The hallways were significantly less crowded that afternoon than they were on weekdays, but that was to be expected. In fact, in your humble opinion, there were way too many students present in the building considering that it was a Sunday. Hm. No wonder your school had been fifth on the national list last year and sixth in three consecutive years before that. It seemed, people took their studies a lot more seriously here than you did.

The corner of your lips twitched as you took the elevator and got out of it on the fifth floor. You weren’t a member in any of the student associations, your passion for most things worn and faded, but that didn’t mean this was your first time around this area. Your steps were confident as they took you closer and closer to the beautification club.

‘So… what’s this thing exactly, anyway? That your friend needs help with. I don’t think you went into any details yesterday,’ Cha Eunwoo inquired just as your hand found the doorknob and pushed the door open.

If he had asked the same question the day before, you wouldn’t have been able to answer him. But since then, you had told Gayoung about the impromptu plan you had come up with, so that you could introduce the two of them to each other somewhat naturally, so the game plan for the next few hours was clear.

‘Making decoration for the upcoming flower festival,’ you stated, only a tad guilty about tricking the boy into coming to the club room when all the members had been assigned an amount that they should have been able to deal with on their own.

In your defence, you hadn’t asked him to actually help the two of you. And while the extra decoration was unnecessary, it wouldn’t be unwelcomed.

‘Uhm-hum,’ Cha Eunwoo observed the beautification club’s logo on the wall next to the door and nodded. ‘Makes sense.’

‘Gayoung! We’re here,’ you announced your arrival, pulling your backpack against your chest, so that you could open the biggest compartment and take the snacks you had brought out of it. ‘We came with peace, two pockets of seaweed chips and enough strawberry fanta to burp the afternoon away,’ you chuckled, enjoying the eye roll your best friend had shot in your way.

Ah, you really did get some of your old sparks back when you were with Gayoung.

‘Thanks,’ the girl took one of the bottles out of your hand, pseudo-annoyed, before she pulled herself together and turned towards the boy on your left. ‘Hi! Thank you so much for coming. My name is Moon Gayoung, a second-year in the same major.’

Cha Eunwoo introduced himself politely, then he took the rest of the snacks and drinks from you, carrying them to one of the empty tables in the middle of the club room.

‘Thanks.’

You took a seat by the table Cha Eunwoo had chosen and placed your backpack on the chair next to you, so that the boy had no other choice but to sit across from you. This way, Gayoung could occupy the chair next to him naturally.

‘Should we revise some of the more difficult segments from yesterday or start with the next topic?’ You asked casually as you fished your notebook out of your bag and opened it with practiced ease. Looking at your messy handwriting on the last two pages, you could almost phantom the cramps in your fingers from the night before.

Cha Eunwoo placed his laptop on the table between the two of you, putting some effort into finding an angle that allowed the both of you to see the screen. Shoot. Now you remembered why you had sat on the same side of the table in the coffee shop yesterday. Reading the slides on a laptop was easier than scrolling through them on your phone because of all those enormous pictures that didn’t fit into the screen.

You weren’t a tech genius, but your sociology professor was definitely way worse than you. How come that the pictures didn’t adjust to the size of your screen when the background and the letters both did? Seriously. This subject was such a pain in the ass.

‘Can you read it?’ Cha Eunwoo asked, and you nodded because while the distance was a tad inconvenient, your eyesight was relatively good. Not to mention that it wasn’t the first time you had seen these slides; you were more or less familiar with their content.

‘If it’s okay for you, I’m good,’ you let him know, repeating your inquiry from before about what you should have started your study session with. Personally, you would have preferred to go over some of the more fundamental definitions (and you told him that much); however, you left the final decision up to him.

You were wasting his precious study time already with your fairy godmother act; you should have adjusted to his studying speed and style a little at least.

‘I’m good with both. Ask away if something’s still not clear from yesterday,’ Cha Eunwoo encouraged you to speak your mind, so you hummed and looked at the last written page in your notebook full of questions about the content.

You weren’t good at multitasking, Cha Eunwoo hadn’t been wrong about that much. Still, it took you by surprise how immersed you got in your study session. You had already felt it the day before: that time flew while you were discussing the topics. Yet, to completely forget about your promise to Gayoung while your best friend was in the same room as you, working on the extra decoration? That was another level of crazy, one-track minded behaviour.

‘I…’ Gayoung’s unsure voice drew both of your attention, her cheeks a beautiful shade of pink due to her embarrassment (or most likely, due to the close proximity of her soulmate). Clearly, she was overly self-conscious, and it was your fault.

It was your fault because you knew how hard it was for her to start a conversation with the boy, and you didn’t take your time to ease her into the situation. Maybe, the three of you could have started with some light conversation over the snacks you had brought, but taking a seat by the table and asking Cha Eunwoo about your study session had somehow come more naturally.

Still… if you had put in the effort!

‘I don’t want to sound demanding or anything, and I know your studies are important… I also take my exams seriously, you see…’ Gayoung started, the most defensive that you had ever heard, her rambling tugging on your heartstrings.

It was wrong. This whole situation was so wrong. You hated seeing her walking on eggshells just because she didn’t want to be hated by her own soulmate as though that could have been a possibility.

‘You’re not! You’ve finished so many paper flowers on your own while you were waiting for us to take a break. I’m sorry, Gayoung,’ you apologised profoundly then sneaked a glance at Cha Eunwoo, who was already watching you.

You placed your pen between the pages and closed your notebook. Then, you slid a bottle of fanta towards the boy, nudging him to agree to your short break.

He kept staring at the drink for a while quietly then reached out for it with a nod.

‘How many of these do you have to finish today?’ He asked just as you took a coloured paper in your hands and started to roll it up, so it looked like a stem.

‘About twenty more,’ Gayoung answered sheepishly, breaking eye contact with the boy after a couple of seconds.

It was a little uncomfortable: watching their interaction. However, you told yourself that it was because of the lingering awkwardness in the air (Moon Gayoung was a confident and stubborn older sister figure in your life after all; seeing her act so uncertain didn’t fit into your perception of reality) and quickly finished your first paper stem with the green tape your friend had prepared.

You were just about to ask Cha Eunwoo for a break, too much of a coward to nudge him in the right direction and request his help, when the boy himself shot a smile at your friend and picked up a pink colour paper.

‘Well, that shouldn’t take longer than half an hour with all three of us here, sunbae,’ he said, then he asked Gayoung to show him the steps slowly, so he knew what to do.

It was surreal, how smooth things started to go from there. Filling the air with conversation and finishing up the decorations became so easy, you wondered whether it was the power of a soulmate bound that erased the discomfort from the room. Was this how fate worked things out when individuals like you weren’t actively interfering with the situation?

So damn convenient!

You swallowed down the unreasonable bitterness that filled your senses and suggested that the three of you could have grabbed some coffee at the nearby organic café right outside the campus ground.

Both Gayoung and Cha Eunwoo seemed to like your idea, and you felt relieved, because you really didn’t feel like you could have been able to concentrate on your sociology slides now that the extra decoration was finished, and the only way Gayoung could have stayed with you two would have been if Cha Eunwoo had insisted that she wasn’t a bother.

Which she wouldn’t have been! Gayoung could have never been a bother to you. But it was an elective class that she didn’t take, so if she had really stayed, she would have stayed to get closer to Cha Eunwoo and…

Well, that would have been actually ideal, right? This outcome was your goal from the get go, you had stepped out of your new comfort zone and befriended Cha Eunwoo, so that the two of them could have gotten closer.

You didn’t understand what had made you so upset a second ago.

‘Are you okay?’ Gayoung’s gentle voice pulled you out of your thoughts, and you nodded, surprised that she had already had your backpack in her hands, your notebook and pencil case no longer on the wooden table.

On your way to the coffee shop that you had chosen, you tried to suppress the annoying voice inside of your head that was nagging you about this whole set-up. Why did you feel the urge to come clean and apologise to Cha Eunwoo all of a sudden? It wasn’t like you had done something bad. You considered him a university friend, and you had never faked having fun in his company. Not to mention that because of your actions, he would have the opportunity to unite with the love of his life so early into his life.

If anything, that deserved a thank you, so you had nothing to say sorry for.

You ordered a latte with plant-based milk and an extra shot of espresso. You also let yourself be talked into a slice of lemon cheese cake, which tasted heavenly when it melted in your mouth.

You had a good time. You enjoyed listening to stories about Cha Eunwoo’s puppy and hearing about that one time when Gayoung had dragged you to a dog shelter for volunteer work, as an early attempt at curing your depression, from your best friend’s point of view. She teased you about how awkward you were around animals up to this day, and you let her because you couldn’t deny the facts. Small animals weren’t your biggest fans and kittens and hamsters were always out for you, biting your fingers until they became numb. 

You felt a light ache around your ankle, and you frowned, though, you tried to hide it behind your latte. Then, you shoved a bite of cake into your mouth and stole a glance at Gayoung, who was sitting in front of you. This time, you hadn’t had the opportunity to block the seat next to you with your backpack, because Cha Eunwoo had volunteered to reserve the three of you an empty table, so the kick could have only come from her.

She raised an elegant eyebrow, and it didn’t take too much longer for you to realise what she wanted: some alone time with the boy.

It was totally understandable, and somewhere in your mind there was a similar plan. You had just had too much fun listening to these two outbidding each other with their stories and you had forgotten your role.

You swallowed the cheese cake in your mouth and quickly finished the rest without coming off too rushed or choking on the crunchy pieces. Then, even though you weren’t a hundred percent sure that your acting skills were advanced enough, you shifted your gaze at the clock on the wall above the counter and let your pseudo-shock blend into your features.

‘It’s this late already? God, mom’ll be so furious,’ you exclaimed and chugged down the rest of your drink in one go before you stood up and grabbed your belongings. ‘I’m so sorry, I thought we had a lot more time. I’ll totally make it up to you guys next time!’

You didn’t have the courage to look Cha Eunwoo in the eyes after sounding so ridiculous, so you avoided both of their gazes on your way towards the front door and didn’t let your steps slow down until you reached the closest bus stop.

As you were sitting on the metal bench in the bus stop, your head hanging low and your hands squeezed between your thighs, you had a hard time to understand the gut-wrenching sadness that lay heavy on your chest. It made no sense, because you should have been happy. Even if you were still bitter because of the cruel fate you had been given, Gayoung was your ride or die. To feel so devastated after seeing her with Cha Eunwoo was a new low, and you were scared you would fall even deeper with time.

Jealousy. Envy.

You hated it. You hated your feelings and you hated yourself.

You just… hated yourself.

You really were the worst.

It was unfair to both of them, but you started to avoid Gayoung and Cha Eunwoo after that incident. It was a selfish way of self-preservation that included a whole new route to your classes, the exploration of new lunch spots a bit further from campus than what would have been convenient, last minute arrivals to your shared lectures, new seating arrangements and a complete social media detox. Your phone’s battery had never gone so long without a recharge since you had bought it, and maybe even your skin would have gotten clearer from the lack of useless scrolling that frequently kept you awake until after midnight if your overthinking wouldn’t have had a worse effect on your already unhealthy sleep schedule.

The change was tiring both physically and emotionally, but you were afraid that reality would have been harder to bear than any of those scenarios that your mind kept throwing at you when you were alone.

You told yourself you would make up for your wrongdoings once you had dealt with your feelings. You would spare no energy or money to make Gayoung forgive you, because what you were doing currently had to be easier to forgive than the truth: that somewhere along the way, you had fallen for her soulmate.

Aghrr… admitting this even just mentally felt like you had broken some sort of sacred rule, and you couldn’t help but think that divine retribution was coming for you when you caught a glimpse at Gayoung in front of the very vending machine you were heading to.

You acted without thinking and did a full 180.

‘Ouch!’ You yelped when you bumped into something firm, the impact turning your legs a bit wobbly as you tried to keep your balance.

‘Don’t you have eyes?’ The person swore aloud, his frustration clearly showing in his tone and his body language. You pressed your lips together out of embarrassment and bowed to soothe the stranger’s nerves. The last thing you wanted was him drawing everyone’s attention at the two of you.

Someone stepped close to you and bent down to pick up your phone. 

‘It was clearly an accident. And you weren’t paying too much attention, either, Mingyu,’ the same person, who was holding your phone in his hand, said. ‘Don’t be a dick.’

Your heart hurt when your eyes met Cha Eunwoo’s. Therefore, it wasn’t that surprising when his conversation with the other guy became background noise. You saw them moving their lips, you saw Cha Eunwoo bumping his elbow into the other guy’s ribcage, you saw the other guy’s tense shoulders falling forwards before they relaxed.

You wanted to run away. Moreso, because you were convinced that Cha Eunwoo was on his way to your best friend. But he was holding your phone hostage, so you stayed still and just waited with your eyes on the floor.

You had to get mentally prepared in case Gayoung noticed this commotion and walked up to the three of you. Were they already close enough to greet each other with a kiss? Gayoung had never been a player, but she wasn’t super conservative, either. Sure, she might have loved romance, but some of the stuff she was reading suggested that she might have been into some weird shit, so kissing in public shouldn’t have been a no-go.

Ah. You really shouldn’t have thought about your friend like that. You were the worst.

‘... before class?’

Your body twitched when someone touched your shoulder, and you almost headbutted Cha Eunwoo when you hastily lifted your head.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Are you?’ Cha Eunwoo tilted his head sideways, a lopsided smile adorning his lips. He looked amused, which was both surprising and expected because he had many friends. Of course, your absence hadn’t been that noticeable to him.

What had you been expecting? That he would hold you accountable for disappearing for a couple of days?

‘I’m just…’ you scratched the back of your head then nodded. ‘Yeah. I am.’

You had almost forgotten how it felt to stand under Cha Eunwoo’s scrutiny, and your fingers curled up into fists unconsciously way before your palms started to feel clammy. Why was he staring at you like that? Was he unhappy with your answer? Had you not sounded sincere enough?

‘Okay. Then let’s grab something from the convenience store before class.’

You were chewing on your lower lip by that point, ashamed of how happy you felt at the thought of hanging out with him without any additional company. You stole a glance at the vending machine behind your back.

Gayoung wasn’t there anymore. Yet, her absence didn’t make it easier to say yes. On the contrary, it was as if it pressed down on your chest, an immense weight of guilt.

‘I’m not hungry,’ you came up with the easiest excuse, and when you looked at Cha Eunwoo’s face again, his smile looked mellower.

You reached out to get your phone from his hand, and he hesitated. Yet, in the end, he placed it atop of your palm and covered it with his own, like it was a blanket.

‘I’ve something very important to tell you,’ he coaxed you with his hand still on yours, his gaze weirdly fixated on the area where your skins touched. Though, who were you to call him weird. You couldn’t take your eyes off his face, either.

You had no idea when the guy you had bumped into disappeared or how long the two of you were standing face to face with Cha Eunwoo in silence, but you did acknowledge the fact that it was him whose long fingers wrapped around your wrist like a bracelet when he pulled you towards the stairs gently.

You pulled your hand out of his grip on your way down to the ground floor, but you followed him to the convenient store inside the main building without further objection. You didn’t have to be a genius to figure out what he wanted to tell you. They must have already made it official with Gayoung since most soulmate couples were formed upon their first encounter. When the universe itself was backing up your compatibility, there really wasn’t any reason to delay the inevitable.

Your parents had moved in together a week into their relationship. Your grandparents had gotten married the day they had recognised each other as their fated pair. This was the world you were living in. It was completely normal.

Cha Eunwoo took his time while he was choosing snacks, and you were so lost in your thoughts that you hadn’t even realised that one of the cup ramens was for you until he poured hot water on both and slid one of them towards you. You looked at it, surprised, before you lifted your head and turned towards him with your upper body.

‘Congratulations.’

Your nails were digging crescent moons in your palms, but you were smiling, because you couldn’t have pictured anything more pathetic than a congratulation with a depressed face. If Gayoung and you stayed friends in the future, you and Cha Eunwoo would see each other often, so you might have as well started to make up for all those times you had done him wrong.

You broke the wooden chopsticks in two and opened the lid of your ramen. It smelled delicious, and one bite from it was enough for you to realise it was your favourite flavour.

You didn’t expect the disappointed sigh that escaped the boy’s lips; however, your body reacted to his mood immediately, tensing up in no time. 

‘There should be a picture of osmium on my hand instead of your go-to matcha latte,’ he murmured under his nose, his words making no sense at all, and not just because you had no idea what osmium was.

You decided to act like you didn’t hear his complaint and kept munching on your noodles while staring out the window you both were facing. Concentrating on the students walking in the hallway was a nice distraction, though, it once again reminded you of how hard-working everyone else appeared to be except for you. It was almost funny how, despite avoiding the only people you had ever hung out with outside of your classes in university, you still didn’t spare enough time to catch up on your studies.

You could have visited the library tomorrow. Your new deskmate in Sociology 101 seemed to like the coffee one could buy in the vending machine right next to its entrance. Which brand was it again? Something Italian.

You smiled at the thought of authentic pizza and gelato. Maybe, you should have taken a year off university and traveled like you had planned in high school. Your savings were still in your bank account. You hadn’t touched that money since you had lost your soulmate, so it should have been enough for a few weeks in Europe.

The childish excitement that you had felt whenever you had thought about bumping into your soulmate on one of your trips reignited in your chest, although the flame wasn’t as all-consuming anymore. It wasn’t blue or violet but orange, just like the glowing embers of a dying campfire. 

You finished the rest of your ramen in silence then stood up to put the cup into the bin. Cha Eunwoo’s slim fingers wrapped around your wrist again, this time, a bit firmer.

‘I like you,’ he said as his thumbs started to slowly caress the inner side of your wrist. Your skin felt surprisingly sensitive around that area. Never before would you have thought that a touch so light could leave so many goosebumps in its wake.

You squeezed the empty cup in your hand and looked at him. He was staring at your arm, at the spot where your soulmate mark had once been.

‘I’m glad to hear that. It’s better for Gayoung, too, if we get along,’ you forced the words out despite the bitterness they left in your mouth, mad that Cha Eunwoo was expressing his feelings so easily when the way he described them cut like a knife.

On one hand, you were glad that he still thought of you as a friend, and that he didn’t hold a grudge against you for ghosting and avoiding him, but he could have put it differently, too, instead of making it sound like… Instead of making it sound like he liked you.

‘God, I knew that you could be one-track minded and stubborn, but this is starting to feel ridiculous,’ he shook his head, pulling you back down on the chair you had occupied a mere minute ago.

You didn’t understand what he was getting at. And you were just about to call him out on his strange behaviour when he unbuttoned the left cuff of his shirt.

‘Woah,woah, woah! What are you doing?’ You grabbed his hand on instinct when he started to roll up his sleeve, showing off his toned arm.

‘What does it look like? I’m trying to clear up a massive misunderstanding,’ he claimed, gently removing your hand from his arm, so that he could uncover the tattoo just below the crook of his arm: a cute drawing of a matcha latte and your initials.

But your brain was telling you that those initials could have been anyone else’s initials, that drinking a cup of matcha latte almost every day wasn’t that special these days, and that even if Cha Eunwoo’s soulmate was someone else other than Moon Gayoung, you still shouldn’t have been considered as an option.

You bit into your lower lip so hard, it bled.

‘That’s not me!’ You screamed at him, and when he tried to convince you of the opposite, the first angry tears ran down your flushed cheeks furiously. ‘I said that’s not me! Why can’t you just believe me, hah? Look!’

It was a decision that you hadn’t really thought through. You took off your sweatshirt so fast as though the knitted material was burning you and shoved your lower arm into Cha Eunwoo’s confused face.

‘That’s not me, and it’s not you! I lost him, okay? He’s gone. And he’s not coming back… ever. And I would rather…’ you choked on the last words, the unintended pause making you unsure of where you were going with this whole monologue. You would have rather… what? What had you been about to say? It wasn’t like you had become unable to feel attachment or love for anyone else. If that had been the truth, you wouldn’t have felt guilty for days for having feelings for your best friend’s soulmate.

(Who had turned out to be an incorrect match since Gayoung and you didn’t share the same initials.)

You shook your head. Why did you feel excited about the fact that it wasn’t Gayoung’s name on Cha Eunwoo’s arm? He still wasn’t yours.

‘I know. I know,’ Cha Eunwoo whispered against the top of your head and your eyes grew as wide as saucers because seriously, when had he stood up and pulled you against his chest in the first place?

You wanted to push him away, but your body melted in his arms.

He didn’t understand, he was just as stubborn as you were, and you had no idea what had given him the confidence to be sure of himself when your skin was devoid of any sign that there was someone out there waiting for you.

‘Gayoung told me about your soulmate,’ he started, and you flinched, upset that your best friend had shared something so raw, something so personal with Cha Eunwoo when it wasn’t her story to share. You clenched your fists, angry, but before you could have pushed him away, Cha Eunwoo spoke up again in a calm, collected voice. ‘I see it now that waiting for you to realise who I am was a miscalculation on my part. I didn’t know that your mark has never come back.’

You furrowed your brows and tilted your head, so you could look at his face. It didn’t help much with comprehending the situation, but his eyes looked determined as though he was ready to do anything to have the chance to explain himself, so you gave in.

You took a step backwards and sat back on the chair, maintaining some distance between the two of you.

‘I don’t understand what’s happening, so don’t spare me from the details,’ you told him in a cold voice, your cheeks still wet from those tears you had shed a few seconds ago.

It would have been better if you hadn’t had this conversation in the convenience store of your university - this specific store didn’t sell cigarettes and alcohol -, but suggesting a different place would have taken too much energy out of you, and you felt that you would need every drop of it if you wanted to stay until the end of his story.

‘When I was in high school, I died in a car accident,’ Cha Eunwoo’s calm voice reached your ears as he started to tell you about everything.

Apparently, he and his parents had been on their way home from a semi-spontaneous family vacation when a drunk driver had crashed into their car from the opposite lane out of the blue. It had been a head-on collision, therefore his parents had died on the scene, meanwhile, Cha Eunwoo had been rushed to the hospital, where he had been dead for a whole minute before the doctors had brought him back.

Cha Eunwoo didn’t have any other family members, both of his parents being an only child and his grandparents long gone, so he had been adopted by his father’s best friend. He had changed his name to get away from the constant rumours that had followed him after the accident, and had never thought too much about the consequences of this decision until Moon Gayoung had shown him her own tattoo with his new initials.

Naively, he had assumed that his soulmate would have recognised him anyway because of the comforting warmth that his own mark also emitted whenever he was around you.

‘Lee Dongmin. My birth name.’

Your heart ached at the realisation that the more detail he added to the story, the more it clicked with your experience. Even his birth name, the one his parents had given him, matched the tattoo you had used to look at with so much hope in your eyes.

When Cha Eunwoo took his phone out of his pocket and showed you a picture of himself in a hospital gown, limbs broken and face half-covered with bandages, your silent tears turned into a full on mental breakdown. You were shaking and crying, overwhelmed by all those emotions that tried to take control over your body at the same time: sadness, longing, anger, grief.

You must have looked like a crazy person from the other students’ point of view. At one point, you had stopped being able to pick up on anything that Cha Eunwoo was telling you, his voice muffled as though it was coming from under heavy layers of water. Still, you could feel that he was growing more and more worried. He might have even regretted choosing this very store for your conversation, not anticipating your overly emotional reaction to the truth. But that was just another miscalculation on his part because you had always been sensitive when it came to this topic.

You had thought he was dead. You had mourned him. But now he was telling you that he was alive this whole time, living under a different name?

He had lost his parents. 

You squeezed your eyes shut. No. Maybe he was wrong. He could have been mistaken in his deduction. Sure, the name he had given you could have been your soulmate’s and he did have a puppy similar to the one you had had as a tattoo on your arm. You drank matcha latte daily and your initials matched his mark, but…

Yes, he had been dead for a minute when that accident had happened and the date matched with the day your life had lost all colours, but…

You almost fell off the chair when another strong wave of emotions rushed through you, but Cha Eunwoo caught you at the last moment and apologised for everything you had been through when he whispered in your ear. He also apologised for his poor choice of location, for not telling it to you sooner, for waiting for a miracle instead of taking action.

When you accidentally touched his tattoo because of your close proximity, the black ink felt warm against your skin. It made you cry a little harder again until you exhausted yourself.

Cha Eunwoo supported you on your way back to the dormitory and when it was time for the two of you to say your goodbyes, for a second, you felt like he would kiss you, but he didn’t. He simply wiped the remains of your tears off of your puffy cheeks and apologised once more, making you promise to contact him and promising to make up for the heartache he had unintentionally put you through for the rest of your lives in exchange.

You felt out of place when you were waiting for the elevator inside the building. If you had to guess, you would have said that your brain hadn’t processed the truth just yet. You couldn’t feel unconditional happiness and you were burdened by something you couldn’t quite put your finger on. If you had had to compare the feeling to something, it was like when you weren’t sure whether you had closed the door after leaving your home.

When you got to your room, your roommate was nowhere to be found, but you were actually grateful for her absence. You dragged yourself to your bed and sat on the edge, looking out of your head.

Cha Eunwoo was Lee Dongmin.

Lee Dongmin was your soulmate. He wasn’t Gayoung’s. He was yours. And he wanted to be with you.

Suddenly, you recalled what he was murmuring under his nose at the beginning of your heavy conversation. Something about osmum. Omium?

You fished your phone out of your pocket and searched it up on the internet. Your spelling was incorrect, but it gave you a suggestion that sounded valid enough so you clicked on it. Then, the corners of your lips turned upwards upon seeing the results on your screen.

Osmium. Os, atomic number 76. It was a rare, hard, brittle, bluish-white transition metal, notable for being the densest naturally occurring element on Earth.

Hah! You had no idea, Cha Eunwoo could be such a nerd.

(But you had a lifetime ahead of you to discover this and all the other sides of him that made him your perfect companion.)