Moon Seolmin has spent three years building the life he was never supposed to have. As the visual and main vocalist of VYRE — a six-member boy group on the edge of global breakout — and the actor behind the tragic heartthrob of On the Day the Snow Falls, he is, by every visible measure, human perfection. What no one on his team, in his fandom, or in his family knows is that Seolmin is a dokkaebi: a centuries-old spirit wearing the shape of a twenty-something idol, bound by old rules he barely remembers agreeing to and hiding in the one place no one would think to look for a monster, under stage lights, in front of a hundred cameras.
Ahn Gyeoul has spent her life training for a war most of the world doesn't know is being fought. Descended from a line of demon hunters, she stepped into acting as the perfect cover: a mystery-drama darling with a face made for magazine covers and a body built for extraction, exorcism, and the kill. When she's cast opposite Seolmin in House of Nightmares — a psychological horror series about a house that hunts the people who hunt it — it isn't a coincidence. Her organization has traced a string of unexplained deaths back to the production, and she's been sent to find the demon responsible.
She doesn't know it's her co-star. He knows exactly what she is the moment she walks into the first script read.
As filming pulls them into every kind of forced intimacy — press tours, late-night reshoots, scenes that ask them to perform trust they don't yet have — both are forced to become the best liars of their careers. But the deaths on set are real, and neither of them is the one responsible. Something older and hungrier has been drawn to the production, feeding on the very horror they're pretending to fear. To survive it, hunter and hunted will have to become allies, and then, despite every rule either of them was raised on, something else entirely.
Age: Appears 24 |
Position: Main Vocalist, Visual, Actor
True nature: Dokkaebi
Seolmin has worn a lot of names over the years, but "Moon Seolmin" is the one he's grown fondest of, mostly because it's the first one anyone ever loved for reasons that had nothing to do with fear. Centuries of dokkaebi instinct — mischief, contrariness, a magpie's attraction to shiny things and interesting people — now get routed into stage presence and interviews he over-prepares for out of sheer nervous habit. He plays tragic leading men on screen and privately finds real grief a little difficult to sit with, which is its own kind of joke he doesn't tell anyone. He is, underneath the charm, extremely good at being alone, he's had a lot of practice. Meeting Gyeoul is the first time in a long time something has felt genuinely dangerous, and he hates how much he likes that.
Wants: To keep this life — this exact one, with these five idiots he calls his group — for as long as it can possibly last.
Fears: Being known and immediately lost, the way it's always gone before.
Age: 25 |
Known for: The Secret of that Day |
True nature: Demon Hunter
Gyeoul was handed a blade before she was handed a script, and she's never fully forgiven her family for making both feel like inheritances she didn't get to refuse. Acting was supposed to be the cover story; somewhere along the way it became the one part of her life that isn't about duty, and she resents how much that scares her. She is precise, controlled, and privately furious at how her body keeps reacting to Seolmin in ways her training has no clean label for, hyperawareness she's spent a career mistaking for professional instinct, until it very clearly isn't. She does not trust easily. She trusts him even less, on principle, and it's driving her quietly insane that principle keeps losing.
Wants: To finish the job, go home, and stop feeling like the job has stopped being the point.
Fears: That the thing she's hunting might be the first thing that's ever hunted her back and that she wouldn't mind losing.
Age: 26 |
Position: Leader, Producer, Main Dancer
The one holding the group together with sheer stubbornness and a spreadsheet. Sol produces half of VYRE's discography himself and treats the other members' wellbeing like a project deadline he refuses to miss. He's the most likely to notice something is wrong with Seolmin before anyone says a word, he's built his whole role around noticing things first.
Age: 24 |
Position: Lead Rapper, Sub-Vocal
Sharp-tongued in interviews, softer than he'd ever admit backstage. Yeonwoo writes most of his own verses and has an unnervingly good read on people's moods, which he mostly uses to make fun of them. He and Seolmin have the easy, needling closeness of two people who've never had to explain themselves to each other.
Age: 23 |
Position: Sub-Vocal, Variety King
The group's chaos engine and the reason half their content goes viral. Kove's entire public persona is "harmless goofball," which makes him an excellent unintentional cover whenever something strange happens around Seolmin, nobody questions weirdness that Kove's probably behind anyway.
Age: 21 |
Position: Main Rapper, Maknae
The youngest, and allergic to being treated like it. Luo idolizes Seolmin a little more than he'd ever say out loud, which means he's also the first to get hurt if he ever finds out what's really being hidden from him.
Age: 24 |
Position: Lead Vocalist, Face of the Group
The member with the most to lose from any scandal, and the one who ends up closest to the truth. Reito is quieter than the others, watchful in a way that reads as reserved on camera and is actually just constant, careful attention. He notices Seolmin slipping first, and has to decide what kind of member, and what kind of friend, he wants to be once he does.
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