Chapter Text
There is a door to me
I've never seen it
Sometimes I get closer to it
But I've never found it
At twilight, I almost had it
But then the night fell
I looked out at the dark and wondered
How could I have lost it?
For the first few months of adjusting to the new life, Celine clung to the lingering mannerisms she learned from her eomma. The feral biting, the scratching, the animalistic growls as opposed to using words. Every time she acted more like a fox or a demon than a human, she got scolded and punished. She was a defiant child, still seeing the hunters as her captors instead of mentors, and so the scolding would turn into spanking, or being forced to kneel on a pile of dry rice, or having her choose a stick for them to hit her with, or threats; the threats would morph into a promise that if she continued to misbehave, they would put her back in the cellar until she learned to act right.
That promise of being shoved through those cellar doors kept her afraid, kept her in line. A few times, the hunters made good on that promise. Sunja was reluctant, but the other two were quick to resort to shoving her back into that dark room again. They left her trapped in there for hours, sometimes days, but never to the extent of that first time. Each time, Celine came out with her spirit more broken, and her reaction to any threat to put her in there more extreme.
She hated being in the cellar. She hated the mildewed damp cold darkness and how the harsh metal shackles dug scars into her wrists. Even though she no longer had claws, she still clawed in vain at her surroundings. They wouldn't even put a pot to piss in for her to use while trapped in that room. It was humiliating. And to rub salt into the wound, when they decided she'd had enough, they would open the cellar doors and unshackle her and then hand her cleaning supplies to clean up the mess she inevitably made on the floor. And then they would put her through another one of their invasive scalding baths where they scrubbed her clean.
It was one humiliation after another. Another mark of shame upon her psyche.
The final time they locked her in the cellar, it was because a reward for good behavior went awry. The dress they found her in was gone, but the hunters kept the intricate well-loved norigae they found on her that fateful day. It was a deep indigo blue, like the night sky, with detailed knotwork made by loving hands — her mother's hands. Her mother made that norigae for her, to hold her fox bead, to remind her of her love. The jade-green bead sat wrapped in the blue thread, secure. They kept the knotwork charm locked away in a warded chest, until the day Sunja attempted to return the norigae to Celine as a reward for cooperating with them.
Seconds after handing the norigae back to the child, Sunja realized her mistake. The patterns sprung up on her face and arms again, her claws grew back. Her face snarled as Celine bared her fangs. She clutched the norigae protectively to her chest, growling at every attempt to take it away.
It took all three hunters holding the girl down to wrench the charm out of her hands, and all of them got their fair share of scratches and bites in the process. If they want her to stay human, they have to lock her norigae away. Back into a warded chest it goes, while poor Celine gets forced into a muzzle and shoved back into the cellar for three days.
She knows better than to scream and cry out loud, this time. She knows they won't let her out no matter how hard she screams and cries, so why bother? She cries quietly, curled against the wall sniffling in the oppressive cold silence.
Celine doesn't remember much after that. That last time in the cellar was the last straw for her psyche, and the next few years are all a blur for her. She doesn't remember what it was like in the cellar. She doesn't remember what it was like before the cellar. She doesn't remember what her eomma looks like anymore. All she knows is that the cellar is scary and cold, and she has to stay good if she doesn't want to be put back in there. She has to stay good so they don't put the muzzle on her again. She can be a good dog fox girl, she can behave herself, she can make herself smaller and squeeze herself into the shape her mentors want her to be. She'll be a model pupil, she'll be as perfect as they need her to be, as long as they don't put her back in the cellar again.
The cellar door will always fill her with dread, even as it sat slowly rotting behind piles of boxes as the years went by. But it had a purpose, and its purpose was to starve out any demonic influence left in her. It was once a bomb shelter, and it served to shelter her in its own ruthless way.
It was a mercy they they put her in there and didn't leave her there for a thousand days. It was a mercy that they took her out early, and chose to trust that she would behave.
The hunters weren't heartless, they weren't monsters. Everyone had their limits. They loved her, in their own way. They loved her and so they tried to save her soul the only ways they knew how. They made her human, they made her a hunter, and she would make a good hunter indeed.
Her mentors were proud of her progress. Proud enough to give her a family name. Sunja wrote down her name as Kang Celine on any documentation, making her a part of her family. One of the hunters. One of the protectors of the human world.
Then, one night, at the park I saw it
With my cheek in the dirt
I couldn't move underneath the dark
But at least I finally found it
Cried out a creak and opened
To show me what's beyond it
A hopeless violence
I named it love