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The town had the hush of a place that had just buried something. Not dead, exactly. Just quiet in the way a wound is quiet when it’s scabbed over. The villagers spoke with hunched shoulders, pointed fingers toward the medicine halls that had been... rearranged. Not ransacked. Nothing missing. Just open cabinets and drawers, bottles brought to the floor.
“A confused trickster, maybe,” Abby hazards a guess, eyes scanning the shelves, where apparently once disorderly piles are now neatly done. “Or a younger demon. The kind that thinks cleaning up is a fun prank?”
He nudges a jar with the toe of his boot, watches the dried jujube roll out slow and deliberate. “Doesn’t feel malicious. Feels like someone trying to play a prank, then panicking halfway through. Like they knocked everything over on purpose but couldn’t remember how it looked before. So they put it all back, hoping no one will notice.”
It was just… too tidy. It was hard for the owners not to notice when their messy workstations suddenly cleaned itself up overnight.
Jinu crouches beside the splintered cabinet, fingers brushing along the grain of the wood, tracing where something—claws, maybe—had scraped the edge, then stopped. Thought better of it.
His brows pull together. “Maybe.”
Abby glances sideways. “You think it’s another demon unit?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time another unit messed with us to get to Gwi Ma,” Jinu says quietly, almost to himself. He stands, brushing dust from his robes. “If it is a spy, they’re either very bad at it… or very bold.”
Abby’s hand rests on the hilt at his hip. “So, we wait?”
Jinu nods once, gaze fixed on the doorway. “We stay. Watch the next move. If it’s just a young demon poking around, we’ll know. And if it’s something worse—” he pauses, just long enough for Abby to notice.
“I’d rather know before it gets clever.”
Abby smiles, sharp and tired. “Guess we’re camping in a medicine hall tonight.”
When night falls, they're perched on the rafters of the hall, waiting, watching. Abby hates waiting—his body built for motion, not stillness—but Jinu is patient. So he sits beside him in the rafters of the apothecary, legs swinging in the dark. Jinu's focused on the task at hand so Abby takes the chance to admire the sharp cut of his jawline under the moonlight.
Time stretches. Abby's dazed. The village holds its breath. It’s well past the third hour when they feel a shift in the air—a tear in the veil manifesting.
Through the window, they see the figure moving down the hall. A jar is lifted. Then—almost compulsively nudged upright again. Glass taps against glass in a soft, apologetic clang.
Abby strians forward to see, but his weight shifts just a little too far. A roof tile slips beneath his boot, skitters down the slope of the eaves, and crashes onto the stone courtyard below with a sharp, echoing clang.
The figure jerks upright.
For a breath, it hangs there, caught in the stillness.
Then it bolts. One flicker, and it vanishes through the veil like it’s sinking into quicksand, leaving nothing but ripples in the silence.
Abby turns to Jinu who also looks bewildered. “What the fuck was that about?”
Jinu’s eyes stay on the space where the figure disappeared. “I don’t know,” he says quietly. “But it wasn't a trickster. It moved deliberately. It was here for something.”
They wait a while longer, crouched in the rafters, breath shallow in the dark, hoping it’ll come back, until the sky starts to pale at the edges. The figure doesn't return at all that night.
In the morning, they sweep the outskirts of town. Whatever that thing was last night—it hadn’t wandered in blind. It moved like it knew the layout, like it had been inside before. Knew exactly where to step, what to touch.
So they search.
The tears in the veil start shallow, scattered like stray threads. But the farther out of town they go, the more the fabric unravels. The air grows colder, thinner. Each tear is older than the last, worn into the world like grooves in stone. Someone’s been using this path for weeks, months even.
They press on into the forest, where pine needles hush their steps and the light grows green and strange. The land tilts upward. Rocky passes give way to narrow ledges. A creek chatters low and cold beside them, its water clear as glass. They cross a rickety rope bridge that sways with every step.
Still, the traces lead on, pulling them forward like a string wrapped tight around something waiting. This mountain is clearly its playground. The deeper in they go, the more well worn the tears are, the thicker the traces of demonic energy, a kind of accumulation that would have taken years.
Abby steps around a root, boots sliding a little on damp stone. “You know,” he says, glancing at Jinu, “this is how bandit stories usually start.”
Jinu doesn’t pause. “We’re not bandits.”
“Yet,” Abby says cheerfully. “But think about it. Remote mountain paths. Hidden veil tears. A pair of handsome strangers with mysterious pasts.”
"We're perhaps even worse than bandits, don't you think?" Jinu says, letting his demon marks show. "Plus," he continues, glancing over. “Only one of us fits that description.”
“Ouch. That was almost mean.” Abby grins, catching up again. “But seriously, if we were human bandits, I’d be the charming one. You’d be the one who never says a word but everyone’s afraid of.”
“That sounds about right.”
“See? We’d be good at it. Real legends. People would write songs about us. Stealing hearts and herbs.”
“People already write songs about us. We're the monsters in their stories. And, we’re not stealing anything."
“Speak for yourself,” Abby mutters, watching the way Jinu’s hair shifts in the wind and his broad shoulders. “I’m working on a heist right now.”
Jinu doesn’t dignify that with a response. But Abby sees the corner of his mouth twitch again—just slightly.
Good enough for him.
Finally, just as the path levels, a clearing opens—and nestled inside it, a small, weather-beaten house clings to the slope.
And there, with half of its body sticking out from the veil, is the derpiest tiger Abby’s ever seen.
Abby instinctively flings an arm out in front of Jinu, but he stops short of going on offence. “What the—?”
The tiger tilts its head. Its eyes don’t quite focus on them. It doesn’t growl. Doesn’t pounce. Just... watches.
Uh, hello?”
The tiger blinks. Slinks back into the veil. Slow. Deliberate.
“Wait—” Abby starts.
It pauses. Abby opens his mouth but can’t really find the words.
The tiger continues backing into the veil until it disappears.
Abby drops his arm. “What the actual fuck.”
Jinu furrows his brows. “Well, we’re going the right way, at least.”
They push forward towards the house and reach its gate. The courtyard lies still. Cracked tile. Weeds sprouting from between stones. Then, beside the main door, the veil ripples, opening just enough for the tiger’s amber eyes, blinking slow.
“Is that an invite?” Jinu asks.
Abby shrugs. “Dunno. I’m inviting myself anyway.”
“I said we're not trying to be bandits.”
“I’m already a bandit for your heart,” Abby says, winking. Jinu doesn’t dignify that with a look.
They step in.
Inside, the air is thick with ginseng, old wood, and the dry rot of time. A single figure lies curled on a low pallet—blankets threadbare, fabric more patch than cloth. An old woman, slight and folded in on herself, lifts her head without turning. Her eyes are clouded white, ringed with the grey-blue of poor sight.
“Oh,” she murmurs, voice thin but not unkind. “We have guests?”
Her head tilts slightly, face drawn toward them with the vague curiosity of someone used to listening more than looking. “Did my cat give you a fright?”
There’s a beat.
“A little,” Abby admits, smoothing his tone. “But he’s very polite. Didn’t growl or anything.”
“Polite,” she echoes, amused. “Yes, he’s not usually the chatty type.”
She chuckles, a dry rasp at the back of her throat. “Keep? No one keeps a tiger, dear. He just lives here. Has since I was a girl.”
They exchange a glance.
“He was smaller then, of course,” she continues, reaching out blindly to pat at the tiger’s side. Her hand finds him with a familiarity born of habit. “Thought he was a cat at first. Scraggly thing. Wouldn’t stop hanging around the house. One day he just… stayed.”
“Just like that?” Abby asks, eyebrows raised.
“Just like that,” she says. Her fingers curl loosely in the thick fur, her smile distant. “I fed him once. That’s all it took.”
Her hand fumbles for a chipped teacup nearby, and in the half-second it begins to tip, both Jinu and the tiger move. But it’s Jinu who catches it, his fingers brushing hers as he steadies it back on the tray.
She nods faintly in thanks, already forgetting the near-spill. “He doesn’t usually like people,” she says, more to herself than them.
They sit—Abby cross-legged near the door, Jinu kneeling near the foot of the bed. The tiger watches, unmoving.
Abby eyes the sagging beams above them, then looks back at her. “You don’t seem too bothered having strangers walk in like this.”
“If you were bad men, Horangi would’ve seen it before I did.” Her tone is matter-of-fact, like she’s commenting on the weather.
She settles back against the worn bedding, breath rattling faintly in her chest. Her fingers scratch absently behind the tiger’s ear, and he leans into the touch with the weight of something long accustomed to being needed.
“I suppose you think it’s strange,” she says after a pause, eyes fixed somewhere over their shoulders. “A woman living out here alone with a beast.”
Abby shrugs. “Stranger things exist. Trust me.”
“Still,” she murmurs. “I know how it must look. I’m old. I’m blind in both eyes. People would wonder if I’ve lost my senses.”
She shifts slightly, the movement slow and laboured.
“But he’s kept me alive. In more ways than one.” Her fingers drift along Horangi’s spine. “And lately… he’s been doing more than just sitting around.”
She trails off, as if debating whether to say more.
Jinu catches it. “What do you mean?”
She hesitates, then exhales, thin and raspy. “He brings me things. From the village. Jars. Paper packets. Bundles of herbs tied with twine. Always smells like the medicine hall.” Her smile falters just slightly. “I know he’s stealing. I’ve never told him to. But lately… I haven’t been able to get up. Not every day. Not without falling.”
She looks down at her hands, twisted with age. “Sometimes I think he’s just trying to keep me alive a little longer.”
Abby leans forward, elbows on his knees. “He’s clever.”
She nods. “Too clever. And too obvious. Someone will notice eventually. Someone always does.”
The tiger doesn’t move, but his ears flick.
Jinu speaks, voice low and even. “He can’t keep going to the village. They’ve already noticed. Soon, they’ll stop whispering and start acting. They’ll send someone. A… hunter.”
She’s silent.
“He might not come back.”
Another pause. Then: “I thought that might be the case.”
“We’ll bring what you need. Once a week. No more stealing.”
Her voice is smaller now, cracked around the edges. “You’d do that?”
Jinu nods. Abby offers a little smile, not quite toothy. “He’s a terrible thief anyway.”
That earns a wheezy chuckle from her. “Thank you,” she murmurs, stifling a yawn now. “He means well. He just doesn’t know how to be small.”
Abby shifts, gaze dropping to the tiger’s massive form now curled beside her. The way he fits himself so carefully into the space around her, like he’s trying to disappear into the shape of devotion.
Abby huffs a soft breath through his nose, not quite a laugh.
He knows something about that—trying to take up less space, trying not to get in the way while still clinging to the people who make the quiet bearable.
The tiger isn’t the only one who never learned how to be small.
The old woman’s breath grows steady—thin, but even. Eyes closed now, her hand still resting in Horangi’s fur. She doesn’t stir when Jinu adjusts the blanket to cover her shoulder, or when Abby quietly sets the tea tray back on its stand.
Neither of them speak.
They step outside without a sound. The door slides shut behind them with a muted click, the wood settling into its frame like a held breath released.
Back on the path, Abby breaks the quiet first. “Will the medicine even help?”
“No,” he says after a beat.
They step over a bent tree root, duck under a low branch.
“But…” Abby prompts.
Jinu’s mouth tugs at the corner. Not quite a smile. “It’ll help him.”
They walk in silence for a moment more, shoes crunching on dry leaves.
Jinu’s voice is quieter now. “Sometimes that’s all you can do.”
Abby doesn’t answer right away. He just watches the back of Jinu’s head, the way a loose strand of his topknot curls at the nape of his neck.
“She didn’t seem scared of him,” he says after a while.
“No.”
“She knew he wasn’t just some overgrown housecat, right?”
“Of course.”
“Huh.” Abby kicks a pinecone down the path. “So she knew he was a demon. And still let him curl up next to her like some giant lapdog.”
“She said he never hurt her,” Jinu says.
Abby thinks about that. About the practiced way she reached out for it. About the way the tiger had leaned into her touch.
“Think she loved him?” he asks, quiet.
Jinu looks at him now, the sunlight catching on the edge of his lashes. “I think he loved her. I think she let him.”
Abby chuckles. He doesn't say, 'Hah. How cruel.' Instead, he says, “You don’t think she loved him back?”
Jinu’s steps are steady, but there’s a flicker of something in the corner of his mouth. “Humans are capable of the same cruelty we are. Sometimes worse.”
He pauses, sidesteps a low branch.
“She might’ve just wanted the company. Loneliness can do strange things. I think she knew she’d have to leave him eventually—one way or another.”
Abby doesn’t respond right away.
He isn’t sure if they’re still talking about the old woman and the tiger.
A wind stirs the branches overhead.
“If their time was limited, then she should’ve given him everything.” He continues, with a faint smile. “Demons are greedy. Jealous. That tiger’s love was already there for the world to see. Not loving him back just leaves them both aching.”
“Love like that isn't something demons like us are meant to keep,” Jinu says, not unkindly—just certain. Like it’s already been decided.
**
So they return. Once a week. Rain or sun. Sometimes it’s both of them, trading quiet jokes on the trail. Sometimes only one—when the other’s been pulled into a mission too far, too urgent to wait. But it doesn’t matter.
One of them always comes.
Every week. No matter what.
The tiger is always waiting. Seated at the doorway like a guardian carved from smoke and muscle, tail flicking in quiet rhythm. He doesn’t greet them, exactly. Just turns and walks inside once they arrive, as if to say: you know the way. Come on, then.
Inside, it’s always the same. Horangi nudges her gently with his head, careful despite his size. Coaxes her upright with a low chuff and a nudge beneath the elbow until she’s sitting, blinking sleep from her eyes, reaching for the edge of a teacup she can’t quite grasp.
Jinu unpacks the herbs with methodical ease, setting down paper-wrapped bundles with practiced hands. He always checks her pulse, adjusts the steeping pot, speaks softly even when she can’t hear every word.
Abby comes with something extra. Not useful things, not really—sweets she can barely chew, candied jujubes too sticky for her teeth, once even a folded fan painted with a crooked mountain he bought from a peddler on a whim.
She laughs anyway. Tells him he’s trouble. Calls him sweet in the way old women do when they’ve seen enough of the world to know better, but choose to be charmed anyway.
“You trying to fatten me up?” she asks once, tapping his wrist with a knuckle like she’s scolding a grandchild.
Abby grins. “I try.”
Then, one day, Abby comes alone. The air is thick with the weight of oncoming rain, and the path feels longer than usual. When he reaches the house, he pauses.
No tiger at the door.
The porch is still. The door slightly ajar.
Something in his chest tightens.
He steps inside.
It’s quiet—but not the lazy hush of midday naps or slow-brewing tea. This quiet is hollow. Unsettled.
The scent of herbs hangs heavy, cloying. A pot long gone cold sits untouched on the brazier.
Then he sees them.
The tiger is curled beside her pallet, hunched awkwardly in the cramped space. He’s nudging a small bottle against her hand. Once. Twice. A pause. Again. The soft rattle of pills against glass.
Her fingers don’t move.
Abby steps closer, knees folding under him as he sinks to the floor. He reaches out, rests a hand on the tiger’s head. The fur is warm beneath his palm.
The tiger doesn’t flinch. Just keeps pushing the bottle forward like it’ll mean something if he gets it close enough.
“That’s enough now,” Abby murmurs. “She’s gone.”
The tiger doesn’t stop.
He keeps nudging the bottle forward, the same soft clink of pills against glass. Again. Again. Like repetition might rewrite reality. Like enough tries might pull her back.
“Hey,” Abby says gently, patting the tiger’s head. “You don’t have to keep doing that. She’s not in pain anymore. You made sure of that.”
He glances at her—what’s left of her. She looks smaller somehow. Folded in on herself like parchment worn too thin.
“You were everything to her,” Abby says, voice low. “You stayed. You kept her warm. You made her laugh, even when she could barely breathe. She wasn’t alone, right up to the end.”
The tiger finally stops moving. The bottle rolls from his jaw and settles against the floor.
“But she wouldn’t want you stuck here.” Abby strokes once, slow between the ears. “How about we go give her a proper rest?”
He doesn’t know if the tiger understands what he’s saying, but he knows the silence that follows feels different—more settled. A step towards acceptance.
Later, Abby stands at the foot of the burial mound, the soil still loose, the air carrying the faint scent of pine smoke and freshly turned earth. The stones are placed with care. Nothing elaborate, just enough to show she was mourned. That someone had bowed their head and remembered her name.
It’s just Abby and the tiger, alone on the hillside, the wind tugging at his sleeves.
It feels wrong, almost. Not because of what they’re doing, but because of what they are.
A tiger demon.
A half-feral fighter with blood on his hands and a smile too sharp.
No monks. No incense. No grain bowls or white hemp mourning robes. Just two beings the world would never count among the living, kneeling in silence beside a mound of earth.
Abby bows low. When he straightens, the tiger is still staring at the mound. Unmoving. Ears twitching in the wind like he’s listening for something that isn’t coming.
He leaves the tiger to its vigil and steps back into the house. The wooden floor groans under his weight. He settles near the edge, back against a worn beam, the overhanging roof casting him in half-shadow. The wind moves through the trees in sighs, brushing through the tall grasses that have crept up toward the porch.
He watches the day shift. The way the sun drags slow arcs across the yard. The shadows of the beams above him stretch and curl, fold and vanish. Clouds drift across the sky, like ghosts moving without direction. Maybe it’s been hours. Maybe days.
He thinks of the tiger.
Thinks about how he kept nudging that bottle like it meant something. How he sat so still afterward, not out of peace, but absence. Like he’d emptied out all the meaning he had and didn’t know what to do with what was left.
And Abby thinks—yeah. He gets it.
He wonders, if he hadn’t met Jinu, if he hadn’t been pulled into orbit by that maddening, gentle, stubborn gravity—would he have ended up like that too? Half-feral, haunting the ruins of something that once made him feel needed?
He doesn’t have family anymore. Not really. Their names slipped from his tongue the day he handed over his love—his guilt—for them to Gwi Ma. That was the trade. Forgetting, in exchange for surviving. A clean wound, carved deep.
All he has is just Jinu. Jinu, with his ridiculous calm. His relentless tenderness. His impossible, infuriating hope.
If Jinu were to vanish—if he were to disappear like his mother, like his sister—
Abby isn’t sure what would be left of him.
He’s glad, suddenly, irrationally, that demons don’t have human lifespans. That whatever curse is carved into their bones lets them stay. Because if he lost Jinu, truly lost him—he doesn’t think he’d move on either.
He’d be stuck. Just like the tiger.
A rustle breaks the quiet—soft, padded steps on old wood. He doesn’t look up.
The tiger settles beside him, heavy presence folding into the dusk. Not touching. Just there.
Abby exhales. His voice is low, nearly lost in the wind.
“Ready?”
The tiger doesn’t respond. Just keeps looking ahead, ears flicking once.
Then, they both rise.
**
They return to base late.
The compound sleeps, tucked in shadow. The moon hangs high, sharp-edged against a cloudless sky.
From Jinu’s private courtyard, music drifts—soft, steady, already in motion. The notes from his bipa thread through the air like smoke, warm and distant. Something plaintive. Something worn at the edges.
Abby pauses in the doorway.
Jinu sits with one knee drawn up, brazier glowing dimly at his side. He doesn’t look up as they approach—just keeps playing, fingers sure, the melody quiet and open.
The tiger stops beside Abby for a breath, then moves forward, unbothered. He pads to Jinu without hesitation, stretches out once, then folds his weight into the curve of Jinu’s side as if he’s always belonged there.
Jinu finally glances up.
Sees the tiger. Sees Abby. Sees the jar of wine and cups in his hand. Says nothing.
But the music shifts—just slightly. Brighter now. Still low, still lonely, but touched with something warmer. A kind of welcome.
Abby snorts at the tiger. “Figures Jinu’d be your favourite already.”
The corner of Jinu’s mouth tilts, barely.
Abby crosses the courtyard, lowers himself to sit next to Jinu, close enough for their knees to touch. He pours them both wine.
The music continues.
The night hums around them—brazier crackling, strings singing, tiger breathing slow and deep.