Chapter Text
This is how it feels to be Jinu:
The dawn of light burns through his eyes.
Pain. So much pain courses through his body. Heat chews through his flesh. Muscles ache and bones crackle as he tries to tentatively move.
There’s fire in his chest. It’s rapidly moving up and down—breathing, he realizes he needs to breathe. Air, or lack of, is killing him. He hears himself gasping. It comes hard and harsh, and he feels a steady beat of drums—a heart, he realizes—beating through his body. The metronome of life. A heartbeat. He has a heart again.
There’s a chorus of groaning around him. And he thinks, this is it. I'm in hell that I deserve.
He tries to make peace with it. One final act of sacrifice—one good deed—and he knows the rest of eternity is here.
Rot.
“I feel,” a voice coughs out next to him, “like shit.”
He frowns. That’s Abby’s voice. Resonating, deep, harmonizing into the body and through the bones. Jinu's wondering if the pain inside of him is playing tricks, making him cope with the idea that he's not alone. Because that’s how he found some reassurance before: at least we’re together, until the end of times.
There are more songs of pain. A bump. A knee lands against his shoulders. Jinu huffs.
“What’s going on?”
That’s Mystery’s voice. A soft whisper. Gentle. Proof that even in hell, there is softness.
Now Jinu is really wondering if this is all an illusion. He opens his eyes. Light, a scattershot of color, burns through his retina. But he sees. He sees his hands. Patterns and marks are faint against his skin.
He woke up with others, all of them, in tattered robes, drenched in water. On a beautiful field, underneath him, flowers soften the ground. The Honmoon ripples, and he feels a surge of cooling Ki, the spiritual energy, seep into him. A hug he had never felt before in his life. It's seeping into his very being.
“This… this shouldn’t be possible.”
Vocal cords. Jinu's. A voice that he thought would help him live, only for it to betray him, to lead him to Gwi-Ma, to lie and lie again…
“What happened?”
And then, his own mind answers: You loved. And you failed to love. You failed to say that you loved her. You tried. God in heaven, you know you tried.
And yet, did she know?
Did she know anything more than the lies you told her?
Because now, Jinu remembers…
Jinu remembers all of it.
The hurt in her voice. The vulnerability he took advantage of. The way she tried to shove him through his chest, as though she could reach into jis heart—or where it should have been. The way he left her in her own remorse and shame.
You were no better than Gwi-Ma.
A single act of sacrifice, a single apology, fixes none of that.
This is when he realizes: there was no demon. There were no patterns or devil's temptation at work. There was no Gwi-Ma.
Only Jinu.
All that you have done was all you. You.
Jinu.
You did it.
You failed her.
Because when you could have had the chance to be free, to take her hand, to offer your hand back to your brothers, when you could have been thinking about everyone but your own tiny little soul, you failed.
It’s in this new life Jinu realizes:
Gwi-Ma’s lies about him were all true. All of it.
He's done nothing for his life except for his own good.
He's crying. He's screaming. He reaches through the ki to harness all of the rage and shame and guilt. Shadow ripples around him. The mark and pattern tattooed on his skin glows. He can hear Romance and Baby startled, and both try to reach out. Ice, a whirlwind of ice, flourishes around him to express the hatred he could only cast to himself.
The field around him implodes. Beautiful flowers wilt. Jinu's breath steams off in frost. Geysers of ice explode through the field, trying to penetrate through the Honmoon. It’s done nothing wrong. But he can’t help it—he's angry at it for thinking to save him. It should know better. The intricate field of ki ripples underneath him, and yet, the Honmoon doesn’t flinch back from his outburst.
It tries to caress Jinu, console him, and reach out and touch him.
But why? Why?
It absorbs each and every intent he makes. It takes in his screaming. It responds to his cries with its own.
It's crying with him.
It recognizes all the pain he's felt in his life. All the shame and guilt he carried, and it weeps with him. Jinu's gasping for breath, shuddering at the vulnerability, the tenderness it reaches out to give him. And Jinu feels it:
I love you. I'm proud of you.
But why? Why?
Suddenly, Jinu feels a crushing weight wrap around him.
Abby. It’s Abby first.
Then Mystery. Then Baby and Romance.
Free, Jinu thinks they’re muttering. Free, he thinks he's muttering alone with them.
He feels their warmth again. He feels their heartbeats—their heartbeats! Flesh and bone. This is what they all wanted. This is what they all get. The reward. But how can this be the reward for evil?
And when he begs the Honmoon for answers, for its twisted sense of justice and mercy, it is silent.
He's wondered, all this time, about how it would feel to be human again.
He wasn't prepared for it: the anger coursing through his veins that flashes with heat. The shame crawling through his skin that makes him want to run.
The love still beating in your heart and the hope blooming in his chest that makes him cry. Everything churning inside of him makes you want to sing.
Jinu takes a breath. And another.
He stops fighting this moment, just for this moment. And he lets go.
You are all alive. Within the field, in the arms of your brothers, breathe in life.
This is how it feels to be Jinu, at first, with the first touch of grace and forgiveness, beyond what he ever deserves.
Abby found that the streets of Seoul haven’t changed, not really.
Cars travel through in the blink of an eye. Streetlights and neon signs burn through his eyes, and he has to look away or else he would get a migraine. There’s light and noise and life even during the darkest of nights. The air is filled with airplanes and buildings that dare to pierce through new heights that Abby never thought were possible.
But below, in the streets, it still hasn’t changed. People, exhausted, hope in their eyes of the small joy waiting for them, still weave through the streets the same as they did back then. They still had kings—idols now—towering over roads in billboards, smiling, pretty, spotless, holding onto whatever product that sells, that convinces everyone it can make anyone who looks up just like them.
He smiles sourly as they finally find the apartment complex buried in the streets and open the door to their new home.
It’s a two-room apartment. A kitchen connected to the living room. A bathroom. A bedroom that is as wide as when he holds his arms out. The walls were stained with liquid he didn’t want to know. The light dimmed and flickered, as if it were exhausting to be on. There was the perpetual smell of cigarettes and alcohol from their neighbors.
“Cozy,” he says cheerfully.
“Rather be back on the street?” Jinu asks behind him.
“Tempting, tried that in my first life. Wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.”
Baby snorts at that, walking in first, kicking his shoes off. Romance follows him with a box filled with whatever they found in the garbage disposal of their previous record label company. In an instant, the company had called security on them. And that was the end of that possibility.
They found with what little they had, on a bank account made with their fake IDs that Abby now supposes is actually real. He slides down his body against the wall and wiggles his feet. Mystery leans against his shoulder and waves his hand to gesture Jinu to join them. Jinu sighs, carrying a plastic bag with all the food from the convenience store, and they’re all splattered in the main room, tired, buzzed, like they were hungover from the resurrection. Baby turns the faucet on, which groans from the rust, spluttering out water, before filling it in the kettle.
As they wait, Jinu takes out all of what they could afford at the moment, starting with some soda cans with their faces still printed on them.
“Didn’t take you to be so sentimental,” Abby says.
“They were on sale,” Jinu says with a shrug when Mystery gives him a questioning glance.
“Must have been in clearance then,” Romance says with a dry smile, tilting his can up, examining his face imprinted on it from all angles. “Always trying to get rid of us.”
“Well, that explains why my cans had the most left,” Abby jokes self-deprecatingly as he reaches for his own. Mango, he reads. Never even heard of that fruit in his previous life.
“Probably because of the rumors that they tried to put protein powder in yours,” Baby offers back in the kitchen.
“I did ask for that.” Abby sighs. “It costs to be a visionary.” He takes a sip and is taken aback by the flavor, by how sweet and tart it feels against his tongue. “Interesting… now let me get some of Mystery’s.”
“Sure, drink all of me.”
And they all snicker at the language. Baby is back with the boiled water, and Jinu brings out—
“Really? Wait, let me guess—they were on sale.”
Jinu shrugs as he brings out three ramen cups with all the faces—their faces—imprinted on them. Abby isn’t sure how to feel about the way they’re staring at him. Zoey smiling with what looks like stripes on a hat from—
“United States of America,” Mystery offers. “They say that’s where she’s from.”
Baby snorts. “Explains the hyper-activeness.”
Mystery curls the hair that delicately hides his face, hiding those eyes of his, with his slender fingers. “And her poor taste,” he says, curling his lips up for that soft smile of his. Abby raises his eyebrows at that.
Rumi is winking in the cup. Superstar flavored, it says. Dazzling, Abby thinks. “No wonder you sold your soul again,” Abby says with a toothy grin.
Jinu flinches at that. His arm holds the other. “I… well… It wasn’t—”
Abby stops smiling. “It’s a joke. Sorry.”
Jinu smiles back weakly, attempting to laugh. “No, no worries.” He swaps the cup and uses the chopsticks to take some of Zoey’s Hamburger-flavored ramen instead. And Abby wonders if Jinu isn’t comfortable touching or handling anything related to Rumi just yet. He doesn’t blame him. They watch as Jinu takes the first bite of Zoey’s ramen. “Exotic,” he answers when they give him a questioning look.
“Do you even know what a hamburger tastes like?” Mystery asks, getting some for himself.
“Sort of like this, right?”
Mystery points to his soda can. “That tasted like blueberry to you?”
Jinu concedes the point.
They eat, mindlessly chatting, filling the cadence with the sound of slurping noodles. “Addicting,” Romance says between the bites. “And for what? 1500 won each?”
“Total of 3000 won. A buy two, get one free sale.”
“Now what made you so resourceful?”
“Poverty.”
Baby points at him with the chopsticks. “And look how that turned out for us. A blessing in disguise.”
Abby chuckles with the rest of them. And the tension they all feel in their chest eases, even for just a little. Questions are looming all over them:
How are we alive?
What do we do?
Where do we go from here?
But no one questions if they should split apart, figure it out with the shattered lives they may or may not have had in their previous lives. That isn’t an option. They’re in this together. Somehow, they’ll need to make it out together as well.
Abby eyes the third ramen cup. Mira’s face is there, smirking, all confident and powerful. The red flames burn through the cup. And he tries to take a bite.
“Careful,” Baby says. “It might be too spicy for you.”
Mystery eyes the ramen cup before taking some of Rumi’s. “I don’t understand why humans purposefully seek something that feels so painful and sharp.”
“Yeah, well,” Abby says, not really able to take his eyes off of her, “maybe that’s what they’re looking for. There’s a rush to it that makes you feel alive.”
Baby clicks his tongue. “Put that in a song, why don’t we?”
“Soda pop,” Romance says. “Spicy pepper—sure, why not go through the whole food pyramid while we’re at it?”
“Makes the sponsorship deals simpler.”
“Getting ahead of ourselves, aren’t we?” Jinu says dryly.
“It’s called confidence,” Baby says with a shrug.
“We can’t just… just go back on the spotlight,” Jinu says, his voice strained.
“Who says we have to right away?” Abby says, leaning back against the stained walls that he knows they’re going to have to clean up. He closes his eyes, trying to concentrate on words instead of the fire dancing on his tongue. Heat rolls through his head. It’s hot. His body flushes from the heat. It tastes exactly like Mira, he thinks, and he remembers the woldo piercing through his stomach. Maybe he was imagining it, but the Mira painted on the cup is glaring at him, insulted at the idea that she is being eaten by him.
Fire. Cleansing fire. Purifying fire. He tries to smile. It really is too hot for someone like him. A demon who theoretically paid his dues in hell. Abby wonders if they are on borrowed time, if they’re here for some mission. If it’s just the amusement of God, or worse, Gwi-Ma.
What if they failed again?
“Is this real?” Romance says nervously. “Are we… really…” he stops himself, not daring to say the words again, not daring to think through the implications.
The whole room is silent. Jinu looks away. And in place of the silence, Abby shrugs. “I don’t think we need answers,” he says. “Not now. Just decisions.”
“And what are we going to do?”
“Back to the basics,” Abby says softly. “Start from the ground up.”
“I’m sure we'll make a comeback with a new album with the record. We just gotta record it first—”
“No,” Jinu says. “No. Abby’s right. Back to the basics. From the beginning. Learning how to be human again.”
Mystery nods his head, while Baby sighs. “No shortcuts? I mean—just a live stream can make…” he looks around him, the soft stares, and releases a deep breath. “Okay, yeah. Back to the start. Back to the beginning. All the way back to 0 and build up the foundation.” He makes a smirk—the tiniest, most sincere of it with something other than confidence: hope. “Sounds kind of fun.”
“And the hunters?”
Abby stares into the cup, all three of them. Would they hunt them down again? He’s almost afraid to find out.
“Avoid them while we still can,” Jinu whispers. “Things… things are complicated enough.”
Abby snorts. “Good luck with that. They catch a whiff, and they’ll be on our throats.”
Baby bumps his fist against Jinu’s shoulder. “Now you’re just threatening some of us with a good time.”
Jinu chuckles at that. And Abby is tempted to smile again. Fragile, he thinks. But durable. Persevering.
Perhaps that’s the best way to describe a person’s heart.
Abby touches his own chest, feeling the heartbeat. He softens at the sensation of the beating. He really does have one. Each and every heartbeat is a statement.
I’m alive.
I’m human.
No matter what, I will carry on. The rhythm of my life will carry on.
“Sooner or later, they’ll find out,” Jinu says. “But… I would like to think we would be more ready by then.”
“Ready for what exactly?”
He doesn’t answer, rubbing his chest absent-mindedly instead, and none of them bother to ask.
“For now, all we have is us,” Mystery says.
Abby thinks he likes the sound of that. For right now, that’s reassuring enough.
“Well then,” he says and raises the can, “here’s to… our second chances.”
And they all follow suit. They continue to eat what they have left. Some packages of candy that they’re all taking delight in. Sugar—a luxury back then, a common treat now. A bottle of soju they all welcome—strong and smooth as ever.
They take turns singing old trot songs from the past. They think of new ideas for songs to sing. They take turns brainstorming how to debut again.
And for now, songs are hope. They aren’t expectations. They aren’t illusions. They’re just what they were always meant to be: a vessel of life. Mystery hums the background. Baby is on the percussion, a kick and snare pattern with his own hands. Romance adlibs all the sound effects that they can’t help but laugh with. Abby sings, harmonizing with Jinu, backing him up, hoping to strengthen the resolve in Jinu’s voice, when they sing about how the harvest in the field will come again.
And now, laughter, from each of the boys, adds only more to the music.
Night comes to them. Hard. Like all the restless times in hell have caught up to them. On the floor, they began to sleep, one by one, taking the faith that the dreams they’ll face are more merciful than what has been offered before.
And before he closes his eyes, Abby thinks of Mira once again. Her fierce eyes. Her sharpness. Her resolution. Her determination. He feels the scar on his stomach, the stitches of where the tip of her woldo went straight through him.
Will it happen again? Or will she spare him for his humanity?
Is he human? Is he still a demon?
He doesn’t know how to answer these questions. He knows he will have to answer them sooner or later.
It makes him uneasy. He doesn’t know how to be human anymore. He doesn’t think he could ever live up to what he has to be now. He doesn’t know how to even make up for what he has done. He would be at the mercy of the hunters when the time comes. And he will fail.
But for now, he is not alone. He cannot hear the thoughts of Gwi-Ma. He is looking forward to the next day for a chance to sing and dance.
Dance! Yes, he can dance, move to the rhythm of music, express in ways words and sound always fail. He was in charge of the choreography. And the idea of dancing once again brings him so much… light. Abby taps his chest again in the hope of that. He distracts himself from the conscience of his mind with the dream of him slow dancing to the music that they made, following Mira’s lead as she holds his hand, promising him that she’s never letting go.