The waiting room door shut behind them with a soft click. The hallway beyond was empty, muted by thick carpets and the hum of the building’s ventilation. Yena stood poised, arms folded delicately, eyes guarded.
Oliver looked at her with a measured ease, like someone retrieving a bookmark from a story half-finished. “You sounded beautiful tonight,” he began.
She nodded once. “Thanks.”
“I just thought we could talk,” he continued. “It’s been... years. And I never really got to ask why you cut me out so completely.”
Yena’s spine stiffened, though her voice remained polished. “It was mutual, wasn’t it?”
Oliver hesitated. “Was it? Because it felt like you vanished before I could say anything real. You built walls fast and sharp.”
She didn’t reply to that.
He stepped a little closer, gaze flickering between her expression and the rose hairpin glinting faintly against her temple. “Funny,” he said quietly, “How you always had this way of making people feel like they were lucky just to stand next to you, even when you didn’t say a word. You still do.”
That should’ve sounded nostalgic. Instead, it scraped across something raw inside her.
“You ever wonder,” he added, “What would've happened if you'd let someone know you before you became unreachable?”
That did it. Yena’s breath hitched. Her composure splintered.
She stepped back, voice cracking just enough to sting. “You’re full of yourself, Oliver.”
His eyes widened at what he had implied without knowing the consequences.
“I don’t need this conversation, and I don’t want it.” Her voice rose. “So do me a favor and don’t speak to me again.”
Without waiting for a response, Yena turned and fled. Footsteps sharp. Gown trailing behind her like a severed tether. The hallway outside the waiting rooms pulsed with backstage chatter—stylists gathering brushes, production assistants muttering over comms, trophies being packed away, and fan banners folded into crates. But Yena’s footsteps drowned it all.
Her heels clacked sharply at first, echoing with purpose… then stopped altogether.
She wasn’t sure how far she’d run, only that her breath came in ragged bursts and the white gown she wore felt tighter than it had minutes before—like a costume stitched to restrain emotion. Her chest burned, and her jaw clenched.
She had gone too far down the hallway to turn back. Around a bend, past two emergency exits, and toward the narrow alcove behind a staircase, where dust gathered in corners and no cameras ever bothered to roll.
She collapsed there, folding into herself. Gown pooled around her like moonlight stripped from the sky, glittering quietly against the dull concrete.
Tears came quickly. No drama. No gasps.
Just wet pain dripping from her lashes, the kind she hadn’t allowed herself to feel since her debut. She pressed her hand against her chest, the hairpin trembling slightly in her curled ponytail.
*You always had this way of making people feel lucky...*
She wanted to scream, but instead, she sobbed.
Quiet, aching, shoulders shaking beneath the weight of pride, grief, and the humiliating realization that even now, she felt like she was losing control of her own story.
She didn’t hear the footsteps at first. Not until they were close. Just the faint shuffle of someone who didn’t want to startle her.
A shadow crossed the corner as a hand extended gently from the edge, holding out a folded handkerchief—pink silk, embroidered with a faint white thread.
Yena sniffled. She didn’t look up, just reached without question, and took it with trembling fingers. She wiped her eyes, the soft fabric absorbing mascara and tears alike.
“...Thank you,” she whispered hoarsely, voice barely audible.
Silence.
Then a voice spoke low and even. Completely calm yet familiar to her ears, “Take care of yourself.”
Yena stiffened as she looked up. Romance stood there, bathed in the half-light, coat draped perfectly, expression unreadable. No smirk in play. No games this time, just his presence.
She stared, heart suddenly racing. He turned without flourish and walked away, disappearing down the bend of the hallway with the same silence he arrived in.
Yena sat there frozen, hand clutching the handkerchief, the wet satin now pressed against her lap.
Her breathing slowed, but her thoughts didn’t because for all the words she'd fought against… It was the ones he didn’t say that haunted her most.
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Romance stood in the corridor long after Yena had disappeared into the stairwell shadows. The soft click of her heels haunted the silence. He hadn’t chased her, hadn’t even lingered long enough to watch her dry her tears.
But he’d handed her comfort, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that he meant it.
“Stupid,” he murmured to himself, tone acidic. “Too much softness... that wasn't part of the script.”
He folded his hands behind his back, pacing slowly. Her tears had bitten into something within him—something long buried. Something he thought he’d cut out centuries ago.
Why did he care so suddenly?
Before the thought could settle, the hallway warped, shifting from stone and spotlight to red mist and obsidian sky covered by the Honmoon. The air thickened. The shadows deepened.
Romance had been summoned. His once mortal guise dissipates into his sluggish demon form and Hanbok, as he stands on the charred caldera of Gwi-Ma’s fiery throne.
Jinu stood beside him, arms folded, gaze sharp but not mocking this time. Gwi-Ma loomed before them in his hellish form.
“You are progressing well,” Gwi-Ma said, voice like molten rock—heavy, gleaming, dangerous. “The girl hesitates now. She feels for you. It's only a matter of time.”
Romance bowed slowly, a side glance to Jinu betraying a flicker of uncertainty.
“I didn’t think comforting her would do the trick,” Romance admitted. “It felt... indirect.”
Jinu smirked, nodding in approval. “It’s not always the blades that pierce the deepest; sometimes it’s the touch that lingers.”
Romance frowned. “She’s not that pitiful, just because someone dented her confidence, doesn't mean she's a damsel already.”
“No,” Jinu said. “She’s just human. You could make use of that fact.”
Romance turned back to Gwi-Ma, who remained motionless, watching through veils and flame.
“She’ll resist,” Romance added. “I saw it. Even when her guard dropped, she snapped back. She’s not like others.”
“That’s why you will change tactics,” Gwi-Ma replied. “You will mirror what she wants to see. Her grief. Her questions. Let her see what you can offer.”
Jinu nodded in agreement. “You’re already halfway there, like it or not. She has compassion, take advantage of it.”
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The city slept in stillness. Streetlights cast fragmented shadows across cracked pavement and peeling lantern posts. Neon signs blinked their last light for the night, and stray cats curled into alley corners like forgotten myths.
But Huntrix was awake.
Tonight was scout duty—routine yet relentless. Demons had slithered through fresh rifts hours before, slipping between realms with a hunger too chaotic to go unnoticed. The huntresses dispersed across sectors, Honmoon blazing beneath their feet, each armed with wards designed to protect what sleep could not
Yena moved through the quiet with mechanical focus.
Her boots scraped lightly against gravel, divine fan pulsing with faded energy. Her celestial blue hoodie billowed against the wind, the tiny bells on her Norigae swaying with the gentle breeze, producing a light chime.
She was tired. Not just physically, but spiritually. The award show had drained her. Not just the loss. Not just Oliver.
She gripped her divine fan in one trembling hand, chest heaving. She’d already cleared five rift breaches in her quadrant.
Her soul screamed for rest, but the demons weren’t done.
Their movements were coordinated now—unnervingly so. They poured in like a liquid nightmare: slithering through vents, clawing up rusted drainpipes, screeching through broken window frames. Dozens. Maybe more.
Her fan sliced through the first wave with practiced elegance, bursting three into mist, pushing another into an electrical ward, but the energy cost was steep. Her reflexes slowed. Her breathing turned shallow. Sweat clung to her neck beneath the collar of her hoodie.
She stumbled backward.
Her vision blurred.
A claw grazed her shoulder, then another across her arm. Her boot slid against gravel, fan raised again but weaker now. One demon lunged. She blocked. Two more encircled.
Her legs buckled slightly, sweat clinging to her brow, breath shallow. The demons noticed. Her fatigue was like blood in the water.
She opened her mouth to scream for backup, but a gentle hand covered her lips. An arm wrapped around her waist from behind, still and precise. Her body was locked in place, and every muscle tensed.
A voice whispered against her ear, low and deliberate, “Don't scream. If you fight, they won't hesitate to tear you apart.”
Yena’s eyes widened as she tried to elbow whoever dared to hold her mid-battle, but the grip held fast, firm and infuriatingly calm.
Her fan flickered, ready to strike, but her body couldn’t break the grip. It wasn’t brute force—it was balance. Restraint. Her captor knew her strength and exactly how to harness it.
For one breathless moment, she stayed still during the chaos.
And the demons froze. All at once.
Then, the horde burst into wild retreat. They launched themselves into wards, scattered into alleys, clawed up walls they couldn’t climb. Every escape was a collision course with hunters, but none of them cared.
The air went still as Yena was released. She staggered forward, caught herself, spun around, and there he stood.
Backlit by flickering signage and the glow of her disrupted ward, coat sweeping at his ankles like mist caught mid-step. His pink hair framed his face with effortless precision, and his eyes, moonlit and dangerous, rested on hers with unspoken weight.
He leaned slightly against a rusted railing, as if the chaos had never touched him.
She didn’t speak, her fan disappeared as her heartbeat thundered because in that moment, it wasn’t what she had survived—It was what everything else had fled.
And she wasn’t sure what terrified her more: The demons or him.
The shattered streetlight above cast slivers of sickly white light across the alley, painting strange shadows onto walls littered with torn ward posters and graffiti that bled from a demon's touch. The air was quiet now. No clawing. No screeches. Just the faint hum of a world still bracing for what almost was.
Yena stood alone, battered boots scraping softly on the gravel. Her divine fan had dimmed to a faint pulse, a whisper against her thigh. Her breathing was labored from the fight, but her focus had shifted.
Romance stood only a few feet away, the mist curling subtly behind him like it obeyed his breath. His posture was relaxed, but every movement felt deliberate, like a dancer hiding blades in his sleeves. The moonlight edged his face with silver, sharpening the curve of his jaw, the steady line of his mouth.
Yena didn’t speak. Not yet, as she was watching him.
Romance raised a brow, just slightly, but it carried weight.
“They weren’t scared off by you,” he said, voice low, edged with something deeper than arrogance. “It was because of my order.”
Yena’s eyes widened at the statement, “Your order?”
His gaze didn’t falter. “Of course.”
That caught her off guard.
She stepped back half a beat, jaw tightening. “Why call them off? How did you do that?”
Romance slowly paced to the side, fingers brushing the edge of a rusted railing. “There are things we don’t let you humans know. About our hierarchy, about what certain demons carry. By blood, by oath, by consequence.”
She blinked. “Are you saying you outrank them?”
He gave a ghost of a smile. “I don’t need a throne for them to kneel. I carry what they fear most: a reminder of what they’ll never reclaim.”
Yena’s lips parted, not in disbelief but in curiosity.
Romance noticed it—the first crack in her dismissiveness. The first flicker of wondering instead of recoiling.
He stepped closer.
“You fight them because you think they are violent,” he continued. “But you never ask why they become what you’re forced to kill.”
Her brows lowered. “Because they choose chaos.”
“That's what you think,” he said. “They’re driven to that point. Shunned. Isolated. That their flaws disqualify their existence. Shame is the chaos, they rot in.”
Yena blinked at that. Slowly. Like the sentence had hit bone.
He stepped into the light. “There was a time demons begged for healing. Now they beg for the pain to end quickly.”
She lowered her fan, hesitation threading through her voice. “…not all demons are evil?”
Romance tilted his head. “Evil isn’t a birthright. It’s what’s left behind when no one listens.”
Yena stared hard, something unraveling quietly inside her chest, and then, with a breath she hadn’t realized she’d held. She asked, “Then what’s your shame?”
Romance froze. Not physically, but internally. His breath stilled. His eyes didn’t shift. And yet everything in him retreated from the question like a wound pressed too deep.
He didn’t answer as his silence said everything.
Yena felt it, the sharp break between his rehearsed poise and the crack of something real. Something wounded.
She regretted asking it. She stepped back, adjusting her composure, voice faintly apologetic. “I'm sorry. I didn’t mean—”
Romance looked away, already disinterested in continuing the conversation.
She didn’t press again as a frown crept to her face, feeling stupid for even asking. She turned, stepping past him with quiet grace, the chill in the air brushing against her face like breath from a door she wasn’t ready to open.
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