Minseok glanced upward where Luhan’s secret companion perched on a hanging art sculpture of the earth wrapped in a ribbon. Tao sat in the curve of the ribbon’s end and smiled when he saw Minseok looking. He couldn’t openly greet the guardian angel because Luhan would have seen it as him talking to the air, so Minseok just managed to wave to the angel in the backseat when Luhan was watching the road for his turn.

He frowned that he basically had to ignore Tao as they walked around the mall. He couldn’t offer him a soft pretzel bite or ask him how he was. Despite their brief meeting and exchange, he considered Tao a friend, or at least a friendly acquaintance by association. He was protecting Luhan, even if by occupation, and Minseok appreciated that.

He could tell too, that Tao had some endearment for his charge. When Luhan shouted his frustration over obstinate department advisors, the angel had angrily nodded in solidarity, and when crumbs dashed at the corner of his mouth, Tao brushed them off with gentle fingers before Minseok had a chance to tell his unsuspecting friend.

While walking through an expensive brand store (Minseok learned that Luhan had cash to burn), he caught the guardian angel staring at a black long sleeve with the brand’s symbol interlocked and repeated across the sleeve and partly across the collar area. So when Luhan split to try stuff on in the changing room, Minseok nabbed the guardian angel, one of the shirts, and held it arms-length in front of himself before a pillar mirror. To other humans, the view would have been odd since he had to hold the shirt a little higher for Tao’s height, but the gist of his actions still made sense. To Minseok, the now blushing guardian angel in the mirror made him grin.

“I appreciate it, Minseok, but you should pretend that you can’t see me.”

“I’ve been doing that all day, and I don’t like it,” Minseok said low enough so that the rich people in the store couldn’t hear him. “I think you need a slightly bigger size. Hold on.”

Minseok hurried to grab a size up from the rack and put it against his (Tao’s) body and nodded in approval.

“This is the best I can do without you physically trying it on, but I think it’ll fit.”

“Minseok, how would I even receive this from you?”

“I’ll just invite Luhan over, and when he’s not looking, I’ll give this to you.”

Without letting the guardian stammer out a complete sentence, Minseok hurried to the counter to purchase the shirt, giving his best professional smile as the cashier sent disapproving and disbelieving looks at him. When he returned, Luhan had come out, and his eyebrows bounced up his forehead.

“I thought you said you wouldn’t buy anything.”

“I can change my mind.”

Luhan rolled his eyes but smiled and went to go purchase his items. Normally, Minseok would have accompanied him, but he took the chance instead to nudge Tao with the fancy bag. The guardian angel stared at the bag, twirling his fingers through his hem, his smile squiggly in an attempt to suppress it.

“Thank you.”

He couldn’t respond when Luhan turned around and bid for them to leave, but as they left the store, Tao leaned in at his ear again, a smile laced in his words.

“Also, consider buying something for your demon guard. He looks the very definition of a jealous kitty right now.”

Minseok jerked to a stop, looking at the angel, then whipped his head back and forth trying to spot Chen. He couldn’t, and Luhan smacked a hand onto the top of his head.

“Why’re you suddenly looking around like a sprinkler?”

“No reason.”

“Whenever someone says that that means they have a reason.”

“It’s nothing, Luhan.” When Luhan gave him a look, Minseok thought for something to change the subject. “Did you have a sudden shopping urge? Last time, it was the pet park.”

Minseok wondered about the spontaneity last time, but now he was wondering why the professor looked away and everywhere but at Minseok.

“I heard about it from a student, and I wanted to check it out.”

“You specifically said that it had to be that day though. Was that the day your student was going too?”

Red colored Luhan’s cheeks, and he seemed to suddenly gain an interest in the tile flooring. Minseok couldn’t help his smile from stretching into a sly one.

“Playing favorites, Professor?”

“No! How dare you even imply the compromise of my teaching integrity.”

Minseok laughed as they found an open corner of the food court, setting their bags down.

“Okay, let me rephrase. Getting friendly, Luhan?”

“No! I mean… Okay, a little, but only because I have to see him more often than my other students. He’s the one with the technical problems on the homework site.”

For the next fifteen minutes, Minseok listened to the engineering professor explain and rant about the school’s incompetence regarding Oh Sehun’s (that name sounded familiar…) credit transfer, then about the Avalik Engineering homework system’s terrible internal system organization and their rude and untrustworthy customer service. Minseok was listening, but he indulged on the idea that maybe Luhan’s rage magnified for the defence of a certain student.

“I am switching homework systems the moment the next semester starts. If they can’t handle one transfer student’s credentials, I’m not trusting them to manage anyone else’s.”

“And the pet park comes into this how?”

“Oh, I have him physically do the homework instead. He comes into office hours to get it checked. There are tradeoffs even if he gets my personalized feedback, so I and my department head agreed that this wasn’t favoritism. He started telling me random bits about his life, and as a good professor, I listened.”

“What prompted him to do that?”

Luhan paused, then shrugged.

“I don’t know. He’s actually a quiet person, but he just started talking about strange noises in the alleys of his apartment. Then he would mention something else a different day and so on. He… seems like someone who’s always alone. He never talked about anyone else. Even when I happen to spot him outside of class, he’s always by himself.”

“Maybe all his friends go to different schools. You said he was a transfer, right?”

“Yeah, but still. School less if there are friends there at the same school with you.”

“True.”

The smile of his university friend flashed in his mind, and Minseok wondered about his wellbeing, if he followed his parents’ plan for him to attend business school or if he managed to open his own psychiatric practice like he had envisioned. The last time Minseok saw him, hurt and indignation befell his face as Minseok snapped at him to leave.

“Hey, are you okay?”

He took a deep breath and sighed it out.

“Yeah. Just thought of an old friend.”

Luhan didn’t ask anything, and Minseok sighed out of relief when the professor just patted his hand. Behind him, Tao sent him a sympathetic smile.

“Anyway, anything else happening with you? What’d you need those news articles for?”

“I was thinking of making a list of articles for students to research. Expand their expectations, you know? They can get some extra credit and some real-life knowledge. I got the idea after I saw this article about a smalltown electrical outage without any explanation and because you told me about those other events earlier.”

“Smalltown electrical outage? I think I just read that this morning. Some place called ee-zeeg?”

“Izid,” Luhan laughed. “I’m keeping tabs on it since I’m curious. Turns out one of my coworkers is from there, and she got permission to take applications for a small group of students to survey the place with her this winter session.”

“Are you going to recommend your star pupil?”

Luhan squinted a look at him before looking up in thought.

“Well, actually, he is one of my best students. He picks up material quicker and catches details most students don’t. Ironically, the mistakes he makes are those that most students wouldn’t make, but he learns from them once I tell him.”

“Sooo?”

“Sooo I might recommend he apply and say that I would be happy to write the rec letter required with the application in private, but I’m going to tell all my students about it and write letters if they ask me and I think they’re a good fit.”

Minseok snickered at the way the professor straightened and crossed his arms trying to look proper, then clapped his hands together in excitement.

“Oh! Speaking of personal achievements, did I tell you that those fancy tech people called me?”

“No, but I told you that they would.”

“They did! We’re trying to get all the numbers and practicalities and benefits all ironed out, and then I’m going to present it the department. I suggested the idea in the last meeting, so they’re going to be expecting I have all the calculations and procedures soon, but I’m excited! My teaching coworkers were all for it. It was just a couple of the advisors and other office staff—you know the people I was ranting about earlier—who were against it. That Jeong Jaehyun person is so nice, by the way. He agreed with me that you’re probably the best person we’ve ever had the luck of meeting.”

Minseok covered his face, and, when he saw Tao nod behind the professor, he bent into the tabletop, feeling all the way down his neck burn in embarrassment.

“Aww, don’t be shy, Minseok. Embrace the compliment.”

“Ugh, I can’t. It’s not in my nature to.”

Luhan laughed, a loud but wide whopping sound, and poked Minseok’s cheeks.

“Don’t worry. If you’re friends with me, you’ll learn to love them and feel that you deserve them. I will make sure of it.”

Chuckling, Minseok swatted Luhan’s fingers away, but they returned with soft furious pecks.

“Also, confession time—I’ve been wanting to poke your cheeks since I saw you. How on earth did someone as baby-faced as you end up working at a waste disposal plant as a manager?”

“Stop that. And I earned my way there, thank you very much.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt that. You barely knew any of the popular songs or groups on the radio, which tells me that you live under a rock if not at your workplace, Mr. Dumpling Cheeks. Ooh, maybe I’ll call you ‘baozi’ from now on.”

“Nooooo.”

Both Luhan and Tao chuckled, and Minseok groaned but smiled too.

“Enough about my work stuff and ranting. What’s been going on with you?” Then Luhan gasped and planted his hands on the table, leaning in with all seriousness. “That sneaky, rude, cat-looking coworker of yours—has he been harassing you still?”

Minseok wheezed, cackling at that description of Chen. Luhan maybe met him for a total of thirty seconds, and he already had a spot-on concept of the demon’s personality.

“Oh no, he broke you, didn’t he? Minseok, wait! Let me cure you with a hug and ice cream!”

Just as Minseok was starting to calm, his stomach clapped up in laughter again, which didn’t help in pushing a smoochy grabby Luhan away from him.

“No, no, I’m fine. You just described him super accurately.”

“So he IS rude?! Minseok!”

“He is, but it’s fine. I can handle him.”

“You shouldn’t have to be ‘handling’ anything. If the guy is a , then why do you have to endure his behavior?”

Because he’s guarding me from becoming supernatural mincemeat.

“We work together, and it’s inevitable. Besides, he’s not all that bad.”

Luhan’s face contorted through a variety of expressions, some of them Minseok didn’t know was possible to make, but all denoting disgust.

“You know this is how abuse happens, right? What if he’s brainwashing you into believing that the ty things that he does to you is alright?”

He knew that Luhan was speaking to him, but the voice of his university friend echoed in his head, and Minseok stopped to listen. In that berating concern, he had said the same thing about Minwoo. The undertone of contempt, the use of guilt, the show of affection at the end—Minseok saw the evidence that his university friend had presented but never believed his accusation. There could have been holes in Minseok’s story whenever he confided in his friend, or he could have misinterpreted his brother and parents’ actions and words. That made him hesitant to label his family as manipulating him.

But Chen differed from Minwoo. As Yixing once said, the demon was cantankerous. Every word hissed and swiped little kitty claws. The contempt puffed out in a proud show, intent on insult, and if he ever did anything remotely benign, he immediately bristled to hide it or spoke another jab. They were housing(?) together only because Yixing was a literal and figurative angel and in charge.

Chen didn’t like his task or him—for sure—and any questions he had asked about Minseok, Minseok dismissed as demon’s curiosity. Any actions Chen made—with bite or not—was simply because Minseok was human. It wasn’t because Minseok made the wrong choice in caring. He didn’t have to return to that same cycle of worrying for someone, doing what he thought was right, and then being scorned for it. So in a weird way, Chen supported the idea that Minseok wasn’t individually bad.

So he shook his head to Luhan’s suspicions and to the voice of his university friend.

“I know it’s not okay, but he’s just regular mean. Nothing else. Actually, just today, I thought that we got along a little better.”

Luhan sat back and raised an eyebrow, silently asking Minseok to prove himself.

“You’ve seen my garden space, right? I was lying down on the daybed there, and he covered the sun for me. I was also kinda upset over something, and he tried to make me feel better about it.”

The professor snorted, and the way his angelic face twisted up with flared nostrils had Minseok snorting too, but in laughter.

“Yeah, I totally see his kindness in that bare minimum of human decency.”

Well, he is a demon.

“It’s nothing to worry about, Lu.”

“And so I will absolutely be worrying about it. I don’t want to be the one wiping snot, tears, and ice cream from my shoulder as you cry on it.”

“Uh, although I see how both could end up with someone crying and eating ice cream, work harassment and a relationship breakup are two different things.”

“Oh. I think I mixed them up, but also that coworker of yours was all touchy with you. WAIT, IS HE UALLY HARA—”

Minseok pinched Luhan’s lips shut, earning him a confused but indignant look from the professor. Minseok just groaned and smacked a palm to his face. Even Tao leaned in closer behind Luhan, serious worry furrowing his eyebrows. Then he straightened and whipped his head towards the walkway where shoppers passed the stores. Minseok barely had a chance to wonder about the guardian’s behavior when a chill in his back made him shudder, his proxy mark pulsing.

“Minseok, someone opened a portal, and a presence appeared. We need to leave.”

“What?”

Then he remembered that Luhan couldn’t hear or see the growing alarm from the guardian angel. Instead, the professor just pulled off his lip clamp by Minseok’s wrist and didn’t let go.

“Minseok, I’m serious right now. ual harassment is no joke.”

“I know it’s not. I just don’t want to discuss it in such a public space and get judged for it. Actually, let’s continue discussing it in your car.”

“Well, okay. Let me buy you something from the food court at least. Do you like smoothies?”

The professor gathered their bags in his free hand and pulled Minseok through the throng of people, in the same direction as the presence. He felt it now. Something small but quick sped in their direction. Tao’s aura glowed beside them, and a buzz nearby vibrated harder.

“Don’t get the coconut one. It’s just coconut water with pineapples.”

“Lu, I really don’t need a smoothie. Let’s just go.”

“If you’re worried about money, don’t be. I budget too.”

“No, I just—”

“Minseok, duck!”

He grabbed Luhan and tackled both of them to the ground, flinching as wind sliced above his head. The presence retreated, but Minseok felt it—a silent blur—start to circle back around even if a bit clumsily. The professor landed on the shopping bags with a yelp.

“Oww. Did you trip or something?”

Minseok couldn’t keep the façade of ignorant nonchalance, not when the blur shot forward, features growing out of the obscurity. The shadows shaped into feathers, orange-brown eyes, and talons aimed straight for them. Ignoring Luhan’s tugging and questions, Minseok shoved Luhan behind him and steeled himself. Just as the talons sped into arm’s reach, Tao dove in front of them, knocking the creature aside with a yellow and gray shield of light. Careening, the blur tottered before it screeched and flew, but hands snatched it out of the air. Crackles hummed in its place.