“Yongsun-ah, your eleven-o’clock tour group is ready!” 

Yong looked up from the schedules she had been pouring over and nodded. As a personal rule she always tried to avoid the morning tour schedules, if she could, if only because it was hard leaving the apartment too early in the morning. Old habits die hard and Yong’s conscience wouldn’t let her leave without at least making sure that her roommates were fed for the day.

Still some things couldn’t be helped. Luckily, Wheein had announced that she would be leaving early to finish a few pieces at the studio for the next group exhibit with her collective and Byul had been away overnight for a shoot at Jeju and wasn’t due back until that afternoon. So all Yong had to do was check in on Hyejin to make sure the vampire was still sleeping before she left the apartment that morning.

All in all, a smooth morning.

That should have been the first warning sign.

The fact that her boss told her this tour group was particularly excited for her to be their guide should have been the second, but at the time, Yong had been too flattered at the notion of it to notice. Which was probably why it took her longer than it should have to notice.

The moment she opened the door to the conference room, she was met by a familiar sight, enough that she let her eyes glaze over the particularly large group as she introduced herself and began the brief orientation process for the tour. 

It wasn’t until she heard a poorly concealed snicker at the back that her brain finally caught up with what her eyes were seeing.

Sitting at the back row, not even bothering to hide their -eating grins, were her roommates.

Her face must have had quite the expression because Wheein had to double over and clamp both hands over to keep from laughing. Byul, the demonic menace that she was, winked at her. Meanwhile Hyejin, decked out in a hoodie and shades and looking like the world’s worst undercover spy, waved.

She was going to kill them.

The entire exchange took only a few seconds, but enough for Yong to realize that the silence had gone on for too long and there were actual tourists waiting for her to finish up the orientation so they could begin.

“Uhm.” She stammered, looking back at the tour map she had been using for the orientation. As an angel, she has a pretty good grasp of every language, but it was hard to switch back to English so quickly after being derailed like that.  “After lunch we will be visiting Changdeokgung Palace, going through the grand pavilions and taking a tour through the grounds where you will see Geumcheongyo Bridge. Then the bus will take us to two very famous markets in Seoul, Insadong and Namdaemun Market, where you can marvel at galleries and teahouses and do some shopping as well.

“The bus brings us all back to this agency afterwards at around 7PM. Any questions?”

Wheein raised her hand, and Yong had to pray for patience and the ability to keep the smile plastered on her face, “Yes ma’am, you have a question?”

“Yes,” Wheein had pitched her voice one octave lower and her English was heavily accented. Beside her, Byul and Hyejin were struggling to stay upright. “Is it true that you will be able to sneak us into the hidden passage at Gyeongbokgung where Kings were said to sneak in their mistresses from neighboring Kingdoms?”

Byul’s eyes flashed mischievously and Yong had to restrain the urge to roll her eyes. Of course she would put Wheein and Hyejin up to this. “Unfortunately we’ll only be sticking to the common routes today. If there are no more questions, Bus Number 9 is waiting outside!”

She opened the door and waited just outside, directing all the other actual tourists towards the exit with a smile. The moment her roommates came up though, she stopped them with a flash of her wing.

“What are you three doing?”

“Taking a tour,” Byul said innocently, as if it were something they had discussed previously at the dinner table. Over rice and fish. Instead of the cruel and unusual prank that her roommates had apparently planned behind her back. Behind her, Wheein and Hyejin were openly laughing now. 

“Seriously,” Yong scrubbed a hand on her face, “What would it take for you all to leave? Especially you, Hyejin-ah it’s the middle of the day! You’re going to get sick.”

“Insomnia,” Hyejin said, as if that was an apt excuse. Yong levelled her with a glare. “Seriously Unnie. We’ll be in a bus most of the time for me to take quick naps in between and the other places we’re going to all have roofs.” The vampire said, already waving the concern away with  her hand, “Besides, there was no way I was going to let them do this without me.” This last part she said with an equally teasing glint in her eyes. Yong groaned.

“You,” she said, jabbing her finger in Byul’s chest, “When we get home you’re in big trouble!”

Byul just laughed, but she darted forward quick enough to press a quick kiss to Yong’s cheek. Something she felt no remorse about shoving the demon in the face for.

“You three better behave,” she warned, before folding her wings back behind her and letting them pass. “Get on the bus.”

--

To their credit, Byul, Wheein, and Hyejin were mostly on their best behavior. 

While she had been guiding the group through some of the pavilions at Gyeongbokgung, Byul had very loudly commented which rooms in the Palace had been used by the Kings to summon demons or broker hidden treaties with the ancient vampire and werewolf clans. At one of the larger surviving tapestries that depicted some of the older royal families, Hyejin raised her hand to ask why King Jeongjo opted not to include his real firstborn son, who had been turned into a vampire on his seventeenth birthday and was still alive today, in the tapestry. Wheein, bless her soul, had nothing to contribute to the scandalous history lesson, but she did laugh loud and heartily anytime Byul or Hyejin opened their mouths.

Still, Yong had expected worse. If anything, the asides from her roommates seemed to excite the tour group. So she let it slide enough that by the time the group sat down to eat lunch at a restaurant, Yong had no qualms about sitting at the table with her roommates.

“Enjoying the tour?” She asked snidely, snatching the kimchi from Byul’s side of the table and dumping it all on her plate just to be a little petty. The demon pouted but let it slide, already motioning to a waitress for a refill.

“Best idea yet!” Wheein said, over a mouthful of ramyun.

“What about you?” Yong turned to Hyejin, who was already piling her plate with fried chicken. I can have the bus take you back to the apartment while the tour stops at the next palace. 

The vampire just shook her head, “Don’t you worry about me, Unnie. Vampire insomnia , but if I had missed out on this I would have been even more miserable.”

“You’re doing great,” Byul this time, around a mouthful of kimchi. “Just pretend we’re not even there.”

Yong didn’t bother holding back the scoff. “As if that’s even possible with the three of you acting like idiots.”

“Your idiots!” Wheein corrected with a jaunty little wink that had them all laughing.

The Changdeokgung tour was a little better, if only because once they were inside, Byul caught Yong’s eye and gave her a little wink before whisking Wheein and Hyejin away to go on their own private little tour. But, when she still had no sight of the three of them by the time the group reached the bridge, she felt the tendrils of paranoia worming at the back of her mind. 

“I’ll let you all take your pictures and explore the gardens by yourselves for thirty minutes!” Yong announced to her tour group, “Please meet me by the main gates when we entered at three-thirty sharp!” 

The moment she assured to herself that her tour group would cause no mischief (they were mostly American today, with one French couple), she hightailed it back into the palace turned into the corner where she’d last seen her roommates go. While the palace was built around the late fourteenth century, majority of it had been reconstructed or restored over time. Yong was pretty sure none of the original wooden structures were authentic at least, and many of the walls had been fortified with 20th century architectural techniques, which meant that the majority of the hidden passages and tunnels would have been long gone by now. Still, there were those that would have remained, if one knew where to look.

When she reached a dead end she nicked the halo off her head and held it up to her face, peering through it like a large looking glass. When she finally caught sight of her roommates through her halo, they were all lying down on the floor, heads close together in a triangle, behind what should be a wooden panel.

The hidden door was easy enough to open, but the passage was dark and dusty and smelt of age centuries old dust and mildew. Clearly a part of the palace that had been overlooked during the reconstruction. The antechamber that Byul, Wheein, and Hyejin were in was small, a little cramped for three individuals, and definitely not enough room for four.

“I thought I told you three to behave!” She hissed. The room was mostly dark but there was light filtering in from somewhere. The lack of space made it hard for Yong to look up.

“Come here,” Byul said, scooting over so that there was space enough for Yong to lie down.

“We should get back, the group--”

“They’ll be fine!” The demon insisted, reaching out a hand for her, “Come on, just for a minute.”

She looked behind her, then back at her roommates. Hyejin was undoubtedly asleep, Wheein was staring up at something high above them, while Byul’s eyes were trained on her, hand still outstretched. Yong sighed, defeated.

“Just one minute.” She conceded.

She crawled over and lay down, taking great care to tuck her wings behind her, until her entire right arm and shoulder were pressed up against Byul’s left side. From this angle, she could see what they were all staring at.

Despite it’s minimal floor space, the antechamber had a decently high, domed ceiling, probably seven feet from the ground. At the center of it, was a hanging fixture where a single candle was lit, most of the ceiling was painted a dark color, and in the dim light Yong couldn’t say if it was black or blue, she could see a few cracks and chips where the paint must have peeled off over the centuries but that wasn’t what mattered. Scattered around the ceiling were shards and bits of mirror, embedded into the cement, all of it catching the light from the single candle so that the ceiling looked like it was covered with golden stars.

“Oh,” Yong whispered, afraid to raise her voice in case it would shatter the beauty of the sight above them.

“The royal children used to hide here from their tutors, or their parents,” Byul whispered back, reaching out in the dark so she could lace their fingers together. “When they started restoration, I was worried it would have been destroyed, luckily it’s far from the pavillions that suffered major damages during the wars.”

“In all this time, no one knew this was here,” Yong wondered aloud.

“I knew,” Byul said, reaching out in the dark to lace their fingers together. “And now we all know.”

Yong smiled.

--

At the marketplaces, her roommates were loud and chaotic once more. By that point Yong was more fond and exasperated than she was annoyed. Still, she felt a little bad for the surrounding vendors and who had to suffer the wrath of an excitable werewolf, her encouraging vampire best friend, and the demon who couldn’t say no to buying them anything they wanted.

By the time they reached Namdaemun, they finally seemed to lose enough steam for Yong to be able to wrangle all of them into a teahouse.

“Did you have to buy them so many pastries?” She asked Byul, staring wildly at the dozens of bags full of cookies and cakes and other sweets that Hyejin and Wheein had wanted back in Insadong. The demon shrugged, reaching into one of the bags to pull out three sticks of tanghulu.

“Not all of it is for them,” she said, with a sheepish up and down of her shoulders.

“We got this for you, Unnie!” Wheein said, more than a little proud as she pulled out a palm-sized box from one of the plastic bags and slid it toward Yong’s side of the table. 

“What’s this?”

“Just something to thank you for putting up with us today,” Hyejin said, having the temerity to at least sound a little contrite. Yong opened the box to reveal a prettily decorated strawberry tart, with whipped cream and crystallized fruit all atop layers of flaky, buttery pastry. 

“You guys,” she said, marvelling at how delicate it looked. “Thank you,” she ducked her head into a little bow, before finally letting a smirk curl up the corners of , “But the next time you three try to hijack one of my tours, I’m banning you from the agency for life.”

“Come on, admit it!” Byul said, nudging side, “you liked having us around today.”

Yong made a big show of cringing and everyone burst into laughter. Byul was right, though. As much as she had griped and despaired about it at the start, she was secretly glad to have spent the day with them like this. Ever since she had taken up the job at the agency, she never saw them as much. Of course there were still weekends, or the odd day off when everyone found themselves at the apartment with nowhere to go. But this, this was nice, all of them together, this little family of hers that she wouldn’t trade the world for.

--

In her car, on the drive home, Hyejin and Wheein were animatedly going over all their purchases. From the passenger’s seat Byul gave her a sleepy smile as she leaned her head against the cool glass of the window and Yong felt something fond and warm deep in her core. 

It had been a great day after all.