It starts like this:

Byul corners Hyejin just at the foot of the stairs one evening, suddenly emerging from her shared bedroom with Yong right after Hyejin comes home from the bar.

“Unnie!” The vampire says, more than a little surprised, “What are you doing up this early?”

“Not important,” Byul takes her by the shoulders and looks her head on, eyes serious. Hyejin realizes, belatedly, that Byul must have waited up all night just for her to come home so they could have this conversation in relative privacy. “I need you to promise me something, Hyejin-ah.”

She grows more alarmed by the second, “What’s going--”

“Just don’t ask. Please.”

She hesitates, because really, she’s never seen Byul like this and something about it scares her a bit, but she sees the flash of fear in Byul’s eyes and lets her loyalty to her friend win out. “Okay, I promise.”

Byul’s shoulders sag with relief a bit. The fear is still in her eyes though. Without meaning to, Hyejin can feel her fists clench.

“In the next few days I’m--” The demon hesitates, searching for the right words, “I might--” Byul takes a deep breath through her nose, her fingers gripping tight on Hyejin’s shoulders, “I might not act like myself or I might.” Another pause. “If I seem cruel, just--I need you to snap me out of it okay?”

“Unnie, are you--”

“Promise me okay!”

She nods quickly, the motion of it jarring against the adrenaline coursing through her. 

“And no matter what,” Byul adds, her voice lowering to a threat, “ don’t tell the others that  we had this conversation. Especially not Yong.”

Before Hyejin can reply to that, Byul’s already entering her bedroom and closing the door behind her. She stares after the demon for a bit, replaying the whole conversation in her mind. The encounter leaves her feeling restless, and for the rest of that morning, Hyejin doesn’t even try falling asleep.

----

At first, she’s not sure what to look out for, Byul’s warning and request had been clear, but at the same time, so very, very, vague. When she finally decides to give up the pretense and join the rest of her roommates downstairs, Hyejin feels on edge, like she’s walking on eggshells and waiting for a freight train to crash through their living room at the same time.

Byul is going about her day acting perfectly normal, like their strange little pre-dawn encounter didn’t happen. It even reaches a point where Hyejin starts to wonder if she had made the whole thing up in her mind. Some strange fever dream that felt all too real. 

Then, while Byul and Wheein were doing the dishes together after lunch, Byul smashes a plate at Wheein’s feet.

“Unnie! What the hell!”

Hyejin is off the sofa in an instant taking quick steps towards Byul, who’s staring at her hands as if she couldn’t quite believe what had just happened.

“The plate must have slipped,” Byul mumbles, almost to herself. Hyejin is already kneeling on the ground, picking up some of the larger fragments while checking to make sure no shards had embedded themselves on Wheein’s feet. Luckily, the werewolf is unscathed.

She’s furious though. 

“Like hell it slipped!” Wheein yells, glaring at the demon “I saw you smash that on the ground as clear as day! What the f--”

“Wheein-ah step away from the sink!” Hyejin barks out loud and sharp to cut through the tirade. “Be careful you don’t step on any of the shards.” She adds in a much softer tone, because Wheein is glaring at her now too.

“Not until Unnie tells me why she--”

“I’m sorry!” Byul is staring resolutely at the sink, her hands are gripping the edges of it so tightly that Hyejin can see her knuckles turn white even through the dish soap bubbles. “It slipped, I swear Wheein! I’m sorry.”

There’s a tense few seconds of silence while Wheein breathes through her anger, but eventually the werewolf huffs the word fine and carefully sidesteps the remaining plate fragments. Hyejin finishes clearing out the last of the shards, when she stands up, Byul is still staring resolutely at the sink.

“Unnie,”

“I’m fine!” The demon says, but Hyejin isn’t sure if she says it as a reply or to herself.

It becomes progressively worse from there. 

The next day Byul suddenly yells at Yongsun for coming home late, and there’s a tense few seconds where the angel looks hurt and everything is deathly silent before Hyejin tries for an awkward chuckle and a weak joke about Byul being possessive that no one really buys. 

An hour later, Hyejin is passing the demon on the way out to work and she catches the moment where it looks like Byul might slap her across the face. Luckily Wheein and Yong are upstairs when it happens. It takes a beat, but Byul snaps out of it again and takes several steps back, mumbling a series of apologies as she goes. 

The day after, Hyejin wakes up in the early afternoon to Byul at the kitchen sink once more. When she comes up behind the demon it’s to see the fresh batch of kimchi that Yong had made the other day all dumped in the sink. She hears Byul sniff and does her the courtesy of pretending not to notice the demon furiously wiping away the tears of frustration streaming down her face. Instead, she orders fresh kimchi online to replace the batch they just lost and makes quick work of cleaning up the mess before Yong comes home.

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong now?”

“I’m fine,” Byul says again, and it’s all Hyejin can do to stop herself from her own outburst. The last thing they need right now is for her to get angry too.

“Look,” she says, going for a different approach, “I’m still holding true to the promise I made when I said I would cover for you, but at some point I think I deserve an explanation. Especially after all this trouble I’m going through for you.”

Byul stays silent.

Hyejin sighs, “At least tell me you won't be like this forever.”

“No!” Byul finally looks at her, desperate and pleading almost. “Just. Just a few more days I think, and then it’ll be over.”

“Unnie--”

“I’ll tell you then,” Byul promises, “I’ll tell everyone then. I just need to stick it out a little bit more and then it’ll be over.”

“But why can’t--”

“Hyejin-ah!” Byul whines. She sounds pained and Hyejin’s heart goes out to her. So she nods again. After all, it’s just like Byul said. Just a few more days. 

----

Hyejin is asleep, blissfully so, when she wakes up to the sound of the Unnies fighting. There is the smell of something sharp and bitter with Byul and Yong’s raised voices coming from downstairs. 

“I just want to understand why!”

“There’s nothing to talk about Yong! I told you it’s fine!”

She’s awake in an instant, scrambling out the cocoon of sheets and pillows she encases herself in every morning. Byul must have slipped up in front of the others, which can’t be good. The next thing she hears is something crashing downstairs and the bitter smell grows stronger and she’s already out of bed and running out of her room.

The living room looks like a page out of an artist’s depiction of the end times.

The Unnies were a study in contrasts. Yong is floating a foot or so in the air, eyes glowing pure white and wings spread out in all their majesty, casting bright white light in almost every corner of the living room, both her hands clenched into fists at her sides. Across from her, the air around Byul seems warped somehow, thinner, like a mirage, the demon’s eyes are pure red and there are scorch marks around her feet, almost like the very ground she’s stepping on is on the verge of bursting into flames.

Wheein is cowering by the dining table in her full wolf form. It’s not even close to the full moon, which means her own wolf senses could sense the danger. 

“It’s not fine, Byul!” Yong says, there’s a hollowness to her voice too. Hyejin realizes it’s because the angel is channeling all her angelic energy into her words. Making them drive her point even more. “You’re acting just like--”

Yong doesn’t finish the sentence but she may as well have, ‘just like a demon’ echoing loud in everyone’s minds. 

Byul’s glare hardens. The bitter smell is practically suffocating now, something acrid and sharp that makes Hyejin want to cover her nose. From the dining table, Wheein whines.

“Ashamed to be with me after all, Yongsun-ssi?”

The honorific takes everyone by surprise. Yongsun drops to the floor and something in her expression falls. “That’s not--Of course not! I just wish--”

“Wish I weren’t a demon?” 

“No! Stop twisting my words around, this isn’t about that!”

“It sure seems like it.” Byul says, her words cold as they slice through the air. She snaps her fingers once and everything snaps back to normal. The strange warp in the air is gone. The smell is gone. The scorch marks on the floor are gone. 

Byul is gone too. 

to be continued