Taeyeon~

For the millionth time that day, Taeyeon shoved the card into Jonghyun’s face. It was a random passerby that had offered the card, which she took out of politeness. But then, as she read the elegant printing, it was a sign.

“SM Modeling Agency!” she read from the small business card. “And they’re looking for models. This is your chance!” Jonghyun grimaced. “I figured you out, you know. I know that you’re envious of Se Kyung for her successful life.”

Jonghyun blinked at her in surprise. She had realized that? When?

“Look! You can’t be jealous of that actress and her singer boyfriend when you have this~!” Taeyeon sang, waving the card around and gesturing to Jonghyun. He scowled at her and continued to walk down the street. They had left the cafe - and Jinki - several minutes ago and were looking for a place that would hire Jonghyun.

“I may be jealous of their success, but I don’t want to draw attention to me.”

“You have the perfect body, Jonghyun,” Taeyeon insisted, turning red when Jonghyun raised his eyebrows. At least he didn’t look at her. “Plus, your face is pretty sort of okay.”

“‘Pretty sort of okay,’” he repeated slowly.

“Fine, fine. Pretty kind of okay.”

“Thanks,” he said dryly. “What if something happens to me as a demon and reporters catch it? I mean, I know I have pretty rocking abs and a flawless face, but that could be a curse, too.” After a few seconds of Taeyeon not responding, he turned to see her giving him a very judging look. “What? You said it.”

“It’s okay for me to say, but not you . . .”

“There’s nothing wrong with being confident in myself,” Jonghyun argued, sticking out his tongue for further argument. He watched as Taeyeon’s face fell, and she pressed her lips together. She was obviously genuinely disappointed since she wasn’t putting up her aegyo act like usual. Sighing, Jonghyun took the card out of her hand and stuffed it in his pocket.

Taeyeon looked at him curiously.

“Fine. I’ll consider the job and put the card on my nightstand, but for now, I get a normal job, okay?” Jonghyun reasoned with her. Taeyeon brightened immediately, throwing her arm over his shoulder. He stumbled forward with a spluttering gasp. “Yah!” He lowered his voice. “What do you think you’re doing, abusing a half-demon?”

“You know I only want you to get the very best job so it’s easier for you to earn money, right, Jonghyun-ssi?” Taeyeon announced as Jonghyun faltered. She grinned and ruffled his hair, earning her an indignant grunt.

Jonghyun ended up scoring himself a job at a veterinary clinic.

“I love animals,” he told Taeyeon as he petted a dachshund. “I used to have a dog named Roo when I was little. I hope the little guy got away during the fire.” His eyes got a far away, distant sheen to the irises, and Taeyeon smiled as she silently watched him care for the animals.

~~~~~~~

Today was the day. She would go straight up to Jonghyun and just say it. Taeyeon took a shaky breath, her heart thumping erratically in her chest. There was no going back once she opened the door to his room. She had gotten up extra early just for this moment, and she’d even made him a warm, Western style breakfast.

Taeyeon took, yet again, another deep inhale of oxygen before releasing it. 1 . . . 2 . . . 3. Taeyeon paused. Huh. That’s funny. My head told me to go but my legs say no. Okay, out loud.

“1 . . . 2 . . .” Before Taeyeon had a chance to say three, Jonghyun’s bedroom door was flung open to reveal him in just his boxers, his hair a mess of bedhead and his eyes squinting lazily at her. Taeyeon squealed in shock and stepped back, hitting the back of her head against the wall and sliding down in a shocked pile.

She glanced down at the tray she held. Everything was in place and in one piece, aside from the fact that the orange juice had sloshed a bit in its glass. She pouted and struggled to stand up while balancing the tray.

“What are you doing outside my room? And why do you look so wide awake? And why are you holding my breakfast?” Jonghyun mumbled sleepily. “What time is it? Aish, I could hear you standing outside my room and shuffling for so long. So annoying . . .” Taeyeon waited patiently for Jonghyun’s mind to start working, although it rarely did. She watched as the pieces clicked into place in his brain, his eyebrows jerking up and his eyes twinkling. “Breakfast in bed?”

“Yes,” was all Taeyeon said before pushing past the stupid dino and setting the food on his dresser. “Why are you wearing just that?” She leaned back when Jonghyun stood next to her to examine the eggs, sausages, and toast, sniffing like a puppy. He glanced up at her and then down at his basically half- state.

“I always sleep like this. I didn’t know you would barge into my room,” he said simply.

“I . . . didn’t barge into your room, though,” Taeyeon responded lamely, her mind still jittering with anxiety.

“All that noise you made did,” Jonghyun insisted as he stuffed a piece of toast into his mouth, waving his hand in a nonchalant gesture. He opened his dresser and dug through his clothes before throwing on a white muscle tee and black jeans. “So why’d you get me up so early?”

“It’s nine,” Taeyeon snorted. She met Jonghyun’s eyes, and saw that he was still waiting for an answer. Taeyeon flushed pink, looking down at her toes. “Well . . .”

Just say it, Taeyeon, she encouraged herself. Don’t be afraid. Even if he rejects you, at least you tried. This is your only chance.

“Please, please, please come back to your old home so that I can try doing this cool exorcism thing I found online! Please, please, please!” Taeyeon begged, grabbing Jonghyun by his wrists and swinging his arms around. She stopped swinging his arms to push his chin up, since his jaw had fallen open at her outburst. “Stop gaping at me.”

“You want me to go back there?” Jonghyun scoffed, the sound humorless and empty. “Do you realize how hard it was for me to go there last night?”

“Y-you seemed fine, though.”

“Because I was too busy chasing you for at least two blocks!” Jonghyun growled, running his fingers angrily through his hair. “I can’t go back there. All those ashes to you are just remains of a burnt house, but those are my memories. I don’t want to go back to those memories.”

Taeyeon bit her lip and scratched the back of her head awkwardly, looking back down at her feet and twisting her foot back and forth.

“Um. Then, oops,” she managed weakly.

“What do you mean, ‘oops’?” Jonghyun demanded warily.

“I may or may not have already called Jinki and asked him to meet us there. And since I needed more people, I may or may not have allowed him to invite your cousin and that best friend or something from high school.”

“What?”

“Your cousin, you know? Kim . . . Kibum. And do you remember a Choi Minho? Jinki says you’ll know because of the height difference.”

“Rule number four, Taeyeon.”

“Right. No~thing about your height. Of course,” Taeyeon muttered. She patted Jonghyun’s shoulder with a friendly smile. “Well, your cousin came all the way from America. And don’t you want to greet your old friend?”

“Kim Kibum was the most diva of a person I had ever met, and the most annoying cousin. He moved to America shortly after second grade. Parents couldn’t handle the sadness, I guess, and they didn’t want to take me in. Choi Minho was cool. We met through soccer, but then I had the whole demon breakdown. That pretty much sums up how much I want to see those two.”

Taeyeon nodded smilingly as she listened to Jonghyun rant about his poor, sad life with humans. Oh, well.

“Great! So we can head out now, right?” Taeyeon didn’t even bother to wait for his answer, grabbing his forearm and pulling him towards the door. Jonghyun threw his head back and let out a loud wail of anguish. Taeyeon smirked to herself. Now she was certain he wasn’t as horrified with her idea.

That all changed when they got to his street. He stopped at the streetlight, the same one he had stopped at last night, and stared down to where his house once stood. Taeyeon didn’t push him and only stood next to him, rocking on her heels and patiently waiting for when he was ready.

Finally, Jonghyun turned right, towards the streetlight, and promptly hugged the pole.

“Uh . . . excuse me. What are you doing?” Taeyeon chirped, walking up to him and bending so she could catch a glimpse of his face. His expression was pained, eyes squeezed shut and features screwed into a struggling frown. “Are you alright?” Guilt squeezed at her chest as Jonghyun’s lips tightened into a thin line.

“I’m fine. We’re already here. Besides, it’s not like you’re doing this for yourself.” Jonghyun buried his face further into his arm. “Give me a sec, please, Taeyeon. I’m actually . . . pretty emotional for a guy, and it’s really embarrassing.”

Taeyeon bit the left side of her bottom lip. She really wanted to console him, but she felt like she had crossed enough boundaries. Crossing her arms, she watched as Jonghyun took deep, shaky breaths, listening as he murmured to himself.

“You can do it. It’s not coming back. It can’t hurt you like it did to Mom and Dad and So -” Here, his voice cracked. Taeyeon glanced down the street and saw a car drive up to Jonghyun’s house. The door of the vehicle opened, and Jinki stepped out in a plain T-shirt and denim jeans. He saw the two, and it must have been an odd sight. Taeyeon was standing awkwardly beside Jonghyun with her arms crossed while he hugged the streetlight.

She knew that Jonghyun must’ve heard Jinki, too, because his shoulders twitched when his friend slammed the car door. Taeyeon gave a half-hearted smile and half a wave to Jinki, who tilted his head in return.

“Okay.” Taeyeon jumped at Jonghyun’s sudden loud declaration. “I’m ready. Get this over with. Let’s go. Get the demon out of my body. Let’s go. Let’s go. Let’s go, Let’s go -” Taeyeon decided to drone Jonghyun out as he repeated that phrase over and over, jogging after him since he had decided to take long strides toward the house.

She didn’t fail to notice when his steps hesitated as two others got out of the backseat of Jinki’s car. The taller one had brown hair, darker than Jonghyun’s, and he was tanner than all of them. His long limbs carried him to the front of the house, where he gazed at the remains in somewhat awe.

The second man had dyed hair, light brown streaked with darker shades on alternating strands. He stood by the car and leaned on the side, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his most likely designer suit and watching Taeyeon and Jonghyun.

“Hey, cuz,” he greeted when the two were in hearing distance (although Jonghyun’s hearing distance was perfect back at the streetlight). Taeyeon assumed that he was Kibum, Jonghyun’s cousin. Flashing a killer smile, Kibum reached out with his hand towards Taeyeon. Blinking, she shook it. “I’m Kim Kibum, heir to Lock Enterprises.”

“Oh, shut up, Key,” Jonghyun grumbled.

“Is that what you say to your cousin you haven’t seen since . . . forever?” Kibum laughed. “And ‘Key’? You’re using that old nickname on me now?”

“Your nickname is probably what Uncle used to name the company. ‘Lock Enterprises’,” Jonghyun snorted. “Really?” Kibum’s face turned red, but he rolled his eyes and walked off to Jinki, who was staring at the empty land. The other - Choi Minho - whirled when he noticed Kibum’s change of attitude. That must’ve meant -

“Kim Jonghyun!” Minho cried ecstatically, running up to his older friend and capturing him in a bone-crushing hug. He shook Jonghyun around before setting him on the sidewalk and beaming at the silver-haired boy. “You haven’t grown at all!”

“Ai~sh!” Jonghyun seethed, mock hitting the younger. Minho laughed loudly, the deep sound ringing through the street before he poked Jonghyun’s side and started towards Jinki.

“We need to catch up later! But first Jinki said we had something important to do,” Minho stated.

“Back in middle school, he wasn’t that enthusiastic,” Jonghyun muttered to Taeyeon. “And then the inevitable horror happened and made him into that optimistic ball of monster right there.” Jinki was chuckling for some reason when Jonghyun and Taeyeon reached the other three.

“Oh, annyeong, Taeyeon noona!” Jinki exclaimed when she came closer.

“Annyeong, Jinki,” she greeted in the same manner.

“Noona? You call her noona?” Jonghyun inquired.

“We’ve gotten closer over the phone, when he was helping me,” Taeyeon explained.

“Ah.”

“Noona, you can do your stuff first while I explain,” Jinki instructed her. Taeyeon nodded and opened up the bag she had brought. she felt eyes on her as she brought out a thick root and began drawing a wide circle in the ash and dirt. Jinki stepped out of the circle quickly, the others following suit just as fast.

“Jonghyun, stay in this,” Taeyeon said without looking at him, aware of the eyes on her back as she worked. She took out her journal and studied her notes as she heard Jinki speak in the background.

“What Taeyeon noona is performing is an exorcism,” Jinki began.

“Question,” Kibum immediately jutted in. “Is she sane?” Jinki cocked his head to the side, contemplating.

“Quite. Anyways, the reason she’s been doing this is -”

“Wait,” Jonghyun interrupted. He was separated from the other boys, stuck in the circle that Taeyeon knew was a Devil’s Trap. She drew chords through the circle, making a star as she raced from side to side. “You’re not telling them -”

“Taeyeon is a journalist, and her next story she’s attempting is about a person’s inner demon. Her company gave her a really stupid prompt, seeing if an exorcism on any normal human would summon their ‘bad’ side, as you would say,” Jinki interrupted before Jonghyun could finish. He flashed his friend a reassuring smile as he continued to lie easily to the two oblivious newcomers.

“You dragged me out of a meeting for this, Jinki?” Kibum fumed.

“Remember that time in kindergarten when you took my 64-pack Crayons?” Jinki argued.

“You’re still caught up on that?”

“There were sixty-four crayons, Kim Kibum! Sixty-four irreplaceable crayons!” Jinki ranted, throwing his arms in the air. “No matter how many more your dad bought for me in apology! That banana yellow wasn’t the same because it hadn’t been used for my monkey drawing.”

Taeyeon fought back a roll of her eyes as she made large runes in the dirt, eyes never leaving her journal and hand never letting go of the root. She stuffed the root back in her bag when she finished and made circles of stones around the pentagram. From the corner of her eye, she saw Jonghyun shift at the edge and realize he was stuck. Panic filled his brown orbs as his eyes darted to Taeyeon.

She returned the worried stare with a promising smile, nodding her head once and gesturing for him to stay in the center.

“Everyone get in their stone circles please,” Taeyeon ordered. All conversation stopped at the seriousness in her tone. Taeyeon glanced at her journal and the phrases that repeated in all the quotes she’d copied down. Exorcizamus te . . . She pursed her lips. Why was Latin so difficult? Shaking her head, she asked everyone to close their eyes before she whipped out a makeshift wand made of a root, rock, and twine.

Please work. I have no idea if I’m doing this right. I should have studied more. Taeyeon muttered the complicated words under her breath, focusing all her energy on the being in the center. She felt beads of sweat roll down the side of her face, but she ignored them and paid attention to what really mattered.

She heard someone gasp, and she wasn’t sure who had, but that didn’t matter.

Finally, she was done. She felt a weight immediately drop from her shoulders, but a new worry weighed her down. Dropping her head to the ground, Taeyeon opened one eye. Dirt. Okay, that was normal. Her other eye opened. More dirt. Huh.

Then, Taeyeon took a huge gulp of air and glanced up to see what had happened.

. . . . . . .

Oh.

Oh, no.

A/N:

Guys, I will not be updating for about a week.

Probably not until next Monday

I do martial arts, and Nationals is this week

WAPAAH! HYUH! KYAP!

That's . . . that's my martial arts sounds

I know today was a short update, but I agreed NOT TO TOUCH ELECTRONICS FOR NATIONALS

Starting Monday at 12:00 AM

/whispers/ it's past 12, I knowowwwwowww, hush hush hushhhh /sings to Apink/

I couldn't just leave this for that long . . . . without warning . . .

I'll miss AFF

So now you guys know another fact about me!

I guess it's good news? Wish me luck!

I wrote as much as I could

Bye!