A young demon hid his scrawny body deep inside the forest.  The pigmentation of the leaves was dark green enough to the point that one could easily mistake it as macabre black.  He swiftly dodged the falling branches and the vengeful vines that were concealed underneath the fallen leaves on the ground.

            Crackle, crackle…

            “H-hee-hi, hee…eh hi…heh…hee-hi, he, hee!!”  His titter slowly turned into an uncontrollable guffaw.  His eyes popped wide-opened and he began to laugh like mad as he sprint perilously across the forest.  He had never noticed how dry the ground was until now.  The crackling noises from the dried up leaves under his bare feet were drumming against his ears like fireworks.  ‘Ah…so this is true despair…’ He thought hysterically.  He had driven many lowly humans into the pit of endless despairs, but he had never experienced it first-hand until now.  Heat was rising to his chest as he desperately tried to hide from the bloody moonlight.

            Crows quickly dispersed from their nests when the wolf’s mighty howl of dominance reached the cloudless, but ever ghastly sky.

            “Haa-aha, heee….hi-hi-hee-aha-hi…!” His voice box was finding difficulty in forming a proper laugh.  His legs were shaken and so, he fell back at the sight of the wolf who was grinning at him seemingly with lust for blood in her eyes.  It seemed as if it was just yesterday that he was born from the bottom of the dirty, black lagoon.  He wondered why such thoughts would flash through his mind now.

            He remembered that he saw stars once on the earthly realm when his lord assigned him on a mission for the first time ever since he joined the legion.  He had felt great honour then.  However, when he looked up to see the blue, shining stars hanging beautifully across the sky, he felt ever so small for the first time.  He envied and hated the stars.  He wanted to become just like them, and was bitter to know that there was not a place for him up there.  However, now, it seemed the stars were finally inviting him and assuring him that he had a place with them.  He grinned crazily and shouted, “S-salvation!  Sa—”

            His body fell swiftly to the ground, filled with cruelly dried up leaves, as his head got chewed up and crushed by the wolf’s sharp fangs.

            Jaerim came out of the darkness with his servant, Seungri, to the land where the moonlight touched just as the wolf slowly morphed back into her human form.  He took the gray cloak that Seungri was holding and wrapped around the young maiden.

            The young maiden held the cloak tightly around her and stood up.  She smiled graciously at Jaerim.  “Thank you, my Lord.”

            “The pleasure is all mine.”  He nodded politely at her.

            The young maiden bowed respectfully to him.

            “Commander Yoon,” Suddenly his voice was cold and low as she was about to turn and exit the forest, “Have you not considered the possibility that this demon might just have the information we needed?”

            She was unfazed at the sudden change in her lord’s tone.  She responded confidently, “General Kim would not have allowed a young, desperate fool such as this wretched demon to keep any secret of importance.”

            “Hm…fair enough.”  He pretended to deliberate and then, nodded approvingly at her reason.  Though, he was not convinced in the least.  Then, he sighed.  He assessed the dead body with just his eyes from a distance.  “Jinyi-ah, it’s going to be a headache to clear up any misunderstandings with General Kim now that we’ve made such a mess in his precious Black Forest.  He’s a great demon of honour that I highly respect, so let’s keep things neater from now on.”  He proposed.  He glanced over at Seungri and ordered, “Seungri, please clean this up and make sure no one finds out about it.”

            “Yes, my Lord.”  The faithful servant obeyed and walked up to the body.

            “Please do enlighten me, my Lord.”  A hint of fury flickered briefly in her eyes even though she had intended to suppress it in front of this mighty demon.  “Frankly, I believe it is better to leave it as it is and let it be a warning to General Kim for his uprising.”

            “We don’t know that for sure.”  He corrected her.  “The General Kim I know treasures loyalty greatly.  So, there must be some sort of misunderstanding for him to suddenly make such moves…”  General Kim Woobin had been the first to pledge his loyalty to Jaerim even before the Great Lucifer’s conditional appointment to declare the latter as the seventy-third great demon lord.

            “Then, it’s most likely Marquis Andras’s doings,” She added, “He has been the most vocal against my Lord’s appointment.  However, my Lord, this could all be settled easily once the wedding takes place.  Once the appointment became official, no demon across this vast land would dare to act against my Lord.”

            “Oh?”  This caught his interest.  He smiled and asked, “Is this why even people like Kim Soeun gets a candidate seat?  Hmm?”

            Jinyi tried to match his unwavering smile.  “An ordinary amongst the extraordinaries, wouldn’t that be an interesting selection process?  Besides, it’s been ninety years since the last select—”

            “That doesn’t mean I’m willing to compromise the quality of the candidates.”  He interrupted her.  “It was a rush last time and you saw what happened.”

            “Yes…” She agreed reluctantly.

            “So, what have my old man been up to lately?”  He changed the topic with ease.  “Where is he?”

            Her fingers flinched subtly under the cloak upon the mention of Jaerim’s father.

            “Wasn’t he the one who chose Kim Soeun as a candidate?”  He deliberately admired the moon as he asked.  “Was his opinion the same as yours – ordinary amongst the extraordinaries?  Tell me, what is he thinking?”

            “I do not dare to attempt a guess at what King Belial is thinking.”  She answered candidly, it appeared.  She did not dare to make light of the mood this time.

            After a long moment of suffocating silence, he reached his hand over and rubbed the blood stain gently off her cheek.  “Alright, I’m sure we all need a rest.  How about Prince Seere’s place?  It’s nearby.”

            Jinyi raised an eyebrow and sneered, “Prince Seere?  I heard that he’s been living more and more like a human, and even enjoying it.  I do not believe he would stand for anyone to disturb his beauty sleep this late at night.”  The utter disgust at the mention of Prince Seere could not be more evident in her voice.

            “Now, now…” He said, as if he was trying to ease a rowdy child’s mood.  “He currently goes by the name, Lee Jongsuk, right?  Anyways, he is still our ally despite everything.  Here, take this to him.  I’m sure he’ll let us stay for the night – no, even for a week without fuss, once he sees this.”

            Jinyi held up the odd-looking object, presumably Jaerim had retrieved from the earthly realm.  She had never visited the earthly realm and so, she was not as knowledgeable as him with regards to the current earthly developments.  “What is this?”

            “It’s the latest phone model.”  He answered, clearly amused.  “He seems quite engrossed with the modern technologies and gadgets that mankind has to offer these days.”

            Jinyi was still confused by all these strange sounding terms.

            “Anyway, go ahead and greet Prince Seere first, Commander Yoon.  I’ll be right over after Seungri is finished with the body.”  He told her.

            Jinyi bowed respectfully to Jaerim before leaving the forest.

            ‘Hm…she called the old fool ‘King Belial’ now…’ He noted her sudden change of respectful tone with regards to his father.  His cheery façade fell at once now that Jinyi was out of sight.  “Seungri.”  He called.

            Seungri stopped absorbing the remnant energy from the body and looked up.  “Yes, my Lord?”

            “Keep a close eye on Commander Yoon from now on.”  He told his servant.  He narrowed his eyes at the direction in which she disappeared into.  ‘Cousin, for your sake, I hope you are choosing the right path.”

***

            For a week, Soeun had attended all meal hours at the dining hall and tried to find more information that could refute all of Hyuna’s assumptions.  Specifically, she prayed that the survival of one did not truly mean the deaths of the rest at the selection process.  She knew that she would not survive long when it began, assuming that it would literally be a battlefield.  Song Jaerim had already given her a preview of the kind of decision that she would end up making when she had lived as Lee Boyoung not so long ago.  It would take a miracle to keep everyone taintless of each other’s blood.

            “Are you going to finish that?”  Hyeri, the glutton, asked even with still stuffed with chunks of roasted pork.

            Soeun sighed and pushed her dinner to the glutton.  “You can have it.”

            “Thanks!”  Hyeri smiled brightly and did not hesitate in stuffing more food into .

            For a week, she did not discover any more new findings other than the information that Hyuna had already shared with her.  Aside from the glutton in front of her, who seemed completely clueless about everything else other than food, everyone else was rather guarded of her, especially Krystal.  Of course, that was understandable.  Especially now that the selection process would begin as soon as the thirteenth candidate appeared, the atmosphere became highly tensed.  It didn’t help that Hyuna winked at her every time their eyes met, making it obvious to everyone that they shared a secret.

***

            “Why did you form an alliance with her?”  The resident sinner of lust, Baek Jinhee, asked out of curiosity.

            “Huh?”  Soeun had long dropped her mute act since her ‘alliance’ with Hyuna.  She didn’t think the girl could keep a secret anyways.  She forged ignorance, but that still did not prevent her pride from getting stabbed by Jinhee’s plain observation.

            “Seriously?”  Chaewon, the ‘greedy sloth’, overheard and chripped in, “Even I wouldn’t form an alliance with her!  She’s practically at the bottom of the totem pole here.”

            “What?”  Soeun was bewildered by Chaewon’s words.

            “So, who initiated the alliance?”  Chaewon’s eyes sparked with anticipation.  It seemed gossiping was one of her favourite pastimes.

***

            ‘Should I at least be glad that I’m the first and only one she has approached to form an alliance with?’  She shook her head at the thought.  It did not matter whichever way, really.  She had never truly intended to abide the alliance.  She had watched enough Running Man to know that betrayals and broken alliances were common place in competitions.  Speaking of the variety show, she couldn’t believe that she would get bored of it so fast now that she truly had all the free time in the world, albeit her death might be on the horizon.

            “Jung Eunji, let’s talk.”  Naeun went up and nudged the shoulder of her former classmate.

            Eunji slammed down her fork, but did not bother looking up and responded with a miffed tone, “Say it here, whatever you have to say.”

            “Eunji-ah…”

            “Then, we have nothing to talk about.”  She concluded crudely.  She took the fork in her hand again and started picking the food on her plate to enforce the point.

            The muscles around Naeun’s jaw tensed, but soon her shoulders slumped in defeat.

            Chaewon, smirked at the scene and whispered to Im Jin-ah, who was seated next to her, “Hey, what do you think is happening?  Is that sly fox trying to form an alliance with the four-eyes?”

            “I don’t know…Leave me alone…” Jin-ah replied slugglishly.  She snapped her fingers and the plate in front of her disappeared in an instant.  She put her arms on the table, closed her eyes, and rested her head.

            Chaewon shook her head and sighed.  She turned to Ara, who sat on her right.  However, she decided to shut after meeting the other girl’s menacing glare.

            Hyuna, finding the fun in all this, suddenly stood on her chair and pointed at Naeun.  “You there!  Are you really going to leave just like that?”

            Naeun looked back just before she stepped out the door.  She stared sadly at Eunji.

            Ga-in groaned in annoyance.  Tired of the ever more tensed atmosphere since the twelfth candidate’s arrival and Kim Hyuna’s deliberate stirring of things, she gave the copper hair alchemist a warning look before she got up from her chair and left.

            That look of supremacy did not escape Hyuna.  She announced loudly just so that the half-vampire could hear clearly, “Keep looking down on me, Son Ga-in, but I’ll be the one with the last laugh!”

            Soeun noted that Hyuna always seemed to keep her descriptively violent comments at bay whenever it concerned the half-vampire.

            Victoria suddenly stretched her arms and got up.  “For anyone who wants to play poker, let’s meet at the library in fifteen minutes.”  She announced, seemingly unfazed by Hyuna’s intention to start another pointless wild fire.  “And Moon Chaewon, bring more than a couple hundred bucks this time, will you?”

            “Hey, you think I didn’t know you’ve been cheating the last few times?”  Chaewon countered.

            “Blame it on your own bad luck.”  Victoria responded defensively.  “You think that I would need to cheat to win against you?”

            Jinhee rolled her eyes at the budding chaos and continued reading her book, a grimoire from the Clavicula Salomonis Regis series.

            ‘Well, I guess that’s my cue to leave.’  Soeun settled.  Now, she was beginning to understand why Krystal rarely showed up at the dining hall.  There were a lot of words being exchanged across the dining table, but none of the information was particularly useful.

            When she was finally in her room again, she looked at the tiny portion of the gothic Lilith Garden from her window.  She rubbed her arm, trying to warm herself from the chilly memory.  It was another full moon tonight.  She wondered why there weren’t any stars visible even though the sky was so clear.

            ‘Now is not the time to romanticize over nonsense.’  She told herself and frowned.  She closed the window and pulled out her notebook from the drawer by the bedside.  “Hm…let’s see…” She mumbled as she reviewed the observations she had jogged down in the notebook since she came back to Hell.  She was hoping that as she became more knowledgeable about this place, she would not be, like she was now, at a disadvantageous position when the selection process began.  Unfortunately, there was nothing to help sharpen her edge thus far.

            She sighed and dropped lazily onto her bed.  “Why do I even bother?”  She muttered.  It was not like she deemed herself capable of murder.  She her side and stared at the book that Jaerim had placed by the lamp.

            “Do not touch.”  She mimicked him with scorn.  She doubted he had said that without knowing the effect on the listener.  Though, he still seemed serious about his words.  ‘Then, why leave it here?’  She wondered.

            The book was as thick as an encyclopedia, with a moss green hard cover and rose gold tinted the edge of the pages.

            She slapped her hand away when she unconsciously reached for the book.  She kept her eyes shut, trying to erase the image of the book from her mind.  However, it was impossible – she could not help but wonder what the book was about.

            “Pandora’s box…” She suddenly realized.  Then she groaned.  “Song Jaerim, you bastard…”

            She got up and started pacing back and forth, trying to distract herself from the temptation.  She didn’t mind it for a week, so why would she mind it now?

            There was no other lead that she could follow and only God knew when the thirteenth candidate would appear.  ‘Maybe just a peek wouldn’t hurt…’ Then she shook her head, attempting to dismiss the idea.  She looked at the book and it was just sitting there, appearing all dignified!

            “Curiosity killed the cat…” She reminded herself.  Then, she stopped the pacing.  A mischievous smile formed on her face.  “But the satisfaction brought it back…”

            Without a moment to spare, she opened the closet and took a couple of clothing hangers off the fancy dresses.  “Okay, it’s not like I’m the one touching it...It’s the clothing hangers.”  She convinced herself.  ‘And besides, I should be safe here, and Isabelle said he won’t be back for a while…Right?  Right.’

            This place was practically a prison that specialized in the cultivation of insanity and madness.

           As she took a step closer to the book, she suddenly lowered the hangers.  ‘No.’ Her rationality was telling her.  ‘But this could be the key to end all this madness!’  Her less-than-rational self was telling her.  “And wouldn’t it be weird if no accident ever happened in this world?”  She finally decided and lifted the cover carefully with the hangers.

            All the curiosity and anxiousness dropped almost immediately when she saw a picture of birds flying freely across the blue sky.  She put the hangers aside, took the book in her hands, and began turning the pages.  She winced at the accidental paper cut she gave herself as she turned the page.  A tiny droplet tinted the edge of the page.  She her forefinger to stop the bleeding. 

            A warm, fuzzy feeling surged through her and she began to smile unknowingly.  She recognized some of the pictures as Jaerim’s work that she saw during her undergrad days.  She wondered if this was his photography portfolio.  Then, she saw a photo of herself sitting by the school’s fish pond.  This easily made it on her top ten favourite photos list.  She had looked so carefree and surprisingly graceful in the photo.

***

            It was early summer, but most students were still busy preparing for the upcoming final exams.  Wanting to take a breather from the nonstop studying since this morning, Soeun took a seat on the grass field near the fish pond.  She stretched her arms and let the sun showered on her weary face.

            Click!

            Surprised, she turned around.

            It was Jaerim.  He lowered the camera and waved at her.

            “S-sunbae.”  Her face flushed in red.  “What are you doing here?”

            “Taking photos.”  He put his camera forward to emphasize his point.

            “I can see that...” She blushed at his teasing.  Then she remembered, “Oh right, the annual photo competition is next week!”

            “Yup.”  He nodded and took a seat next to her, seemingly unaware that it was making her even more self-conscious.  “I’ll let you see it once it’s developed.”

            “Then, it’s a promise.”  She responded wittily and held up her pinky.

            Going along with her sudden childishness, he locked his pinky finger with hers.  “Sure.”

***

            Her eyes savoured on the artistry of the photo a moment longer before she turned to the next page.  Now, she was really curious why he left the book here.  She had initially considered the possibility that monsters might pop out.  Yet, she admitted that she had been surprisingly reckless these days.  This place was twisting with her sanity after all.

            Just then, she shuddered from the sudden breeze that ran across her back.  ‘That’s strange.’  She thought she had already closed the window.

            She dropped the book immediately when she turned around.  Her face paled, thinking that she saw a half-transparent lady in white hanbok standing by the window.  The stranger had on a face of melancholy.

            ‘No, this is not real.’  She told herself.  It was not possible for anyone else to enter her room.  She rubbed her eyes, thinking that she must be tired.  When she opened them again, the stranger’s face was only a few short centimeters from her own face.  She screamed and tried to banish the uninvited guest with her kicks.

            None of the kicks was prevailing.

            The hanbok lady opened and that was when Soeun noticed that a great portion of the lady’s tongue was sliced off.  She screamed for the second time.  “P-please go away!”

            However, the stranger wouldn’t, or perhaps couldn’t, listen.  Instead, both of her icy hands reached over to Soeun’s neck.

            “Cin—” Her words were cut short by the stranger’s grip on her neck.  No matter how she struggled, she couldn’t fight off the transparent stranger.  Tears streamed down her face uncontrollably.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Author's Note: Ha...thought it's time to "demystify" Jaerim a bit here.  Been having fun doing reseach on demonology.  I believe that I'm relatively fast with the update this time. XD  Oh yea, just added a chatbox, so please feel free to use it. ^^  Really, I don't want to feel like I just wasted karma points.  Hahaha.... -___-"  Yea, you can even go ahead and make a complaint about the story.