Screams and yells resonated around the house. Kai, who was standing at the top of the staircase, smirked as he watched how the demons tried to run away from the fire to save themselves from getting burnt. Too bad, the fire was only getting bigger and bigger.

They deserve it for trying to start a rebellion and overthrow my hyung, he thought. Too bad I only managed to kill half of them.

Kai was too immersed in his thoughts and didn’t realize that someone was coming at him from behind.

“Die!” The male demon yelled as he tried to attack Kai with a sword.

Just like his older brother, Kai was also gifted with fast reflexes, and he managed to dodge the sword before it could hit him. He quickly raised his leg and kicked the sword from the demon’s hand, making the sword clatter on the ground.

The demon tried to pick up the sword, but he wasn’t able to do so when Kai punched him in the face. A groan of pain escaped when the demon fell down onto the floor. Kai then grabbed the demon up from the floor before pinning him to wall behind him.

“You’re very sly, trying to attack me from behind,” Kai said. He then strangled the demon’s neck. “Tell me the names of the members of this rebellion. I know there are more. If not...” Kai tightened his grip around the demon’s neck.

“I’d… Rather die… Than tell you,” the demon replied. He spat in Kai’s face.

Kai used his palm to wipe the saliva from his face. “Is that so? It seems like you’re very eager to join your friends.” His lips curled into sinister smirk. “I’ll just fulfill your wish.”

Kai dug his nails into the flesh of the demon’s chest while the demon began to struggle. He plunged his hand through skin and bone, and screams of pain filled the air. Blood oozed and gushed around his arm, and he pulled out his hand, a still beating heart in his grasp. He smirked again before tossing the organ away.

“Say hi to your friends for me.”

Suho stood at his room’s balcony with a glass of red wine in his hand. His mind couldn’t stop recalling the incident from the morning. Was that witch telling the truth? If she was, then what was the reason that he couldn’t stop thinking about her?

His thoughts were interrupted by a knock.

“Hyung, have you gone to sleep?”

He put down the glass of wine on his bedside table before heading toward the door. He opened the door to see Kai standing at the doorway. He raised his eyebrows when he saw the blood on Kai’s arm.

“I hope that blood isn’t yours.”

“Of course not, Hyung,” Kai replied. A small laugh escaped his lips. “This is the blood of the demon who was part of the rebellious group.”

“Have you finish them off so that they wouldn’t bother us anymore?” Suho asked as he leaned against the wall.

Kai’s expression changed slightly.

“Well?”

“I’m sorry, Hyung. I should have investigated first before going to their meeting place. By the time I got there, most of them were already gone home. Only few of them left. Still, I managed to kill them,” Kai answered with his head down.

“Continue searching for the remaining members. Make sure to finish all of them. I don’t want any of them bother us anymore.”

Kai looked up at his older brother in disbelief. “You aren’t mad at me?”

“Why should I be? You did a good job tonight.” Suho patted Kai’s shoulder. “Keep this up, okay? Don’t disappoint me again, and make our deceased parents proud of you.”

“Thank you so much, Hyung. I definitely will continue to work hard.”

“Good. Go to sleep now. You must be tired.”

“Yes, Hyung.”

Kai was about to leave and go back to his room when he saw the small bruise on the corner of Suho’s lips.

“Hyung, why’s there a bruise on your lip? Who has the guts to hit you? Do I need to teach someone a lesson?”

Suho touched his lips. He hadn’t even realized that there was bruise on there. “This…”

‘You aren’t even worthy of my spells.’

“Tsk.”

That was his response when his mind wandered back to the scene that happened that morning.

Kai was slightly taken aback by that.

“You don’t have to worry about this. It’s just a small bruise,” Suho answered. His lips then formed into smirk. “About the person who did this to me, let me deal with  that by myself.”

What’s wrong with my hyung? He’s suddenly smirking for no reason, Kai thought.

“Sure. Then I’ll go back to my room. Good night, Hyung.”

Kai then headed to his room. It quite bothered him, actually. For the past few days, his older brother had been acting weirdly, and he didn’t know what the cause of it was. Yet he didn’t dare to ask his older brother, either.

Despite them being brothers, Suho didn’t share everything with him. The only person whom Suho could converse with about his problems was Kyungsoo, which was the reason why Suho wanted Kyungsoo to come back quickly from his vacation; he could talk about this matter to Kyungsoo. Hopefully, Kyungsoo would be able to do something about it.

Time flew by so fast. It had been a week since Kristina’s last encounter with that demon. She’d decided to move on with her life and forgot about the incident. She hoped that she would never encounter the demon again in her life.

However, there was something else that had been bothering her lately. Her job as a demon hunter was not only dangerous, but there was a chance that she would make enemies who would either want to kill her for revenge or for the pride of being able to kill one of the best hunters.

Thus, she had to be alert at all the times, which explained why she could feel someone following her. She’d started to realize it few days ago when she’d been at the market to buy ingredients for dinner, since she’d had to cook that day because Yixin had to work overtime again.

She’d been carefully choosing tomatoes when she’d felt someone staring at her with hawk eyes. When she’d turned around, she hadn’t seen anyone aside from a lady bargaining with the meat hawker. Still, she hadn’t wanted to give up. She’d kept searching for that person, and she’d been so focused with it that she’d jumped a little when a black cat had walked past her, although she would likely have denied it if people had asked.

It’d seemed that no one had been staring at her. All the people had been busy doing their own things.

Thus, she’d decided to dismissed it. She’d thought that maybe she was thinking too much. However, it had been going for a few more days. She would have felt it either after she had finish her mission or on the way going to back to her house.

She told this to Yixin, since she couldn’t tell it to her superior. Without a doubt, her superior was going to think that she must have caused trouble again.

“Xin, my senses have never lied to me before. Someone has indeed been following me these few days.”

Yixin narrowed her eyes. “Have you been offending someone again?”

Kristina let out a mock scandalous gasp. “What do you mean by that? Am I that kind of person?”

“Just drop the act, Jie. It may work on others but not on me. Just admit it, Jie.”

“Fine.” Kristina raised her hands in surrender. “I may have slapped a demon, and there’s high chance that the said demon is the new demon lord.”

“Oh my god! Jie, are you out of your mind? How could you slap a demon lord?”

“He deserved it. He came out nowhere and accused me of putting spells on him. Not only, but that he called me a .”

“It’s very clear that he didn’t like it, which explains why someone is following you. He must have taken it to heart and asked his comrades to follow you while waiting for the right chance to kill you.

Kristina scoffed. “Why should he? He should be thanking me instead. I’m giving him a free lesson on how to be a civil demon.”

“Jie!”

“What?”

Yixin sighed. “Will you be serious about this? Your life is in danger right now. I think you should tell this to Minseok-ssi.”

“There’s no need to involve Minseok-ge in this small matter. I can deal with it by myself. I just need to figure out who’s been following me.”

“Well… Didn’t you feel anything coming from that person?”

“Now that you asked, I did feel something,” she continued. “As cold as ice. That was what I felt from that person. It made me shiver after. Not even Minseok, who has the power of frost, is as cold as this person.”

“If that case, you need to be careful, Jie. I’m scared of what this person is capable of.”

“You don’t have to worry about it. Maybe that feeling is actually coming from his power. Who knows.”

“I give up. You’re too stubborn.”

Kristina just grinned.

“Just promise me one thing. If it’s getting out of hand, you must inform Minseok-ssi about it so he can assign someone to guard you.”

Knowing Yixin’s behavior, it would waste her breath to argue with her. She pretended to agree with Yixin’s suggestion by nodding her head. She would deal with this matter by herself, and she wouldn’t stop until she discovered who had been following her.

It went on for another two days, yet Kristina still couldn’t discover who was following her. She quickly turned around when she felt someone following her again. However, much to her dismay, she didn’t see anyone aside from the flying bird and the wind that blew in her face.

She didn’t tell Yixin this, but the cold feeling that she felt, she’d actually felt it before. She just couldn’t remember from whom and when she’d encountered it. Because of her jobs, she would encounter different kinds of demons and unearthly creatures.

She let out a frustrated sigh. It seemed that she would not able to discover anything today. She should just head home and take a nice hot shower. She needed it, since she had been fighting a demon who had tried to an innocent high-school girl a few hours ago.

“Let go!”

The scream came from opposite of the road!

She ran across the street before heading to the alley where the scream was coming from. She stopped running when she saw a demon pinning an old lady to the wall. She scanned the demon’s body quickly and saw the mark on his arm.

Great… Another soul- demon. When they are going to give up?

“Wow, I never thought that you’d be so low. You even can’t let go of an old lady.”

The demon dropped his arms. He turned around to face Kristina before eyeing her from head to toe.

“How about I take your soul instead?” The demon his lips. “You look delicious to me.”

Kristina grimaced. “Eww… How disgusting.”

“I deal with you later on, old lady,” the demon said with smirk on his lips. “Let me deal with this witch first.”

He approached Kristina while she grabbed her sword’s hilt as she waited for the demon’s next action. There was an unspoken rule for the hunters: they could only fight the demons if the demons attacked them first.

What she never expected was the old lady suddenly taking out a knife from her skirt pocket. Before Kristina could react, the old lady sliced the demon’s neck, severing his head.

Kristina stood there dumbfounded. What the hell was happening? Who was this old lady? How could she so easily cut off the demon’s head using only a knife?

“You chose the wrong person to mess with,” the old lady said with cold tone. Her lips curled into smirk as she watched the body slumped down to the ground. There was blood on her blouse and skirt, but she chose ignore it.

“You aren’t really an old lady, are you? There’s no way an old lady can have the strength to cut off a demon’s head.”

The old lady turned around to face Kristina, the smirk still intact on her lips. Then Kristina finally felt it: the coldness that she felt from her stalker!

“You’re right,” the old lady replied. “I indeed am not an ordinary old lady.”

Smoke suddenly came out from the old lady. It slowly surrounded her until she disappeared from Kristina’s sight. Kristina quickly tried to clear the smoke. She got scared that the old lady used the smoke as a distraction to escape.

However, she was wrong. Her eyes widened when the smoke finally cleared out. Instead of an old lady standing in front of her, it was the same demon who wrongly accused her one week ago.

“You!” Kristina yelled while pointing her finger at Suho.

“Yes, me.”

“Tell me the truth. Are you the one who’s been following me this whole week?”

“I’m not going to hide it anymore, since we’ve already come to this stage. To answer your question, yes. It’s such an unfortunate event that I encountered this stupid demon,” Suho answered as he pointed at the body.

She hated to say this, but Yixin indeed was right. Her stalker was none other than the demon whom she slapped.  Not only that, but she was also finally able understand why she’d never been able to discovered her stalker. She’d heard about demons shapeshifting powers before. Without a doubt, Suho must have used it.

“What do you want from me? Didn’t I tell you that I never put a spell on you?”

“It’s not the reason I’m following you.”

“Then what’s the reason that you’re following me? For fun?”

Suho was slightly taken aback by that. Demons feared of him because of his status and his power, but it is different with this witch. Not only she didn’t feared him, she even treated him rudely.

However, he will not let that affect him. He come here for one purpose!

“I want to know your name.” Suho continued.

“What for? So you can ask your comrades to hunt me down for slapping you? I wondered what your comrades would think once they knew that their demon lord was slapped by a witch.”

Was she always this rude?

“That wasn’t the case.”

“Then I don’t have reason to give it to you.”

Kristina quickly turned around to leave. She needed to get out from here before she lost her temper and attacked Suho. The last thing she wanted was to have demons hunting her down for killing their lord. That was it if she guess it correctly about Suho.

“Then you don’t mind if I call you ‘dear’?”

Suho’s question stopped her steps.

What the is he saying?

“Or you prefer ‘honey’?”

Ignore him, Kristina. Just get out of here!

Kristina continued walk across the street.

“How about ‘sweetheart’, then?”

Kristina angrily turned around after she reached the opposite road. She clenched her fist when Suho smugly smirked at her.

‘What a bastard!’

“Remember it well! My name is Kristina!”

Coincidentally, a horse carriage was passing by. The wheel was making a loud noise, allowing Suho only hear part of it.

“I can’t hear you!” Suho yelled, but he didn’t get any reply.

He waited for the horse carriage to pass. Much to his frustration, Kristina already left.

“Damnit,” he cursed.

Beta-ed by rmzcharizard

Co-Author's note: Poor Suho....hahaha.

I enjoy write Kristina for this story. So sassy. Hehe.

Comments are appreciated.

Regards,

_Amy_Lea_2021