August 14th

Ugh… I’m terrified. We’re on vacation in Acirema, and today I was possessed (like actually possessed!) by a demon lady with purple eyes… I still can’t shake the things she said to me, stuff about how I deserve my own magic, how I’m more than ready and shouldn’t have to keep waiting…

If you didn’t know already (I don’t talk about this a lot, obviously), magic, in my world, is one of those things that isn’t necessarily required for everyday life. If you can use it, great! If not, no big deal.

Regardless, all people are born with the ability to learn magic, and a select few (like Howon) were born ready to use it. From the moment we could understand words, we’ve been told that there’s simply nothing wrong with not ever being able to use magic.

Easy for them to say, when they’ve been using magic for so long. Understandably, there are some people (impatient people like me), who refuse to believe that. We’ve been ready for so long, have always been ready, and we want our own magic.

That’s when people turn to dark magic.

Unlike righteous magic (more often called light magic), anyone can learn and use dark magic at any point in their lives. That means sixty-year-olds with their teeth falling out, if they wanted to, could technically learn how to use dark magic. Yeah, it’s… pretty convenient in that perspective. It does take a lot more effort to learn dark magic than light, but hey, it doesn’t require you to wait until you’re ready (because you’re always ready for dark magic mwahaha).

Those impatient people who turn to the dark, they forfeit their light magic for something evil, something more powerful, something more easily accessible. They very effectively sell their souls to be able to wield the magic that is not their own.

Yeah, that’s right. Dark magic works by drawing energy directly from your soul. Contrary to popular theory and belief, dark magic users don’t actually suffer from mood swings and personality changes. In fact, nothing happens to you at all (aside from the ability to do magic, of course). The only thing that does happen comes at the very end, when your soul depletes. It’s pretty obvious: you die.

Literally, you just drop down dead, and that’s all there ever was to you and your magic.

Light magic can be separated into two categories (dark magic is its own little subdivision): elemental and thought-process. Elemental magic is, well, pretty self-explanatory. It deals with anything drawn from nature, including the four basic elements (like Myungsoo and water), light and shadows (Howon), minerals and metals, and much more. Thought-process magic, then, is anything else.

Of course, there are still a lot of other types of magic out there, magic that doesn’t really fit into either category. Like that creepy store owner (ugh, don’t even remind me), he had camera magic. That sort of magic would belong in the elemental category because cameras harness the power of light, which is obviously elemental. So yeah, essentially, any magic that doesn’t really fit into either category just takes the side of whichever category its magic stems from, if that makes sense.

God, I probably sound like a wannabe reporter. I think I need to sleep.

Gahhhhh this was a filler chapter because 1) I needed to explain magic, and 2) because I hadn't updated in so long lmao.

No but fr summer work is goddamn killing me. In case yall don't pay attention to fonts, I changed the fonts all to Georgia (mostly because they show up on phones, which would make it a hell ton easier on me later on in the year lmao). I shouldn't have any pronoun mistakes in here since it focuses Woohyun, but yeah, enjoy this little, uh, blurb into Woohyun's thoughts.

Maggie