The two girls came as soon as they were summoned, one by one from the same door that Seulgi did.

    The first of the pair was a tall girl, with round cheeks and pursed lips. She looked a good deal younger than the other three, maybe somewhere around Yerim’s age, give or take a few years. Her outfit shared the same color scheme as the other girls’, though her dress had a more robe-like style to it, with velvety folds that hung down to her knees. From what Yerim could glean from the way the dress hugged the girl’s body, she was a curvy, wonderfully-built girl, complimenting her simultaneously alluring and adorable facial characteristics quite nicely.

    The second was a woman who was much shorter than the girl she entered with. Her appearance deviated the most from the others. Her hair was auburn and she wore a dress that almost reminded Yerim of a collared maternity dress, sporting a few buttons down the front, with a deep red main color that was covered in thin strips of blue, white, and gold. She had chubby cheeks, but in a different way from Seulgi’s and the taller girl’s. It was in more of a “hamster-like” appearance.

    To Yerim’s chagrin, the taller girl squealed upon seeing her, practically sprinting over, only sto be topped by Joohyun, who stepped in front of the terrified  brunette to block the taller girl’s approach.

    “Oh my god!” the tall girl yelled, struggling to peer over Joohyun’s shoulder to get a better look at Yerim, who was seriously considering making a break for it, “I can’t believe someone’s here! And she’s so cute! Is she here to play with us? What’s her name? Wh-”

    “Sooyoung! Calm. Down. Right now. Or I’ll send you to your room until she leaves.”

    Sooyoung’s eyes widened, her lips fixing into a pout as she rapidly ceased her attempts to get past the older girl, taking a step back and joining the auburn-haired woman who had entered with her. It was then that Yerim realized that Seulgi was doubled over in her seat, trying her best to hold back her laughter.

    Joohyun gave Seulgi a death stare and the monolidded girl quickly controlled herself. The leader then turned her attention back to Yerim, an exasperated look of apology coming upon her face.

    “That’s Sooyoung. She can be a bit much, sometimes,” she said, gesturing towards the tall girl, “And that’s Seungwan.”

    Yerim smiled and waved at the both of them, a gesture which was enthusiastically returned by Sooyoung (who looked as if she was ready to start jumping up and down again). Seungwan, on the other hand, offered an almost imperceptible nod of greeting in response.

    “And all of us…” Joohyun said, taking a deep breath, her eyes flitting back and forth between the other girls, “We’re witches.”

    Silence followed. It was a period that was filled with four dark pairs of eyes staring intently at the young girl sitting at the table before them. One with filled intrigue, one filled with giddiness, one filled with kindness, one filled with indifference. Yerim took her time in mulling this over. Not that she didn’t believe Joohyun. Because clearly, something was seriously different about these girls. Their personalities, the things they could do, the place they lived, it was all too far out to be anything of the natural world. But of course, things like this were difficult to process for a seventeen-year old girl, especially one who had just been chased through the woods by a killer.

    “Witches.” Yerim finally said, the word escaping almost involuntarily from her lips.

    “Yeah!” Sooyoung piped up, “It’s really cool, huh?”

    “I don’t know if that’s the word I would use…” Seungwan mumbled.

    “Oh shut up, Wannie,” Sooyoung said, rolling her eyes, “We’re awesome.”

    Yerim found herself grinning slightly at Sooyoung’s bubbly personality. She sure was the most pleasantly unique of the bunch.

    “So… what do you think?” Joohyun asked, nervousness creeping back into her voice.

    “I… I really don’t know,” Yerim said slowly, “You guys aren’t what I pictured witches to be like. Well, not like traditional witches. You’re kinda like the Twilight-version of witches, you know?”

    The brunette realized that the comparison meant nothing to the women before her when she was met with four perplexed looks.

    “So, uh, anyway… where do I even begin? Like, how’d you get here? And how long have you been living here? And why hasn’t anyone seen you before?”

    Seulgi answered this time.

    “Well, we don’t really know how we got here at all. Joohyun woke up one day and she was here. Alone. And then time passed, and I woke up here, too… Sooyoung was next. Then Seungwan…” Seulgi paused for a second, glancing over at the auburn-haired girl before continuing, “She came a while later. We don’t really have a frame of reference for these things. They just sort of happen.”

    “And when you say ‘here’, we’re not entirely sure where ‘here’ is,” Joohyun said uncertainly, as if she were ashamed to be divulging such information about themselves, “We kinda just… exist. We can’t walk too far away from the house, and when people come here, they usually claim they’re from different places. Like the last man who was here. He claimed he was delivering a pizza to a house in Pennsylvania.”

    “Pennsylvania?” Yerim said incredulously, “But we’re in them middle of the woods in-”

“Yeah, we know, not Pennsylvania,” Seungwan interrupted, sounding fed up, “We’ve had a lot of different people come here from different places. Mostly delivery people who got the wrong house, or little kids who get lost in the woods.”

“And what do you do to them?” Yerim asked, trying not to let the fear enter her voice.

“The delivery people usually start freaking out, so they just leave,” Sooyoung said forlornly, although she perked up when she added:

“But the kids stick around for awhile! And we make them food and we play with them and everything! Joohyun says we shouldn’t send them out by themselves, so we always wait for their parents to come get them.”

In response, Seungwan mumbled something unintelligible, causing all eyes to shift to her for a moment before she her heel and walked away unceremoniously.

“Seungwan is a different story,” Joohyun said with a sigh, “Only a handful of kids have been here, and every single one of them has been found by their parents. Except Seungwan.”

Yerim felt her heart swell in sympathy.

“She just sort of started staying here. And eventually, I guess she became a witch too. Because she stopped aging after a certain point, stopped doing the usual things humans need to do. She didn’t need to eat, drink, or go to the bathroom. And she started being able to do magic. But, of course, that also means she can’t leave the circle… She doesn’t like talking about her life before this, or even bringing up the topic of how she got here.”

“I feel bad for Wannie…” Sooyoung said sadly, and Yerim felt her heart being weighed down even further at the look on the tall girl’s face, “I think that’s why she doesn’t like playing. Or doing anything, really. Because her family never came to get her.”

“But it’s okay. She’s part of our family now,” Seulgi said, wearing that bright smile of hers. The other girls nodded fervently in agreement.

Yerim no longer felt worried about the dangerousness of the women (witches) before her. They seemed like good people.

“So… do you wanna play now?” Sooyoung asked, her expression brightening up once more, “Seulgi and Joohyun keep saying they’re too old to play with me, and Wannie doesn’t like to. Do you like playing?”

“I never said too old, Sooyoung, I said too mature!” Joohyun exclaimed indignantly. Seulgi chuckled again and Yerim found herself joining in.

“But it’s getting late,” Yerim admitted once she contained herself, “My parents will want to know where I’ve been. And I don’t know how I’m going to explain this all to them.”

“Oh, please Yerim?” Sooyoung actually dropped to her knees, hands folded as if she was praying, begging the younger girl, “Please, just for a little bit? Time doesn’t pass here anyway, so when you leave it’ll just be the same time that you passed into the circle!”

“For real?”

“Yeah, it’s for real,” Sooyoung said seriously, her statement reinforced by nods from the girls beside her, “No matter how long those kids hung out here, their parents always seemed to think it had only been a few minutes before they’d left.”

“Well… as long as you’re sure… I could play with you for a little bit,” Yerim said uncertainly, “I do owe you guys.”

“Yay!” Sooyoung said, jumping up and down and clapping, not even bothering to inquire about what Yerim exactly owed them for, “Come on, we can go to my room!”

The taller girl took brunette by the hand and practically yanked her from the seat, leading her towards the exit to the kitchen.

“Please be careful with her, Sooyoung!” Joohyun called, “She’s just a human! She can break!”

“Wait, what do you mean, break?!” Yerim questioned desperately, but Sooyoung had already whisked her away.

---------------------------

Poor Wendy ):

Thanks reading<3