4 years ago…

Arin saw the way that Jitae looked at her mother; he loved her. It showed from the way his eyes lit up when she came home, or the way he would do everything in his power to make sure she was happy. From buying her everything she could ever want to serenading her with poetry and songs, he spoiled her a lot.

Arin’s mom, on the other hand, did not do a thing for him. She didn’t even look him in the eye and could barely say a few words to him, probably because she was unfaithful and she knew it. Jitae didn’t seem to know it though, and if he did, he chose to ignore it.

When their 100-day anniversary came, Jitae approached Arin for a favor. He bought take-out food from her favorite restaurant, and put up a table and some candles out on the balcony, where her mother liked to hang out to smoke.

“Can I ask you a favor, dear Arin,” Jitae had approached Arin that day. “Could you please serve us tonight? I think your mother would like that…”

Arin agreed. She always found it hard to say no to Jitae, not only because she owed her new comfortable life to him, but because he was always so kind, and it was hard to say no to a kind person.

But her mother never came home that night, and texted Arin to tell her she was sleeping over at a friend’s house. Arin knew that “friend;” she saw him in her bed a few weeks ago.

When she told Jitae that her mother wasn’t coming home tonight, his face fell. He looked heartbroken.

“I’ll eat with you Jitae,” Arin told her stepfather, not wanting all his efforts go to waste.

“Sweet Arin,” Jitae said, forcing himself to smile. “I would love to have dinner with you, child.”

And so Arin ate the food that was meant for her mother, and sat before him on the balcony, conversing in the candlelight. He offered her flowers, and asked her about herself. Arin told him about her love for Chili, her dreams to become and idol, and her love for chocolate and cats.

In turn, Jitae also told her about his work (something to do with stocks, Arin didn’t quite understand it). He also opened up about how his last two marriages failed. Apparently, both women were unfaithful, and so it had to end.

“Is it something about me, Arin?” Jitae asked her. “Why do women turn away from me so easily? I give them everything they desire: money, love, children… but not one of them stays with me.”

“I’m sorry,” was all Arin could say to him.

“I love your mother, Arin,” Jitae told her. “But I know that she doesn’t feel the same way about me. I know she has someone else,” he said. He sighed, cast his eyes down, and crossed his arms.

Arin didn’t know what to say. She felt sorry for him, and angry with her mother, and confused as to why he was still investing so much into a marriage that her mother had disrespected. Even this fancy dinner and all these pretty flowers… why is he doing that for her after all she’s done?

“I’m pathetic, aren’t I?” Jitae said, as if reading her mind. “I just want her to love me,” he explained.

“Well, I love you, Jitae,” Arin told him, in hopes it would make him feel better. “You’re like the father I never had.”

Jitae smiled at her a wide, genuine, happy smile, and reached out to hold her hand. “I love you too, dear Arin. Thank you for making me happy tonight.”

The next day, Jitae had left Arin some gifts in her room: a front-row ticket to the upcoming Chilli concert, a box of chocolates, and a little kitten she named Meemo.

-

“What are you doing here, missy?” Jeonghan asked, crossing his arms and frowning.

“I… uh… I was cleaning,” she explained to her overbearing boss. “I… uh… forgot to do something yesterday… and yeah.”

The door was still open, and the tenant was certainly overhearing the conversation. When Arin wanted to close the door so he didn’t hear Jeonghan scold her, the guy had already come close enough to see what was going on.

“Arin was just helping me clean something up. Totally my fault,” he told Jeonghan. “I accidentally spilled some coke on the floor and curtain, but it's cool. She cleaned it thoroughly.”

Jeonghan didn’t seem to believe it. He still had a pronounced frown on his face that only seemed to grow in intensity. Arin lowered her head and looked down at the floor, embarrassed and afraid of the wrath to come. She had broken his rule. She was “fraternizing” with the tenants behind his back.

“Go to your room,” he told her like an angry parent would to their child if they wanted to yell at them, but not in front of the guest.

Arin gladly did as she was asked, zooming up the stairs past him, feeling him stare daggers at her as she rushed toward her room.

Jeonghan followed her up just a few minutes later, ferociously knocking on her door when he arrived. Arin considered ignoring him for a second, but figured she didn’t need the extra wrath. She placed Meemo of out of sight, took a deep breath, and opened the door.

“What were you doing?” he said with a raised voice.

“I was cleaning, I swear,” she told him. “I’m sorry I did it behind your back, but I was afraid that if I told you about my mistake, you’d get angry.”

Jeonghan scoffed. “Angry? I’m more than angry, missy. Not only did you break the rule, but you also didn’t clean the apartment properly? And you disturbed the richest, most important tenant? Do you think he’s going to stay with us now after this? You do realize what you’ve done, right?” His voice was growing louder and louder, angrier and angrier. Arin also felt him get closer and closer, as if her were closing in on her.

Arin wanted to disappear.

For how often Jeonghan yelled at her, you’d think that Arin was used to it by now so that it doesn’t affect her, but it does. Every single time he yelled, Arin just felt smaller, and her self-confidence would dwindle. It was now at the point where she had no self-confidence left.

“No salary this month, missy,” Jeonghan declared. “Or for next month for that matter. That will teach you to cross me again!” With that, he turned and left her, standing frozen at the door.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket with notifications, either from Chilli or from ~, but she did not even have the energy to look. She only guessed it was ~ from that tingly feeling she got when the enchantment was lifted. It meant that ~ was coming.

Arin took a deep breath and shook off the daze. She went into her room and thought about how much she hated Jeonghan. She really hated him. She hated him so much, she realized she wouldn’t mind seeing him choke before her very eyes. It would be an honor, actually.

Hating Jeonghan was the way she often dealt with her miserable situation. It was only by hating him that Arin could gain even a little edge. He treated her like she was his slave, and there was nothing she could do about it but hate him to feel some kind of power over him, and it helped.

~ arrived minutes later, out of breath from all the stairs. She looked slightly disheveled, and was still in the same clothes she was in from the previous day.

“Oh Ar… they found me,” ~ told her. “They know where I live, and now they’re after me.”

“Who?” Arin asked.

“MRS.”

Immediately, Arin forgot what happened with Jeonghan and was overcome with a new, far graver kind of anxiety.

“My associates told me last night that the members of MRS were waiting for me to return home so they can capture me,” ~ said with calmness so unbefitting of the situation. “That’s why I couldn’t take Meemo. I needed to go and warn the others.”

“Did… did they get any?”

“No, no. Not yet at least. But if they found me, they’ll surely find the others.”

Arin shuddered.

MRS, Magic Restoration Society, was a group of bad people, witches and warlocks, who wield magic and seek to “restore” it. According to ~, the magic of the world was waning because past mages had overspent their supply and tipped the balance between the natural and the supernatural. That’s why magic is such an obscure phenomenon in this day and age; that’s why a lot of people don’t believe it exists; very few people have it, and if they do, there’s not much they can do with it.

Having magic is a hereditary thing, and because of the short supply of magic, so many of the mage’s offspring end up being muggles.That meant magic was on the cusp of termination, dying out with the last of the mages.

MRS was seeking to restore magic. One of the ways they do that is by breeding mages to produce more mages. As one of the very few fertile mages, ~ was a target. They wanted to get their hands on her so that a warlock could impregnate her and keep her hostage.

But that wasn’t the only reason they wanted her. She also posed a threat to them, because unlike the witches of MRS, ~ did not like nor want magic. On the contrary, she wanted magic to faze out. She thought magic was evil, and did everything in her power to stop it. In actuality, she and her associates worked against MRS and have succeeded in curtailing many of the society’s efforts.That included keeping Arin in an enchanted building, where the magic of her curse could remain idle.

This brings us to the second way that MRS sought to restore magic: activating curses.

“The thing with curses is that they’re mostly forever,” ~ had explained. “The limited supply of magic doesn’t seem to affect them. On the contrary, they seem to multiply and produce magic themselves. You see, when a curse is activated, like when you say the name of someone you love out loud, some magic is emitted to carry out the deed, and the excess feeds into the magic supply of the world. But what happens with cursed people like yourself is they do everything in their power to keep the curse from activating. MRS hates that. They want the curse to work. You see, it takes a lot of magic to curse someone, especially in a way that can’t be reversed. The witch who cursed you used probably used up everything she had to impose her curse on you, so that means her powers are now impoverished. The fact that your curse remains mostly idle means that her magic has been wasted; it’s not doing anything. It’s like she spent her life’s savings on something that doesn’t work.”

~ had told her stories about the two unfortunate cursed victims who were now prisoners with MRS. One young man was cursed to puke everything he ever ate, and they now have him locked up, force feeding him food that he always disgorges. There’s also a little girl who was cursed to absorb the pain of others. So MRS torture the vomitting man, and the girl is the one who feels the pain. With that, slowly, little by little, they restore some of the magic.

“You can’t fall into their hands, Arin, or they’ll torment you. They’ll make you love people, and then they’ll make you kill them,” ~ had said. That’s why ~ enchanted Arin’s building. The enchantment kept Arin in, but it also kept the witches out. That meant Arin was safe from their clutches.

But Arin wasn’t the only cursed person under ~’s protection. Apparently, there were a few more that ~ had put in enchanted buildings like this one. MRS was looking for them, just like they were looking for Arin.

Arin had never really worried about them before; they felt like a distant threat that would never reach her due to ~’s protection. But now, things seemed to be changing. For the first time, MRS seemed to have the upper hand.