Arin soon learned that MRS was made up of four units.

The "Procreation Unit" is where mages come together to, well, procreate. This is based on the belief that conceiving in a spiritual, magical place would increase the chances of a baby with magical abilities.

Jun is part of the "Recruitment Unit," who go out on the field to recruit mages and cursed or blessed people, and any other person of interest to MRS. Finding Arin had apparently been an ongoing project for them.

Jun was now leading her to the "Research Unit," which is made up of alchemists, scientists, and potion brewers. Their job is to conduct the research needed for magical retention, restoration, and reparation.

Eventually, she learned she was going to be a part of the "Extraction Unit," which extracts magic from the blessed and the cursed by pushing their limits. According to Dasinai, this unit is responsible for so much great work in restoring magic, but they only have access to two cursed people, besides Arin. Jun told her that she would soon meet them.

Walking through the headquarters with sunglasses on, Arin could finally take in everything around her without feeling lightheaded. There were at least 50 people in this expansive space that seemed way too big considering the little structure she saw outside of it. She also noticed how fancy everyone looked. No one wore sweatpants and a hoodie like Arin did. They wore high-end brands, donned shiny jewelry, used the latest laptops and mobilrd, and had neatly kept hair that made her own hair look like a mane. She noticed the strange way people would look at her, as if she were some pitiful stray cat.

This made her feel even more anxious than she already was from the prospect of meeting even more new people. After spending the past four years in isolation, seeing and talking to so many people in one day was burning her out. She just wanted to go back home. To cuddle with Meemo in bed.

Then she remembered she didn't have a home anymore.

The anxiety continued to grow with every step she took. What was worse is that Jun told her he was going to leave her in the Research Unit. She hated to admit it, but she wanted to stay with Jun. She didn't like being with strangers, and dreaded that the only familiar face she kind of trusted was going to leave. She wanted to ask him to stay, but was worried she would come across as clingy and childish.

She stopped herself from picking the skin around her fingernails when she felt how smooth the finger that Dasinai had healed was. She did not want to ruin it.

"And we're here!" Jun announced. He stopped at the desk of a young man who was reading something on his computer. It was a large open space, with various desks on one side, laboratory stations on the other, and shelves with colorful labelled vials pushed up across the walls.

The man looked a little less fancy than everyone else, but judging by the size of his desk compared to others, he seemed to be someone important.

The man looked up at Jun, and then at her. "What do we have here?"

"Hoshi, this is Arin," Jun introduced her.

The man named Hoshi gasped. "Oh !" he said with a happy smile on his face. "No ing way!!! The chick with the deadly curse?!"

"Yep!" Jun answered.

"Was she...?"

"Yeah, she's muted!" Jun told her.

"Arin! It's a pleasure to finally meet you! I've been interested in your curse since I first heard about it! Can't believe the losers from the Recruitment Unit took so long to find you!" he said jokingly.

"Arin, this is Hoshi," Jun said. "He's a researcher and alchemist here at MRS. He'll be looking into your curse and studying it so we can figure out what to do with it."

"Why do you make it seem so serious?!" Hoshi scoffed and playfully pushed Jun. He stood up and made his way toward Arin, then took her hand and kissed it suddenly. "Enchanté, lovely Arin!"

Arin blushed, and felt self-conscious about her tattered fingers again. If Hoshi had noticed them, he did not comment.

"He's also a flirt," Jun said to Arin, rolling his eyes, to which Hoshi responded by sticking out his tongue at him playfully.

"Don't listen to Jun-bug over there. I'm awesome. The smartest alchemist here at MRS!"

"Really? I wonder who caused the accident that let the spirits run loose," Jun continued to tease.

"Hey the spirits are nice creatures! Gave this place a little bit of magic! Arin, don't listen to him. He's soiling your first impression of me. I'm a great guy, really," Hoshi responded with enthusiasm that Arin found amusing.

Jun opened his mouth to say something, but Hoshi reached out and covered Jun's mouth before he could.

"Anyways, before Jun blabs his mouth and makes you distrust me, let's get down to business!" Hoshi said.

Jun pushed Hoshi's hand away. "Good luck with this guy, Arin," Jun said. "I'll leave you now and beat you to the Extraction Unit. Hoshi, when you're done with her, could you take her there?"

"Why do you have to say it like that and scare her?" Hoshi said, rolling his eyes. "Be gone, Jun!" he demanded, pushing Jun in the opposite direction.

Jun turned and left. Arin was surprisingly not as anxious about that as she thought she would be. In a weird way, even from just her first interaction with him, she trusted the amusing alchemist. Even if he made a mistake that tipped the natural order and misplaced the spirits, she felt strangely comfortable to be around him.

"Gosh, that guy!" Hoshi muttered. "Mean, isn't he? Anyways, what's with the uh..." he pointed at her sunglasses. He waited a second for an answer, before realizing. "Oh right!" He made his way to his desk again. "Here, have a seat and just type." Hoshi signalled to his chair and opened an empty document on the computer.

I feel sick seeing purple, she typed. Reminds me of dying faces.

"Oh, I see," Hoshi said. "I think we can fix that though! The color you see is actually octarine, but we mortals see it as purple. Some people see it as green though, because they think of it in a different way, and use a different part of their brain to perceive color."

He walked down toward a nearby shelf filled with vials. He looked through them and took out a green-colored liquid in a vial.

"This potion activates that other side of your brain," Hoshi explained, "the side that will let you see Octarine as green. If you want, I can give you a bit that will last you the rest of the day."

Arin knew she shouldn't be comfortable consuming a random potion that some random stranger she just met had offered her, but for some reason, she nodded and accepted the offer.

Hoshi put on some gloves and took out a tiny little dropper from a nearby drawer. He took out a miniscule bit of the solution in the vial, and asked Arin to open .

"This might give you a weird feeling in your head," he warned, "but it'll pass quickly, I promise."

He dropped the liquid in . There was so little liquid, she didn't even feel it.

"For potions, unlike medicine, all you need is a microscopic amount for it to take effect," Hoshi explained as he began to put everything away. "And because magic is a rarity, we're trying to be a little frugal with how much of the potions we use. Anyways, this should start to take effect in a couple of seconds." He reached out and pulled off her sunglasses.

Seconds later, Arin felt her head quiver and her eyes blink fast. During one of the blinks, all of the purple suddenly turned into this warm shade of green. It took a while for her eyes to adjust, but when they did, it was a huge relief.

She smiled, closed her eyes, rubbed her eyelids, and opened them again, just to be sure. It was amazing. She mouthed a thank you to him, and he bowed graciously in return.

Then the "tests" began. Hoshi first asked her to type down her curse, word for word. After that, he asked her to relive the moments when the curse was activated in painful detail, asking her very specific questions about how each death transpired.

"I'm really sorry to do this to you," Hoshi said. "I know it's hard to think about those events, but I need to know if I'm going to figure out how your curse works."

Arin nodded in understanding, and for the first time in years, she opened up that box of memories she had buried deep in her subconscious, and wrote out everything that happened to her with regards to her curse. The fanchant that made her kill Seungcheol. Turning to Minghao, saying his name, and killing him. Calling her mother "mom" and killing her. And then seeing Joshua's name tag, saying his name, and killing him. She wrote about how she felt like she had no control over her own mouth, how she was compelled to say the names. She also told him about ~, and how that name didn't work. How Meemo's name didn't work. How Jeonghan's name didn't work. And how Woozi's name didn't seem to work. Hoshi was reading as she typed, taking notes on his own notepad.

"Alright, now for some tests!" Hoshi disappeared into his shelves again, then came back with this black string bracelet with a single white stone attached to it. "May I?" he asked, signalling to her hand.

She folded her fingers inward to hide her ugly fingers, and offered him her wrist. He put the bracelet on her, and immediately, it turned a very light, faded shade of green.

Hoshi laughed when he saw that. When he finished tying the bracelet, he explained. "So, this here is a magic detection stone that I invented," he told her. "When there's magic exuding from your body, it starts to get some color. In your case, that means it's activated when you have positive feelings for someone, feelings that are heading towards love. Think of it as a 'love bracelet.' The more color it has, the more you like someone. The stone now has a faded color, which means there's some magic coming out of you, which means you like me!"

Arin blushed, feeling exposed and embarrassed. She wanted to say something to defend herself, but quickly remembered that she couldn't speak.

"Frankly, I'm a little annoyed though," Hoshi joked. "Why isn't it darker than that! Why didn't you fall in love with me at first sight! Aren't I hot enough for you!?"

Arin smiled, amused. The bracelet turned a slightly darker shade of green. She felt the need to cover the little snitch.

Hoshi just smiled in triumph, but didn't acknowledge it.

"Anyways, this also means that fake names work," Hoshi noted. "Hoshi isn't my real name; it's just a name I like to go by. I'm going to tell you my real name now, and see what happens to the bracelet.... Soonyoung."

The color didn't change, which meant it didn't matter what the name was; the magic was still the same.

He continued carrying out more tests, and Arin marvelled at how much he came to learn about it in such little time. Arin has always wanted to test the limits of her curse, to see what she could get away with without killing anyone, but she could neve do that without putting someone's life at risk. Now, with a simple magic gadget and a temporary curse of muteness, Hoshi was learning more about her curse than Arin had learned in years.

For example, the stone turned white when she closed her eyes, and when she was made to look at a picture of S.Coups on her computer. This meant that her curse only worked if they were "before her very eyes," and her eyes were open.

Hoshi also introduced her to new, and, according to him, "lovable" people. She met these people (who were indeed very amiable) without knowing their names, and the stone stayed white. As soon as she had a name to the face, there would be a little bit of color.

Together, Hoshi developed what he called a "hypothetical tiered conditional system" on which her curse operated.

TIER 1: Eyes have to be open. They have to be in front of you. They have to be human. You have to know their names* (any kind of name seems to work).

TIER 2: You have to love* them (any kind of love seems to work).

TIER 3: You have to say their names.

Hoshi explained that if one of the conditions in Tier 1 is not met, there is no magic at all. Tier 2 is where the magic begins. Tier 3 is the trigger, when the scale is tipped and the magic takes effect and kills people.

"All right, I think we're ready to take you to the Extraction Unit, where we'll conduct our next test," Hoshi said. He grabbed his notes, and a vial from the shelf and asked her to follow him.

She walked behind through the now-green spaces and hallways until they arrived at a large room labelled "Extraction Lab." In the middle of this room was a glass structure, a small room within a room, so to speak, where everyone in the outer room could see into the inner room. The inner room had nothing but a bed and a couple of chairs. The outer room seemed more like a lounge than a lab, but there were a couple of desks facing the central glass structure.

There were people standing next to the inner room. Arin first noticed Jun and Dasinai, happy they were there. As she approached closer, she noticed someone else, and Arin's felt her heart stop.

Standing there beside them was the witch that had cursed her.

A/N: THE STREAK CONTINUES!

This was quite a technical chapter. Hope it was somewhat interesting though... there are some important details here /HINT HINT/

Also random note but whenever i write a new story i always try to feature members of seventeen that I didn't feature before. Hoshi was kind of central in my previous story, so I didn't want to feature him in this story at all, BUT he just naturally fit this role so much I had to give him the part lol. Also, Joshua and Minghao were supposed to be more central characters. but somehow i ended up killing them both a lot earlier than i expected WELP