After the meeting with the blind woman, Hoshi peered at Arin with the side of his eye, as if trying to glean her reaction.

“You’re free to type down what you’re thinking,” Hoshi said, sliding his keyboard over to where she was sitting.

Her fingers hovered over the keys for a minute. There was a jumble of confused thoughts in her brain and she couldn’t think of a coherent way to phrase them. After a lot of typing and erasing, she finally managed a question: “Do you think that I should get rid of my voice permanently?”

Hoshi didn’t seem surprised or mortified when he read it. On the contrary, he looked relieved to know that she caught on to what he wanted.

“Honestly, Arin, I think that might be only way you can get rid of its effects for good,” Hoshi said. “Your curse has irreversibility in the words, which means we can’t use magic to undo it like we can with Sangbin or Larali.”

Arin nodded slowly, understanding. “Would I have to drink some potion?” she typed.

“Actually, there’s no need to waste magic on this,” Hoshi replied. “This can be done medically. There’s this like thing in our throats called the larynx. If that’s damaged, then you won’t be able to talk again…”

Hoshi had clearly done his research. He must have thought about this before, but only suggested it to her now.

The prospect suddenly felt too real, too scary. That anxiety she thought she had overcome that day began to surface. Even if she loved the idea of the curse having no bearing on her anymore, she was terrified of medically maiming herself.

“Don’t stress about it yet,” Hoshi told her when he saw her begin to pick the skin around her nails. “There’s still hope. I’m still lookinh for a loophole or some way around it, so maybe things will work out without any of the damage. I just wanted you to keep the idea in mind, for now…”

-

Arin sang Chilli songs all the way back to Woozi’s apartment, in which she had decided to stay until she could find her own place.

People stared at her, thought she was drunk or crazy, but she didn’t care. She wanted to enjoy her voice while she still had it.

As she sang, she remembered her past, when she used to take singing lessons and train to be an idol. It seemed like a lifetime ago when that was possible for her; now it was just a far-off dream, drifting further and further away as her life progressed. If she were ever to lose her voice for good, that dream would be far out of reach.

She continued to sing as she exited the bus and walked over to the building. She continued to sing as she climbed up the stairs to the door. She continued to sing as she put in the combination and entered the apartment. She continued to sing as she took off her shoes and entered.

She stopped singing when she saw Meemo standing there.

Meemo purred as she nestled into Arin’s legs. Arin stood still as she looked down on her cat, dumbfounded but elated.

“Meemo!” she exclaimed, picking up her unwilling cat and hugging her. “What are you doing here? Did Woozi bring you?”

Arin noted the extra pair of shoes at the doorway. She also heard fast typing from inside the office. The door was closed.

She wondered if he heard her come in. He most certainly had seen her duffle bag of belongings which she left in the middle of the dining table, so he must now know that she had decided to go there after all.

Groans of frustration, along with faster and louder typing came from the other room. Whatever Woozi was doing in there, it was clearly stressing him out.

Arin figured she shouldn’t disturb him. She considered getting out of his way and leaving the apartment that night; she could go back to MRS and sleep in the Procreation Unit, even if it was loud and uncomfortable. She could even sleep in the streets that night;.

But she couldn’t take Meemo, and when she thought about getting up to leave, she found it hard to part with her furry friend.

More cries of frustration from the other room. Papers flailing. Fists pounding on the tables and the keyboard.

Whatever he was doing in there, it was stressing him out. Something was wrong with him.

At one point the typing stopped, and Woozi emerged from the room, closing the door behind him.

His eyes were bloodshot and wide, as if he had been on the computer for hours. His hair was a disheveled mess. His glasses were titled on his nose, and he didn’t bother to fix them. He looked tired, but also disappointed.

He glanced at her and didn’t seem surprised to see her there.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” he replied curtly before heading over to the small kitchen in the corner.

He walked over to one of his cupboards and opened a bottle of soju.

“Are you okay?” she asked him.

He gulped down some soju before answering: “no.”

Struggling to find the right words to say in response, she asked, “what’s wrong?”

“Nothing I want to talk about,” he said. “What’s wrong with you?”

There were a lot of things wrong with her, but she didn’t know what kind of answer he expected.

“You’re letting some scumbag like Jeonghan get away with the he did to you?” he sputtered. “Those kinds of men deserve to be locked up before they can harm anyone else.”

Arin wished she could explain it to him, but she couldn’t, so she just lowered her head and let awkward silence linger.

She didn’t feel anxious in front him like she usually did; she didn’t feel like being with him was going to kill him. Even though he was her soulmate according to Jun, she didn’t feel anything for him. She glanced down at her bracelet; it was white.

She guessed it was because her love for Sangbin was still in effect, so those feelings of attraction she thought she felt for Woozi before were overshadowed and silenced.

The curse wouldn’t work on Woozi at the moment, because there was no dark magic. She realized how much more in control she was now that she was facing her curse rather than running away from it. From the sessions at MRS, she was getting practice and experience with the inner workings of her curse. She knew what it felt like when the curse was working, and what it felt like when it wasn’t. Right then, it wasn’t. Arin was absolutely sure of that, and the colorlessness on the bracelet reinforced that.

“Sorry,” Woozi said after a few minutes of silence. “That was unfair to you. I don’t know your circumstances, so I shouldn’t judge.”

Arin accepted the apology with a nod.

“I’m just a bit frustrated right now because of some things at work,” Woozi said before gulping down more soju. “Also, I don’t usually come to this place, but I had some things to do here, and figured I should bring you Meemo as well before Jeonghan evicts me.”

“Thank you for that. And I apologize for forgetting to let you know that I was here…”

“I knew you were here. I have a security camera outside my door,” Woozi admitted.

“Oh.”

“I’ll clear up around here so you don’t feel uncomfortable by the mess,” Woozi said, before chugging down the last of the soju in the bottle.

He stood up, a little tipsy, and picked up his junk from around his living room, placing it in a messy pile in the corner. Arin helped him.

“Feel free to use any part of the apartment except the office, which will stay locked. You can change the sheets on the bed too. There are some new linens in the closet somewhere. Just make yourself at home.”

“Thank you. I really appreciate this. I’ll be out of here as soon as I find other arrangements.”

“It’s fine,” Woozi said, then trailed off for a moment. “Just… in return, can I ask you for something?”

“Anything.”

“Please reconsider reporting Jeonghan. He’s a ed up person with ed up morals, and he’s a nuisance to society. I just can’t rest knowing that someone like that is out there, free to hurt someone else…”

Woozi looked deeply troubled and frustrated, like the prospect was personally tormenting him. It was strange how affected he was by it, strange how much he seemed to care.

“Umm… I…”

“I know you’re hiding your identity for whatever,” Woozi suddenly said. “I figured it out. That’s why you don’t want to take it to the police, right? That’s why when the paramedic came last time, you pretended to be Chinese. That’s why you were tolerating Jeonghan all these years even though he pays you nothing and treats you like crap. I don’t know what you’re running away from, Arin, but think about this. Sometimes it’s okay to be caught for whatever you’re running from, if it means preventing others from getting hurt.”

He got some of it right. She was indeed hiding her identity and running away from the life she lived before the curse, but that wasn’t the reason she avoided talking to the authorities about Jeonghan.

She wished she could explain herself. She wished she could tell him that it was a lot more complicated than that.

“I’m sorry,” was all she could say to Woozi.

He looked visibly disappointed. He took a deep breath and shook his head. “Suit yourself. But honestly… I really hate this, Arin. I really ing hate this.”

With that, he just left. He trudged out the front door and slammed it shut.

His disappointment had more bearing on her than she expected. She felt hurt and guilty for making him feel like that, for disappointing him, for making him think ill of her.

She figured that meant the effects of the love potion were fading, and with that, the real, genuine feelings for Woozi were slowly creeping back up to haunt her.

-

The next morning she woke up to loud meowing and clawing at wood. It was Meemo from behind Woozi’s locked office door.

“Meemo, how did you get behind there?” Arin asked as she rose and walked toward the door. She tried to turn the doorknob, but it was locked. Upon hearing Arin’s voice, Meemo’s meows grew louder, asking for help to get out.

Arin went into the balcony, where there was a window into the office. The balcony door was slightly ajar, so Arin figured that Meemo had gone out the balcony and leapt through the office’s open window. Woozi must have opened the window yearday and forgot to close it before he left.

The window had been pushed to a close by the wind, which meant Meemo couldn’t jump back out.

Arin pried the window open and called for Meemo to come out. Meemo happily obliged and leapt back through the window and scuttled into the bathroom where her litter box was placed.

Arin was just about to close the window, but she let her eyes linger in his office for a moment, out of curiosity. There were just a bunch of computers with flashing screens of zeroes and ones and hacker coding languages she could never understand, but she focused on a bulletin board he had up on his wall. There were notes and newspaper clippings, but there were also many pictures of the same girl. In one of those pictures, the girl was asleep on a bed, without any clothes on.

Arin felt an uncomfortable feeling rise up in her chest. She assumed the girl was someone Woozi knew, because of the intimacy of the photo. Maybe she was a girlfriend or something? Arin was disappointed, and, as much as she hated to admit it, possibly jealous. She didn’t know Woozi had been this close to a girl…

Curiosity compelled her to keep looking, and from the distance, she spotted a name in one of the notes he had written. Kim Mihyun.

She took out her phone and searched that name up on social media, to see if that was the name of the girl in the pictures.

Immediately as she searched, she could tell that the pictures that came up on the Internet were the same as some of the pictures Woozi had up on his wall. The girl was so mind-blowingly beautiful - gorgeous clear skin and smooth long hair.

She was so focused on the pretty pictures, she didn’t even notice the not-so-pretty ones that occasionally popped up on her feed. It was only when she spotted a blurred version of the photo, up online, that she paid attention.

After reading the caption, she realized with horror that the girl was actually dead in that photo, not asleep.

It was then that she paid attention to what the articles that came up when you searched her name:

Kim Mihyun’s phone hacked by killer to track whereabouts

Kim Mihyun stalked, , killed by former secret boyfriend

Murderer lured young girl into his home, then and killed her

Kim Mihyun’s killer on the run, police have no leads

Kim Mihyun’s killer now likely using a fake name, officials say

A/N: Dun dun dunnnnnnnn