Arin was numb to what had just happened. She had collapsed in place, afraid to go near Hyojung, afraid to even move.

Everything hurt. Her chest hurt. hurt. Her head hurt. Her heart hurt. There was so much pain that Arin didn't even know where to go with it. She could barely register what was happening around her, even as her environment changed.

Jun had seen the messages Arin sent late, and had immediately gone to the specified location.

She just registered people putting blankets around her, pulling her into heated cars, talking to her, trying to comfort her but to no avail. She registered Yoonsa's sobs, the sobs of a mother realizing her son was gone. Those sobs were eerily similar to her dead granddaughter's, the sobs of a daughter realizing her father was gone. She heard relief, laughter, calls for celebration. She also heard pity. "The poor girl."

Eventually, it was all too much for her failing body, which lost consciousness very soon after.

-

Arin was bedridden for the next week, sick with hypothermia and PTSD, manifest in never-eneding nightmares and anxiety attacks. She was in the extraction room at MRS. She didn't really know what she was doing there, but she didn't care enough to even wonder.

They gave her medicine and food. They brought in doctors and therapists, but nothing really seemed to get Arin out of the dark and drab places she inhabited in her mind.

Many people came to visit her. Mages she had never met came in with gifts and thanked her for what she did to save their lives. Even Yoonsa came in with flowers that she placed in the corner and left.

There was only one person to whom she had anything she wanted to say. When Hoshi came to visit one day, she wrote him the message.

"I want my voice gone forever. How can I arrange this?"

Soonyoung nodded in understanding. "Okay. I'll arrange it," he promised.

-

Arin only felt alive when Larali came by for what were called "healing sessions." Yoonsa was also there during those sessions, to collect the magic that Larali's curse had released.

Larali's presence was definitely healing for Arin, as the girl drained all of the physical and emotional pain in one fell swoop. It helped Arin's tense muscles relax, it helped her feel like the world was okay again, like it was not as dark and hopeless as it had been feeling.

Larali could only stay for so long though, because at one point over the course of these sessions, the girl could no longer handle the hurt and had to get away.

"I'm sorry, Arin," Larali would say, before running out the room to get away from the monumental pain to which Arin subjected her.

This made Arin feel even worse than before, heavy with guilt for having put the girl through it. It was just a vicious cycle of pain, temporary relief, then guilt, then pain again.

-

"I need you to feel better, Arin," Jun told her one day when he came to visit after Larali went running off. "I know it hurts, but I need you to make the effort to get out of this slump."

Jun's tone caught her off guard. It was not sympathetic or kind like it usually was, but aggressive and frustrated. Arin did not understand that frustration at all, and she wasn't bothered to make the effort to write to him and ask about it.

"You know what," he said. "I know what will make you feel better..."

The next time Jun came along, it was with a guest. Two guests actually; Woozi, who came in carrying her cat.

"I told Woozi everything," Jun said. "About you, about your curse, about magic, about what happened. I don't think he has quite processed everything yet, but he agreed to come see you. I figured since... you know..." Jun didn't say the soulmate part out loud, "He'd be able to make you feel better."

Of course, Jun would think that her soulmate was the one to make her feel better, but for Arin, he was just someone she knew that she didn't know how to deal with at the moment.

"By the way," Jun turned to Woozi, "she can't speak. It's a protective measure to keep everyone safe from the curse."

Woozi nodded blankly, then stepped inside hesitantly and placed Meemo beside her. Arin weakly greeted her furry friend with a head scratch as Meemo snuggled beside her and purred.

"I'll... umm... leave you guys alone," Jun said to Arin and Woozi, before leaving leaving the room.

Arin figured that maybe Jun brought Woozi here to activate Arin's curse again so they could sneakily collect more magic from her. The joke was on him though; Arin felt nothing. She glanced at the bracelet too. No color whatsoever.

Woozi looked like he had just seen a ghost. He stared at her with a curious kind of wonder and fascination, and that made for a prolonged awkward silence in which he did nothing but gawk.

"I'm sorry for all that you had to deal with," Woozi finally said. "I'm sorry for all of your losses." He took a seat on her bedside.

Arin just pursed her lips weakly in response, focused on petting Meemo's head.

"Your friend Jun told me everything the day it happened. I could hardly believe it. Magic... who knew that was an actual thing that existed. It's scary to realize the world is so much different than you've known it your entire life."

Woozi shifted his position a little, turning around to face her.

"But I always knew something about you was strange in a supernatural kind of way," Woozi answered. "Like the time I saw you fly backwards when you tried to jump from the rooftop. And the time when Hyojung threatened me when we first met. And your reaction to my mention of that Chilli member. His death was related to your curse, right?"

Arin nodded her head.

"It's also why you always tried to push me away, right? Because of your... umm... your curse."

Arin nodded again.

"Well ... that's..." he shook his head as he tried to process. "That's dark."

Arin shrugged.

"How does the curse work? How do curses in general work? Jun just told me the basics, but right now, I'm fascinated with the whole of it. I'm sure there's a scientific explanation for it, and I want to know everything. I've been a man of logic for so long, and now I see magic is all around me. I just... and those green things out there!" Woozi continued to ramble about magic and how fascinated he was by all of it, and Arin just blocked him out to focus on Meemo.

While some people were enthralled by the idea of magic, Arin just felt numb to it. Actually, she felt scared of it, because it was the reason she had killed so many people: S.Coups, Minghao, her mother, Joshua, Jitae, and now, Hyojung. She didn't want to see that happen to anyone else. Hoshi could not help her lose her voice soon enough. She couldn't wait for it to be gone. She couldn't wait to be free.

She focused again when Woozi's tone changed, when he looked straight at her and said, "You surprise me, Arin. Just when I think I have you figured out, I learn something new. Like how you saved a whole magical subculture from extermination. like a... like a superhero or something." He smiled at her.

Woozi's words sat with Arin for a while as she dwelled on them and let them sink into her soul. He did not seem to be trying to console her or anything, just making an observation about his impression of her, but that impression was more healing than the many words of consolation she received the past few days since the incident. She liked to think that the decisions she made, no matter how hard and heart-wrenching they were, had done something ultimately good. She had been so focused on the deaths she had caused, it helped that Woozi helped her shift her perspective just a little to consider the lives she had saved.

If she could thank him, she would. Instead, she expressed her gratitude by meeting his eyes and smiling, her first smile in days.

Her heart skipped a beat when she looked at him, which instinctively raised panic in her chest. However, when she glanced down at her bracelet, she saw nothing.

It was unusual. Even if her heart was not in the right place and loving was hard, there were always faint shades of purple color when she was around people she liked. It appeared with Jun, with Hoshi, with Dasinai, with Jeonghan, and even with strangers she barely knew. There was no doubt in her heart that she felt some regard for Woozi, so why could she never recall seeing color on her bracelet around him?

Why did it not work around him?

Woozi invited her back to stay at his place. Knowing about her curse, he promised he would never come close.

"This place is so stuffy and there's no privacy," Woozi said, looking around him at the glass walls. "Plus, those spirits are so uncomfortable, and I'm pretty sure I walked past a room of two people doing it." He scratched the back of his head awkwardly. "I think you'd be a lot more comfortable over there, with Meemo and all..."

He was right about that. It was not very homey in the MRS Extraction Room, not at all.

Eventually, after her temperature stabilized, she took up Woozi's offer.

-

The magic released from Hyojung's death was substantial, but Yoonsa said she needed a little more before she could break Sangbin's curse. That's what Larali's healing sessions were supposed to do, but Larali could never stay in the room for long enough, and they needed the magic immediately.

"Would you help us, Arin?" Dasinai asked. "I know you've helped us enough, but we need to extract more or else he'll die..."

Arin wondered if that was the truth. Hyojung had claimed that the whole "uncursing" operation was a lie MRS told the cursed people to get them to cooperate, and that instilled Arin with doubts she could not shake.

However, a lot was at stake with Arin's doubt. Sangbin was sick to the point of exhaustion, and even Arin could see that he was dying. If MRS was telling the truth, and her doubt made her refuse to help them, it could mean the difference between life and death.

It was a lot of pressure.

However, she could not be the cause of another death, never again. So even if she had doubts about the integrity of MRS's operation, and even if she was not in the right headspace to fall in artificial love, she agreed to participate in the sessions, for Sangbin's sake.

-

Arin came into the extraction room that day expecting to find Jun or Sangbin there to play as her love interest that day, but apparently, Sangbin was too weak and Jun was too busy.

"We got a new guy in there now," Hoshi said. "I hope that's okay with you."

Arin didn't really care who it was. She just wanted to get it over with so she could go back to sulking and waiting for her cursed voice to disappear forever.

However, when she entered the extraction room to meet this new guy, her heart nearly dropped to see Jeonghan.