The package arrived early in the day, while Hyejin was asleep. Which meant that in the hours before the vampire woke up, it was subject to the single-minded scrutiny of Hyejin’s roommates.

“Maybe it’s a spare coffin.” Byul offered, spoonful of oatmeal still in .

“Why would a vampire need a spare coffin?” Yong countered, carefully nudging the giant box with a slippered toe and checking to see if something would rattle inside. It was a large box, almost three feet in height, yet the delivery man didn’t seem out of breath at all when he rang their doorbell to drop it off. “Besides,” Yong added, “It’s too small to be a coffin anyway.”

“Could be one of those self-assembly-type situations.” Wheein said. Earlier, Yong and Byul had tried to get her to sniff at the box to see if she could determine what was inside, but aside from the overwhelming scent of cardboard and packaging styrofoam, she couldn’t discern much else.

“Last time I checked, Ikea doesn’t offer coffins alongside their cabinets,” Yong said, which effectively ended the conversation for the moment. 

A few hours later, Wheein tripped over the package in her scramble to find her sneakers at the hyeon gwan. Byul had to move it to the living room coffee table, so that it would at least stop blocking the door.

“It’s blocking the TV,” Yong said, not even looking up from the book she was reading. “There’s nowhere else to place it,” Byul countered, circling the box again. “It has the Jeonju coven seal.” The demon added.

Yong put her book aside to stand next to Byul, both of them tilting their head at the very obvious seal on one side of the box. “Huh, that wasn’t there earlier.”

“It probably was,” Byul traced the raised edges of the seal with her finger.

“Did we check if it came with a letter?” It was Yong’s turn to circle the package now, crouching low to see if they also missed an attached envelope. Byul shook her head.

“Not that I could see. If there was, it’s probably inside the box.”

The angel pondered the box again before looking up at the closed door that she knew was Hyejin’s room. “It would be bad if we woke her right?”

“It’s rare that she gets a full day’s rest,” the demon agreed, idly picking at the packaging tape. Yongsun slapped her fingers away. “We just have to wait for tonight and ask her to open it before she leaves for work.”

“Right.”

“Shall we order in?”

“Right!”

Later on in the day, it was Wheein who found the letter. Just as she was coming back from helping one of her friends set up their exhibit at a gallery, she noticed a nondescript envelop just outside their door. It had Hyejin’s name on it.

“The mystery continues!” Wheein announced as she entered their apartment. She caught sight of her the Unnies huddled over at the dining table, playing a video game on a tablet.

“Welcome back,” Byul said absently, her shoulders moving along to the tiny avatar she was controlling on the screen. Yong let out small noise, and was equally as engrossed.

“I found a letter for Hyejin outside our door,” Wheein continued toeing her shoes off and hanging up her beanie on the rack, “do you think it might have slipped off the box when the delivery man dropped off the package?”

When she looked up, both Yong and Byul had abandoned the game completely, instead staring at her with no small amount of shock. “There was a letter?” Yong had tried for nonchalance, but her tone ended up more along the lines of manic.

Once Wheen held it up, Yong and Byul were at her side instantly. The corners of the envelope were a bit crumpled, and there was already a small tear in the center from where it must have been ripped off from the box during the delivery. Just inside they could make out a brief note.

“It would be rude of us to read a letter meant for Hyejinie,” Wheein said, one finger just idly slipping past the seam where the envelope had ripped. All three of them glanced at the package again, sometime during the day, Yong had moved it from the living room coffee table to the foot of the stairs so she could watch TV. 

“We could say there wasn’t an envelope to begin with,” Byul hedged, fingers twitching toward the envelope in Wheein’s hand. Yong clicked her tongue, head shaking disapprovingly .

“No, no, no, no. We have to respect our roommate’s privacy!” Yong moved to grab the letter from Wheein’s hand and place it with the box, instead, the motion ended up tearing the envelope in half, the letter inside fluttering lamely to the floor. 

The three of them stared at it for a beat then gave each other a quick look before all three scrambled to pick it up, elbows colliding every which way. In the end, Byul was the fastest. She held it up for all of them to read at the same time. 

Hyejin,

You left him behind. We thought about keeping him around, but at the end of the day, he caused too much conflict within the coven. Besides, we figured you would need him for your new life in Seoul.

There was no signatory, but the Jeonju coven seal marked the bottom of the letter.

“What the heck does that mean?”

“Who’s ‘he’?”

They all turned from the letter, to the box, it’s presence now more ominous than ever. It was at that moment that the door to Hyejin’s room creaked open. There was a wordless scramble to hide the letter, which somehow ended up crumpled into a ball and stuffed into the pocket of Yong’s pajamas.

“Hyejin-ah! You’re awake!” The angel called out, her voice cracking a  bit and pitched up what higher than it normally was. Byul and Wheein fought to keep a straight face. “A package arrived for you!”

“Oh?” The vampire trudged slowly down the stairs, voice still hoarse from sleep, with tendrils of her long hair escaping from the bun she wore to keep her hair out of her face while she slept. Hyejin took one look at the box, eyes widening slightly at the seal of her old coven on it, then craned her neck a bit, as if searching for something. “Did it come with a letter?” Hyejin asked.

“Uhm--”

“Yong read it!” Byul said, grinning mischievously as she reached into Yong’s pocket to pull out the crumpled mess of a letter. Yong stared at the demon in disbelief, before lifting a hand to smack Byul in the shoulder for the betrayal.

“We’re sorry,” Yong began, handing over the letter to Hyejin, “the envelope ripped accidentally and--”

They watched Hyejin read the contents of the letter once, before scoffing and crumpling it up again, this time chucking the paper in the direction of the nearest bin and walking towards the kitchen.

“What’s with that reaction?” Wheein called out, “and aren’t you going to open your package?”

“I already know what it is,” Hyejin called out, the next sound they heard was her opening the freezer for a packet of frozen blood, which she then proceeded to defrost and heat in the microwave.

“Well we don’t!” Byul didn’t even bother hiding the whine in her voice, “Come on, we’ve been curious all day, at least open it!”

Hyejin reemerged from the kitchen with her thermos of blood, she took a long sip before levelling her roommates with an unimpressed look. “It’s just Wilson.”

The confused silence that followed that statement was long. Yong stared at the box again in horror, “Wilson as in-? Is there a--”

Hyejin cut her off, already vehemently shaking her head and the hand that wasn’t holding her thermos. “Don’t be silly,” At long last she walked over to the box, slicing through the packaging tape with one of her long nails. Once it was opened, she reached inside and pulled out the box’s sole content. A few packing peanuts spilling in the process. Yong, Byul, and Wheein stared at the item in disbelief.

“It’s a giant teddy bear.” Byul said.

“Yeah,” Hyejin patted the bear’s soft head for a bit before, setting him to sit up against one of the box's flaps, “I got him for my eightieth birthday a while back.”

“But, the letter said he causes conflict in your coven,” Wheein said. From the box, Wilson slumped forward a bit, causing his head to press forward into the soft bulge of his plush stomach.

“It’s an inside joke in the coven,” Hyejin explained, “People are always trying to borrow him and it somehow ends up--”

“Can I hold him?” Wheein suddenly asked, moving to stand up 

“Wait, I’ve been waiting all day for this box to open, I want to hold him!” Byul was already walking over. 

“Not after you blamed me for reading the letter!” Yong chimed in, grabbing at the hem of Byul’s shirt and pulling her back, “I should get to hold him before you.”

Before Hyejin could take control of the situation, all three of her roommates pounced at the bear, grabbing at it and shrieking in fits of laughter as each person tried to get a hug in before the others. Hyejin watched the chaos with equal amounts of exasperation, shock, and fondness.

“Let me hug it once!”

“Unnie your wings are going to poke my eyes out!”

“Get off you’re so heavy!”

“Ends up like that,” Hyejin mumbled to herself. Amidst the whirlwind of three supernatural beings wrestling each other over a large stuffed animal, she saw Wilson’s plush head wave from side to side. He really was a cute teddy bear. Hyejin sighed in the tone of the long suffering, still there was a wry smile on her face as she walked over to the shelf to grab a decorative gong. She struck it once to test the sound, and then a second time to grab her roommates’ attention. 

“Everyone, honestly!”

Yong, Byul, and Wheein, were lying in a rumpled heap on the floor, laughing and gasping. Wilson had been chucked off to the side in the scuffle. Hyejin walked over and picked him up, pressing her face into the soft down of his plush head. “You can all borrow Wilson one at a time, until then, he’ll be in my room!”

All three roommates were smiling up at her and the bear, and if Hyejin hugged Wilson a bit more possessively after that, she figured she couldn’t be blamed.

He belonged to her first, after all.