There’s something dark pumping through her veins. It isn’t blood. What is blood without life? What is life without a soul? 

No, it’s a dark, thick substance that clogs Wendy's body and fills her with a vast emptiness. Emptiness. A void.

But with nothing comes the opportunity for creation. After all, that is what God did is it not? He created light from the darkness. 

Wendy wonders if God has a soul. Why create life if only to let it die? Why allow suffering to ensue to your creations? She doesn't need a soul to know that's immoral. She's almost thirty, she's lived long enough to know the socially accepted views on ethics and morality. Wendy supposes she's lucky she didn't lose her soul at a young age. Hell, imagine a soulless sixteen-year-old Son Seungwan! Insanity.

Though, as Wendy finishes the recording of her song, she thinks of a sixteen-year-old Yerim without a soul. That would be true chaos. Does Park Sooyoung have soul? 

Almost as if she could hear her thoughts, Joy appears before her.

"Ah!" Wendy yelps. Missing a soul does not mean you can't get scared by sudden appearances from the devil. "What the hell, Joy! Doors exist for a reason."

"Teleportation also exists for a reason," Joy chirps and lounges on Wendy's bed. 

"What are you doing here? I'm working."

The taller girl scans Wendy's room. "You cleaned your room."

"So?"

Sooyoung hums, "You don't usually do that."

"I don't usually lack a soul either," Wendy shoots back with an equal snark.

"So you want it back?"

"You said I can't."

Wendy without a soul might be a little difficult to deal with, Joy realises now. 

"Okay well, rhetorically speaking then. If you had the chance to get it back, would you?" 

"I don't know," Wendy shrugs, scribbling some song lyrics. "You were right, having no soul isn't too bad. Everything is so much easier."

Well, that was a very quick one-eighty, Joy thinks to herself disgruntedly, she was complaining so much about it not even twenty-four hours ago.

"But you said you felt weird earlier."

People don't usually adjust to this that quickly.

"Well, I wasn't used to this feeling."

Curious, Sooyoung decides to probe Seungwan. She crosses her arms and summons a pair of glasses and a notepad out of thin air. "What feeling?"

Of course, Wendy knows nothing of Sooyoung's therapist-like posture as she continues strumming her guitar. "Nothing."

"Tell me."

"No literally. I feel... Nothing."

"What do you mean?"

Sighing, Wendy takes a moment to scribble some notes down before playing with the fretboard experimentally. "Irene texted me earlier."

"Since when have you been calling her that?" 

"What, her name?"

"Yeah, for work. Like when she has to go overseas. You always call her 'Joohyun'?"

"Whatever, they're both her name. Anyway, she asked about dinner, so I asked her what she wanted. We talked about it for a while, but honestly, I couldn't care less. I mean, I pretended to be interested. But I really wasn't. I don't think I care about her... At all. Or you for that matter. And Seulgi, Yeri, my family? I remember memories with everyone, and I remember what I felt for them when I had my soul but... today, I feel nothing for them. I should feel guilty, right? According to society, philosophy and well, my memories, I should feel guilty for not caring. But, I just don't. And, I don't know if this is better or not, because I've finished three times as many demos in one day than I could have with a soul in a week. I don't need to eat, I don't need to sleep. I am so much more productive without a soul. And the best part? I never have to feel any type of pain. I don't suffer at all. Because I have no feelings for Irene, and she means nothing to me now."

With the guitar playing in the background, Sooyoung sits in silence for a pregnant moment as she considers Wendy's words. They hit her hard enough to cause her to stop breathing. A kind of heart-stopping, gust of shock that renders one immobile. If I weren't the Devil, Sooyoung thinks, my soul would leave me right about now.

It's Sooyoung's silence--that is much akin to Wendy's emptiness in its ability to seemingly elongate and stiffen with time--that they hear a noise down the hall. Snapping her head to the open door, Sooyoung swallows thickly. , how much did Joohyun hear?

"She's home early," Wendy notes and then goes back to her songwriting.

Pursing her lips at Wendy's indifference, Sooyoung asks, "So, what are you guys having for dinner?"

"Don't know." Another apathetic response. 

"Right, you don't need to eat."

"I never really did much of that before," Wendy points out nonchalantly. 

Joy sighs. She messed up. With all her work as the king of hell, she missed the signs from her friend. Seungwan whose soul weighs a literal ton. Seungwan whose soul makes up who she really is. Seungwan, who--with a soul--was slowly killing herself by neglecting her health. Overworking herself, and failing to acknowledge her basic needs. Seungwan, who struggled to find true happiness because she was too afraid of rejection from Joohyun. 

The devil decides not to tell Seungwan that she knows a way to get her soul back.

***

"Because I have no feelings for Irene, and she means nothing to me now."

Joohyun bites her lip and picks up the metal straw she'd dropped on the ground. Seungwan's favourite bubble tea whines in her shaking hand.

***

Sooyoung calls Yeri the moment Wendy leaves her room to start on dinner. 

"How's Seungwan unnie?" Yeri asks. There's a bustle of noise on her end--beeping and whatnot--that tells Joy her right-hand woman is still down in Hell. 

"Soulless," Sooyoung replies, playing with the side of Wendy's bedcovers. "Without a soul."

"Yeah, I know what 'soulless' means, unnie," Yeri retorts. "Sana, what's wrong?"

Sooyoung hears a muffled reply through the phone before asking, "Everything okay, down there?"

There's shuffling on the other line--some kind of movement--and a grunt before Yeri talks to her again. "Yeah, no it's really ing hot here for some