“Alright.” Key set down a pile of thick tomes onto the table. Tomes. Plural. And they were huge. In his arms, the stack almost touched his chin. When he had set them down, dust particles freed themselves from the covers and now floated visibly in the stream of sunlight coming in through the windows. “These are a good start. I fished them out from the underground library. Volumes 1 through 3.”

Her eyes fixated on the stack for a full ten seconds before she switched her stare to Key. Then she glanced at Minho.

Minho, seeing her look, spoke up, “Uh...Key...I don’t think three weeks will be enough time to get through those. What are those books of anyway?”

“These? Volume one contains theories of the beginning of supernatural existence. Volume two gives super brief descriptions on most demon species. I think it needs to be updated though. Volume three goes into demonic wars. And there are twenty something more volumes somewhere,” Key started. “My tutor made me study from these when I was younger.”

Minho took the top tome and flipped through it experimentally. He closed it and pushed it away saying, “Just because you were tortured as a child doesn’t give you the right to subject others to these.”

The girl glanced at the two guys who weren’t paying her visible attention before inching for the book that Minho had just picked up, curious at its contents. Trying to pull it towards her, she found that it budged only a millimeter. With her eyes on the slender Key, she wondered, ‘Just how strong is he?!’

“Oh, like you didn’t have to study these boring things when you were a pipsqueak,” Key mumbled.

The other guy rolled his eyes.

“Alright, so the first thing you need to understand is that the supernatural world is comprised of more than just demons” Minho paused for a second in thought.

“Instead of trying to give them labels, how about examples?” Onew, who had been standing in the doorway for the past minute invited himself in and sat down next to Minho and across from her. “We’re demons. Demons have their own general characteristics that make us demons. Then we have our own “laws”, clans, traditions, and wars. Demon society is separate from say...Beasts. Your animal-like creatures like dragons and unicorns. And then beasts and demons are of course separate from say…the beings that epitomize things. That just be.”

To her credit, the look on her face betrayed only slight confusion even though she didn’t grasp his last sentence.

“For example, those dirt people that paid us a visit. They’re not demons at all,” Minho put in. “They are pretty much earth substance, soil, mud, and clay in organismal form. They pretty much ARE dirt. Technically, they aren’t supposed to be evil or good. They just be.”

Key picked at his nails, not fondly remembering how messy the clean up process was. “But nowadays, everyone’s starting to think too much when they shouldn’t be and starting to make stupid decisions that aren’t usually part of their nature.” He scowled while insulting the dirt people.

“Kind of like what we’re doing,” Onew pointed out.

Key became quiet and then mumbled, “Yeah...like what we’re doing.” His expression changed in a second, and he went back to teacher mode. “Demons are characteristically evil. I mean like, nobody thinks of anything good when you hear the word ‘demon’ right? Unless you’re some crazy, cult-following, masochistic or sadistic-” Key cut himself off when he felt the gazes of his fellow band mates drilling holes into his body.

Minho decided to take up the explanation. In a voice that was light considering the topic, he gently continued, “Demons live to make others suffer. Like Key said, they’re innately evil. They desire to see and cause suffering even though their lives do not depend on it. They just do it for ‘fun’.”

“Different kinds of demons live for various number of years and have various abilities,” Onew added. “So the demon community, encompasses creatures that can be very very different from each other.”

“So you are evil then.” She just restated the fact that she had learned long ago.

The three casted their eyes downwards. Minho looked back up and said gently, “We’re different now.”

Key tried to support him. “Yeah. Like I said before, a lot of us are changing now. Looking outside the boxes we’ve always been in. We can choose to act differently! We wouldn’t be SHINee, singing, dancing, and training under a human-run company and making fans happy if we still stuck with our demon nature.”

“So you’re telling me you didn’t kill the man who stole my purse, and you didn’t enjoy it.” She challenged Key. “You’re telling me you weren’t grinning as you crushed people’s heads in and tore people limb from limb?” She asked all of them.