For Your Soul to Keep

Henry has been alive for nearly six months now or to be more accurate he has been undead for a total of 171 days and 13 hours, and counting.

He finds that being an undead took a bit of time to get use to and that was mostly because there was the whole being dead part that Henry had to get over but once he moved past the fact that he technically doesn't even need to breathe or eat anymore, and that his heart had stop beating altogether it isn't all that different from when he was alive.

Henry can eat, it just doesn’t fill him up and he has no problem walking out under a sunlit day. He can even sweat, go to go the bathroom if he eat or drink something, cry and bleed but most of all he can feel pain—which was demonstrated when an armed ghost from the 13^th century Europe had tried to assasinate Hyukjae but nearly decapitated Henry's head and ended up chopping off his arm instead, he’d certainly felt that.

(Later, Donghae and his spiders and their agile hands and feet help reattach his arm back to his body and that was the least weird thing about his current circumstance.)

Henry still doesn’t quite understand the mechanics of being undead since the night Hyukjae had brought him back from the dead and kept his soul intact with just blood and spellworks, and when he brought it up to Hyukjae, he just simply rolled his eyes and said, “It’s magic, it doesn’t have to make sense to work.”

Which Henry read as—just go with it.

So he does because Henry isn’t going to look at a gift horse in the mouth. Eight months ago he was fighting a one-sided battle against a demon because he was stupid enough to make a deal with it and his soul was the price for bringing his dead parents back. Of course, he should have known that nothing good come out of making a deal with a demon but he was young and naive. He soon learned the price of his deal first hand when he came back to his house and found his parents’ eyes went pitch dark and their hands were stained with blood of his friend—the one they believed was a bad influence on Henry.

He spent the next five days scouring the internet for any way to defeat the demon and save his soul. His research led him to an enchanted website that gave him an address and a name: the Necromancer.

When Henry first stepped foot into Noctis, the City of the Midnight Sun, he had entered into the world of magic and the occult, where magical creatures and inhuman beings live and prosper behind wards and seals since the Fall of the Veil and humanity realized that the monsters and creatures told as children’s fairytales at bedtime were all too real.

Noctis is a city within a city, situated right in the middle of Seoul but barely take up a block—it’s one of the twelve magical cities formed on Earth after the Fall of the Veil and integration of the Orphics into modern society, that was thirty years ago and world was never the same again once they found out magic was real and inhuman beings with immense power wield them in the palm of their hand.

The Orphics—which is just a fancy term for the mystics, the occults, and the weird and freaky things that bump in the night—needed a new place to live after their realm was torn apart for whatever reason and the world governments quickly said yes. People had assumed that was mostly because magic and magical items were part of the trade for the land that Orphics were given and they were right because it didn’t take long for magic to seep into their life. Magic potions, from love potion to truth serum; charms that spelled luck and killed; and cursed tools that give as much as it take, these things can be easily bought and sold in the Orphic’s black market trade and humans never been the kind of species to leave anything they don’t understand alone.

Which is how Henry ended in his position. He knew dealing with demons were a bad idea from all the horror stories he had heard but he foolishly thought he was the exception. Now he had to pay his price.

Henry made his way through Noctis hazardly and found himself standing right in front of a small run-down inconspicuous shop that advertised, “Everything you need for your wary soul,” which doesn’t sound sleazy at all. He didn’t expect that when he entered the shop, he would meet bright-eyed and beautiful Donghae who offered assurance and confident when he told Donghae of his predicament.

Then, he was introduced to the one who could solve all his problem, the one and only Lee Hyukjae, Noctis’ Necromancer. The next few days after that was a flurry of Hyukjae being grouchy and pissed that Henry was stupid enough to bartered and blood bind his soul to a high ranking demon.

“Humans,” he’d scoffed, “so arrogant that they think they could overrule death with just a wish. I should let your soul rot in Hell for eternally for being so incredibly dumb.”

Henry winced and hated how truth that was. He thought he could cheat death but looked where that got him, his parents weren’t his parents anymore and a demon is now after his soul.

“Hyukjae!” Donghae frowned. “You have to help him.”

“I don’t have to do anything,” Hyukjae said, crossing him arms stubbornly.  

Donghae had pouted and sulked for the next two days and Henry, after being allowed to stay in their home during the his first visit to them, wondered if this was how it would end for him, his soul dragged down to hell and suffered for all eternity. That was when Hyukjae crawled out of his study room after barricading himself in there for two days straight and told him this was how they going to save him.

Needless to say the battle to save Henry’s soul lasted a month, with Hyukjae trying to break the three seals on Henry’s contract with one of the Archdukes of Hell—he didn’t even realize he had even called upon such a powerful demon!—and one bloodied battle where Donghae and Belial destroyed an entire block in the lower city of Noctis.

Hyukjae couldn’t break the last seal because Henry was once again dumb enough to be tricked by Belial's lies and Donghae was furious enough on his behalf to go to battle with an Archduke of Hell—and that was when he found out how inhuman Donghae truly was.

So Henry had to die to end the battle before Donghae’s madden rage hurt someone, and Henry can’t let Donghae carried the burden of guilt when this was Henry mess to begin with. In the month that he had stay with Hyukjae and Donghae, he had experience of the happiest times in his life, reminisces of the time when he parents were alive and human. He couldn’t thank the two of them enough for what they had done for him so far, that they had taken in a stranger and gave everything to aid him.

He didn’t regret his choice because he was able to meet them. 

Hyukjae looked grim as he pulled a sword from his shadow and said, “I’m sorry it had to end this way.”

“Me too,” Henry said and closed his eyes.

The blade came fast and quick and he didn’t even feel a thing. Despite Hyukjae’s seemingly abrasive personality, Henry found that he was very kind and even though this was all Henry’s fault in its entirety he showed mercy to Henry in the end.

Henry assumed that once he was dead he would stay in Limbo that repent for his crime, after all even if he escaped Hell by choosing to die instead of being forcibly taken to Hell, he still had to pay for sins he had committed on Earth--playing god with the soul of his parent.

But the next thing he knew he woke up in his coffin and Hyukjae was standing over him with blood dripping down his wrist. “,” he’d ordered.

Henry was not one to disobey and Hyukjae looked terrifying enough that he didn't question any of it. Hyukjae’s blood was the sweet and intoxicating, and Henry couldn’t get enough of it.

“Enough,” Hyukjae eventually said, abruptly pushing Henry away and wearing a scowl on his face. “Don’t make me regret bring you back.”

And that was how Henry became Hyukjae’s ghoul.

After that Henry moved permanently into Noctis since he wasn’t human anymore and Donghae, so delighted to see him alive once again—well undead anyway, cleared a room for him in their apartment building and hired him as their assistant shopkeeper, running the front desk and managing the shop as Hyukjae and Donghae run around the city chasing one of their many crazy cases involving humans and non-humans.

Periodically he has to take Hyukjae's blood to keep on functioning but once he got over the fact that he's drinking blood it wasn’t so bad.

He had asked if that make him some sort of a vampire instead because he relied on blood like them and Hyukjae had made a face at that and said, "Don’t be stupid, you only need my blood. Unless you are starting to crave for other people’s blood as well. Shall I cut off your head to find out if you’re really a vampire?”

Henry frantically shakes his head. “No," he said grumpily.

And that was that.

The Odds & Ends is a quaint little shop situated between a Faerie café that served drinks of highly exotic taste like mermaid’s tears and dragon’s sweat, and an enchanted jewelry shop and metal crafting run by dwarfs.

The shop caters to an eclectic clientele that may be looking for item of dangerous and cursed variety. There’s the genie lamp that held a very grumpy genie who more than likely jinxed you than grant you your wish, rare grimoires and spellbooks that can teach you to hatch your own wyvern or summon an incorporeal spirit from Limbo, or the many different variety of herbs and ingredients that can aid in that bewitching and shrinking potion.

It has a little of everything and eight months ago, the shop only opened whenever the owner and his companion seems to be around and not running all over the city to solve a case so the store hours was erratically and unpredictable at best but ever since Henry started to work in The Odds & Ends, it became more normalize—if such a place was ever normal to begin with, not with such a man as its owner and the kind of people that work there.

The shop doesn’t get much traffic during the day—even when it’s always foggy and grey in Noctis—but when the night settles in and the black sun rise along with the silver moon that’s when they come out.

Nighttime is when the shop is at their busiest, all kind of strange and odd beings walk in and out of their shop. Henry is getting used to seeing Orphics of all shape and size and background. In school, he learned the most common ones like the werewolves, vampires, and faeries but in Noctis he came to known the angels, reapers, wraiths, and so on.  

They more often than not come to the shop to personally talk to Hyukjae and ask him for help in one of their problems but occasionally people do buy the items in the shop but money never exchange hands in The Odds & Ends. Usually it’s a trade-off, an item for an item, a binding promise, or a favor in the future.

At first Henry didn’t know what the point of it all because what does Hyukjae get out it and had asked him about it. Hyukjae ruffled Henry’s hair and grinned as he said, “Money doesn’t mean much in Noctis outside of what little value we hold them but now favors and promises? That mean something. You don’t get it now but you will one day.”

Henry huffed because Hyukjae can be so annoyingly vague sometimes. He’s a frustrating paradox as Henry is starting to find out.

The Odds & Ends is own by a man name Lee Hyukjae but to everyone in Noctis, he’s call the Necromancer and they say that name with the same reverence as if they are talking to a god on Earth.

Henry never pay much attention to the Orphic’s lore in school or outside of it, he was much too busy mourning over his parents to care, so he hadn’t had a clue who the hell Hyukjae was and why he was so important to the Orphic’s community and why everyone go to him for help.

Since he’s living in Noctis now, he started to pick up stuff from the Orphics around him and learned that when they say Necromancer they meant someone who can tread the world of the living and dead and for all the Orphics’ capability to wield immense magic, messing with death is something very, very few can do. Even demons who often promised the living that they can bring the decease back to life, like Henry’s circumstance before, couldn’t bring the soul completely back intact. The dead souls quickly become so warped and distorted in the living world that that they’re no longer themselves and are now monstrous things—no longer human. But Hyukjae can bring people back without any hard consequence on himself or the soul, he’s also able to enter Limbo and knocks on the door of Hell, call upon a possession, and summon spirits and if that isn’t admirable enough--that is if one forget Hyukjae is entirely human and has never been an Orphic to begin with.

When Henry first found out that Hyukjae is a human he was so surprised because he had assume that Hyukjae was a warlock that had inherited his magic skills from his family blood line but Hyukjae was originally a state sanction mage who quit his job in the government to open a shop in Noctis for reason no one knew about.

A former mage that had worked for the government in controlling and opposing the Orphics was now one of their biggest defenders. Henry is sure there’s a story somewhere in there but Hyukjae remained tight lipped about it. 

Even so, Henry could understand why the Orphics revered Hyukjae so much because here was a human who had given everything to protect and defend them and he wields such powerful magic that if he wasn’t on their side it would mean more trouble for them.

The longer Henry stay with Hyukjae and Donghae the more and more curious he becomes in finding out about their backstory, because here was a former state sanction mage that abruptly switched side and then always beside him is a corporal demon in the form with a beautiful young man. Together they run a shop and help the Orphics and the humans maintain some sort of uneasy peace.

To simply put, Noctis is a weird city. The sun never show its face except the black sun that graced their night sky and the people are even weirder. Henry had meet Draconian bankers and their horde of gold, neon faeries that run nightclubs, sirens and their underwater theaters, and angels and their metallic wings guarding the city.

But the things that threw Henry the most off is probably the relationship between Hyukjae and Donghae.

They’re just an odd pair.  

Hyukjae has little tolerant for the majority of the people of the world and most of the time he doesn’t even seem to like the people that call him their friends, but it doesn’t stop him from going out of his way to help them with their problem and constantly putting his life endanger to finish the job they ask him to do.

He’s a contradiction, Henry thinks, because even when he’s cutting people down with his sharp tongue and two seconds away from tearing their heart out, Hyukjae rarely kill or intentionally and maliciously went out to hurt anyone.

Henry can count on one hands when Hyukjae truly went out to hurt someone and that’s mostly when children are in danger or someone threaten his “friends” that he always denied.

Donghae often gleefully referred to Hyukjae as a grumpy bear because he comes off a little mean most of the time but he’s soft and squishy on the inside once you get past his rough exterior and though Henry doesn’t want to die from he finds himself agreeing with that statement.

You just really need to get past all the coarse layers that made up of Lee Hyukaje… but that’s a lot of layers.

Working under Hyukjae is--interesting to say the least. The few times that he was asked to come along on a job Hyukjae needed to talk to the merfolks down below so he had thrown Henry into a man-made lake in the Midtown to call them out, and Henry thought he was going to drown before he remembered that he was a ghoul and he doesn’t need to breath, then there was that incident with Hyukjae left him in the middle of a dragon nest and the eggs were about to hatch, and also the time Hyukjae lend Henry out to the Reapers Corp. where they mostly deal with the ugly clean-up of decompose and decapitate body parts and Henry threw up three times that night.

Hyukjae doesn’t make it easy to love… but Donghae is another matter entirely.

When Henry had first meet Hyukjae and found out that Donghae was a demon bound to him, he thought Hyukjae must be powerful enough to have a demon servant but Hyukjae never treat Donghae anything but Donghae.

Donghae usually does whatever he wants and Hyukjae barely bat an eye if Donghae decide to ditch work that day and hang out with the faeries next door. He’s soft on Donghae and lets him get away with a lot of things and often time the cases that Hyukjae take was pushed by Donghae.

Hyukjae clearly holds Donghae in high regard and even Henry knows that is very unusual in a master-servant demon contract. He had seen a similar contract like theirs while tagging along on one of their cases and the demon never spoke out of turn with his master and never refer to his master as anything but master and the master herself—a powerful state mage—exercise firm control over her servant and that was such a jarring difference between them and Hyukjae and Donghae.

Henry thinks that fine because they clearly have a close relationship and respect each other too much to ever be like that but then he remember that time when Hyukjae held the entire city of Seoul hostage when Donghae was gone--taken, stowed away from Hyukjae because Donghae was unregistered high-level corporal demon and Hyukjae had raised an undead army that surrounded the city hall, causing much chaost among the human's population. He had even called in all the favors he had collected from his clients that had asked his help before and there was nearly an all-out war because Donghae was taken from Hyukjae.

It had seem at that time that the fate of the entire city and her people hang on presence of a demon and only when Donghae was returned to Hyukjae again did everyone let out a sigh of relief.

Henry never seen Hyukjae behave so ruthlessly and it’s all because of Donghae. It’s terrifying to think he was capable of such thing and could easily bring a city down just like that.

It wouldn’t be so bad if it was only Hyukjae because if Hyukjae was the one who can easily strike fear into people’s heart then Donghae is the only thing that can calm him down.

Donghae never live up to any of Henry’s expectation of a demon. He’s eerily beautiful and so human that Henry had hard time reconciling the hideous thing that fought for Henry’s soul that day with the lovely person before him.

Henry thinks maybe it’s just Donghae because he’s little quirky, childish, easy-going, and so, so bright. Donghae is the antithesis of what a demon should be because he loves everyone and the whole world in its entirety and his heart is so big and wide that the whole universe could fit in it. Henry thinks that’s why it’s so easy to love Donghae too.

But as kind and sweet as Donghae is, he can snaps so suddenly and shockingly that it almost cause Henry’s whiplash because he can’t forget that Donghae is a demon and the demons’ emotion are raw, ugly and twisted and they burn.

So when Hyukjae was critically injured in an accident dealing with the dragons raiding Noctis and entering Seoul, Donghae had razed an entire area to the ground with his uncontrollable fury alone. It was only when Lady Jessica had brought Hyukjae directly in front of demonic form of Donghae--all sharp edges, hard armor, tail, fangs, and all--monsterous and terrifying and Hyukjae had told him to, “cut that out now, Donghae! How many people do you intend to kill in my name?!” then Donghae freeze up and dropped out of the sky in exhaustion.

People had died that day, thirty-six injured and five death—though the deaths weren’t technically one of their own, still to see tender-hearted Donghae going berserk just because Hyukjae was hurt can make people wary and thread carefully around the bomb that is Donghae, and as much as Donghae was wrought with guilt later, he was a sobbing mess in Hyukjae’s arm and Hyukjae silently pat his hair and offer no words except his comforting hands, several nights later after when Donghae couldn’t sleep from another nightmare from that tragic day he confessed to Henry that though he was regretful and ashamed of what he did—they may have been his enemies but he doesn’t think they deserve to die—but he would have turn this world into ash if Hyukjae hadn’t survive.

“There’s very little I wouldn’t do for Hyukjae and it seems killing isn’t one of them,” he said almost bitterly. “I wish I could blame it’s on the contract that made me feel this way but it’s all on me.”

Donghae departed after revealing that secret to Henry and Henry was left with the revelation that he was living in house with two people who love each other so madly that they throw their own moral codes into the water as long as the other is save..  

Henry finds that unnerving and scary because their love so huge and heavy that the world may not be able to bare it, its the kind of love that bring empires down to its knee.

If people were to ever find out about the truth of their feelings for each other—if they haven’t already—they will abuse that weakness and use it against Hyukjae and Donghae to get what they want.

Henry knows very little about love, the only kind of love he had seen were his parents and that had failed miserably but Hyukjae and Donghae’s love burns so bright that it’s blinding and it’s so pure and precious that it’s so easy to corrupt it. He had already seen how their love can twist them and make them do things they would never do and as much as its scare Henry to see they fall like that and throw all the morality away for each other, Henry stands on their side.

Henry loves the two of them, they had given Henry so much and had done so much for him in the past months. They never ask anything in return and that may not seem a lot to people but for Henry who never had a true family in a sense of what Hyukjae and Donghae had given him and he would die to protect their happiness—to protect this.

Henry will wait and watch over them and he won’t let anyone get in the way of Donghae and Hyukjae’s love and abuse it for their own selfish end.  

a/n: hiiii -waves- sorry sorry that i been absent! this is mostly due to my writer's slump that cripple any drive to write :((( but it seem i been picking writing again but i dont want to jinx it /o\. anyway, this fic is really weird i just hope nobody get too confuse by it?? @_@ if there's any question i'll do my best to answer them! but i got to sleep first 'cause it's five am over here and my eyes are droopy. i seriously need to stop these late night writing.