MAKE YOUR MOVE, DASH YOUR ALLIES, CLAIM YOUR THRONE.

WHO'LL BE LEFT IN THE AFTERMATH? 

HYUNJOO SONG?

August 19th. The opening rift of Michael Jackson's P.Y.T. blasts from beneath a discarded heap of dresses. If finding something black wasn’t hard enough, now her pearl earrings won’t catch—the skin healed over. Her phone’s serenade comes to an abrupt halt as a 14th missed call goes to voicemail. “Just one more day,” she chants to her reflection. 

Springfield, Canada tricked puberty into a four year hibernation.

“Don’t you know now is the perfect time?” he sings at the threshold. Petals fall from a rose bouquet. “Let me take you to the max.” 

Myungsoo Kim doesn’t sing. He’s rather good at it, but he can never remember the proper lyrics. So 21-year-old Hyunjoo Song taps her foot to even-pitched nonsense. This isn’t her, for all intents and purposes, “boyfriend” at her bedroom door. It’s Eric Nam: Delegate of the Hunter Faction. And, in typical clichéd fashion, her “ex”-boyfriend.

“What’s wrong, Joey?” he asks with a smile. “Werewolf got your tongue?”

SUNGGYU KIM?

Sunggyu Kim checks his watch; it’s half past 12. “He’s late,” he breathes, “again.” Turning in his chair, he mimes a gesture of exasperation. EN08 B-bomb shrugs—his babysitting career ended six months ago. “Want to grab a pint?” Sunggyu gives up, gathering stacks of legal documents. 

“Fear not!” The man of the hour, year, revolution enters stage left—through an open window. He stumbles into a chair, yipping, “Jiho Woo has arrived. Can I get a whoo?” Whoo, he echoes his own call.

“Looks like someone beat us to the pub,” B-bomb admonishes like he’s in Springfield all over again. 

Bad habits die hard, and Zico’s embraced his supernatural liver. “I hear a dotted line needs signin’!” Falling over onto Sunggyu’s briefcase, he fumbles with the lock. “When’s the devil pickin’ me up? I got somewhere to be by 5.” 

“Where’s U-kwon, Zico?” B-bomb asks, fishing for his phone in his pant’s pocket. “You can’t just leave an impure bred to fend for himself in Denmark.”

“It worked out for you, buddy, didn’t it!” Zico yells at the briefcase. Flicking at its leather handle, his voice cracks, “Is the big, bad wolf ignorin’ me?” 

“You’re dropping your Gs,” Sunggyu addresses anything but the issue. “Did you pay in AA tokens?”

“Ain’t got a token to my name,” Zico shoots back, collapsing onto the cool leather he unjustly accused for his misery. “Why start savin’ now?” He sounds like his tongue has an unhealthy attraction to his front teeth. 

Michael Jackson asks, “Where did you come from, baby?” P.Y.T. drowns out the sound of B-bomb telling U-kwon to, “Stay where you are.” Zico never wanted to be an alpha male, the head of his pack, a leader. He’s a firm believer that what’s dead stays dead: old men in mansions are, generally, out of touch with the world.

“.” Zico takes a deep whiff of high quality leather. “Me—Delegate of the Impure Breds?”

“My grandfather would be proud,” Sunggyu assumes, patting him on the back.

Bile threatens to leap from Zico’s throat. “Bull.”

“Welcome to the world of Sobriety.”

MYUNGSOO KIM?

“Art History at the University of Toronto,” Myungsoo answers, sipping water to calm his tapping feet. “Graduation’s set for next year.” She doesn’t look impressed, so he adds, “I’m interning at the Royal Ontario Museum this fall. They’re vetting me for a desk job—but it’s a start.”

She comments at long last, “You’re going to spend the rest of your life looking at things you can’t touch.” 

Eve Kulkarni is a curly-haired kleptomaniac who never came back for Myungsoo. Hakyeon Cha, his younger brother, connected the two after a cataclysmic family reunion in Thailand; she showed up, unannounced, to the sound of screams and shattered class. Within a week, Myungsoo arrived in India. He wondered if he wanted her to steal him away after 21 years. 

“Like father, like son,” Eve says, fixating on the person she couldn’t nab from his sky-high family tree: Myungsoo’s father, Hyunsoo Cha.

Myungsoo jeers, “I’m your son, too.” 

“I know,” she coos, reaching for his hand. Myungsoo presses his palms together, and she misses by a few inches. “I know that—that’s why I’m here.” His confusion prompts her to slide an envelope towards him. “I want to build a legacy with you, my son.” 

Their waiter returns to the table multiple times over the next two hours. She gave him the answers to all of Springfield’s mysteries on a silver platter. It’s food for thought that makes him forget he hasn’t eaten all day.

OR ERIC NAM?

Hyunjoo and Eric met again last summer. “What a coinkydink!” he had exclaimed like fate caused two childhood friends to meet at an archaeological dig—not prearranged circumstance. Hours into reminiscing in the middle of the Sahara desert, he asked if she knew where in the world her infamous “boyfriend” was. 

“Sorry,” she said with a laugh, “did I use the word ‘boyfriend’?” She didn’t notice, because she hadn’t.

“New Delhi, India,” Eric answered. “Plotting the destruction of the Elites with Original Sin.” 20-year-old Hyunjoo scanned the site for unfamiliar faces; years of experience with traitorous plots and underhanded schemes didn’t make distinguishing friend from foe any easier. Eric added, “And I think we can both agree the Power in the West needs a platform.”

Myungsoo or Sunggyu: choosing between the two used to be a luxury. At the time, she opted on neither. Limping through the Springfield Cemetery a year later, half a day late for Daeryong Jung’s memorial service, she rips apart the roses left at his tombstone. It isn’t fair. 

“Where are you?” Tiffany Hwang answers her late-night phone call. “Hyunjoo, I can’t hear you. Tablo—what? You ed up? Stay where you are. I’m on my way. Hyunjoo, stay on the line.” If only she had.

Eric stole the necklace she treated like high school memorabilia—all but guaranteeing Sunggyu’s rise to power. 

WHO DO YOU THINK WILL COME OUT ON TOP?