“…She’s dead! Dead!”

“No way! She’s dead!”

“What’s going to clean this up?”

“This thing is dead!”

Jieun slowly opened her eyes. She groaned in pain, but held onto her head while she used the other head to get up.

I seriously need to get used to these headaches, she thought. She blinked her eyes, trying to focus on her vision. She looked around and noticed that Howon was laying down next to her, unconscious. She turned her head, but couldn’t find anyone else.

“She’s alive!” 

“Quick, quick! Run! She’s with an erkling!”

Jieun whirled around, looking at the direction she heard the voice. However, she saw nothing. She blinked her eyes and rubbed them.

I must’ve been imagining them, she thought. She looked down besides her. She was about to get up to find the rest, but remembered that she wouldn’t be able to travel anywhere unless Howon was near her. If she wanted to anything, she would have to wake him up.

“Howon… wake up,” Jieun whispered, shaking him. 

The boy woke up right on the spot. He groaned in pain and clutched his head. It took him a few blinks to regain his vision and a few more minutes just to process what was going on. The, he looked at her in a strange manner.

“You’re not a Devil user, are you?” he asked her. Jieun only remained quiet. “Everything felt so…weird. It was so different. For a moment, I felt so light.” He turned again. “What are you?”

“I’m just Jieun,” Jieun simply responded. “Anyway, we need to go and find the rest.”

“Right—“

“Look! It’s Hoya!”

“Hoya’s here, guys!”

“Hoya! Hoya!”

In seconds, different colored balls of light started to swirl around them. Jieun gasped in fear and was about to run away until Howon grabbed onto her wrist. He pulled her back, causing her to collapse next to see. She was about to yell at him until the lights flashed.

Human figures with wings replaced the tiny balls. All of them had silver white hairs and were dressed loosely with natural objects like large leaves or twigs for belt. One of the figure approached Howon and grabbed his hands with a mischievous grin.

“Hoya! It’s so good to see you!” the figure exclaimed.

Howon smiled. “It’s nice to see you, too, Eunji.”

“What happened to you? We were all so worried about you! We heard that something massacred your village, and we were afraid that you were gone,” Eunji stated. She paused to looked at Jieun. “What’s this?”

“This is Jieun,” Howon said. “She brought me over to this world.”

“You mean you were at a different world?” Eunji asked, surprised.

“Yeah, technically,” he murmured.

“It looks like I brought you to your little friends,” Jieun said, smiling. “Well, I’m going to start going now—“

“Wait!” Howon shouted. He lunged over to grab her wrist. “You’re still the contract.”

Jieun frowned. “Why?”

“You brought me to this area, but not to where ‘here’ is. We still have some walking to do,” Howon said. He turned to Eunji. “Can you lead me back to the village?”

Eunji widened her smile. “Of course!” Her face darkened. “That is, if you play our game with us.”

Howon forced a tight smile. “Still playful and naughty, hm?”

“All pixies are like that,” Eunji said. “What game do you want to play?”

“What game do you offer?” Howon asked.

Eunji grinned at his response. “Let’s play ‘EAT IT.’”

Howon’s face turned grim. “No. I’ll play any game except for that.”

“You don’t have to play it,” Eunji said. She looked over his shoulder and smiled at Jieun. “She can play it.”

“She’s not my kind—“

“It doesn’t matter,” Eunji said. “She can still play.”

“Um, Howon?” Jieun called him softly. “What’s the ‘EAT IT’ game?”

“It’s only for erklings,” Howon told her. “It doesn’t matter for you.”

“Here, I’ll make the game so simple that even she can participate,” Eunji said. 

She sprinkled some magical dust on the ground. A red mat solidified on the ground. On top of the mat were three objects that caused Jieun to widen her eyes: a worm-shaped creature with black and orange stripes about the size of her arm; an odd sphere that squirted out black liquid every time it squeezed itself; and a pile of dust and dirt.

Jieun felt like she was going to throw up, but Howon remained a straight face. 

“Here is an erkling’s tongue. We cut it off from your friend’s tongue when he was going to die,” Eunji said, pointing at the worm. Jieun paled, but Howon once again remained calm. “This is the erkling heart, taken from your mother when she was dying, too.” Eunji pointed at the dust. “And these are your father’s ashes when you burned down the village. We saved these, too.”

As Eunji continued to smile, Jieun was slowly realizing where this was going. She turned to Howon, who curled his fingers up into a fist and continued to stare at the objects.

“Howon,” Jieun started, “you’re not going to participate in this game, right? You’re not going to…”

“Eat it,” Eunji finished. “I know that you’re hungry. Eating this will satisfy you.”

By now, Howon’s mouth was drooling. He gazed at the objects with monstrous eyes, tempted to devour the dead. They would faintly glow red, but every time he frowned to take control of himself, his eyes would return to normal.

“Howon, don’t—“

“I just have to eat this, right?” Howon asked Eunji. “Then you’ll lead me back to the village?”

“Of course,” Eunji said, putting up with her smile.

Howon started reaching for the tongue. “If… If I just eat this—“

“Howon, stop!” Jieun shouted, almost about to scream. Her heart started to race in fear for the boy. “Don’t do it!”

“Do it,” Eunji enticed. “You just need to eat this all…”

Howon grabbed the tongue. “I can do this. I’m born to eat this—“

“STOP!”

A loud chime rang in the forest. Howon widened his eyes and dropped the tongue. The tongue wiggled against the ground, battering itself against the dirt. In seconds, red strings tied itself around him. Although the string was thin, he couldn’t budge at all. It was an incredibly strong string; he knew just by moving around that he wouldn’t be able to break it.

He looked over and noticed that Jieun was holding her hand in front of him. Red strings shot out from her finger tips. When he followed the red strings from her hand, he realized that it was her holding him back.

He wasn’t the only one who was shocked. Jieun seemed quite surprised with herself. It was like she didn’t except strings to appear out of her fingers, and she didn’t except such a thing at all. She gasped and tried to pull back, but all was doing was pulling Howon back.

“Ow, ow, ow!” Howon exclaimed as he was being dragged against the ground. “Stop pulling me! Release me!”

“I-I can’t!” Jieun shouted, shaking her hand with the string. “It won’t separate!”

“What the hell? What are you doing?” Howon shouted.

“I don’t know! I don’t know!” she repeated, freaking out. She moved her fingers around, but all that did was toss his body around. She bit her bottom lip. “You’re very light, though… I can move you around freely. You don’t weigh a thing.”

“Seriously? Is that all you can think of? Get these strings off of me!” Howon shouted. He tried to bite them off, but it did nothing.

“Should I feed it for you?” Eunji asked. She reached down to grab the dropped tongue. She was about to feed it to Howon, but one of the strings from Jieun’s other hand zoomed out and penetrated the tongue. 

The string wrapped itself around the tongue, squeezed it until it bursted into nothing. Eunji widened her eyes while Howon and Jieun stared at the the tongue that had suddenly disappeared. Eunji frowned and grabbed for the heart. She tried to shove it into Howon’s mouth, but before it could reach any closer, the same string headed straight for the heart, penetrated it, wrapped itself around the heart, and squeezed it until it bursted into nothing.

Eunji shot a glare at Jieun. “You’re ruining the fun of the game!”

“I-I’m sorry,” Jieun stuttered. “I don’t know how to control this! It’s something that just happened—“

Eunji grunted and grabbed a handful of ashes. She threw it at Howon, hoping that some would end up in his mouth. However, from the single strand of string, other strings appeared out of it, creating a complicated branch of thin, red strings. All the strings penetrated each and every ash that dared to fall in his mouth. In a blink of an eye, the ashes, too, disappeared. 

Eunji dropped her jaws and was about to throw more ashes until the branches of strings whipped itself against Eunji’s neck. She cried out in pain and reached for her neck, only to realize that it was heavily bleeding. She gasped and glared at Jieun and Howon.

“I-I am so sorry!” Jieun apologized. “I didn’t mean to hurt you! I just didn’t want Howon to eat any of those stuff—“

Before Jieun was able to say anything else, Eunji went back into her pixie form and disappeared. The other pixies, too, went back into their pixie form and fluttered elsewhere. 

Jieun stared at the sky for a bit longer until Howon cleared his throat. She looked back down and realized that he was still stuck in her tangled mess.

“Can you get me out now?” he asked her.

“I would, but I don’t know how,” Jieun said, wiggling her fingers. Again, Howon’s body flopped around on the ground. “Oops. Sorry.”

“Why did I have to be stuck with you?” he murmured. “Why did I ever think of making a contract with you?”

“We need to find the others,” she said, looking around.

“We need to find my village,” he told her.

“Come on, let’s go,” she said.

“I would, but I’m in a tangled mess.”

“I’ll drag you around.”

“Oh boy. This is going to be fun,” Howon stated sarcastically. He soon found himself being dragged around the forest, searching for her friends and for any signs of his village.