Chapter Text
It all started a little while after the drop of Soda Pop.
Rumi, Mira and Zoey were roaming the streets of Seoul, waging their (seemingly) one-sided war against the Saja Boys. The demon group’s hit single was absolutely inescapable, so it was no shock when a random café they passed started blasting it at full volume. They grit their teeth, put their heads down, resolved to ignore it…
'HERE WE GO AGAIN!'
'Come on Joowon-ah, it's just a song...!'
'I DON'T CARE I SWEAR I'LL ARREST THESE BASTARDS FOR AUDITORY VANDALISM!'
The girls stopped dead. Could it be? Someone immune to the demon band's lure?
The one ranting was a young man, early thirties maybe. He was sitting on the terrace of the café in the company of an older man. He was going on and on, detailing how every time the song came up, he felt like ripping his face off - or preferably the boys’ faces. His friend was leaning back in his chair, evidently used to such outbursts, good-naturedly laughing at him...
And then the Honmoon rippled.
The shimmering waves caught on the young man, twisting into new shapes, wrapping around him. They revealed a pair of fangs, long ears pinned back in frustration, and a single long horn sticking out of his forehead.
The girls stared, struck speechless. …Which of course the two men noticed.
An awkward silence ensued.
And then, all at once:
'FINALLY someone who agrees!'
'Handsome AND has a good taste, huh?'
'Oh my god I've been saying, they are soooo overrated!'
Thankfully the men had no reaction besides blinking at them in confusion. The girls, all drenched in cold sweat, quickly shuffled off and dove into the first available alley. For a long while, all they could do was to stare at a wall. When they finally regained their ability to speak it exploded out of them all at once again:
'I mean we knew demons existed so like why not...'
'We did NOT cover this kinda thing with Celine!'
'You just don't see haechi running around like this every day!'
'...Wait, what's a haechi?'
This one was Zoey. Having grown up in America, she kept finding frustrating holes in her knowledge, and here she was, running into one again. She knew her friends were better than that, but part of her still expected eyerolls and pointed sighs. No such thing came – instead Rumi plopped down on a discarded box and started to explain.
‘So… It looks like this guy is a haechi, or a xiezhi if you want to call it by its Chinese name. It’s a righteous beast that can tell good from evil. Depending on locality it can look more like a goat, a bull or a panther, but it always has a single, large horn on its forehead. It uses that horn to gore and kill evil people. Aaaand then it eats them.’
‘Haechi are just by nature, but you gotta admit the method is a bit extreme. Outdated, even’ Mira added ‘I mean, they eat humans. Evil humans, sure, but still humans.’
‘So we are to him like demons are like to us?’ Zoey asked ‘We also don’t wait for a court ruling to kill demons if they hurt us, so maybe it’s the same for him with people?’
‘Sure, but we ARE people’ Rumi said, scratching the back of her head ‘We are meant to protect humans, even the shitty ones. Still, I guess if someone was going around gutting folks we would have heard about it? I think?’
‘Yeah, and it’s not like haechi need human meat to stay alive or something… Maybe he’s just vibing, we don’t know’ Mira went on ‘I say we put a pin in it and focus on the Idol Awards and the Saja Boys, right?’
The proposition was universally approved – they had enough on their plate already and the haechi hadn’t given them a reason to harass him, so they decided to leave him to his business. For now.
This ‘for now’ almost turned into ‘forever’ because the general mayhem surrounding the Idol Awards fully put the little haechi out of their minds, but about three days after the dust settled, they, by complete accident, ran into him again.