Chapter Text
The demon girl that lives in the outbuilding attached to the main house is quiet. Always quiet. Zoey only ever hears her voice when she sings - or screams.
Zoey repeats and repeats and repeats to herself that demons are evil, that demons kill people, that this demon killed Miyeong and Celine of the Sunlight Sisters.
The Sunlight Sisters, inspirational idols of legendary tragedy, their career a joy to millions of people, including Zoey, who had found in their music a refuge away from school and home.
Now she knows what really happened to them.
However normal and young the demon looks - not much older than Zoey herself - Zoey knows that she's a killer. She's the reason Tae-hee is.... the way she is. A woman nothing like the girl on Zoey's posters.
Sad. Tired.
Angry, all the time, even if Tae-hee tries to be patient and kind with Zoey and Mira.
She's not patient and kind with the demon girl.
Who would be? Who could be?
Zoey understands it, she just finds it hard to watch.
The demon girl looks so human. Even counting the claws, and the unnatural golden eye, impossible hair color, and the matching monstrous patterns etched into her skin, which glow when she spars with them, or when she's in pain.
And she is in pain a lot.
She understands why Tae-hee does it. She understands that this feeling in her chest is weakness, sympathy for a creature that would never return the favour of feeling sorry for her. She knows that she shouldn't cry about a demon being in pain. Hunters have to be strong, ruthless, in order to be able to survive, to be able to protect people, and the Honmoon. She has to kill demons soon and so she really, really shouldn't cry about one being hurt.
The girl's humanity is exactly the kind of illusion that Tae-hee repeats and repeats and repeats is what killed her groupmates. The illusion of humanity, of feelings, put on deliberately to seed weakness in them, to make them vulnerable. To kill them.
But she never can shake the feeling in her chest, the heavy, painful ache climbing up into her throat.
Tae-hee isn't even always fair! But you don't have to be fair to a demon - better not - since they won't be fair to you.
Sometimes, she wishes Tae-hee would just stop it, would just end it, would just put the demon out of its misery.
But that's not possible. Tae-hee had explained that to them. The demon had stolen one part of the sacred connection to the Honmoon, and they need her to have a chance at strengthening it this generation. So in a way, it is the demon's own fault.
Sometimes she thinks Tae-hee punishes the demon girl just to desensitise them, so they won't balk at putting their weapons though what looks human, but isn't.
She just hates it. She hates it.
She hates watching, hates it more than when Tae-hee hobbles the girl and Zoey has to land as many hits on her as she can.
So when Tae-hee puts the remote in her hand and tells her to push the button, she feels like puking.
She doesn't want to. She does not want to.
But she can't disappoint Tae-hee. She can't disappoint Mira. She can't be weak about this, when Mira is so strong. She can't imagine losing her like Tae-hee has lost Celine and Miyeong.
She's got to be in control of her emotions, everything that is always spilling out of her - as always, too strongly, too much. It's a liability. She was chosen by the Honmoon for this, finally good enough for something - for the most important thing in the world.
It helps to remember that this demon killed her idols, Tae-hee's soulmates, and that it wouldn't hesitate to do it again, take Mira away from her.
The demon girl screams.
Zoey's seen her take and shake off injuries that made Zoey feel sick, so she doesn't want to think about what kind of voltage goes through the collar on her neck.
The worst thing is that she never even looks angry. She just cries. But she never speaks.
Zoey can barely remember what this punishment was for. Her ears ring and she only realises that she is about to fall over when Mira grabs her arm and steadies her.
Zoey repeats it like a litany in her head, as the girl pants on the floor, shaking, spit leaking from her slack mouth: demons don't feel, demons are killers, demons don't feel, demons are killers.
Tae-hee pats her on her shoulder. Normally, that rare gesture would have filled her with a hopeful, hot sense of pride. It still does. She thinks she actually is going to puke.
"You will have to keep it in line when I'm not with you," Tae-hee says. "Don't ever let it get away with disobeying you."
Zoey knows what she's going to say next. Tae-hee says it every day, more times than she can count. Zoey's pretty sure she hears the words in her sleep.
"Never hesitate.”