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There were times when people needed an extra push, a little more incentive, to agree to a deal with Gwi-Ma. Your average human was - rightfully so - wary of disembodied voices offering to fulfil their greatest desires - for a price, no less. A paltry thing, he would say: some time in the future, Gwi-Ma would require their service. But he never did elaborate on what that service was, nor when he would ask for it.
When Gwi-Ma’s whispers would fail to make a supplicant of someone he saw potential in, he would send a honeypot to their doorstep, an offering to show his sincerity. And these days, that task would often fall to Ajun.
It wasn’t the worst role he could have. Some demons spent their days scrubbing Gwi-Ma’s platform on hands and knees to ensure it didn’t fall into disrepair, and others toiled in the mountains to collect rock and metal for Gwi-Ma’s monuments. It meant he got to leave the boring, unchanging landscape of the underworld and experience the human plane for periods of time. Usually only a few weeks, which was as long as it ever took him to persuade someone into Gwi-Ma’s service, but those would always be the best weeks he’d had all year.
The only downside, really, was the guilt associated with trapping people in the same miserable situation you were in. But the alternative was screaming yourself raw in Gwi-Ma’s prison while mired in an endless reel of your worst memories, and Ajun’s resolve had admittedly broken fast.
The guilt of turning other people into demons got easier to bear as the years passed. Over time, he even learned to enjoy the process. It was a challenge: how fast could he get his current target to fold? The fastest so far had been twenty minutes.
The man he was working on at the moment was proving to be a little more difficult than past targets. They were a tall, skinny man with bruised knuckles and dark undereyes, a hairsbreadth away from dying from starvation, but they had family, and they were hesitant to leave them. That would just make the acquisition all the sweeter for Gwi-Ma. What could be worse than knowing what you were doing was wrong and doing it anyway? There was no greater shackle.
Ajun banished his grey, patterned skin in favour of something smooth and peach-soft and approached Jinu with the sort of smile that could melt some people's resolve within an instant.
“Jinu, right?” he said, honey-sweet. “I was sent by Gwi-Ma. He’s concerned for your well-being, and I can see why.”
He nodded to Jinu’s ragged appearance, the filth on him, the way his body narrowed under the ribs.
“And you are?” asked Jinu hesitantly, his eyes sweeping Ajun up and down.
Ajun adjusted the fine fabric of his hanbok to bring attention to it. It was an almost embarrassing contrast to Jinu’s filthy, threadbare clothes. “Ajun. A friend.” He gestured down the dirt road out of Jinu’s village. “Come on. Let's get something to eat.”
Jinu hesitated, his eyes sliding over to the ragged building he must have lived in with his family. The thatched roof had holes in it.
Ajun curled a hand around his shoulder. It made him jolt, evidently not expecting the contact. “It won’t take long, I promise.”
Jinu’s stomach growled. He swallowed and grabbed his bipa, perhaps wary of parting with it in case someone tried to steal it. “Lead the way.”
With that, they left, winding their way out of the village and into somewhere more respectable - a bustling city of paved streets, sturdy buildings, and pretty tiled roofs. Plenty of entertainers dotted the streets, playing instruments, dancing, and doing puppet shows, and Ajun mindlessly threw them a few copper coins since Gwi-Ma always gave him a small stipend to use on jobs (likely from the wealth collected from his victims). Jinu’s gaze lingered on the coins.
He guided Jinu into a tavern-inn and sat them at the largest soban in the establishment, ordering everything on the menu - rice porridge, soups, stews, and drinks, until their table was covered from one end to the other in bowls and plates. The sight and smell of it was enough to make Jinu visibly salivate, and he still cast Ajun an uncertain look despite his ravenous hunger. It was unlikely anyone had ever been this generous toward him. Ajun recognised that look, the shock at a display of kindness, and he almost hated that it was nothing but chains drawing taut, pulling him closer to the underworld.
Ajun put on a smile. “Eat. I’m sure you’re hungry.”
So Jinu did, visibly struggling not to devour it all like a starving wolf, shovelling mouthful after mouthful into his empty belly. Ajun watched him quietly, his smile fixed, and didn’t touch his own food until Jinu indicated he was done. He wouldn’t risk taking anything Jinu might want. Once Jinu had filled himself to capacity, Ajun took his time with a bowl of rice porridge, soybean stew, and pollock, since food was one of the few indulgences Gwi-Ma allowed him on these jobs.
“So, Gwi-Ma,” said Jinu as he folded his hands in his lap, looking full and warm and comfortable. “Does he often send people to take care of, uh- clients?”
“No,” said Ajun, which was true. A lot of the people Gwi-Ma propositioned didn’t need the persuasion. He was good at targeting people who felt they had no other way out. “But you’re a special case.”
“Special?”
“Mhmm.” Ajun smiled prettily, letting his long lashes brush his cheeks and his silky black hair fall over a shoulder. Innocently seductive, as though unaware of his looks, his beauty. “I can see you becoming a favourite of his.”
Colour rose on Jinu’s cheeks. He hastily picked up a bowl of rice, chopsticks shaking slightly as he stuffed it into his mouth. “What does that mean, exactly?”
“He’ll-” Let you keep things you value; take things you value. Send you up top for jobs; prevent you from leaving. It could mean any number of things. “Make sure people remember your name,” was what he eventually decided on. “Your music. Your voice.”
Jinu sucked in a breath, clearly taken with the prospect.
“I’d like to hear you, actually,” said Ajun, leaning forward a little, letting his robe slip to unveil the skin beneath. He kept it in good shape. “Can I? Please?”
Jinu stared at that sliver of visible skin. “Not right here-?”
“No, no, somewhere private,” said Ajun, ever so sweetly. “Please?”
Jinu agreed, of course, and Ajun took him to a nearby bridge where the sky twinkled off the water slithering underneath. A picturesque place, a perfect location for a performance. He had expected Jinu to be bad; why else would he be tempted into making a deal with Gwi-Ma? But when Jinu sang, it was in soft, dulcet notes perfectly in time with the strumming of his bipa, and it was beautiful - captivating - a song pulled straight from the heart and soul. Two things he would lose, under Gwi-Ma.
To rob the world of that voice would be such a cruel thing. But you didn’t survive Gwi-Ma’s tutelage with a capacity for mercy intact.
“The world deserves to hear your voice,” he said after, setting his hands on Jinu’s shoulders. “Gwi-Ma could give you that.”
The spiderweb of fractures in Jinu’s resistance only grew.
They shared a few more meals, a few more performances, interspersed with lingering touches of their hands or thighs, casual things he could see were having an effect on Jinu. Ajun noticed the way his breath would hitch, the way his gaze would dart away like he was trying to compose himself. But Jinu had a startling amount of restraint. A few days of idle touches was usually enough to make any man - or woman - take him to their bed, and Jinu had thus far resisted.
During his days with the namsadang, it’d required even less than that; just a flutter of his eyelashes or a sway of his hips and the nobles would climb over each other for a private performance from him. He’d hated it. Hated them. But needs must when your troupe was constantly on the verge of starvation. He hadn't had the luxury of saying no.
Well, he had that luxury now. But nonetheless, when Jinu finally, politely, sweetly asked if he could kiss him (he’d never been asked before; how odd), he said yes, and it was such a chaste sort of thing that it left his chest tight. No one had ever kissed him like that, like he was a person instead of just a receptacle for their lust.
“I’ll do it, Ajun,” Jinu murmured against his lips, soft and trembling against him. The hands around Ajun’s hips were painfully gentle. “I’ll do it. Tell Gwi-Ma I’ll work for him.”
Ajun opened his mouth around an instinctive protest, then closed it. He stared quietly at Jinu for a time before forcing himself to smile again, his hands coming up to cradle Jinu’s face. He thought about the dark corners of the prison, of reliving being held down and used again, and again, until he came apart and Gwi-Ma reassembled him into something more compliant. Sooner or later, he would just end up right back here anyway.
“You won’t regret this,” he said.
The lie didn’t come easy.
"I'm sure I won't," said Jinu. "If he could bring me someone as lovely as you, I see no reason to doubt his generosity."
Jinu closed his eyes and leaned into his touch, smiling against his lips, and Ajun kissed him once more, slower this time, trying to memorise the taste and warmth, dedicating to mind this fragile moment before everything irrevocably shattered.
Once Jinu had been shackled to Gwi-Ma, there was no need for him anymore. So he went back to the underworld, back to the dreary, rolling fog and the dragging passage of days, where the quiet was like nails against the inside of your skull.
“You did fine work,” Gwi-Ma said. Rare praise. “This one will serve me well.”
Ajun bowed with his hands around his knees. “You know I would never disappoint you.”
“Oh, I know,” said Gwi-Ma, likely recalling those torrid weeks Ajun had spent in the prison.
It was another few years before he saw Jinu again, patterns crawling up his neck and into his face, pulsing with Gwi-Ma’s authority. He still had his bipa, strumming away gently in a quiet corner of his new home, his eyes gold now, yet somehow darker than ever, devoid of any of their earlier lustre.
His fingers froze on the stem of the bipa as Ajun turned to walk away. “It’s you.” A soft, ragged voice. He must have been screaming recently. Fresh from the prison, perhaps. He seemed like he would have been more willful than most who ended up there.
Ajun glanced reluctantly back over his shoulder. “So, how was fame and fortune?”
“You lied to me,” said Jinu.
“Not always,” said Ajun, trying to ignore the way guilt curled in him like a viper. “You did get what you asked for.”
“You lied.”
“People knew your name-”
A hand seized around the front of his robe and another clamoured for his throat, and Ajun instinctively grabbed Jinu's wrist and threw him so hard into a nearby boulder that he heard something crack. He was stronger. Of course he was; he’d been here longer, consumed more souls, steadily ascended the ranks. He’d worked hard to make a name for himself here.
To Jinu’s credit, his injuries didn’t stop him from getting up and trying again. But Ajun couldn’t risk letting this drag out when other demons would so often join into scrimmages. He caught Jinu by the leg and twisted sharply until something popped, watching him crumple to the ground with a howl of pain. That would incapacitate him for at least a few weeks.
“For what it’s worth,” said Ajun. “I enjoyed our time together, and I meant my compliments. You played well.”
“You did this to me,” Jinu breathed, ignoring him, ignoring the macabre twist of his ankle. “Look at what you made me.”
Ajun couldn’t restrain a flinch. “I didn’t make you anything," he said, with a touch of desperation, a man who needed to believe his own words. "You chose this.”
Jinu’s face crumpled. “I-”
“We all chose this. This is where we belong, Jinu.”
He turned and headed away, to some far-flung corner that Jinu wouldn’t find him.
From afar, he watched Jinu and how he adapted to his new situation, how he slowly, steadily ascended the ranks, each step up at the expense of someone else. Another demon, another human. Anything to seize a little more power. There came a time where Gwi-Ma even accepted his counsel - a height even Ajun hadn’t managed to ascend to. It miffed him that Jinu had achieved more than him despite having been here for less time.
Now that Jinu had something resembling influence over this place, Ajun had expected he would no longer be a point of interest. Until the man broke into the ragged house Ajun had claimed for his residence. The door folded in, smashed by the thrust of a leg, shuddering as it hit the ground, and Ajun raised his head in alarm- and anger, because now he would have to scavenge a new door and figure out how to attach it to the frame.
“What’re you doing?” he asked in a hiss. “This is my house!”
“I don’t care,” said Jinu, sounding more livid than Ajun had ever heard him. That gave Ajun pause. “Did you know?”
Ajun stood from his low table, blinking at Jinu. “What?”
“Did you know? Did you know he would take them?”
“Who-?”
“My family,” he choked out. “Their souls.”
Ajun considered how to answer diplomatically enough to prevent Jinu from lashing out at him. “Gwi-Ma does whatever he wants.”
“That’s not an answer!” Jinu roared, stepping closer, and Ajun flinched back. “Did you know?”
“I mean, i-it didn’t occur to me, but he's always been like-” Apparently that was sufficient for Jinu to slam into him, sending him sprawling into his table, breaking it in two. Claws scratched at the sides of his neck as Jinu’s palm crushed his windpipe. His head was slammed into the wood once, twice, rattling his brain inside his skull and making his vision swim.
“Stop,” he rasped, clawing at Jinu's forearms. “I didn't know! You’re only doing this because you can’t attack Gwi-Ma!”
“I don’t care,” he snarled. “I’m done- I don’t want to do this anymore - I want it to end, I want to go away! I want to be with them! I don’t care anymore!”
The way he was snapping Ajun’s head against the table were not the actions of a man who didn’t care. He cared so much, so deeply, Ajun could feel him drowning in the pain of it, and it made him ill with shame.
“This won’t help,” he rattled out, reaching up to cradle Jinu’s face like he had all those years ago.
“I can’t- I can’t-” A sob tore from Jinu's throat. Tears spilled over, thick and hot, splattering onto Ajun's neck.
"Jinu, there's nothing you can do now," he said shakily. "There's nothing any of us can do."
Jinu made a ragged, mournful sound, a shattering of something that could never be unbroken. The sound hurt to hear. It hurt more than it should have for a demon. So Ajun did the only thing he could think of: he dragged Jinu down for a kiss, moulding their lips hotly together. And he didn’t really expect Jinu to kiss him back, but he did, driving his tongue into Ajun’s mouth, tasting his hard palate and molars even as his palm ground down against Ajun’s windpipe. He kissed Ajun with the of desperation of a man who needed something - anything - to escape his own body, his own thoughts. His hands shook as he curled them around Ajun’s back, half hugging him as he pressed desperate, wet kisses to Ajun’s mouth, his tears mingling with their saliva.
“I’m sorry,” Ajun whispered, unbidden. He’d never apologised for his actions before, never, and he shouldn’t have, because this place was incompatible with mercy. “I’m so sorry. I'm sorry, Jinu, I'm sorry.”
Jinu let out rattling, gasping sobs and leaned his face into Ajun’s neck. “Are they gone? Forever?”
“Yes,” murmured Ajun. He threaded his fingers over Jinu’s nape, stroking softly. “But it’s- like death. It doesn’t hurt. They aren't suffering.”
Jinu took a shuddering breath. “Their bodies…?”
“Yes,” he said, and Jinu curled over him, pressing his forehead against Ajun's shoulder. “Did they have anything? Anything in their house?”
“I don’t know if they were able to keep anything after I left,” Jinu choked out.
And then Ajun did the last thing he should have. He curled his hands over Jinu’s and said, “We’ll find something to bury.”
“Bury?” Jinu’s eyes flicked skyward. “But he doesn’t let me leave.”
“He lets me leave,” said Ajun.
Jinu exhaled slowly. “He won’t be angry if you take me?”
“It’ll be fine,” Ajun lied.
It was foolhardy, but the next time Ajun ventured into the overworld, he brought Jinu with him to scavenge for anything his mother and sister had left behind. They found a rag doll stuffed with sawdust and an old, threadbare blanket that smelled of the flowers the mother would often tuck behind her ears. Ajun made some rough-hewn headstones while Jinu dug the pits they were to bury the items in.
“Thank you,” said Jinu as they stood over the freshly covered graves, his fingers finding Ajun’s hand and squeezing.
Even after everything Ajun had done to him, everything Ajun had taken from him, Jinu was still so gentle, so kind, and Ajun wished Jinu would hurt him the same way his customers had so his shame would burn less. He stared down at his feet.
“You shouldn’t thank me.”
“I’m grateful anyway,” said Jinu.
“I’m sorry,” said Ajun again, eyes shifting to the mounds of earth overlooked by two jagged headstones.
“I know, Ajun,” said Jinu quietly.
It wasn’t especially surprising that Gwi-Ma found out about their excursion, nor that he was unhappy about it. Jinu was sent straight to the prison; the main perpetrator, on the other hand…
Gwi-Ma could take a lot of things from you as punishment for poor conduct. Your voice, your sight, your hands, your ability to feel, to think. He could even take your name. A punishment reserved for the most serious of offences, and inviting a fellow demon to the surface so they could dig graves for their family and find some measure of peace was a serious offence indeed.
The worst part was, he remembered having a name. He remembered that he’d liked it, thought it was as pretty as himself. He remembered that he had liked how it sounded on Jinu’s lips. He thought to ask Jinu about it when he emerged from the prison, gaunt and shaken, and he didn’t remember either. No one did.
They sat quietly in the small hovel Demon had carved out for himself, the one with the broken table and broken door.
“I… I think it started with an A,” said Jinu, his voice still raw from his ordeal.
The letter didn’t mean anything to Demon, not a lick of familiarity. “That doesn’t really narrow it down.”
“I know,” said Jinu, frowning down at his lap.
“It’s alright,” said Demon. “I wasn’t that attached to it anyway.”
Jinu snorted. “You’re a worse liar than I remember.”
“Those always worked better when I fluttered my eyelashes,” said Demon, shrugging.
Jinu slowly raised his eyes to Demon, shuffling a little closer, bumping their shoulders together. “We’ll think of something new. You can’t keep referring to yourself as ‘Demon’.”
“Well, it’s accurate, isn’t it?”
“You need a name. You’ll start to lose yourself.”
“I think I already have,” said Demon.
Jinu winced. He drew Demon’s hand into his lap and ran his thumbs over the knuckles. “I’ll give you a name, then.” His thumbs circled the back of Demon’s hand as he considered an appropriate suggestion. “What about… Abby?”
“Abby. Abby.” It didn’t sound bad. Something unique, a name he’d never heard before. A blank slate that could feel like his own. “Alright.”