Kpop Demon Hunters Fanfiction Archives

K-Pop Demon Hunters Fanfiction and Fanart K-Pop Demon Hunters is a fandom concept that blends the high-energy world of K-Pop idols with supernatural action. This includes demon hunting, and modern urban fantasy. In this universe, idols who light up the stage and attract millions of fans live double lives as hunters. They are tasked with protecting ordinary people from demons hiding in plain sight. That contrast is what makes K-Pop Demon Hunters such a fun and flexible space for fanfiction and fanart. Creators can explore what it means to carry fame and secrecy at the same time, how teamwork holds up under pressure, and what it costs to keep smiling for the camera while facing real darkness offstage. K-Pop Demon Hunters fanfiction often expands the setting with deeper lore, more personal character moments, and alternate interpretations of how demon hunting works. Fanart adds another layer by visualizing stage personas, battle gear, supernatural transformations, and the quiet aftermath when the show is over and the mission is done. K-pop Demon Hunters fanart and Kpop Demon Hunters fanfiction - Enjoy Common Characters and Story Directions Many K-Pop Demon Hunters fanworks focus on a few popular storytelling angles: Dual identities: balancing rehearsals, performances, and public image with secret demon-hunting missions Team dynamics: trust, rivalry, loyalty, jealousy, and the bonds that form under constant danger Demons and supernatural rules: curses, contracts, possession, hidden factions, and the system behind the horror Music as power: songs, rhythm, or stage presence becoming literal force, protection, or a weapon Found family themes: the group becoming each other’s safest place when no one else can know the truth Where to Find K-Pop Demon Hunters Fanfiction and Fanart You can find K-Pop Demon Hunters fanfiction and fanart across multiple fan platforms and communities: Archive of Our Own (AO3): strong tagging system and many longer, character-driven stories Twitter / X and Tumblr: short fic, headcanons, art threads, moodboards, and quick updates Pixiv: high-quality illustrations, character designs, and concept art LOFTER / Weibo: active Chinese fandom spaces for both fanfiction and fanart This page also features a free K-Pop Demon Hunters fanfiction, so you can start reading right here without needing to sign up or pay. Fanfiction Spotlight: gimme that candyfloss (by arsonide) gimme that candyfloss is a K-Pop Demon Hunters fanfiction by arsonide that leans into atmosphere, character interaction, and emotional undercurrents rather than nonstop action. It captures the strange overlap between idol life and the supernatural, using small moments to hint at bigger threats and deeper secrets. The story plays with contrast: bright, sweet, and soft on the surface, but with a sharp edge underneath. It’s the kind of fic that can feel warm one second and unsettling the next, in a way that fits the K-Pop Demon Hunters vibe perfectly. Themes and Tone (No Spoilers) Sweetness vs. danger: soft visuals and “cute” moments that don’t erase the threat Character-focused writing: thoughts, glances, and tension carry real weight Idol life vs. hidden reality: the line blurs, and the cost of secrecy shows up Quiet unease: a mood-driven approach where the atmosphere builds slowly and sticks Writing Style arsonide’s style is subtle and sensory, favoring texture, pacing, and emotional nuance over heavy exposition. The fic reads intimate and cinematic, making it especially appealing if you enjoy stories that linger on feeling, tension, and the “in-between” moments where everything can change. Read the First Chapter for Free Below, you can read the first chapter of gimme that candyfloss for free. It’s an easy way to sample the tone and direction before continuing with the rest of the story. K-Pop Demon Hunters Fanfiction - Gimme That Candyfloss. Chapter 1 There are only two things in this world that Zoey can say, with full confidence, that she hates. People who litter in the beautiful oceans—and 7 AM classes. Unfortunately for her, she doesn’t know anyone on campus who litters, so there’s nowhere to direct her fists. It’s just her, the crumpled up bag of chips in the bottom of her bag, and her notebooks against the world. And to hell with morning classes. She still has no idea what possessed her to pick them when she registered last year. Zoey slams open the door to her room. Her school bag rolls off of her shoulder and thumps to the ground near her desk. With a groan, Zoey shuffles towards her bed and flops face first into it. Derpy, her favorite cat in the whole entire world, hops up onto her lower back and loafs there. He purrs. It’s only eleven in the morning, and she already feels like death. She probably smells like death too. Her alarm clock didn’t go off, and she had to skip the deodorant to race out of the house and catch the bus—which she couldn’t even make! The stupid bus schedule they posted online said that it would leave at 6:30 AM, but it left at 6:25, and god, she should really call the county and complain and— Zoey groans. She shoves the heels of her palms into her eye sockets and groans some more. It’s only been two weeks, and Zoey already wants to die. Who made morning classes legal, and why aren’t they locked up for their crimes? Her phone buzzes in her pocket. She turns over on her shoulder and hugs a pillow to her chest while digging around for it. She’s still wearing her outside clothes, which is ugh, but she’s already at that point in the semester where she honestly doesn’t care anymore. Whilst checking her notifications, Zoey hears her abeoji yelling downstairs. She has to stop from rolling her eyes. “Zoey!” her father shouts. His voice is muffled, but he’s loud and gruff enough that Zoey can hear him all the way from her room. “Don’t forget to do the dishes! And I don’t mean just shoving them in the dishwasher, I need you to scrub them this time. There’s grease streaks all over the dishes from last night! And don’t forget to vacuum, we have—!” “I know, I know!” Zoey shouts, lifting her head. She cups her mouth to yell louder so that he could hear her and not complain about her sounding too quiet—again. “I’ll do them later!” “When is ‘later’?! And when are you cleaning your cat’s litter box?” her father yells again. “The last time you said that, you—” Zoey rolls her eyes and scoffs. She throws a pillow over the side of her head to keep from hearing the rest of his rambling, and she melts back against her sheets. They have this same conversation every single time, she swears to god. It’s not her fault that the dishwashing soap that they bought is the crappy kind. She scrubbed those plates last night to hell and back. There aren’t too many notifications on her phone. Half of them are things that Zoey just swipes away from, like a reminder that her period is coming up and that her virtual cats haven’t been fed for the day yet. She also has emails from different brands that she likes promoting their sales, which seem interesting at first—until she remembers what her bank account looks like, and she winces. Zoey sighs as she checks the other notifications, her other hand petting Derpy. She rolls onto the other side and squishes her cheek against her forearm as she thumbs through her screen. There’s a couple notifications from the website that she streams from, Honmoon. Nothing too exciting. Just three new followers at the top of her notifications bar, as well as reminders that other streamers that she watches are now live. Zoey wouldn’t consider herself a flop, really. Maybe just someone down on their luck—for now. She has fifty-two subscribers, which is fifty-two more than she could’ve ever hoped for. Plus, she’s only been streaming for a couple months. Maybe she’ll get a boost from a bigger account someday, or one of her clips screaming at a horror game will go viral. Losing her voice after every stream can’t be for nothing. Zoey keeps her chin held high as she taps away from the streaming website. It makes her a little sad to know that she won’t be streaming as often now that she’s back to the awful grind known as college, but at least life isn’t too busy that she has to drop it completely. Maybe she can pick up daily streaming again over the winter break. Zoey’s father shouts some more downstairs. Derpy jumps off to play with something on the floor. Her thumb hovers on her messages app. He’s less so talking to her directly, and more so just complaining out loud about the mess in the kitchen and the trash not being taken out. She sighs. She really, really hopes that she could get a good mic someday to block out his ramblings. Maybe that’s why she’s not getting too many followers. Zoey clicks on her messages. There are a couple texts from classmates asking her if she could pass over notes from a lecture that they missed due to the flu (yeah, right), and a little check-in from her mother in Korea asking her if her classes had been going well. Rolling onto her back, Zoey sends off a quick text to her mother telling her that everything’s fine and that things are good here in America. (She remembers that sad little $12 flashing on her screen whenever she checks her bank account, but Zoey waves it away.) There’s no other texts for her to read—which is a little sad, but such is life, Zoey supposes. She’d rather have a few good friends than a dozen friends that she barely talks to—which is a nice sentiment, if she had a few good friends. She only really has one, so Zoey taps on his profile picture to bother him. Zoey • 11:12 AM JINUUUUUUU for your prideeeee🦁 • 11:13 AM yesssss Zoey • 11:13 AM class SUCKED bro idk how you can wake up this early everyday and not want to kys for your prideeeee🦁 • 11:16 AM lol yeah so how was class besides that Zoey tosses and turns on her bed again. Her fingers are flying on the keyboard now to recount every awful thing that’s happened to her in the past couple hours—including her professor cold-calling her while she was trying to play snake on her laptop, her dollar bill being rejected by the vending machine so she hadn’t even had lunch yet, and that she already had two essays to do by next week in her first month of the semester. She’s a goddamn music major! Why are they making her write so many essays? She’s never even going to need it, so what’s the point? She sends the entire block of text to Jinu and sees the little “read” symbol underneath it. He’s not a particularly fast reader, so Zoey sits up in bed to stretch her arms over her head and groan. She can probably fix herself up some noodles—if they even have any left. Zoey slips on her fuzzy slippers and presses her ear close to her door. She hears her dad shuffling around outside of the hallway, and she waits until she hears the door to his bedroom close. He coughs loudly, a testament to his sickness—and the reason why Zoey had to even stay in Burbank with him—and Zoey finally slips out of her room. She slides over to the pantry and opens it wide. There’s practically crickets in there. And dust bunnies. The only things left inside their pantry is a bottle of mostly empty gochujang, fish cakes, tea bags, and coffee sticks. The fridge isn’t any better. There’s some eggs and a couple of condiments, but she’s already getting sick of eggs and rice all the time. Huffing, Zoey closes the fridge. It rattles and tips, but Zoey’s too hangry to care. She rummages through the pantry one last time to make sure that she hadn’t missed anything, then the fridge again too—and she shouts, “Ah ha! Come here, you little rat.” There’s exactly two and a half sausages left in a ziplock bag. Zoey holds it up in the air in victory. Her mouth is already watering. She moves fast around the kitchen. Honestly, she’s too hungry to care about anything else. The sausages go in the air fryer, she pours out some rice to wash and cook in the rice cooker, and she works on scrubbing rotten food from the plates in the sink with as much vigor as possible so her father stops complaining for once. Which, honestly, should’ve been her first red flag. With her mind preoccupied with washing the dishes and humming along to the song blasting in her earphones, Zoey kinda forgets about the food in her air fryer. The air fryer that she accidentally set to 500 degrees. She plops the last bowl on the drying rack and puts her hands on her hips to admire her handiwork. “Complain about that, old man,” she grumbles under her breath. The sink is practically sparkling from how empty it looks. Then, Zoey’s eyes begin to sting. She sniffs the air. It smells like smoke, and the kitchen is suspiciously cloudier than it had been when she walked in. With a squeak, Zoey scrambles for the air fryer with a jumbled, “Oh, fu—!” She rips open the basket to the air fryer and coughs. She waves the air in front of her face and squints into the darkness within. Her eyes are still stinging, but she can make out two shapes inside the basket. Really, really black shapes. Groaning, Zoey sets the basket on the counter to cool off. She can’t exactly throw it away, considering that she had no other options but to eat it. She drags her feet on the ground with less gusto to fix herself up a plate. She paddles out a few scoops of rice from the rice cooker (which fortunately hasn’t burnt along with the sausages), then makes her way to the air fryer basket. With two pinched fingers, Zoey fishes out the sausages. She hisses when she takes up the first one. It’s too hot, but she’s also too hungry, so she takes a few quick breaths before pinching the sausages between her fingers again to drop into her plate. “Ow, ow, ow—” she hisses, waving out her hand. Zoey sets the plate on her table. She opens a window nearby and uses her dad’s newspaper to fan more of the smoke outside, then picks out some utensils. The chair scrapes when she goes to sit down. The charred sausages are in her mouth before she knows it, with white rice acting as her chaser. It tastes disgusting, but at least it’s sustenance. Zoey learned her lessons a couple semesters ago when it came to skipping meals. A meal is a meal, even if that meal was an unrecognizable mush on one of her dad’s fancy plates. She sets down her utensils to chew and check her phone. Jinu had finally replied to her. for your prideeeee🦁 • 11:46 AM slr I almost fell asleep but I’m still in the dance studio so I gotta stay awake anyway lol sounds like it sucks. im sorry zo :( Zoey • 11:49 AM it sucks REAL bad >:(((( OH isnt it like 3am over there right why tf are you up????? for your prideeeee🦁 • 11:51 AM company wants us to learn the new choreography before tomorrow morning 🔫 so we’re all staying up late to make sure we got it down some of us think that our debut is coming soon lol idk if I agree but I don’t mind the optimism since ill probs be their leader Zoey • 11:55 AM saja boys sounds like a forever nugu group I hate to tell u BUT I’ll stream ur songs just for u for your prideeeee🦁 • 11:57 AM lol thanks how was your lunch btw? and the expensive cat you stole from me. is he eating well? Zoey • 11:58 AM ur never going to believe this but ur lion kitty likes the kibble I got him more than the 50 cans of expensive korean tuna you sent me also my lunch went crazy for your prideeeee🦁 • 11:58 AM first of all he’s a TOYGER. secondly…? Zoey snorts at his text. He’s never going to believe what monstrosity she has in front of her right now. She brings another spoonful of plain rice into her mouth (because honestly, just plain rice is way better than the charred ball in the corner of her plate), then swipes up to find her camera app. Her tongue sticks out of the corner of her mouth as she plays around with the angles, then she snaps a couple of pics. Zoey sends all of the glamor shots to Jinu. She sets down her phone with a little snicker, then enjoys the rest of her food. Jinu replies by the time she scrapes off the last of the rice and dunks her plate in the sink. It’s a lot of question and exclamation marks that he sends to her, but he’s too accustomed (sorta) to her cooking to reply with more concern. He does send her a selfie of himself looking disgusted though, and Zoey belly-laughs at it. The sleepiness is already starting to kick in as she makes her way upstairs to her room. She stands in the middle of the hallway, looking back and forth between her room and downstairs. She could either go back down to make a quick instant coffee, or she could just crawl into her bed and take a power nap. Zoey’s agenda comes up in the forefront of her mind, and she grimaces. She needs to start on a couple projects, and there’s a reflection due later that night. A nap would be a slippery slope if she took one right now. Zoey shrugs. That’s a problem for Future Zoey. She changes out of her crusty clothes that smell like burnt sausages and slides right into her bed with a grateful sigh. She’s been dreaming about her bed ever since she woke up. Another buzz from her phone wakes her before she can fully submerge herself into sleep. Zoey opens one eye to check her screen. It’s a random ‘like’ notification from one of her socials. Zoey shifts her arm to type in her password. She gets on the app, clicks the plus sign at the bottom to add a post, then attaches two pictures of her burnt sausages. She adds the first caption that comes to mind: brekkie for today 😛 Her thumb hits the ‘post’ button. Zoey lays her phone facedown next to her on the pillow, and she shifts around in bed until she gets into a more comfortable position. She goes to bed hugging her pillow with drool already half-dry on the side of her face. It usually takes her a while to fall asleep, but after the exhausting day she just had, a couple of inhales is all she needs to start feeling the lull. In her mostly-asleep state, Zoey can feel her phone buzzing over and over again on her bed. She can feel Derpy trying to swipe at it, but she waves him away with a sleepy arm and a grumble. Jinu must be extra disgusted with my food today, she thinks to herself. “Rumi!” A flash of light blinds her momentarily. “Rumi! Rumi, look over here!” Her gracious smile spreads across her face with practiced ease. She turns her head, just enough to acknowledge them, and waves in that dainty way. Her bodyguards are gently guiding her from behind. “Ryu Rumi! Rumi, smile for us!” More flashes. Afterimages are already floating in her vision, but she smiles like they don’t affect her. Nowadays, they really don’t. “Rumi, do you have any upcoming projects that you’d like to share with us?! Rumi—!” “Rumi, can you comment on the dating rumors between you and the leader from PSYCHFUR—is there any substance at all—?” “Ryu Rumi! Ryu Rumi! How do you feel about your single hitting a Perfect All-Kill last week—?” “Look over here—!” “Can you wave over here for Vogue Korea?!” “Ryu Rumi—Rumi—!” “Can you confirm if you’ll be attending the Idol Awards this year?” “Rumi!” As per usual, Rumi doesn’t bother to open her mouth to any of the questions. There’s way too many for her to keep track, and she knows that they’ll eventually be answered on a radio show sometime this week. Or on a variety show. Or at a magazine interview. Or— A bodyguard makes a hand signal for her to duck her head. She does, and her assistants surround her to cover her with black umbrellas and coats. The paparazzi groan in disappointment. Still, she can hear the snaps of cameras and the desperate clamoring of those who still think they can get an answer out of her if they yell loud enough. Rumi presses her lips into a thin line. Her team guides her down the rest of the sidewalk. Bodyguards shout at the nosier paps to get away, and cameras continue to snap and flash. Rumi can hardly hear herself think. Someone gently puts a hand on top of her head to make sure she doesn’t bump it as she’s guided into the back of her limo. It would be an awful look on her, after all, if she showed up to tomorrow’s late night show with a bump on her head. Celine would’ve lectured her and her team for hours. Someone shuts the door for her. A bodyguard knocks on the window to signal to her chauffeur that everything’s all good. The cacophony of screaming paparazzi and the blinding cracks of flashing cameras fade away as she’s driven off. Rumi watches everything get smaller by her tinted window. Her arms are crossed protectively over her chest, hackles raised. She only relaxes when the noise and the company completely fade, and she’s left in her silent limo. Rumi breathes out a deep sigh of relief. She slumps against the expensive leather seats and slides down. Her head rests against the window. The gentle rumble of the car is soothing. And god, she can’t wait to take a bubble bath after this. Rumi leans over to knock on the window that separates her and her chauffeur. He rolls it down and looks at her through the rearview mirror, silently listening to whatever she needs. She could ask him to swerve out of the road and off a cliff, and he probably would. Anyone in Korea, and honestly on this planet, would. It’s not conceited for her to think that when she’s had people tell her to her face that they’d do anything for her. It used to be startling to hear, especially during the first few years of her career, but now she laughs it off and thanks them with that smile everyone seems to love on her. “Before you drop me off, could you make a quick stop at the bakery and grab me a cream bun, please?” Rumi asks him politely. “You must be extra tired today,” her chauffeur comments lightly. Rumi gives him a noncommittal shrug and a guilty smile. He’s been driving her around since the start of her career—and had driven her mother, back when she was still alive and in that group with Celine. Rumi trusts him with getting her the right cream bun. Sometimes, Rumi feels like he’s one of the only people that get her. Her chauffeur does as told. He makes a turn away from her usual road home, and the gentle blinking of his turn signal almost lulls Rumi to sleep. But she’d rather not wake up with another crick in her neck like last time, so Rumi straightens up and checks her phone to pass the time. The first notification she checks is from Bobby. It’s a newly published newspaper article with the headline, The Starlight Darling of Sunlight Entertainment hints at an upcoming album! Rumi heart-reacts to it. She replies to his second text asking her if everything went okay at the morning show today, then swipes out of her messages to check what’s going on in the social world. She finds all of the usual things that pop up on her timeline. There’s the cute tiger videos, and the random singing covers of her songs that she likes from her main account, and news about the comings and goings in Korea. There’s a new comeback from a girl group that she enjoys, as well as some trailers to new movies that pique her interest. Rumi finds herself giggling at a video on her timeline about some new trend as the car rolls to a stop. Her chauffeur promises to be back in a little bit, and she thanks him with a smile. Rumi continues to scroll through her phone. Her mind feels half-dead looking at seemingly the same things over and over again. Tigers, kittens, Internet trend, dance cover, singing cover, more tigers, another Internet trend, edits of herself from fans, fans talking about her and how pretty she is, fans clipping some of her scenes in movies and praising her acting— Rumi scrolls away from a post, then scrolls back up. Her face wrinkles in disgust before she can stop it. The caption reads: brekkie for today 😛 Rumi sincerely hopes that it’s just a tongue-in-cheek joke by whoever posted it—because what she’s looking at is a complete abomination. She can’t even tell what it is. She can tell that the bottom half of the picture is rice, which at least looks edible; the rest of the picture is something charred past recognition. It could be a charred human limb and she would never even know. Clicking her tongue in disapproval and pity, Rumi clicks on the post to check out the comments. Maybe someone could shed some light on the post and reveal the fact that it’s just some poorly photoshopped image, or the work of an art student trying to make shock value art. It’s not. Everyone in the comments seems just as disgusted as she is—but they aren’t half as pitiful, from what she can tell. There’s a lot of “LOL”s and laughing emojis and keyboard smashes, as well as people asking the account to post some more of their “brekkies” for everyone to see. The like count is almost on par with Rumi’s announcement of her last single. It makes her laugh to herself. What a strange place that the Internet could be. Her thumb hovers on the account name. She’s painfully curious to see if this person has anything else as monstrous as that on their page. She takes note of the account name, zoeazyonme, before the door to the limo opens and her chauffeur holds out a small brown paper bag to her. “Thank you,” she says graciously. He settles back into the driver’s seat and drives off. Her penthouse is only a few minutes away. Rumi looks back down at her phone screen. Her timeline has refreshed. She shrugs it off and pockets her phone to enjoy her cream bun. It’s better when it’s fresh, after all. It also tastes insanely good after a long day of running back and forth between four different interviews. Her chauffeur fills the silence by asking her about how she liked the new location for that variety show she was on, and Rumi answers with the cream bun stuck to the side of her cheek. “I hope you rest well at home,” he tells her kindly. “Thank you,” she says again—but that hole in her heart aches, just slightly. Rumi can already picture her penthouse: vast, with all the latest technology, and windows kept spotless by hardworking staff—but that’s where it ends. The grandeur feels hollow beyond that. Stepping into her penthouse is like stepping into a ghost town. It never feels like home—but at least she’ll get to rest. She really, really can’t wait for that bubble bath. It’s only seven in the morning, but she’s going to need one if she wants to survive the rest of her day. Rumi checks her phone one last time as she wipes her fingers on a wet wipe. She finds that same dreadful account on her timeline—perhaps due to the world intervening, or because someone that she follows liked it and cringed just as much as she had. Rumi clicks on the account. She follows the URL to a streaming website. Her eyes go impossibly wide. “Holy s...,” Rumi mumbles to herself, mouth numb. The first video that she finds is of a girl with giant headphones, screaming into her headset while she jumps around on her chair and smacks her keyboard. Her screams almost blast Rumi’s eardrums clean off—which is saying something, considering all the times she’s had feedback accidents on stage. But this woman’s smile and giggles make up for it. And she’s pretty. Rumi instantly feels the need to repay her for the trials and tribulations that came with whatever she just ate for breakfast. And maybe just for existing. Mira reaches over to turn down the music in her car. She can see the gates to the Kang Mansion just over the horizon, and they take the enjoyment out of the music she’s listening to with them. She exhales through her gritted teeth as she makes the last turn. Her punk rock music is still playing gently in her car, but she can’t find it in herself to bob her head to it like she had a couple seconds ago. Even just seeing the stupid family name written on a golden plaque across the fence is already enough to make her nauseous. It’s not just that either. It’s the reinforced, black fences, the intercom that buzzes her in like a prison alarm when she slows down in front of the gates, and the giant house that looms miles away from the gate itself. The black, modern design is just as homely as a corporate building. At least her mother had the right idea to put some more flowers out front—but it feels more like a cop-out than anything else. Mira rolls up her windows as she nears their parking strip. She turns off her music entirely as she parks. She’s already rolling her eyes at the thought of her family picking a fight with her because of her damn music. The lights are turned on in the living room. She can tell from the warm glow that peeks through their giant windows, and Mira has to stop herself from gagging. That means her entire family is home for breakfast. For once. Mira closes her car door as quietly as possible. The thud still makes her wince, and her face contorts under her hat. She can already imagine her family turning their heads to their giant double doors, faces warping into those disappointed scowls like the mere sight of her already warrants it. “Great,” she mumbles under her breath. She swings her car keys on a finger as she makes her way indoors. She knows by now that trying to sneak inside wouldn’t work—and she might as well own it at this point. Mira slips off her shoes, and a staff member offers her a plate of cookies and warm towels. She gently waves them away. Her family is in the dining room. She can tell from their distinct conversation, sounding cold even all the way from here. It’s like they’re in a business meeting, even though she knows from the smell in the house that they’re merely having breakfast. The logical choice is to just march up to her room and never talk to them again. She goes towards the dining room instead. If they want to pick a fight with her today, they might as well do it now, rather than wait until she’s lounging in bed. It’s her father who greets her first. Which is surprising. He dabs at his mouth liberally with a monogrammed napkin, and he’s mid-polite laugh at something her brother said when he glances up at her. His eyebrows jump up, and he sets down his napkin. “Mira,” he says, voice gruff and cold in that way it’s always been. “Nice of you to join us.” “For now,” her brother says under his breath. “Minho,” her mother admonishes, but she doesn’t sound as harsh as she should be. Mira holds up her hand, lazy in its regard. She tries not to speak as much as she should around them. Everything she says only gets turned around on her no matter what. Still, she manages to get out, “Sorry. Tried getting home as soon as I could. The shoot ran late.” She makes her way to sit next to her brother—the only empty seat at the table. There’s already food on her plate, arranged by the kitchen staff, but she could tell it had gone cold. She can feel censorious gazes on her as she sits down. Her chair scrapes, but she doesn’t even flinch. Mira doesn’t even look up while she picks up her metal chopsticks. “What ‘shoot’ did you do today?” her mother tries to ask. Mira almost snorts at how forced it sounds coming from her. But she at least respects her mother’s forced effort, compared to her brother’s downright critical scowl. Mira licks the tips of her chopsticks to test the flavor of the soup. It’s cold, but the broth tastes delicious. She picks up her soup spoon as she answers casually, “Just a fragrance campaign for Tamburins. Nothing crazy. But I do have a magazine shoot for Gentle Monster tomorrow morning—so I can’t be at the office ‘til noon.” Yeah, no big deal, mother. Your daughter scored two of the biggest advertisement gigs in Korea back-to-back. Again, she wants to add sarcastically. But she knows better. Her mother presses her lips together and hums. Mira can see the displeasure written all over her Botox face. Her father clears his throat—not to add onto the conversation, but because something had gotten stuck to the back of his throat. He thumps his chest and gets back to chewing his food. As per usual, her father never has anything to say about her antics. Her amazingly supportive older brother, on the other hand, looks directly at her and asks, “I can’t believe that you’re choosing to do more meaningless photoshoots instead of helping us at work. How vain can you be to choose that over—?” “Minho,” her mother scolds again. But, as always, it sounds forced—like she agrees completely with her brother, but that she has to at least feign playing the good mother who has no biases. Their father looks completely at peace as he scrolls through his tablet and chews on his food. Mira’s teeth grind together. She shovels some more food in her mouth to stop herself from lashing out. She’s too tired to play that game today—maybe tomorrow, if Minho won’t get off her bum. Which he probably won’t. “I’m just saying!” Minho exclaims. He puts his utensils down with a clatter. He gestures at Mira accusingly, even though she tries her best to stare down at her food. “All she does is stupid shit whenever she leaves the house. ‘Oh, I can’t come in today, I have a photoshoot’, ‘Oh, I can’t come to the meeting because Calvin Klein called’. She’s never offered to help us out once—” “Can you get off my ....?” Mira snaps. “Mira!” her mother reprimands. It’s a lot more berating than when she had called off her brother. Which isn’t a surprise to anyone at the table. “I’m just saying that you could stand to help us out once in a while.” Minho’s nose flares as he stares her down. Mira doesn’t look away from him. Like hell she’d let her brother cow her. “Why can’t you do that?” “Uh, because every time I come to ‘help out,’ you think I’m doing something wrong?” Mira asks in disbelief. “Because you never take any criticism,” Minho snaps. “You always have to think that you’re right, or that rules don’t apply to you. Whatever happened to working together as a family, Mira?” Mira snorts. “You want to lecture me about doing things as a family?” Days like this makes her think that her brother should’ve been the one to dye his hair hot pink instead of her. It would match the twisted look on his face. Minho scowls and throws his napkin onto his empty plate. He turns his body to face her, and he says slowly, “At least I don’t run off to play dress-up while everyone else cleans up after me. You think being on the front page of a magazine makes you untouchable? You think holding perfume on TV pays back all the embarrassment you put us through?” Mira stands up. Her plate clatters just as loudly as the scratch of her chair. “Mira, sit down,” her father says tiredly. He’s pinching the bridge of his nose, face contorted like he’s smelling something mildly awful in the room. “Not until he apologizes,” Mira snarks. Minho sits there and looks up at her, tongue rolling over the inside of his cheek. He looks a little proud of himself, especially with that faint smirk on his lips and the hand that rests on his lap. He doesn’t say anything either. Neither does her mother, or father. Mira tosses the napkin that was on her lap onto the side of her plate. “Thought so,” she says, not wholly surprised or upset. She leaves the dining room table with her chin held up high. She used to leave with a middle finger over her shoulder, but that was more effort than it was worth, and she’d rather just crawl into bed after the long day she had. Her brother mumbles something unintelligible under his breath, and her father’s deep belly-aching laughter follows her as she leaves. She could already imagine what sorts of things they might be laughing about, but she doesn’t care enough to walk over there and ask them to repeat it. It can’t be anything that would make her laugh anyway. Her bedroom is isolated from the rest of her family’s. It’s all the way in the west wing, whereas her parents and brother press close together in the east. She hadn’t asked for it to be structured that way, but she appreciates the blessing more each day. “Did you eat enough, Mira?” the housekeeper asks her. She’s vacuuming the hallway as Mira passes. Mira nods and gives her a strained, polite smile. “Just let everyone else know that I’m going to take a nap and don’t want to be bothered,” she mumbles under her breath. “Of course, young miss.” Mira doesn’t miss the way that the housekeeper’s eyes follow her with pity. She closes the door to her bedroom and takes a deep breath. It’s the first time she’s been able to breathe since coming inside. Mira strips out of her clothes and turns on the shower. Being under the photoshoot lights for two hours straight has dampened her body with sticky sweat and oil in her hair. A nice, hot shower in her giant bathroom would help relax the muscles in her shoulders. At least, that was the hope. Hot water cascades down onto her body like an enveloping waterfall. She breathes in the lavender scent with a faint smile. There are many drawbacks to being in a conglomerate family, but at least she can leech off nice bathrooms and full-body dryers. Mira goes through her entire post-shower routine as fast as she can. The cold lotion on her body feels good, and jade rolling her face feels even better. She puts on a soothing playlist while she stretches out her aching body. Sussie gets his breakfast in his bird cage. He squawks at her with that judgmental eye, but Mira only rolls her eyes and tells him, “It’s the same breakfast you get every day, and you can’t exactly eat sirloin strips. Get over it.” With her hair up in a fluffy white towel and her comfy, expensive pajamas over her body, Mira jumps straight into bed with a groan. Her comforter is extra warm. She makes a mental note to thank her housekeeper tomorrow morning before she leaves for her photoshoot. Mira scrolls through her phone. She doesn’t even bother checking her notifications—she turned those off a while ago, after she kept getting buzz after buzz of people calling her different forms of “mommy” with heart eye emojis after she went viral for that dance cover a long time ago. Some of her family friends have told her that her amount of followers nowadays makes her a social media influencer, but Mira abhors that term with her entire heart, so she’d rather kill herself than say something like that. She snorts at a few videos on her timeline. There’s a lot of funny videos that she gets whenever she checks her apps—it’s all that she really uses them for, besides updating her socials once in a while with behind the scenes pictures of her on set or with a dance cover now and then. Honestly, she would have deleted her account a long time ago if she could. Social media is not very useful to her, especially when she doesn’t really care about connections. But modeling is almost entirely connections, so. Whatever. Mira turns over onto her shoulder and nuzzles her nose into her warm blanket. She thumbs through more of her timeline, half-bored. Until she sees the most horrendous thing she’s ever seen in her entire life. Mira snorts. She turns until she’s on her back, and she hitches up a knee. “Wow,” she mutters under her breath. It’s a picture of someone’s food—or at least, was someone’s food, until they seemingly nuked it in an open fire and left it out in the sun. Mira doesn’t think she’d even eat that if someone offered her all the money in the world. Which leaves the question: did the person behind the account actually eat that? Because 1) gross, and 2) Mira has enough empathy in her heart (by some miracle, anyway) to wince at the thought. She clicks on the post to scroll through the comments. The first one already makes her snort. It’s someone who said, and the crowd gets CONCERNED!!! 🔥🔥 Mira looks through the other comments with glee. Each one makes her laugh and giggle to herself. She thumbs her screen with one hand and unearths her necklace with the other to chew on it. The bulb of the locket is still in her mouth as her lips spread into a grin. She’s never had this much fun looking through someone’s comment section in a long time. All of the comments are roasting the hell out of the poor person behind the account, and while she usually would find more pity in someone being relentlessly knocked around like this, the picture that they uploaded warranted it. Plus, the comments are funny. If this account had the gall to upload something like this, hopefully they found it funny too. Mira stops at one comment. It reads: guys, you should check out this girl’s streams. Her clips are funny as hell omg Curious, Mira clicks on the account. The account handle is zoeazyonme, which is… okay, fine, pretty creative. The profile picture she used isn’t any selfie, like most people have, but a turtle. Which is also cute, she supposes. The banner is more sealife animals, and the bio just reads: College student trying not to die, come follow me on my journey! :P The account owner also attached a link to her streaming channel. Mira takes note of it. She scrolls down to her posts instead, just to see if she had any other monsters dwelling in her picture gallery. Unfortunately (or… fortunately), there isn’t any of the sort. In fact, this girl’s other posts are semi-normal—posts complaining about her classes, her surrogate… brother, whatever that meant, and how she wanted the person who invented morning classes to die. Mira wishes she could reply with “same” but the truth is that she’s never been to a college class in her entire life, so. Mira also notes the fact that this person doesn’t get that many likes on her posts—at least, not the posts before her abominable creation. Just maybe three or four likes on her rants about midterm exams, and then maybe a couple dozen on her announcements that she’ll be going live soon on her stream account. Her vile, dreadful-looking breakfast that she posted a couple hours ago already has over thirty thousand likes, and the number seems to go up every time Mira refreshes her page. The number is going up just as fast on zoeazyonme’s follower count. The curiosity finally overtaking her, Mira checks her streaming account. She clicks on the newest archived stream video. She wants to see whoever would eat that kind of thing for breakfast, of all meals. It must be someone who looks dead inside, or a sweaty teenager in their parents’ basement, or someone rage-bating for fun and looks the part, or— Or someone completely gorgeous and cute. “Hey, chat!” the beautifully gorgeous cutie on Mira’s phone screen says. Mira almost drops her phone on her face. “Probably gonna be a short stream today. I still gotta finish an essay later, and my dad’s been on me about the dishes—” Right on cue, a muffled grumble is heard through the archived video of the person’s stream. The streamer winces. “Maybe I should make my next donation goal a new mic that can cancel all of that out,” the person jokes. She reaches over to adjust the camera with her tongue sticking out, and Mira almost has a heart attack right then and there. “But then again—we haven’t reached my five dollar ‘keep Zoey alive for a week straight with ramen’ goal, so maybe I should take it one step at a time,” she says to the camera with a giggle. Zoey. Her name is Zoey. And her giggle—god, that laugh. It’s haunted her dreams for as long as she could remember. Zoey continues to ramble on about her school work while she sets up the video game on screen. Mira is hardly listening. She just stares at the girl playing on her phone screen, with her black hair up in that small bun, with the turtle drawings in the background of her room, with the offhanded chatter about how she wishes she could go back to Korea during the summer to see her mother again, and those giggles. Her heart is practically beating out of her chest as she swipes out of the streaming video. Mira turns off her phone and gets up so fast that she nearly sees stars in her vision. Sussie flaps his wings and squawks in irritation when Mira nearly bumps into his cage. She mutters a quick apology to him, then crouches by the corner of his enclosure to open up her bottom drawer. These drawers haven’t been opened in what feels like forever. She rummages through it like there’s a hurricane coming straight for her. Her heart is practically beating out of her throat as her hands scatter the yearbooks and random school achievements in her drawer. She picks out one that sticks out like a sore thumb—an elementary school book, with its hard cover painted in neon blues and yellows, compared to the more dreaded, muted colors of her later school years. It was the only year that her parents had let her go to a public school. It was only because her private school had put her on a waitlist, and Mira’s counselors at the time had strongly advised her parents not to let her be homeschooled with her current… attitude. Mira flips through the pages like a mad man. Under her breath, she chants, “Choi, Choi… Choi, Zoey… Choi, Zoey…” Her finger finds it. A smiley, big-cheeked girl in the second grade stares back at her. The text under the picture reads, Choi Zoey. Mira releases a shaky exhale. She turns on her phone delicately, like it might explode in her hand like a bomb, and goes to check the account again. Zoeazyonme has a couple of posts talking about a birthday celebration a while back to denote her 22nd birthday. Mira does the math in her head—and it checks out. Plus, the fact that the pictures on the account and the little girl in the school book smile exactly the same—with freckles dotted underneath the creased, happy eyes, and dimples on each side. Mira can practically hear the sweet laughter in her head. She’d only known Zoey for ten months. Ten months, before Zoey moved away to America and promised her that they’d stay in touch with emails or snail mail letters. Ten months, before Mira was back to being a reckless girl without friends, and her family counselors who had praised her for being more adept at making friends had to go back to ground zero. Mira wonders if Zoey still thinks about her from time to time. She can’t help thinking about it. But she also knows that it’s been a long, long time since they skipped classes together because they were in different grades and classes—she wouldn’t ever put it past Zoey to not remember her. Plus, Zoey probably had more friends in America. How could she not? She’s the brightest girl Mira has ever met, and no one else could stand against that. After the shock wears off, excitement is all that’s left. Mira hops back into bed with her phone pressed only an inch away from her eyes. She’s too lazy to get her glasses or put in some contacts. She wants to message zoeazyonme and reconnect. Maybe by saying something like, hey, just saw your post on my timeline and I just realized that we were best friends in elementary, would you maybe want to grab a coffee or talk some more or—? Mira blinks the thought away. No, no, she has to be smoother than that. But how would Zoey even reply to something like that? After all, Zoey never responded to any of her emails or to her painstakingly-made envelopes. She probably wants nothing to do with a girl that she ran away from school with a couple times in elementary. Hell, she would probably think it was weird and desperate. Mira groans. Her arms flop to her side, taking her phone with them. She stares at her ceiling and groans some more. Sussie squawks like he's laughing at her. The Sunlight Entertainment building has always been something of an enigma to Rumi. It’s neither warm nor cold inside, and it’s not too tall but not too stout. Coming inside always feels like she’s been worm-holed into a different reality, with so many people in suits buzzing around and assistants walking around with a minimum of five coffees balanced on their hands. Rumi’s not sure why she has to be here so early. Couldn’t they have made this a conference call or something? They’re not even ready for her yet. Bobby had informed her that they were still resolving a couple things from their 5 AM meeting, and that they needed her to wait for a couple more minutes—or closer to half an hour, from the looks of it. But at least the seats here are comfy. They felt a lot bigger when she was a kid, but they still feel nice to sink into while she waits. Rumi thumbs through another streaming clip. Her phone blasts Zoey’s farming simulator game, as well as her loud singing. It’s not even… bad. Like, at all. In fact, it’s good—even though Zoey is clearly singing with a Texan accent to make a joke out of the game she’s playing. “Ca-li-forn-ia girls, we're unforgettable!” Zoey sings at the top of her lungs in that godawful accent. She’s trampling over wheat as a—goat, maybe?—while she belts out the lyrics. “Daisy Dukes, bikinis on top! Sun-kissed skin so hot, we'll melt your—” Rumi snorts under her breath. It catches the attention of Bobby, who turns his head right over to her. He almost spills the freshly made coffee in his hands, and Rumi has to school her features before he can catch her smiling. “Rumi? Did you get anything I said?” Bobby asks suspiciously. He stalks over to her with an eyebrow raised. “Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure,” Rumi says quickly. She clears her throat and recites, “Something about me needing to memorize the first three scripts to a K-drama shooting in… Daegu?” “Busan,” Bobby corrects, incredulous. They both know that she never gets distracted like this. He raises both of his eyebrows at her now and stalks closer. Rumi shrivels up under his gaze. “Whatchaaa doing?” Bobby asks slowly. “Nothing,” Rumi says quickly. “Rumi,” Bobby warns. “Seriously! Nothing!” she says again, looking as solemn and sincere as she possibly can. Unfortunately for her, all of her acting lessons don’t apply when her manager, Bobby, is in the room with her. He just has a way in making her talk—unless it’s about taking his food from the company fridge. That is something that Rumi would take to the grave. Bobby asks, very slowly, “So why are you smiling at your phone?” “Nothing!” Rumi exclaims. “Is it a funny cat video again? Can you send it to me?” Bobby asks eagerly. He presses closer, and Rumi turns her phone screen away and squirms. “Is it a new girlfriend? Is it Mira—?” “No!” Rumi snaps. That time was done with more conviction. It temporarily startles Bobby too, and he straightens up to blink at her like he might actually believe that she was telling the truth. Then he tries his best to give her the most berating look that he can muster, but he mostly looks constipated—and it makes Rumi laugh. She shows him her phone so that he won’t complain about her making fun of him. He leans in to take a closer look. Rumi shimmies over on their nice company sofa so that he could squeeze in and watch with her. The clip is still playing on her phone, but she plays it louder for him to hear. Zoey’s singing is adorable, and good, but also cute—and Rumi feels that smile reach her face before she knows it. She can feel Bobby staring at her now. Bobby offhandedly says, “Oh, she’s cute! Do you like her?” “Do I—?” Rumi slams her phone down onto her lap to stare at him, mouth agape. Her mouth moves and her throat makes noises, but it’s all incomprehensible. Bobby is just nodding along as she continues, “Why would you—I would never—I was just showing—that was a—it’s a—I don’t think—you think—w-wha—! I can’t believe—it was just—why would you say—” “I’m kidding, I’m kidding!” Bobby exclaims between his laughter. He lightly pats her knee, then takes a sip of his coffee. He blows out a satisfied sigh, then tells her, “Hey, I’m going to check on the meeting to see where they’re at. I’ll tell them that you have better things to do if they’re not wrapping up in the next ten minutes. Do you need me to grab some water before I go? A snack?” “I’m fine, thanks,” Rumi tells him sincerely. Her heart is still calming down between her ribs. “Seriously—thanks, Bobby.” “Any time for my favorite girl!” Bobby declares with a proud wink, and he pats her knee one last time before getting up to check the door nearby. Rumi goes back to watching the clips on her phone—at a lower volume this time, so she doesn't get more eavesdroppers around these parts. She can already feel a couple stares now and again, from interns and other people at the company who still feel starstruck at seeing Ryu Rumi walk around the building. The clip that she’s watching freezes and reminds her that she has a couple minutes of ads to watch. She blows hair out of her face and slumps against the couch with a groan. Once the ads finish, Rumi goes to buy a subscription to zoeazyonme. Hopefully, that should stop all the annoying ads that block her screen and prevent her from watching the funny, pretty, adorable girl on her screen. Then she freezes. In Zoey’s description, there’s a part that reads, don’t feel obligated, but if you ever want to support a college brokie (meeeee!), I have a tip jar here! The URL under it leads to another website, with cash signs and an auto-translate button from English to Korean. Rumi doesn’t need it. She knows perfectly well what the website is for. She taps the ‘plus’ symbol next to the numerical amount on Zoey’s page. She keeps tapping until she reaches two-hundred, and then she freezes. It would be the smart, well-mannered thing to ask Zoey if that amount is alright, wouldn’t it be? Rumi chews on her thumbnail. She can’t exactly use her main account—it would be displayed for the world to see, considering that the very few people who had already tipped on Zoey’s page are proudly displayed on the banner in Zoey’s streaming account. It’s sweet, but that also means she has to go undercover to do something like this. Rumi leans over to poke her head at the door. It’s transparent, and she can see a few men in business suits talking to Bobby, who keeps nodding his head over and over. He seems preoccupied at the moment. She looks back at her phone and makes a split second decision right then and there. Her new account is made in record time: a random handle with a bunch of numbers in it because it was what the website had autogenerated for her, and a zoomed in picture of her teddy bear from last night. Rumi presses on the envelope next to Zoey’s account handle. It leads her to an empty messaging page, and she starts to type out, hi, you’re really cute do you want Nope. She taps hard on the backspace button and tries again. Do you want money No. Do you prefer gift cards or Lame. Delete. Do you wanna grab a coffee sometime, I could fly you out and What the hell? No. Hi Zoey, do you wanna get married because I can provide WHAT. No. Backspace, backspace, backspace. Rumi smacks her forehead with her phone screen over and over again. “Think, Rumi, think,” she hisses at herself. She can’t pass up this opportunity to make someone this cute smile—even though it already sounds pathetic thinking it—just because she can’t think of an opener. For god’s sake, she’s Ryu Rumi! She starred in the biggest romcom in Korea two years ago! Every single one of her albums has won “Album of the Year”! She’s won more daesangs and awards than she could count on her fingers, she’s endorsed at least forty different animal shelters in the country, and she’s sold out every stadium and arena she’s stepped foot into! And most of all—she’s everyone’s type! She could make anyone fall to their knees with a single swipe of a finger under the chin, and she has used that power with no mercy before. Everyone she’s flirted with has fallen to her spell—quite literally everyone. (Except one, but she doesn’t count, Rumi tells herself. She doesn’t count. She would never count.) So Rumi pulls back to stare at the empty screen, ready to think of a smoother way to “slide into the DMs” as she’s heard one of her fans say to her before. Only to see that she had already sent a message. Her forehead smacking had somehow opened up her stupid GIF keyboard and sent a GIF of Winnie the Pooh dancing and holding up a spoon and a knife. Well, she thinks, exasperated, at least that picture isn’t too bad. “Fine,” Rumi grumbles under her breath. Her thumbs move before her thoughts do, and she hits the send button before it processes too much in her mind. She had sent: Hey, Zoey! I like your videos. I know you’re struggling to eat sometimes, so I’d like to send you some money for lunch. Is that okay? The door flies open, and Rumi hides her phone behind her back with a (hopefully not) wobbly grin. “Good to go!” Bobby declares. Rumi springs up and nods her head in agreement. Mira is still rotting in her bed, hand on her stomach, other hand scrolling through her phone passively. She should be getting up soon to make the most of her day, or whatever, but she’s too comfortable, and she can still hear her family knocking around dishes downstairs, and she would rather be in a Saw movie than get up right now. She’s on zoeazyonme’s account again. Sue her. Drag her to court, for all she cares. She’s laughing under her breath at some of Zoey’s videos. She’s hilarious, that much Mira can admit. It makes her feel a lot lighter after her small kerfuffle with her brother. Mira clicks on her followers, just to see the kind of audience she’s currently attracting. (And maybe because Mira is feeling a tiny bit protective, even after all of these years; even after so long, she still feels the need to yell at bullies who push Zoey around.) There’s all kinds of people following her. A lot of them are small accounts, just people who casually scroll through social media like a good chunk of the planet, as well as some gimmick accounts for different celebrities and such. A lot of anime and cartoon profile pictures too, which makes her smirk a little. It would definitely be something that Zoey would appreciate, knowing her. Her face sours. She can see a few accounts with that girl’s face as their profile pictures. That washed-up celebrity’s. She knows it isn’t her because her stans are always the same people who like to put sparkles in their display names and things like “rumilover1493” in their handles. But then Mira’s breath pinches. She scrolls back up and stares at the middle of her screen. She sits up. The teddy bear. She knows that stupid, frayed, ragged, threadbare, faded, matted, ugly-looking teddy bear anywhere. “Oh-ho,” she scoffs and growls under her breath. “Finally found something you like, huh?” I found her first. Get your own, she wants to message the account. Mira is holding her phone screen so tight that it’s practically shaking in her hands. But Mira has gone through enough therapy—private therapy, away from her parents’ dirty bribery money—to know that it would just set her back a couple months of progress. And she has half the mind to know that she isn’t even all the way there, with there being her completed journey of healing, but she’s trying. (She’s trying so hard, but sometimes it’s just so—) Mira swipes away from the account. She hopes that her therapist would be proud of her for that. Instead, she tries to heed her therapist’s words: channel your ugly emotions into something positive instead. She likes making Zoey smile. That’s something positive, right? Mira clicks the envelope icon on Zoey’s account. Zoey wakes up with her phone buzzing against her face. She smacks her lips a couple times, wrinkling her nose at how dry her mouth feels, and picks up her head. Her entire head feels like a bowling ball. She drops herself straight back onto her pillow in defeat. The lull of sleep almost takes her again, before her phone buzzes some more next to her cheek, and she groans in irritation. Smacking her lips some more, Zoey blinks away the crustiness from her eyes and checks the time on her phone. “WHAT!” she squeaks. The sleep is drawn out of her with that singular scream. She snatches her phone and sits up straight in bed. She can feel stray strands of hair sticking out in all sorts of directions, but she doesn’t really care about that right now. What she cares about is the fact that it’s almost five in the afternoon, and she still has a shit ton of things to do. The full refund period for her classes passed yesterday too. She’s also not looking forward to redoing a class—not when her wallet practically has fruit flies coming out of it. Zoey musses up her hair and stumbles out of bed. She almost falls, but she catches the wall just in time. Her phone is still buzzing, which is odd, considering that she swore she already turned off her alarm. She sets her phone down on her bedside table to slip on a comfier hoodie—her lock-in hoodie, as she lovingly calls it—and hops straight over to her messy desk. Her old PC, with her second-hand mic and a shoddy camera that she may-or-may-not have borrowed from her campus’ old computer lab, stares at her while she rearranges her desk. Press the power button and play some games on me, her PC seems to whisper to her. I know you want to. She does. More than anything else in the world, she wants to. She desperately needs to log into her games and do her dailies before they reset at midnight, and she wants to turn on her camera and stream for a couple hours. But alas, she has responsibilities as a college student. Which sucks. Zoey flips to a page in her class notebook and chews on the endcap of her pen. A lot of the things she’d written down are doodles and random notes for groceries and lyrics that come to her mind—the actual class content is practically nonexistent. She groans and runs her hands through her hair. She doesn’t know how she’s going to pass this class, but she believes in herself, which is all that matters! She hopes. Her phone buzzes on her nightstand again. It buzzes again, and again, and again. With an annoyed roll of the eyes, Zoey kicks her feet off of the desk to let her chair roll straight for her bedside table. She snatches up her phone to silence whatever alarm is the culprit—but she stops. It’s not an alarm; it’s a bunch of notifications that rain down on her lockscreen, over and over. Zoey stares at her lockscreen in open-mouthed confusion. Had she woken up in an alternate reality? Is she dreaming? Is she getting cancelled on Twitter for that one time she made an accidental 9/11 joke on stream last year? Zoey presses on a random notification to check what’s happening. She bounces nervously in her chair. It takes a long time for her phone to load it in, which already isn’t a good sign. The little spinny wheel mocks her with how slow it seems to turn around in circles—until it stops, and it shows her that stupid breakfast she had a couple hours ago. Just seeing it makes her wince again. She laughs a little under her breath. She loved freaking Jinu out with that. Then her eyes slide over to the interaction counter underneath it—and her eyes nearly pop out of her head like a Sunday morning cartoon character. It’s almost at a hundred thousand likes. She scrolls through the replies with a shaking forefinger. There’s so many that she’s overwhelmed, but she can catch a few snippets here and there of people laughing at her breakfast and asking her for more. “Oh my god,” she says breathlessly, her finger still scrolling through the thousands of replies. “Oh my god, they think I’m funny.” She needs to tell someone. Like, right now, or else she’s going to explode. She can’t tell her father because she already knows that he’s just going to lecture her about Internet safety or something old like that, and her mother is probably busy doing work in Korea. Or sleeping through the morning, like a normal person. Which leaves Jinu. Funny how one of her only friends in the world is an international student who was in her elective class for one semester last year—but eh, such is life. Zoey stands. She clicks on his profile picture and the little phone symbol next to it. She couldn’t be bothered to remember his phone number. Pacing her bedroom floor, she listens to the trill of the line in her ear. Then it cuts, and Jinu’s voice greets, “Jinu speaking.” Zoey snorts despite herself. “Don’t start,” Jinu says tiredly. She can hear him yawning, as well as the sounds of his fellow trainees talking distinctly in the background. “It’s nine in the morning, and I already feel like selling my soul to the devil so I could stay awake for another hour. Don’t make fun of me.” “I won’t, I won’t,” Zoey says quickly. On any other day, she would have gone back on her word and made fun of him anyway—but she had other matters to attend to. “Hey, so, you know how I burnt my sausages this morning?” “Don’t tell me you ate it?” Jinu asks in disbelief. “I told you that it was going to give you food poisoning if you ate it!” “I don’t have food poisoning!” Zoey argues. She thinks about it, then amends, “Well, for now, I guess.” “Are you calling me to give me your verbal will?” Jinu asks. “What? No.” Zoey sits down on her chair with a grunt, then slides back into her desk. She reads over the notes written in her notebook passively, then says slowly, “Did you check my post about it on Twitter yet?” “Why would I do that?” There’s more shuffling on Jinu’s end, and she can hear him shouting after someone to get off of—something, probably. “Just check!” Zoey cries. “Fine, fine! Give me a… second…” Jinu says faintly. There’s some more shuffling on his end, probably to adjust how he’s holding his phone so that he could check her account. He’s taking his sweet time trying to look for it too, but Zoey is accustomed to it. Jinu’s a lot like an old man when it comes to technology and social media for some reason. She prays for his debut. Then he’s dead silent on the other end. Zoey almost giggles, but then he slowly says, “Zoey… did you buy likes for your post?” “Are you—?” Zoey unsticks her phone screen from her ear to check if she’s still in a call with Jinu. She can’t believe that he’d say that. She presses the phone back to the side of her cheek and shouts, “Dude, I have twelve dollars and fifty cents to my name! With what money do you think I’d do that with?!” “Okay, okay!” Jinu says quickly. More shuffling. “Sorry! I don’t know, just—are you okay? Are people sending you death threats? Or—or docking you—?” “Doxxing,” Zoey corrects. “Are they?” Jinu presses. “No, no, nothing like that,” Zoey tells him. She taps the back of her pen against her notebook over and over, then rolls her tongue against the inside of her cheek nervously. She’s not sure what to think. “Do you think I should do anything about it, though? I mean… what do people even do when they get a viral tweet? Do I start promoting vibrators under the replies now or something?” “I don’t know,” Jinu says helpfully (not). He hums to himself in thought, then he suggests, “I would just carry on, I guess. It shouldn’t affect you too much. It’s not like you went viral for saying something stupid.” Zoey snorts. “Yeah, I just ate something stupid.” “Who knows?” Jinu barrels on like she hadn’t said anything. “Maybe someone out there is going to pity you and send you ten bucks for a decent meal—and don’t. Don’t say it. I already told you that I was broke too.” Zoey clamps her mouth shut and pouts to herself. She hears Jinu laugh on the other end. “What’s the point of wanting to be rich and famous if you’re going to spend most of that time being broke and useless as a trainee?” Zoey groans. She leans against her chair to recline and stare at the ceiling. “To learn resilience,” Jinu predictably says. There’s some shouting on his side of the call, and Jinu shouts back. There’s more random noises that come from Jinu’s end that denote him handling his phone with not too much respect, and then Zoey hears him exhale loudly against the mic. “Hey, I gotta go,” Jinu says lightly. Zoey groans, and he chuckles. “Good luck with your classes. Try not to let it get to you too much.” “Thanks,” Zoey grumbles. She sinks further into her chair. “You have fun with ballet training or whatever.” “It’s hip-hop inspired, actually—” “Yeah, yeah, okay,” Zoey says quickly. “I gotta lock-in with my homework. Wish me luck with tonight’s dinner.” She hears Jinu inhale sharply through his teeth, like the thought alone is making him wince. Zoey wishes she could reach through the phone and hit him over the head. “Good luck with that,” Jinu finally says, laughing under his breath. “Jinu out.” Before Zoey can make fun of him for saying it, the line cuts, and Zoey is left alone with her millions of notifications and a messy desk full of homework that she needs to sort through before midnight. She sighs heavily. Her hand becomes limp at her side. The phone is still buzzing on the desk. Her second course of action is to turn off her notifications, even though it pains her to do so. She’s been dreaming of the day that her phone never stops buzzing like this, but she knows that she needs to be distraction free to finish her work. Zoey sets her phone facedown next to her. She thinks about it for a moment, then takes her phone and hides it away in the drawer in her desk. She doesn’t have a lock, but at least it’s out of sight and out of mind, and it might give her less of a temptation to look at it. After all, she doesn’t really have great object permanence. For the next few hours, Zoey grinds out her assignments. She touches up her essays, outlines her projects, and hums to herself and notes down the best harmonies that she could use for some of her music production assignments. She has to play with a bunch of MIDIs next week, which excites her the most. It’s the one thing she enrolled in the course for, too. Zoey turns on her PC, puts on her headphones, and rewards herself with some music when she finishes her first assignment—it was a short reflection paper, but a win is a win, and wins need rewards. Listening to music while she writes her essays is never a good idea. She always ends up getting distracted by the lyrics, always feeling the need to harmonize with the singer or to belt right along with them. And even if there weren't any lyrics, there was also the need to hum with the drums or tap along to the hi-hats. But listening to music has always been her greatest joy in life, and she would rather die than not listen to some form of song at least once every hour. Especially Ryu Rumi. She absolutely adores Ryu Rumi’s music, and she’s gotten into her fair share of Internet fan wars trying to defend Rumi from stupid trolls. In fact, Zoey had been there since Rumi was a pre-debut teenager. Ryu Miyeong was her bias from the Sunlight Sisters (sorry Celine and Kimmy, she winces to herself), so it was only natural for her to want to see Rumi succeed. Her belting and vocal runs are so warm and powerful that her songs are the only ones Zoey puts her headphones on maximum volume for. So what if she was a nepo baby? At least she was a talented one. Zoey also remembers pausing and zooming in on every red carpet video that Rumi was attending with her guardian, Celine, and sighing fondly to herself like a lovesick teenager at the ripe age of eleven. And even though Rumi was two and a half years older than her, she still likes to think that she grew up and matured alongside Rumi—even if Rumi has no idea who she is. So sure, writing her essay takes two hours longer than it should’ve, but at least she got it done a few hours before the due date. Zoey clicks around on her PC to find the hand-in URL for her essay. She doesn’t bother proof-reading it more than once. C’s get degrees, or whatever the phrase was. After she hands it in, Zoey tabs out of all of her thesaurus websites and research papers to look at her desktop. She rubs her hands together devilishly. So many games for her to play tonight, and yet so little time. Zoey gasps. She just remembered about her phone—and those many, many notifications. She pulls out her drawer to take her phone. The screen pressed greedily to her face, Zoey taps onto the website with a “99+” symbol on it on her homescreen. She scrolls through her notification tab with a smile. Propping her chin on the arm of her desk chair, Zoey smiles as she looks through the funny things that people are saying about her breakfast. She giggles a lot under her breath too, and the giddiness doesn’t leave her for quite a while. Checking the number of her followers had been exhilarating too. She went from a measly hundred-something, to five thousand. The number goes up with each refresh too. There are a lot of comments under her older posts now, from nosy people who wanted to see what other things she liked talking about. Many of them exclaim about how funny she is—and because Zoey is only human, it makes her want to hold her chin higher in absolute giddiness. There are a few comments asking her when she’s going to stream next. Apparently, she had caught quite the interest from the general public about her streaming habits. It excites her to no end. This was the break that she’d been dreaming of for most of her life. The Zoey from high school, who had been relentlessly teased for liking K-pop and Spider-Man comics, would never believe the position that she’s in now. What she wouldn’t give to see the look on High School Zoey’s face when she looked at how many followers they had now. She just can’t believe that this all happened because of two and a half burnt sausages. But a win was a win. Zoey swipes down from the top of her phone to check the rest of her notifications. She has a text message from another classmate asking her for more notes from the last lecture, and she snaps a picture of her messy notes just because of how good of a mood she’s in. Jinu also sent her a selfie of him and his trainees sweating from head to toe, and she thumbs it down for funsies. She also receives a notification from a food delivery app reminding her that there's a BOGO deal going on with her favorite store. It hurts her heart to swipe it away. The twelve dollars in her bank account flash back in her head. And then she notices the two direct messages on her account. She gets messages sometimes, either from hacked accounts or porn bots, so she’s not too worried as she opens the first one. Just like she predicted, it’s clearly from a bot account. Who the hell keeps that many numbers in their account name? And why Ruminator? At least their account doesn’t look porny, so she opens up their message while she makes her way downstairs to grab a granola bar. The message almost makes her roll her eyes. The obvious, generic-looking bot is asking her if she would like some money. Typical. Her first day of fame and virality online, and she’s already getting scammers. She’s not that stupid. Zoey rips apart the granola bar in her cupboard with her teeth. She types with one hand, and sends out, ya, that would be awesome. my lunch usually costs $250 👍 She takes a chunk out of her granola bar and winces as she chews. Ugh, it’s stale. But at least it’s better than nothing. Then she pauses halfway up the stairs. Zoey chews as she swipes around on her screen to copy-and-paste a link to her donation site to give to the bot account. Just in case they were serious. Maybe it’s a nice bot. As she sits back at her desk, she has a quick thought in the back of her mind that wonders if she could get hacked that way. It almost makes her laugh thinking about it. She has to pound on her chest when she chokes on her granola bar, and a few crumbs spit out over her desk. Good luck with my twelve dollars and fifty cents, Zoey thinks giddily. She checks the second DM next, just to see if it’s another bot that she can mess around with. It’s not. It’s… a legit-looking account, with a shit ton of followers. And with a super, super gorgeous-looking supermodel as the profile picture. It makes her choke on her granola bar again. She manages to swallow it down just in time. Sitting up, Zoey scrolls through this model’s account to make sense of her message—which was just two short, separate send-offs of, yo. want money? Zoey relaxes against her chair the further she scrolls. The model looks a little bit familiar, but she chalks it off to seeing her somewhere on a commercial or advertisement at the mall—and from the looks of this one social media account, it’s a lot. She also realizes that this is another case of an account getting hacked just to scam her. Once again, Zoey wishes the scammer luck with her measly twelve dollars. It’s barely two work hours’ worth of money. Zoey pastes the link to her donation site and gives it to the hacked account. Then she adds a second text of, some guy just offered to send me $250, can u beat that lol Just for the love of the game. Zoey gets back to studying. The stale granola bar that she’s chewing on is hurting her jaw, but at least it gives her something to do with her mouth that isn’t chewing on the end of her pen. She’s running out of pens, and she really doesn’t want to go out and buy another. It’s almost nine by the time she gets up from her desk. She pulls her roller chair out to stretch her achey-breaky back, a groan on her lips. Her arms are stretched over her head next, and a satisfied sigh escapes her. There’s no better feeling than finishing everything before midnight. Zoey smacks her lips. She feels tired all of a sudden, and also very thirsty. And hungry. But there’s nothing to eat at the house, and she really doesn’t want to see the twelve dollars in her bank account go down even more, so she’ll wait until tomorrow to eat stale cereal or something similar. Zoey stands and picks up her mostly empty water bottle. That water bottle alone had witnessed her dozens of breakdowns throughout the years for her exams, and she can’t imagine going anywhere without it. She scratches her lower back, smacks her lips again, then picks up her phone. She checks her notifications just to see the sorts of things she missed. Hopefully not another spam bot or a hacked, beautiful lady trying to take her twelve dollars. Zoey opens up her water bottle to drink the remaining water in it. Water almost spritzes everywhere in her room with her spit take. Zoey doesn’t know how long she stands there in the middle of her room, gawking at the notification flashing at her screen. Well, notifications, plural. They’re back to back on her home screen, right under all her social media notifications of people showering her with likes for today’s breakfast. Ryu Rumi sent you $250.00 “For lunch tomorrow! Let me know if you need more xo" Kang Mira sent you $501.00 "lmk if she sent more than 500, I can double it lol" Zoey loudly declares, “What the HELL?” You can read Chapter 2, here.