Secret Patterns

4. Shadows Between Them

The sound of the crowd bled into the night long after the boys had left the stage. Cheers, laughter, the faint fizz of the chorus still echoing like sugar on the tongue. But for Huntr/x, silence sat between them like another presence as they slipped out of the press of fans and ducked back into the narrow alley.

Zoey yanked her mask down just far enough to breathe. Her voice came sharp, more bark than question:
"Okay. What the actual hell was that?"

Rumi was hugging herself, shoulders hunched, as if the heat of the crowd had vanished and left only cold. "It wasn't...normal." Her words tripped over each other. "People don't shimmer like that. Not even with lights."

"They weren't lights," Mira said quickly. Her tone was flat, but the tight line of her jaw gave her away. She had seen too much, processed too fast, and her mind was already moving three steps ahead. "That wasn't tech. It wasn't an effect. It was something else."

Zoey gave a laugh that wasn't really a laugh, the sound rough and nervous. "Great. So the debuting boy group isn't just pretty faces and catchy hooks—they're glowsticks with bad intentions. Fantastic. Exactly what we need."

Rumi's brow furrowed. "You both felt it too, right? That weight? The way the air...shifted?"

Mira nodded once, slow and deliberate. "It was there. Heavy. Almost like...like a storm pressing against your chest."

Zoey snorted, folding her arms. "Like being stuck under a speaker the size of a truck. I thought my bones were rattling." She looked at Rin then, eyes sharp, suspicious but searching. "Don't tell me you didn't feel it."

Three pairs of eyes were on Rin now. The air seemed to close in, damp and heavy. She could feel the question clawing at her ribs. Tell them. Confess. Admit what you've hidden. The shame-script tightened, years of silence curling like smoke in her throat.

She forced her shoulders loose, lips curving into a small shrug. "Maybe a little. But it could've just been the bass. Crowds always make energy feel heavier."

Mira's eyes narrowed. "That wasn't bass."

Rumi tilted her head, studying Rin's face as if she could read between the lines of her calm. "You really didn't feel it?"

Rin held her gaze, steady but not too steady. "I did. Just...not the way you're describing." It wasn't a lie. She hadn't felt it like them—foreign and frightening. She had felt it as recognition. As resonance. As something that mirrored the furnace buried in her bones.

Zoey threw up her hands. "Well, whatever it was, it wasn't normal. Guys don't just walk past you, then hop onstage and—boom—patterns crawling across their skin like glow-in-the-dark tattoos. Unless they're demons from some K-drama we got stuck in."

The word demon stabbed through Rin, sharper than she expected. She swallowed hard, forcing her face blank.

Rumi shook her head, voice trembling. "No drama does that. This was real."

"They shimmered," Mira confirmed, her tone almost clinical. "Wrist to collar. The tall one—he had marks along his jaw when the spotlight hit. It's not explainable by effects."

Zoey pressed her palms against her head like she could squeeze out the memory. "We're idols. Hunters. We've trained for weird. But that—" She broke off, pacing two short steps before turning back. "That was something else. Something we're not ready for."

The word hung heavy: hunters. Rin felt it like a brand. The others wore it as identity, armor, purpose. She wore it as camouflage, the role that hid what she truly was.

Rumi's hand brushed Rin's sleeve, a gesture soft as a whisper. "Whatever they are, we'll figure it out. Together."

The word together ached. Rin nodded, forcing a faint smile. "Together." Her voice was quiet, almost drowned by the echo of the crowd beyond the alley.

The Tension Unravels

They lingered in the shadowed corner, unwilling to step back into the noise of the city, unwilling to move forward into the unknown.

Mira broke first, tugging her mask down to speak clearer. "If they're tied to our collab, management knows. Or suspects. Which means this isn't just about stage presence or PR. It's something bigger."

Zoey let out a harsh laugh. "Management can't even get our in-ear mixes right. You think they know they've signed on a group of—whatever those boys are?"

"Not know," Mira corrected, "but suspect. And if they suspect, they'll spin it. Market it. They'll make it into an angle." She snapped her notebook shut as if sealing the thought away. "That's what terrifies me."

Rumi chewed her lip. "Maybe...maybe it's not bad. Not every unknown is an enemy."

Zoey scoffed, shaking her head. "That's your Rumi answer to everything. Some strangers shimmered like demons onstage and you want to bake them cookies."

"I didn't say that," Rumi muttered, but her cheeks flushed.

Rin kept her head low, the words washing over her. A battle raged inside: the urge to speak the truth, to tell them why the boys' presence had burned so sharp in her chest, why the furnace inside her had leapt toward them like iron to a magnet. But the rulebook screamed louder. Be normal. Be quiet. Be kinder than the thing that lives in you.

If she told them, they would see her the same way they looked at those boys now: suspicious, afraid, maybe betrayed. The thought of Rumi's trust shattering was worse than silence.

Breaking the Quiet

Zoey finally dropped into a crouch, dragging her hands over her face. "Okay, so what do we do? Pretend we didn't see it? Or march back in there and demand they tell us what kind of freakshow they're running?"

"Neither," Mira said sharply. "We wait. We watch. They'll cross paths with us again. Collab rehearsal is in two days. That's when we'll know more."

Rumi's voice softened. "And until then?"

Mira's gaze swept the three of them. "We don't talk about this outside of us. Not to staff. Not to managers. Not to anyone. Understood?"

Zoey groaned. "Secrets already? This is how horror movies start." But she nodded.

Rumi glanced at Rin again, concern written plain across her face. "You're quiet."

"I'm listening," Rin answered. She forced a small smile. "I agree with Mira. We wait."

Inside, her stomach twisted. She had been waiting her whole life—waiting to confess, waiting to be seen, waiting to be freed from the weight of her silence. And still, she chose it again.

The Walk Back

They finally left the alley, the noise of the city rushing back to fill the spaces between them. None of them spoke much on the walk. Zoey kicked at loose gravel, muttering half-jokes to herself. Mira scrolled through her phone, sending cryptic notes to no one. Rumi kept glancing at Rin, her hand brushing her arm like an anchor.

Rin's mask hid the tension in her jaw. The night air cooled her skin, but the furnace inside burned hotter. The boys' song still echoed in her skull, sharp and sweet, and beneath it pulsed the certainty she couldn't share:

They weren't just competition. They weren't just danger.
They were like her.

And for the first time, Rin wasn't sure if that truth would save her—or destroy everything she'd built.