Babes, we've reached 10k reads + 900 votes!! 😭 this is absolutely insane. I truly can't put my gratitude in words so I've decided to upload another chapter 🥰
BTW I'm not sure if we only have 10 chapters left 😂 Kinda looks like a few more atp... BUT we're definitely sailing smoothly towards the ending. Guess we'll see when we see 😂
Enjoy this one 🖤
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Part 49: Paralized
With his jaw clenched, Kyun watches Anya leaning on the railing of the balcony. The demon has no idea how to fix this. As a matter of fact, he wasn't aware what his true motives were until Anya confronted him.
She's right.
After her confession there was a raging fire inside him, a fire so bright that it blinded him. Still he ignored it.
He needed to prove a point. He needed to show her that he's not good for her, proof that there's nothing about him worth loving.
It frustrates Kyun that Anya is more upset about him killing Henry than Henry's death itself. As if sparing his life would make Kyun less of a demon, less evil.
A part of him wants to move heaven and hell for her to stop being upset. The other part knows it's better this way. Even though Anya loves him, she needs to see the real him, needs to realize what he's capable of.
Just when he has this thought, she turns around and slowly walks back toward her living room. Lingering by the door, she sighs deeply.
"I know," she begins in a low voice without looking at him, "I know what I just said and I know that there are things going on inside of you that make it harder for you to go but... can you leave? Not for good. Please..." Her last word is barely a whisper, but it's not low enough to conceal the desperation in it. "I just need a few days to sort things out."
Still with a clenched jaw, Kyun nods. "I'll leave. But I want you to know that I don't want to leave. I'll leave 'cause you asked me to!"
Their eyes meet and Anya pulls her brows down flat. "I know..."
The demon clears his throat and mumbles, "Just... wanted to make that clear. I'm only one call away!"
With these words, his crimson eyes trace Anya's features, and he takes a deep breath and vanishes.
It's been three days. Kyun tries his best to keep his distance but Anya's pull is undeniable. It's like a tidal wave is constantly dragging him under and only Anya's presence helps him take a few vital breaths before he has to leave and drown once again. When he visits her to ease the insufferable feeling of suffocation, he makes sure she's deeply asleep. Him needing her like oxygen is his problem, not hers.
But every time he's standing in her living room, letting the warm shelter of her presence brush over him, he asks himself if he's close to losing his mind for needing her so much. This thought keeps on running in his head over and over again like a broken record.
On top of all these feelings is the sheer boredom. Kyun can't even remember what he did with his doomed eternity before he made that second deal with Anya and began spending every free moment with her.
So all he can do is sit in his apartment and stare out the window until he feels in the mood to go to work, collecting souls.
Taking a big gulp of his whiskey, he tilts his head as he lets the shiny lights of Seoul's skyline wash over him. But suddenly a dark, cold feeling sinks in his gut.
It's Anya.
Without consideration, he jumps into her apartment and finds her standing in her living room. Her chest is rising and falling quickly, and there's rage and anger in her eyes.
"Babygirl..." As he takes a step toward her, his eyes fall on her visitor standing a few steps away.
Alec.
"W-what's going on?"
"What the...?" The demon hunter looks at him, a mixture of surprise and sheer annoyance in his face. "What the hell are you doing here?"
Kyun's eyes fall on Anya, who is still staring at Alec, her hands clenched into fists.
Carefully, he walks up to her. "Babygirl..." The demon makes sure his voice is calm and soothing as he tucks her hair behind her ear and turns her head by her chin. The moment their eyes meet, the anger in hers turns into sorrow and Kyun can tell there's a lot she wants to say but can't, or doesn't want to.
"Would you leave?" Alec's pissed voice echoes over to them. "Our conversation is none of your business!"
Kyun turns his head and smiles weakly. "It is my business. I could feel you're upsetting her. The two of you can have a calm, adult conversation but if you're only here to upset her, I can't allow that!"
Alec's gaze rotates between the demon and Anya, his brows furrowed.
"What the hell?" Alec takes a step towards them. "What do you mean you could feel her being upset? What is going on?"
Kyun closes his eyes for a second in disbelief when he realizes what he just said. There's a reason he still hasn't talked to Magnus about all his weird thoughts and feelings lately.
Fuck.
He tries to maintain his cool and keeps on smiling at the demon hunter. "That's none of your business!"
"Please leave, Alec!" That's the first time Anya has spoken since Kyun appeared and the demon is startled by how weak her voice sounds.
"Anya, I'm just trying to—" Alec groans and takes another stop closer but freezes when Kyun lifts his hand.
"Leave, Alexander!"
For a long moment the hunter observes Kyun and Anya. Then he nods.
"Very well! But listen to me, Changkyun: Anya is a human being! She's not a toy you can play with to get rid of your boredom. It's my job to protect humans like her from demons like you! And if I ever hear that you hurt her, I'll kill you with my bare hands! I don't even care if Magnus will never talk to me again!"
Kyun smirks. He's never seen Alec angry. Even now, as he's threatening the demon, his voice is calm but still has the lethality of a blade. Kyun knows what this guy is capable of.
It actually makes him proud that Anya is surrounded by so many people that want to protect her at all costs.
"Don't worry, Alexander," he says. "If I'll ever hurt Anya, you can do with me whatever the fuck you want! I'd be happy to die at the hands of a friend..."
Alec didn't seem to see these words coming. His jaw drops but only a second later his eyes form into slits. The demon assumes Alec thinks he's mocking him, which wasn't his intention at all, though it's quite funny. He loves to provoke the hunter.
Said hunter scoffs and turns. "I see myself out!"
Kyun cups Anya's cheeks as the front door falls shut behind them. "Are you okay?"
Anya stares past him for half a heartbeat before refocusing and shaking her head. "No!"
He expected this answer. The demon can almost feel Anya's body rippling with anger and desperation.
"Do you want me to stay?" he whispers. "Or do you need more space?"
She looks up at him, her brown eyes wide and glassy, and those eyes deliver the answer without a single word. She wants him to stay, but needs him to leave.
"Okay..." He forces himself to smile as his hands slip from her cheeks. "Then call me if you need me!"
Back in his apartment, the demon has to resist the urge to destroy his entire interior. He has no idea what happened between Anya and Alec but all those feelings she had are enough for Kyun to lose his sanity. Multiple times he has to stop himself from jumping into Magnus' apartment and asking him what the fuck is going on, what his husband did to Anya to upset her so much, but Kyun knows Alec will have already told Magnus about the demon's weird behavior and Kyun is absolutely not ready for this kind of conversation.
So all he can do is keep an eye on Anya in the following days, trying to find a quiet minute to talk to her and find out what happened. But as hard as he tries to catch her, Anya tries just as hard to avoid him. She spends hours and hours practicing with her team for her upcoming show. He knows this is important to her. After all the press she's gotten recently for the dramas with Joo and Kyun and Magnus, she wants show her fans that she's still the same, that music is still important to her.
He gets that.
But she's always surrounded by people until he has to leave for work late at night. He could catch her early in the morning, or when she takes a shower, or when she gets changed. But he knows better than to invade her privacy like that.
He also gets that she's avoiding him to try to fall out of love. That's what he wanted. But her strange behavior after the incident with Alec worries the demon too much for him to keep his distance. He can see that she's struggling when he watches her practicing. He can see it in her face every time she thinks no one looks at her. She seems lost in her thoughts, in thoughts that are deeper than just a single fight with a friend, deeper than Henry's death.
Anya's crew doesn't seem to notice her weird behavior, which makes Kyun even angrier. How can they be so close to her and not recognize that she's not herself lately? Even Hyungwon, who seems to fuck her with his eyes whenever they're in the same room and is a little too touchy for Kyun's liking, doesn't seem to see.
Kyun feels so helpless. He wishes he wouldn't care. Then it would be so easy to just walk away. But he does. And watching her slowly falling apart feels like a part of himself is falling apart with her.
By the day of her concert, Kyun has no more patience left to just sit things out. He has to do something. Her fragile state probably won't mix well with the beast she is on stage and no matter how weird things are with her, he won't let anything happen to her. So he appears in her dressing room a few minutes before the show starts. He knows she's alone right now, preparing herself mentally for her performance. Sure, the timing definitely sucks, but he's too worried and unwilling to wait a single moment longer.
"Babygirl!"
Confused, she lifts her head where she sits in front of the mirror and their eyes meet. She sighs deeply. "Not now, Kyun, I—"
"No!" he interrupts her. "I get it, you're upset with me, but please, babygirl, talk to me! What happened?"
Anya gets up from her chair.
"There's nothing to talk about!" she replies monotonously. The spark in her eyes is gone, her posture weak and fragile like an abandoned child. "Now let me—"
"No! Please, I have such a hard time figuring out your feelings." His words drown in desperation and he cups her cheeks. "What happened between you and Alec? I can see it in your eyes, I can see it in your soul, something is happening! What did Alec do? Did he hurt you?"
"No!" Annoyed, she shakes her head out of his hands and takes a step back. "He just... He wanted to know how I made it out of the deal, wanted to know what I had to do for you in exchange for my soul! He wanted to know about my 'secrets' so he can help me out of your claws!"
Kyun needs a moment to respond, his mind somewhere where he tortures the living shit out of Alec for pressuring Anya that much. At the same time he's glad. Glad that Magnus, his friend, kept this secret, hid it even from his own husband.
"What? Why now? I don't understand..."
Anya takes a deep breath. "It's because he lost a friend to a crossroad demon recently. It was Will, Kyun. He's dead."
Still trying to process, the demon stares at her. Who the fuck is Will again?
And then it hits him. That guy that gave her the instructions on how to sell her soul eleven years ago.
Kyun sighs, kind of relieved that it's only that. "I'm...I'm so sorry, babygirl, this must be been hard for y—"
"You don't understand, Changkyun!" Tears build up in her eyes. "Will is dead because of me!"
"This isn't your—"
"It is my fault!" she yells before lowering her voice again. "Will tried selling his soul in exchange for mine. He wanted to fix this mess he put me in. But Alistair refused that deal, since apparently you can't trade a doomed soul just like that. But Alistair forced him to make another deal cause—"
"When you summon a demon, the deal has to be made, no matter what..." Kyun whispers the crossroad-demons mantra.
That explains...a lot.
"It was my fault..." Anya cries, leans her forehead against his shoulder and sobs loudly.
"This was not your fault! Hey, look at me!" Kyun lifts her head by her chin. "He used you, then tried to fix his mistake! He did this to himself!" Carefully, he dries her cheeks. "This is not your fault!"
For a long moment, Anya stares at Kyun and the pain he feels in her is almost impossible to bear.
"I can't go on!" she suddenly whimpers. "I can't finish this deal..." Kyun loses the ground underneath his feet and he has to struggle not to fall to his knees. He hears her words as though through deep water. "I'm so terrified of hell and at the same time, I have this ache in my chest every time I think of Henry and Will. It's like I'm a fucking death-angel, everyone I was ever involved with dies and I—"
Abruptly, Anya stops when the door opens.
"I'm sorry to disturb you," a shy voice says and they both turn their heads. "But. Anya, it's time!"
The artist nods and dries her cheeks. "I'm coming!"
Wide-eyed, Kyun watches Anya turn to the mirror to fix her smeared make-up. He can't believe all this.
"Fuck, babygirl, no! Please!" He turns her body to him. "I know this is hard but we're so close, so fucking close!"
The pain he feels, the fear inside of him, is unbearable. Kyun knows this must be hard. All of this. But he can't let her give up now.
Anya looks at him, the devastation and utter frustration in her breaks Kyun's heart. "I gotta go!"
"No, babygirl! Wait!"
She leaves the room and walks through the backstage area to the stage. Kyun follows her, his thoughts too wild to form a proper sentence, a question, a plea.
"Please, babygirl, let's talk about this!"
Again he catches her wrist and Anya stops and turns. With bloodshot eyes she wraps her hands around his cheeks. "I love you so, so much, Kyun, and I'm grateful for everything you've done for me! But this is my final answer!"
"Baby—"
But she's already gone. In complete shock, he watches her walking on stage. He can't believe she's giving up now. The pain tightens around him like vise and each breath feels like he's swallowing razor blades.
This can't be it, this can't be the end of it.
Breathing heavily, Kyun watches Anya beginning her show with one of the softest ballads in her repertoire and the pain in him intensifies when he sees how weak and small she looks on that huge stage.
A sudden movement makes his heart pound even harder. While holding the microphone in one hand, she grips the stand with the other almost as if she's struggling to remain upright. Her voice shakes harder with each note she hits and suddenly her body crumbles.
"Fuck!" Kyun breathes and gets moving.
He catches her body before it can collapse on stage and sinks to the ground with her.
"Babygirl!" he whispers and shakes her lifeless body.
~*~
Do you think Kyun can convince her to keep up the deal? 🤧
Don't forget to votes, babes! I love you 🥰