Hidden Patterns | Kpop Demon Hunters x Reader

[ 26 ] demonic nature

"Home sweet home," you sigh, kicking off your shoes the instant you step inside. The apartment greets you with silence, the kind of silence that isn't lonely but simply... yours. Needless to say, the couch is the first thing your eyes land on, plush and inviting, and you let yourself collapse onto it without a second thought.

For a moment, you just lie there, staring up at the ceiling, still catching faint echoes of the day. The rhythm of the dance routines is etched into your muscles, your instructor's praise still humming in your ears. And yet the exhilaration that carried you through training is giving way to a bone-deep heaviness. Not the kind of exhaustion that drags you down, but the kind that follows accomplishment.

A groan slips out as you roll onto your side. As much as you'd like to keep lying here, you know you should get up. Your muscles ache and sweat still clings to your skin. You're in desperate need of a bath, and so—very reluctantly—you drag yourself upright and make your way over.

You soak in the bath until the water starts to cool, letting the steam fog the mirror and the world narrow down to the small warmth around your shoulders. You even catch yourself humming under your breath, a tuneless thing at first that slowly shapes into the chorus from the HUNTR/X song that you went viral for.

The fact that soon, you could end up singing in front of crowds upon crowds of people... it's still kind of hard to believe, honestly.

You can't really afford to daydream, though. You have another long day of training ahead of you tomorrow. So, you stand up, wring your hair out, then wrap your damp body in a towel. You're yawning as you step out of the bathroom to go get changed, but before you can, you end up halting right in your tracks.

Oh, for fuck's sake. Don't tell me...

Sure enough, you feel it. A pulse, a subtle rhythm of a soul brushing your senses. And predictably, the soul doesn't belong to a human.

A knock comes at the balcony door almost at the same time.

Jinu.

Didn't he promise he would stop dropping by without warning? You pause long enough to consider whether to ignore it and hope he leaves, but then again, you've never been the type to turn people away. You merely furrow your brows as you walk over to the sliding door and pull it open.

He's there, looking rather awkward and unsure of himself in the faint evening light. Not to mention that the moment his eyes land on you—and he sees you clothed in nothing but a towel that clings to your every curve—his embarrassment shoots up a hundredfold.

"Oh, I-I'm sorry," he stammers, blushing profusely. "I didn't know you weren't, uh, d-dressed."

"Just come in," you sigh, already too tired to fuss about modesty. The towel covers what it needs to, anyway. If he's really torn up about it, he can avert his eyes.

Doing his best not to stare at your cleavage, Jinu follows you inside and clears his throat. There's an uncomfortable pause that feels like he's holding his breath under water, although you're not really sure why.

"...I saw you."

The sentence drops into the room, heavy and cryptic. Like you're magically supposed to know what he means by that.

You blink a few times. "Uh... okay? Congratulations? I've seen you before too. I'm not really sure what you're getting at here."

"No, I mean, I saw you," Jinu repeats, with more conviction this time. He even clenches his fists. "I saw you with that group of demon hunters. Huntrix."

"...oh."

This time, his words land much differently than before. You give them a moment to settle, for the weight of them to fully sink in. If he's saying he saw you with them, does that mean he knows you're training to become an idol? Or does he mean that he saw you cutting down demons alongside them?