"I had a very bad chuuni phase. Like, it was seriously bad, with the emo hair and everything," Han Li made some strange hand gestures in the air, as though it might be able to illustrate the concept of 'chuuni' and 'emo hair'.
"Apparently people thought I had a real stick up my ass but I suppose they weren't wrong. We were just brats back then, you know? But we were already trying to grind credentials. That's how you got sponsors at Saint August's. You know about sponsors, right?"
Graham's voice seemed to cut through the thickness of the air, "I do."
A minor didn't have to be an orphan to have a sponsor, but an orphan that wanted to succeed needed them desperately to get ahead. Specialized gear and training for hunters did not come cheap.
"Right. So, sponsors. I had the most and I was very proud of the fact. It made me into a bit of a hard ass, I would take all the most difficult missions the orphanage could get us."
"The highest-ranked job accessible to minors is C," Graham said.
"Yeah. But you know sometimes the C+ ones slip through, mission screening isn't always reliable. And Saint August's is notorious for picking up those 'on the cusp' jobs if you know what I mean. They provided us with a roof, good food, superb training, and gear, but they weren't always the best at keeping us kids alive."
"The fatality rate for Saint August's is—"
"Still within an acceptable range. I know. And plus, I was the one who requested to be transferred there from a smaller Training Orphanage. Saint August's has a high mortality rate but they always have the best batch of graduates, right? I wanted to be part of that. Guess I was hella intense. You wouldn't really be able to tell now, huh?
"Anyways, when I was around sixteen, I picked up this job, thinking it'd look fantastic on my resume. Never took on a mermaid before; that was before I learned about the horrors of the deep sea because fuck that shit now.
"So there was this paladin on our team— his name was Cole and this guy was a bit of a dunce but he was a nice kid I guess. And he was one of the best hand-to-hand combatants around my age at the time so I had a decent amount of respect for that guy. We weren't particularly close, though.
"That wasn't what mattered. We were on the coast and I was the vanguard and he was the paladin. We didn't bring an exorcist due to some sort of ridiculous oversight, I don't even know but…yeah, let's just say there wasn't just an angry flesh-eating mermaid. There might have been a poltergeist and a corrupted druid involved as well, it was honestly pretty murky because I don't entirely remember everything that went down."
"What happened?" Graham cut through his monologue, reminding Han Li that he wasn't just rambling to himself.
"I'm getting there! Anyways. The mermaid was using a witch spell to hunt from a shack and we decided to split up and flank her. Cole and I from the east and the rest of the team from the north. There were our supervisor and our sentinel, Mrs. Heartfelt, and this girl called Sophia. Yeah, those two…they didn't arrive on time.
"To be fair, neither did we. But it was because of some time perception-altering spell or something. That druid had us good.
"It was just Cole and me when we stormed the shack. We just thought it was one stinking mermaid, and we were up for the challenge. I know, it was dumb but we were hot-headed teens with too-big egos and thought the world of ourselves. With two Saint August's elites, even without proper backup, what could possibly go wrong?"
A smile curled on his lips, his chest stung. Looking back, there were so many obvious flaws in their plan, execution, the lack of preparation, and their pride that came to nip them in the ass. And as much as he wanted to blame their supervisor, there was only ever so much a supervisor could do on the field. That was the nature of hunts.
"I don't remember much of what happened after that. Just that the mermaid wasn't in the shack as we expected and there was a portal stuck underneath the floorboards and some crazy shit came out of it—" Han Li paused, remembering something like a long dark vine that lashed out from half-rotted planks. That's all it took for Cole to lose his leg.
"…Han Li?"
"Huh?"
"You said that something came out from the portal."
"Oh. Yeah. The floorboards. Honestly, I can't tell you what that shit even was…" His memory was too blurry. There were only flashes; Cole's pale face, a set of needle teeth between thin lips, iridescent green scales on a human shape. The furniture had been floating around them and his body was so, so heavy. It was hard to move and Han Li couldn't remember if it had been the pain, the magic, or the fear kicking in. There was an opening to run but Cole was stared at him with these big pleading eyes and Han Li felt like he had a choice to make because there was no one coming for them—
"I undid my seal. Unleashed my demonic nature for the first time."
"…"
"…"
Han Li's jaw cramped up, his throat felt parched and he suddenly felt dizzy. Graham was still there, sharing the bed. The warm dip next to him was so utterly tempting and before he knew it he had reached out with his fingers, tentative. Graham didn't seem to mind, his digits folded over Han Li's hand. He wasn't wearing his gloves and Han Li could feel the rough callous and faint scars that grazed his skin. The world stopped swaying so obnoxiously.
"What happened then?" Graham urged.
"Hm? Nothing. I unleashed my demonic nature for the first time." Han Li repeated. Back then, his mind had been full of adrenaline and the color red. He tore the mermaid's chest open with his bare hands. The poltergeist's wrath was suddenly his own and he was angry angry angry. They told him later that he had devoured the spirit's energy. It explained a lot, but it brought no comfort. "Oh yeah, Cole still died."
"…My condolences."
"We weren't that close." Han Li shrugged, trying to ignore the fact that his hand was shaking. In his dying breath, Cole had wrestled to reach for his blessed dagger. Blood loss must have screwed with his aim because it pierced through Han Li's shoulder blade but missed his heart by a mile and then some. Han Li had elbowed him with so much force, that it threw the other boy across the room. The wall of the wooden shack cracked, collapsing on top of Cole on impact.
The coroners had said that he died from blood loss but the snapping crack of Cole's ribs Han Li felt from his elbow still echoed with crystal clarity to this day.
"Our supervisor and sentinel arrived not long after. I probably could have found another way to stall out the situation," Han Li sighed, regret settling heavily on his chest.
"There was no way of knowing that."
"I suppose," his therapist had said the same, but Han Li still couldn't find a way to break out of that mental loop. "The rest was history though; I had broken the seal. The half-demon thing became more of an open secret than a half-baked rumor and I guess things were just never the same after that."
"Han Li—"
He took a shuddering breath, barely resisting the urge to roll over and curve up into Graham's arm. "Don't think I'm cut out for hunting, not anymore. I can't handle the stress and not to mention…"
He raised his arm and flexed his clawed digit, seeing their faint outline through the darkness. "Not to mention, this."
Graham reached up and caught Han Li's extended arm, guiding it back down. "There are solutions."
Han Li's laugh was bitter. He didn't want solutions. "Such as?"
"I will find them, you have my vow."
If it had been anyone else, Han Li would have only found annoyance, and yet he laughed. He rolled over and pressed his forehead against Graham's bicep and laughed. It was a hollow sound that left him rasping.
"Okay big guy, I'll be waiting," he said even though he still didn't want to wait for anything. He still didn't want to go back to hunting and still didn't want Graham to be an asshole who purposely pushed him towards the very things that haunted him at night.
And yet, despite it all, Han Li's rest had been deep that night, his sleep dreamless and bountiful. When he woke, the warmth that had been pressed against his body still lingered.