Demon hunting is the kind of secret everyone in town (the closest to the compound) knows of but everyone makes sure to keep it hush. There's a reason the hunters' compound is in Jeju.
For some reason, demons loved breaking into the human world in Jeju, a less protected place. Maybe that's why, after a few generations of hunters, they decided to establish their training grounds in there. The constant attacks from demons still live in the collective mind of the villagers, there's still historical documents explaining the atrocities, even if they are wildly believed to be nothing more than myths.
The villagers know of the secluded compound, always inhabited by three young women and their mentors, generation after generation. They also know it's the safest place to be if something unexplainable threatens their safety back home. Many times, villagers have sought refuge in the compound, some of these villagers still alive, if old and with scarce memories that feel more like a fever dream.
They have seen generations of hunters growing up, just as they have seen most of them die way too young.
But this generation was different. Hunters died young, but usually at middle age, when the new hunters had been already trained and the older ones had gotten too comfortable and too old to keep up with the physical strain.
This generation saw the middle aged mentors die, along with the new hunters in their early twenties. Only one had survived, barely.
Chaos had broken right while Miyeong was giving birth, a couple of older women helping her deliver, the kind that had seen a few demons before. The mentors rushed to town, protecting all the innocent villagers and guiding them to the sacred tree. Celine and thirdlight were tasked with keeping the compound safe, but hoards upon hoards of demons kept rushing in, the Honmoon too weak as the half demon child was being brought to life.
The mentors brought the villagers to safety before dying, one after the other. Miyeong gave birth to a purple-haired baby. Thirdlight collapsed. The Honmoon stabilized. Celine was getting rid of the last hoard. She got to Miyeong. A straggler. Miyeong gave her last breath, right in front of the two women that had helped her deliver. Celine killed the demon, the last one, before falling into a pool of her own blood.
To say that the villagers, specially those two women, remembered that day would be a euphemism. They had all seen the bodies of the dead hunters. And they had all seen Celine, bloodied all over, running on fumes, as she kept the weight of the world on her shoulders, all by herself. They had been the ones to stitch her up, the ones to hold the half-demon baby in their arms as Celine lay unconscious for days. The best doctors of the village tended to Celine, the young men and women fixed everything that had been broken, the mothers cared for the baby, the elderly cleaned the blood off of all surfaces and lied to the news reporters about what had happened. All the kids and all the vulnerable people had been brought up to the compound to stay close to the sacred tree, as the world lay completely unprotected. They slept in turns, keeping watch with pitches and forks and anything they could find, keeping everyone and anything away from Celine and Miyeong's baby girl.
They were scared, terrified, but they wouldn't let anyone, anything, risk Celine's recovery.
And Celine had recovered. She stood up and faced the world while carrying grief and the weight of the world on her shoulders, never complaining, never faultering. The villagers had seen her sneek in, baby Rumi strapped to her chest, into the village and silently take out any demons that dared haunt their homes. They had heard her song many a times during the night, always a lullaby of some sort.
And then the egregious news had hit them square in the face. Reporters mocking Celine for the way she looked, for looking exhausted, for looking anything but perfect, for having dark eyebags, for having messy hair, for having simple and stained clothes, for carrying a baby everywhere with her.
They knew Celine, they had seen her grow up, had seen her fight to the point of collapse. They had seen her lose everything. They knew how she was, they knew her stubbornness, her guilt, her defeatedness. So they coordinated. They made plans.
They would help her, the kid who had lost everything protecting them.
kianamaiart
germansingergirl
pixelskylines
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
amandla
blakekathryn
