اِستريح ياصاحبي لاشيء يستحق كلّ هذا العناء، فنحنُ بصحبة الكتب نجول أراضي لم تطئ أرجلنا عليها، نعيش تجربة الشعور الأول في الخفاء وتحت موجة الخيال أيضاً.
THE COVEN WELCOMES THE 4:30PM CEREMONIAL, KANG SEULGI, A 24 YEAR OLD SIBERIAN CAT FAMILIAR
idiosyncrasy
At first glance Seulgi seems arrogant and standoffish, and in a way she is. She prefers to be on her own and fully believes she doesn’t need to rely on anyone for anything, save for the bond she has with 4am. She’s irritable and uncaring of any business that isn’t her own, almost to the point of selfishness because why should she help if it doesn’t benefit her? If she does agree to help (or is forced to help), she treads carefully because any misstep could cause her curse to knock off another few years of her life.
However, despite the cold exterior, Seulgi can be a fiercely loyal friend, who will go to any lengths to protect those dear to her. She’s not ungrateful to those who help her, being more tolerant of those who do and she hates having any kind of debt to others. Alongside being cautious, she’s mostly levelheaded because she knows mistakes are born from emotions, although this also means she’s a tough nut to crack when it comes to revealing her emotions. On the off chance her guard is lowered, she can be a little clumsy and a little tsundere, but you’d have to be really lucky to get to see that.
proficiency
In her cat form, Seulgi is gifted with exceptional night vision, being able to clearly distinguish between people, objects and animals. She has a great sense of balance, is very quick and agile and her keen hearing helps to keep enemies from catching her off guard from behind. She is quiet in her cat form, making almost no sound as she travels; however, not the same can be said for that pesky tail of hers.
ineptitude
Still trying to understand her role and her ‘gift’ as a familiar, one of the things Seulgi has troubles with is the control of her tail. Sometimes without thinking, she’ll knock something over on her way out, or (very loudly) rustle some leaves, alerting others of her presence. While she has keen hearing, it’s useless if the person, animal or familiar coming up from behind her is light footed. Without a keen sense of smell, she also cannot distinguish if they are a friend or a foe. While most cat familiars also seem to be able to see spirits outside of their realm, it is largely undeveloped in Seulgi. Sometimes she’ll see a flicker of light, or the slightest shadow, but because her abilities manifested later than others, she doesn’t have much control over any that aren’t of a physical nature.
Seulgi is also weak when it comes to confrontation. She is more likely to evade than attack and any physical blows can cause considerable damage, depending on where it lands. If forced to attack, her claws are weapon, although she’ll keep her attacking to a minimum, just enough to create an opening for her escape. This is less of an issue in her human form as she’s taken up martial arts to make up for it.
sanctions
The myth is that cats have nine lives, but that’s not how it goes for Seulgi. In fact, Seulgi doesn’t know how many ‘lives’ she has left. She’s been cursed with her ‘nine lives’, where she has nine chances to get out of nine life-threatening situations; however, she doesn’t know how many chances she has left or how many have already been used. What she does know, is that after her nine chances are up, something bad will happen and it’s not something she wants to find out.
The only clue she has to finding out when her chances are maybe being used is the pain she feels in her chest when she’s in a dangerous situation. This can sometimes cause her to falter in her escape and cause more harm in that particular situation, though the pain can be negated with the help of either magic or specially brewed medicine.
memoirs
i.
Born on a moonless night, Kang Seulgi was very much a mistake.
Born to a faceless father and a mother who never wanted her, she was passed to the first person who would take her and maybe, that was the beginning of her bad luck.
ii.
She’s raised with her grandmother in a small farming town outside of the city, having only seen her mother through old, faded images. Secrets are always eventually leaked between the gossiping neighbours and she’s soon enough branded as the child of a whore, and the local kids have something to tease her about, though she doesn’t understand.
If her parents didn’t want her, then why did she need them?
When she repeats those words to her grandmother later that night, the elder’s lips curl up into a slight smile, hushes her and tells her to finish her meal.
iii.
They’ve never had money and it’s a struggle to put Seulgi through school. Her grandmother was getting too old to work, her mother barely sent any allowance anymore and so at 15 she drops out to pick up odd jobs. Commuting to the middle school in the next town was a hassle anyway. Her grandmother doesn’t approve, saying that they’d somehow find a way because the neighbours always helped, but it was because the neighbours always helped that they were beginning to want to stop.
This world was never made to be fair.
She leaves her grandmother at 16 to move to Suwon. At the very least she would be able to pick up better paying jobs, more money could be sent home and luckily, her boss offers her the cramped storage room above the restaurant, even though instant rice is all she has for a while. Its her first time in a big city and she gets scammed once, stolen from three times, but calls are still made every other day, payments are made fortnightly and somehow, they manage to survive.
iv.
She’s almost 18 when her world is turned upside down.
Everything happens at once – her grandmother passes, the payment for the latest medical bill is being followed up, she needs to leave the storage room to make way for the new tenant that wanted to expand on the second level and then there’s the unsettling feeling in her chest that won’t go away. She quits her jobs and heads home as soon as she can, the feeling in her chest only getting tighter the closer she gets to home, but reality doesn’t hit her until she’s standing in the same room as the woman rumoured to be her mother, in front of her grandmother’s dead body.
They don’t talk, but Seulgi cries because her world is gone and from the looks of it, her mother didn’t even want to be there. She doesn’t leave that night, doesn’t invite her mother home the next morning and by evening on the second day, she’s gone. There’s no note, but there’s cash and Seulgi doesn’t know if due to guilt or responsibility, but she’s thankful in that moment that she can at least give her grandmother a proper funeral.
v.
She manages to make a bit of money by selling the stuff she doesn’t need or can’t keep. She keeps some jewellery and some photos, but the rest she burns, because those memories aren’t hers and she doesn’t need any memories of her mother. At 18, she finds someone to help her rent out the house and for once in her life, money is not an issue.
The issue is when her mother turns up once more out of the blue and demands the keys to the house, and all Seulgi can do is scream at her in the street and run away. Running, running, running, because she needed to get away and who the hell does this woman think she is? Traitor. Her emotions flood through her, the anger, sadness, loneliness taking over, moulding into one, and then she’s running faster than she’s ever run before, but the world seems different.
The lights and shadows seemed to dance in her peripheral, her senses became a little sharper and somehow, everything looked a little bigger.
A little too big.
She slows down, because by now she’s well towards the outskirts of the town and looking down, Seulgi almost gets the shock of her life. Since when was the ground so close… and why did she have paws?
vi.
When she returns home, its because her time as a feline is up. She doesn’t know who to go to for help, but when she arrives, the lights are on and her belongings are heaped outside of the gate and Seulgi doesn’t need her mother to tell her what she wants. Gathering her belongings, she makes sure she has everything and then turns on her heel to leave– this time, for good.
vii.
By 20, Seulgi’s figured out this transformation trick of hers. Without someone to teach her, trial and error becomes her teacher and eventually, she finds small uses with her new skill. Having made a little home out in an abandoned cabin the forest, fruit growing on trees is easier to obtain and free snacks in town were easier to come by (though taste is a different matter). But the more she stayed changed, the more energy she used until eventually, Seulgi would come home exhausted and sleep the day away.
A visitor waiting for her outside her cabin after one morning run is all she needs to find out that she’s actually something called a familiar. She learns that because she’s relying on her own power, she’s unable to do much in her cat form and that she needs to be bound to a witch to create a relationship of mutual benefits.
She doesn’t like the sound of needing to rely on others, and the words could also be sweet lies. If there’s anything the world has taught her, is that reality is harsh and free is rare, but her curiosity gets the better of her and besides, don’t they say cats have nine lives?
viii.
She’s never been in this much pain before.
The pain sears through her chest, forcing its way into her veins and Seulgi’s curled up on the floor, clawing at the wooden boards in a futile attempt to find some sort of distraction, but nothing can distract her from this. She’s gasping for air like a fish out of water, but every breath feels like a knife to her lungs and the only thing the Witch can seem to do is stare with a look of disdain.
“You rejected it.” She says plainly, as soon as Seulgi can hear over the blood rushing through her ears.
“What the hell did you do?” She hisses through clenched teeth. It’s almost a miracle when’s she’s able to push herself up into a sitting position, her head starting to clear up and cool down, but the pain doesn’t subside and throbs in her chest, almost with an iron grip around her heart.
“I told you I could help.”
This time Seulgi’s eyes are defiant, narrowing them at the woman standing on the other side of the shed. “I don’t need you.” The only person who had ever needed and wanted her was now gone and the only person she could rely on was herself, because all anyone else had done was smile to her face and talked behind her back.
She doesn’t need anyone.
ix.
It turns out that she does need someone.
The pain comes and goes in waves, better on some days than others. It hurts to transform, so she doesn’t, and she spends her days rationing the rest of her food and staying curled up in her bed. It’s easier to tire, so the days are spent sleeping until she’s gathered enough energy to be able to bring herself to get more food, only to repeat the cycle over and over.
The pain also never fully goes away, intensified when the Witch shows up at her doorstep once more and this time, with another. They ignore her hostile greeting and sit her down, the second Witch more respectful than her counterpart, offering her a medicine of sorts. It helps to calm her down enough to listen to what they have to say, but what they tell her is not the kind of thing she wants to hear.
“The contract backfired because you rejected it,” is the first thing she hears. “And the resulting negative energy is now acting like a curse, because you’ve let your body become so weak.”
She learns then that the contract was not supposed to be broken or rejected in the manner it was and that the rejection was a big deal between familiars and witches.
Somehow, they manage to figure out some of the details of her curse, finding out of her nine chances to get lucky in life threatening situations, although what will happen when her nine chances are up is left to fate. The one thing that’s clear is that she can no longer form a bond with the first Witch and that in order for her to survive, she needs to partner up with another.
“I’ll think about it.” Are the words she tells the witches, and with a sigh they get up to leave.
“Think fast, for you may not have very long left.”
x.
She moves to Busan soon after, wanting to leave her past behind. There was nothing waiting for her but bad memories and ruins of what used to be her old life. Maybe the ocean could wash all her worries away, but even she knows it’s not as easy as that. Eventually she makes up her mind and researches ways to entice some witches in her direction, because if she wanted to live, she’d have to make some compromises.
Maybe one day they would be able to rid her of her curse, but until then, she’d have to play nice.
“Hey. You’re a witch, right? Looking for a familiar?”
