Are All The Boys Out Here The Same?

Chowon had expected a man.

That was the thing no one warned her about — not the summoning ritual itself, which she’d found courtesy of her unnies, and not the three days of failed attempts before the candles finally held their flame. No one had warned her that when the air in the center of the room went cold and thick, like the inside of a walk-in freezer, what stepped through the stillness would be a woman. A woman in a suit, mind you.

She was striking in a way that made Chowon’s eyes want to look away and couldn’t. A tar black suit, cut sharp at the shoulders. White hair swept back from an almost elegant face — would have been, fully, if not for the two small horns pushing through at the crown, blunt as thumbs and deeply out of place. Her eyes were the color of a brake light. She reminded Chowon a bit of herself in all honesty.

“Oh,” the entity said, with a smile that arrived before the rest of her expression caught up. “You must be Chowon.”

Chowon nodded. Her throat had closed.

“Don’t be shy, darling.” The woman tilted her head, amused. “I’m not here to frighten you. I’m here to help.”

“Help me.” Chowon found her voice, thin as it was. “You can actually — you can help me debut?”

“I can.” She said it the way someone says of course — like the question was almost too small to deserve an answer. “But I want you to understand something before we go further. This life you’re hungry for? It doesn’t come free. Not from your agency, not from your trainers —” she paused, smoothing the lapel of her jacket before shrugging it from her shoulders, draping it over the back of the chair nearest her — “and certainly not from me.”

Beneath the jacket was a deep red sweater, neatly tucked into a black pencil skirt that stopped at the knee. Red stockings. Black boots. She moved through the room as she had always lived in it.

Chowon swallowed. “What’s the cost? I’ll do anything.”

The entity — Asmodeus, the post had called her, Asmodeus, the one who answers ambition — let the silence sit between them for a beat. Then she smiled again, fuller this time, and extended one hand.

“Come here.”

Chowon moved without deciding to. That was the part she would try to remember later, in the moments she was still capable of remembering: that her feet carried her forward on their own, like a word she hadn’t meant to say out loud.

Asmodeus was close now. Closer than comfortable. The cold that had filled the room seemed to be coming from her, or maybe from the space just behind her eyes.

“Little Chowon.” Her voice had dropped, low and deliberate, each word placed with care. “To receive everything you lust for, you must take what I’m offering. Willingly. That’s the only rule that matters.” She lifted Chowon’s chin with two fingers. “Are you willing?”

She should have asked what everything meant. She should have asked what the offering was. She should have asked a great many things.

“Yes,” Chowon said.

Asmodeus kissed her — and the world didn’t go dark, which somehow made it worse. Chowon stayed present for all of it. She felt the change moving through her, not like fire, not like cold, but like something being quietly removed. Not from her body. Deeper. From some chamber of herself she hadn’t known existed until it began to empty.

When Asmodeus stepped back, Chowon’s legs gave out. She caught herself on her hands and knees against the floor, breathing hard, blinking at the carpet.

“Rise.” The voice above her was almost gentle. “You’re not the same thing you were sixty seconds ago. That’s worth something.”

Chowon looked up.

Asmodeus was watching her the way you watch a door you’ve just unlocked — patient, certain, already knowing what’s on the other side.

“You are evolved,” she said. “Rejoice in your unholy ascendancy.”

Years Later

The cinnamon roll had been sitting in the B4 slot since Tuesday.

Luard knew this because he had been thinking about it, off and on, since then. It was Friday now — cataloguing reasons not to buy it, losing the argument with himself incrementally over the course of an eighty-hour workweek, until here he was at 4:30 in the morning staring at his own reflection in the vending machine glass like a man on trial.

His weary reflection nearly drowned the light out of the little machine. The reflection confirmed it without editorial comment.

He pressed B4, fed the machine its dollar fifty, and listened to the mechanical arm release the thing he’d been negotiating against for three days. Some victories felt like losses. This was one of those.

He was reaching into the tray when something touched his hand.

Not a brush. Not a draft from the air conditioning. A touch — fingertip-light, and cold in a way that had nothing to do with temperature. He pulled his hand back and looked around the empty break room. The lights hummed. The machine beeped once, satisfied with itself.

He grabbed the roll and walked back toward his office.

It happened again in the hallway. The same featherlight contact at the back of his wrist, followed immediately by a wave of warmth that had no business being there — thick and disorienting, the kind that sits behind your eyes and makes the walls feel closer. He stopped walking. He looked at the ceiling, then the walls, then the carpet, in that order, the way a person does when they’re not sure what they’re looking for.

He opened his office door. Reached for the light switch.

Before his hand found it, something moved near the printer.

The shape was feminine — aggressively, architecturally so, the kind of silhouette that seemed designed with intent. It stood perfectly still, facing away from him, cast entirely in shadow even though there wasn’t enough darkness in the room to cast that much shadow.

Luard looked at it for a moment.

“Who goes there?” he said in the flat tone of someone who has already decided they’re too tired for whatever this is. “You. By the printer.”

The shape made a sound — a yelp, short and genuinely startled — and spun toward him.

“You can see me?” The voice was young. Alarmed. “Oh no. Oh, that’s — I’m so sorry, you’re not supposed to be able to, there’s a whole protocol about this, this is against code —”

Despite the fairly obvious implication that an entity explaining code violations for being seen in his office at 4:30 AM was not a great sign, Luard mostly felt bad for her.

“It’s alright,” he said. “Just tell me why you’re here.”

The shadow resolved itself.

She stepped into the light in stages — edges first, then the full picture — and Luard found himself looking at a woman who was, unmistakably, a K-pop idol. She had that specific quality of grooming that only comes from years of professional maintenance. Also: small horns at the crown of her head, blunt and pale. Eyes the color of a stoplight. And a tail — black, long enough that it pooled briefly on the floor behind her before she seemed to become aware of it and tucked it aside, self-conscious. Everything about the woman screamed nervous, compounding Luard’s desire to protect and overriding his self-preservation drive.

She stared at him.

He stared back.

“You’re a K-pop idol,” he said.

“Yes.” She straightened slightly, with the composure of someone defaulting to a rehearsed register. “I’m Chowon. Of LIGHTSUM.” A beat. “And you are?”

“Luard Pendragon.”

Something shifted in her expression — briefly, genuinely charmed. “That’s a very knightly name.”

“Thanks.” He set his cinnamon roll on the desk. “What are you doing in my office?”

It came out as a statement. Not hostile — just a man with finite reserves asking a reasonable question.

Chowon’s tail moved. She straightened again, apparently deciding that the most professional option was to be direct.

“I’m a succubus,” she said. “I’m here to feed off your lust.”

Luard looked at her for a long moment.

Then he exhaled — not quite a sigh, more like a controlled release of pressure — and walked past her to the supply shelf beside the window.

“No,” he said. “Not tonight.”

He found the can of compressed air he used for the keyboard, turned back around, pointed it at Chowon, and pressed the trigger. The sharp hiss filled the room.

“I appreciate the honesty,” he added. “Please leave.”

Chowon winced at the cold blast, then collected herself with the dignity of someone who absolutely was not just rejected by a man holding a keyboard cleaner.

"Wait." She held up a hand. "You don't want an unforgettable experience.

With a succubus. You're aware of what you're turning down."

"I know what I'm turning down."

"I just want to make sure you know what you're turning down."

Luard set the can on the desk. "Chowon. I like you. I think you're genuinely talented, and I've probably watched more of your content than is strictly healthy for a grown adult. But the way I feel about you is the kind that doesn't translate well to —" he gestured vaguely at the space between them "— this. You're supposed to stay on the other side of the screen. That's where the feeling works."

The silence that followed was not uncomfortable, exactly. Just slightly stunned.

"You're not a sasaeng," she said, less as a question, more like she was recalibrating.

"God, no. I'm just a man who's been without a woman's company for longer than I'd like to admit, and that's probably doing something to my critical faculties." He picked up the cinnamon roll. "That's on me, not you."

Chowon looked at him for a moment. Then something in her expression shifted — the professional composure easing into something more genuinely curious.

"Can I try something?"

"Chowon —"

"Not that. Or — not only that." She paused. "I just want to try something.

It won't be weird."

He picked up the compressed air.

"Weirder," she corrected.

He set it back down. "Fine. But it's within reach."

She crossed the space between them and raised her hand slowly, telegraphing the movement, giving him time to say no. When he didn't, she rested her palm against the side of his face.

The effect was immediate — she felt him exhale before she saw it, some long-held tension in his jaw simply releasing. He leaned into her hand like he didn't mean to, the way you lean toward warmth without deciding to.

What came back to her was not what she'd expected.

Lust, she knew the texture of — she'd described it to herself, privately, as a ribeye. Substantial. Rich. It satisfied in the moment, but left something thick and vaguely unpleasant settling behind her sternum after, like she'd eaten too fast.

This was different. Quieter. The closest thing she had to a frame of reference was a candle-lit room and something that cost more and came in a smaller portion and somehow left her more full. The feeling that came off of Luard wasn't hunger. It was relief. Long, genuine, low-burning relief — the specific kind that comes from being touched by something that doesn't want anything from you.

She found herself stepping forward and wrapping her arms around him before she'd entirely decided to.

He didn't stiffen. He just — settled, like a building after an earthquake, all that small residual trembling going still at once. She traced slow circles into his back and felt each one land.

She fed until she was satisfied — not stuffed, not overwhelmed, just done, cleanly and completely done, the way a good meal ends. Then she stepped back.

He looked different. The same tired face, but behind it — somewhere behind the eyes — something had been set down.

She kissed his cheek. Soft, unhurried.

"You're working yourself very thin," she said quietly. "Take some time for yourself. Okay, Luard?"

He blinked. Nodded, still somewhere slightly adrift. "Okay, Cho Cho."

Her heart did something involuntary and unhelpful.

Cho Cho.

"I'll come back after your shift," she said, and she meant it practically, logistically — and knew even as she said it that wasn't the whole reason.

"We can just — hang out."

He smiled. Small, genuine, the first unguarded thing he'd done since she appeared.

She left.

The quiet she left behind her had a specific shape to it — not empty, exactly. More like a room where music had just stopped, and you were still deciding whether you wanted it back on.

Luard sat down at his desk, opened the cinnamon roll, and did not examine the feeling any further.

The dorm was loud when Chowon reappeared — someone had the TV on too high, there was an argument happening in the kitchen about whose turn it was to buy ramen, and the general low-level chaos of six women sharing a space was fully in effect.

She stood in the entryway for a moment, still carrying whatever the night had left on her.

"Chowon-ah."

She turned. Nayoung was already crossing the room toward her, having clocked her the second she materialized — the way she always did, that particular best-friend radar that worked even across dimensions if you gave it enough time.

She stopped a few feet away and looked at Chowon the way you look at someone when their face is doing something their words haven't caught up to yet.

"You're glowing," Nayoung said. Not a compliment exactly. More like an observation requiring an explanation. "Good hunt?"

"Oh god." Chowon exhaled, and the smile that had been sitting quietly on her face since she left the office finally had somewhere to go. "Yes. He was so — Nayoung, he was just sweet. We didn't do anything. I held his face, gave him a hug, and I have never felt so —" she searched for the word and landed on it softly — "nourished."

Nayoung stared at her.

"You didn't sleep with him."

"No."

"And you look like you just came back from a three-course meal at a place that doesn't print prices on the menu." She tilted her head. "What is he? Some kind of minor deity? Entity of some kind? Sleep demon? Because regular men do not produce that."

"He's just a guy," Chowon said. "He works in an office. He was up at 4AM, eating a cinnamon roll alone and thinking too hard about it." She paused.

"He's very tired."

"A tired office worker."

"A very tired office worker."

Nayoung absorbed this. "And you're going back."

"When he gets off shift. We're just going to hang out."

"Chowon-ah." Nayoung's voice shifted — still light, but with something careful underneath it now. "You know how this goes. Men clock what we are, and they get unpredictable. Scared people do not make good decisions."

"He already knows." Chowon picked up a hair tie from the side table and started pulling her hair back. "He figured it out on his own. And he didn't freak out."

"He didn't freak out."

"He blasted me with compressed air and told me to leave."

Nayoung blinked. "He what —"

"And then he let me stay." Chowon finished with the hair tie and looked at her friend with an expression that was trying to be casual and not entirely succeeding. "He was very polite about all of it. Called me by name. Asked reasonable questions. It was —" she thought about it — "genuinely the most normal I've felt doing this in years."

Nayoung was quiet for a moment, studying her with the particular attention of someone who has known another person long enough to read what they're not saying.

"He sounds extremely weird," she said finally.

"He is." Chowon smiled. "But he's also kind. Actually kind, not just — " she gestured vaguely "— performing it."

Nayoung made a sound that wasn't quite agreement and wasn't quite skepticism. The sound of someone reserving judgment while already having formed one.

"We'll see," she said.

Luard's apartment was quiet in the specific way that apartments are when only one person has ever lived in them — not empty, just singular. One couch is positioned exactly where one person would sit. One mug on the drying rack.

He dropped onto the couch with the full weight of a man whose shift had just ended and felt, unexpectedly, fine. Better than fine. There was a low warmth sitting in his chest that had no business being there at 7AM, and he was too tired to interrogate it.

"Hey."

He looked up.

Chowon was standing near his door — not like she'd knocked and waited, more like she'd simply arrived, which he was already learning was just how she moved through the world. She crossed the room and dropped onto the couch beside him with the comfort of someone who'd decided the space was hers, taking in the apartment in one slow sweep.

"This is your place."

"That's the one."

It wasn't much — one bedroom, one bathroom, a bookshelf that had long since given up on being just a bookshelf. But it was organized in the specific way of someone who knew exactly where everything was and had opinions about it. Chowon's gaze moved across the DVDs, the paperbacks, the scattered game cases, before landing on the shelf beside the TV.

Figures. A lot of them. Hulk, arms mid-swing. Black Panther, posed. Several Super Sentai she half-recognized. Two Ultramen flanking a Kamen Rider she'd seen on a poster somewhere. And one she didn't know — a compact robot in a red jacket, something rakish about the proportions, the words BILLY KID visible on the packaging still tucked behind it.

"Okay, I have to ask." She pointed. "The one in the red jacket."

"Billy Kid. Zenless Zone Zero."

"That sounds familiar."

"Hoyoverse. Same studio as Genshin."

Chowon's eyes lit with recognition. "Oh — the city one."

"Yeah. Billy's basically the game's resident tokusatsu fanboy. Huge Starlight Knights devotee. It's their in-universe Power Rangers equivalent." Luard paused. "He's one of the first characters you get. I liked him immediately."

Chowon looked at the figure, then at the three shelves of Super Sentai behind it, then back at Luard.

"I wonder why," she said.

"I contain multitudes."

"You contain a lot of seasons." She leaned forward to read one of the spines. "What can I say, though. I get it. Better to want to be a hero than to want to be nothing."

"That's the idea." He glanced at her sideways. "Although by some metrics, letting a demon into your home at sunrise is arguably a villain move."

Chowon smiled. "By some metrics."

"Carranger taught me that working adjacent to the bad guys doesn't automatically make you one of them."

She turned to look at him fully. "You just cited a Super Sentai series to justify our friendship."

"I cite what I know."

"You're so cheesy." She said it warmly, the way you say something you've already decided you don't mind. "Please don't change."

"I only know this way to be."

She laughed — real, unguarded, the kind that didn't have any performance in it — and settled back into the couch cushion. Her tail curled idly at her side. The apartment held them both without complaint.

"So," she said, after a moment. "You're one of my more normal fans."

Luard made a face. "Normal is doing a lot of work in that sentence."

"What, are you secretly a superhero or something?"

He held up both hands in an X — the universal Super Sentai gesture for blocked — and said, "No. Just — not entirely standard. It'll probably come up eventually."

Chowon made her eyes deliberately wide, performing innocence with the precision of someone who'd spent years in front of cameras. "That's incredibly ominous. Should I be scared?"

"It's not bad. Just uncommon."

She studied him for a moment. The warmth under his skin. The way he sat was like he was used to being the last one standing in a room. The complete, total absence of any response to what she was — not fear, not hunger, not manipulation. Just a man who had looked at a succubus and handed her compressed air.

"You're one of those paladin types," she said.

He raised an eyebrow. "How did you get there?"

"The sentai. The riders." She tilted her head. "Also, you were completely immune to me, which has a very short list of explanations."

"Fair." He considered. "Does that complicate things?"

"It does," she said. "But in a good way."

He nodded slowly, processing that, and then looked at her with the expression of a man gathering himself to ask something he'd been holding onto.

"Hey. Can I ask you something, Cho Cho?"

"That name." She pointed at him. "You keep doing that, and I'm going to start thinking you actually want to date me."

"I mean." He spread his hands. "Who wouldn't want to date an international pop star?"

She laughed again, surprised into it. "Okay. Fair. Ask your question."

He hesitated — not the hesitation of someone who didn't know how to ask, but of someone making sure they wanted the answer.

"How long have you been a succubus?"

"Since Produce," she said. The word carried a specific weight — not grief exactly, but the particular texture of something that happened before you fully understood what you were agreeing to. "I wanted to debut more than anything. My unnies pointed me toward someone who could help." She paused. "You can probably guess the rest."

"Asmodeus," Luard said.

She looked at him. "How did you know?"

He exhaled — a sound somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. "I've had a few run-ins over the years. They're — interesting. They appear differently to different people. Whatever form inspires the most in whoever's looking." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Most recently showed up as a small woman. Suit. Red sweater, black skirt, red tights. White hair."

Chowon went still for exactly one second.

"Huh," she said carefully. "She appeared to me like that, too."

"Oh." Luard had the expression of a man doing math he didn't particularly want to do. "That's — hm."

Chowon read the shame on him like a frequency and decided, privately, that it was too good to let go.

"So," she said. "My new paladin is a degenerate who's extremely susceptible to women in suits."

"I wouldn't say —"

"A full conservative business look. Red tights."

"Guilty," he said, with the dignity of a man admitting a war crime at a tribunal. "Completely guilty."

Chowon smiled. Then, slowly, deliberately, let her form shift — hair lightening to white, cut to a short bob, the rest settling into something familiar. She tilted her head.

"Does this do it for you?" she said, watching him with open amusement.

Luard looked at her. Looked away. Looked back. Then said, with great sincerity: "It does a lot for me, actually. But I don't want you to be uncomfortable."

She stared at him for a long moment.

"You," she said, "are going to give me cavities."

"I hope not."

"Too late." She let the form dissolve back to her own and tucked her feet up beneath her on the couch, making herself small and settled in that particular way that means someone has decided they're staying for a while. "You're the worst."

"I'm doing my best," Luard said, and reached for the TV remote.

Luard pulled up YouTube, held the remote out to her, and stood up.

"Put on whatever you want. I'm going to cook — how do you feel about Alfredo?"

Chowon took the remote and looked up at him. "I'd love that."

He nodded and headed to the kitchen, which was separated from the living room by approximately nothing, just a counter and a change in flooring. She scrolled for a moment, landed on a mix built around LIGHTSUM's Pose, and let it run. Then, because the apartment was small and the kitchen smelled immediately of something good, she drifted over to watch.

She'd expected him to open a box. Instead he was making pasta — actual pasta, working the dough with the practiced ease of someone who'd done it enough times that his hands knew the steps without consulting him. The chicken came next, diced clean and even. Then broccoli, broken down with the same unhurried precision.

"You're quite good at this," she said.

He didn't look up from the knife. "I wanted to be a good boyfriend someday." Said it simply, without self-pity, the way you state a fact you've made peace with.

Chowon watched him for a moment. The set of his shoulders. The way he

moved through the kitchen like he was used to being the only one in it.

"You work yourself to the bone for other people," she said quietly.

"Oh, it's not so bad."

"I didn't say it was bad." She leaned against the counter. "I just said what I see."

He glanced at her briefly, something acknowledging in it, and went back to the broccoli.

"You're an E," she said. "In your MBTI."

"ENFJ." He said it without hesitation, like it was already filed somewhere.

Chowon straightened. "No."

"No?"

"I'm INFJ."

He looked up at her fully this time, and the smile that crossed his face was slow and entirely too pleased with itself. "Maybe it's meant to be."

"Maybe," she said, matching his tone exactly.

The pasta went into the water. He moved to the stove and she stayed at the counter, and the music from the living room drifted through the space between them, and it was — easy, in a way she hadn't anticipated. She'd come back to this apartment because she meant what she said about hanging out. She was realizing she'd underestimated what hanging out would actually feel like.

"Hey," Luard said, watching the pot. "Why is your English so good?"

Chowon blinked, then laughed — genuine, delighted. "We are not speaking English right now."

He turned around. "...What."

"My magic. It translates the language of the heart directly — we're speaking to each other's understanding, not our vocabularies." She tilted her head, studying him. "You are speaking perfect Korean, for what it's worth. Very correct. Very formal." A beat. "You sound like you should be a knight somewhere."

Luard absorbed this, turned back to the stove. "That would explain the voice."

"What voice?"

"The one I'm hearing from you." He considered how to phrase it. "It's — the closest reference I have is gyaru. Which isn't quite right, and I want to be careful with how I say that because the implications can go somewhere I don't mean —"

"No, keep going," Chowon said, amused.

"It's associated with a kind of — airheadedness. Ditzy. A look and sound that people assume means a certain kind of personality." He stirred the pasta. "Which I assume is not accurate, but that's the register the translation landed on."

Chowon was quiet for a moment. "It's not accurate," she said. "But it's how most people read me. Because of how I look. How I present." Something underneath the lightness of it. "People see the face and assume the mind to match."

Luard turned around. "That's strange to me. Every time I've seen you — tonight, the office, everything — you've been sharp. Observant. A little shy, almost. Composed in the way someone is when they're paying attention." He paused. "You kind of remind me of Asmodeus, actually. That register."

Chowon's eyes lit with something fond and deeply entertained.

"My little paladin," she said, "has a type. The shy, serious, put-together ones."

"I'm not going to argue with that."

"You can't." She pushed off the counter, crossed the kitchen, and stepped behind him. Her arms went around his waist — easy, unhurried, the way she'd learned he needed to be approached, with enough telegraph that he could brace or step away. He did neither. She pressed her ear to his back and listened.

His heartbeat steadied almost immediately. The tension she'd felt in his shoulders since she arrived — the low-grade structural load of someone who never fully sets things down — released in increments, like a building after a long wind.

She didn't feed. She just listened.

The relief that came off him was the same as before, but warmer now. Domestic. The specific quality of someone who has been alone in a quiet apartment for long enough that another person's presence in the kitchen while dinner cooks registers as something close to grace.

She stayed where she was.

The pasta finished cooking.