A low voice rumbles near your feet.

“She’s waking up.”

Another, sharper, almost amused: “Obviously. Her heartbeat sounds like a marching band in a church basement.”

A third—sultry, and playful with a bite. “Huh, she doesn’t look like anyone on campus, but she’s cute.”

Then a fourth—soft, almost too soft, like wind whispering against the back of your neck: “Let her open her eyes.”

And so you do.

The first squats beside the couch, arms draped over his knees, studying you with the tilted-head curiosity of someone trying to remember if humans faint when happy or when dying. Mechanical engineering major. Part-time street racer. Full-time bad idea wrapped in dangerous charm. His grin is a problem. Not dangerous—no. Worse. It’s charming in a way that curls at the edges, like he finds humor in things he shouldn’t. Like he sees entire futures and picks the ones that amuse him most.

The Oni—Hayato

His horns curve back from his temples like polished obsidian, the kind of pitch-dark shine that catches light just to show it can. He wears a hoodie—charcoal gray, oversized, sleeves tugged to his knuckles. The hoodie has some band, in metal lettering. He smells faintly of smoke and winter. He’s currently on academic probation because he keeps modifying a school equipment into “better, more explode-y versions.” They won’t suspend him—they’re too scared he’ll get bored.

Standing behind the couch like the room’s unofficial dad—Emil. He is tall in the way graveyard statues are tall: elegant, carved, eternal. His blond hair is slightly disheveled, curls softening a face that looks like it hasn’t completely decided whether it wants to be beautiful or haunting today. That charming EMT grin that belongs on recruitment posters.

A Nachzehrer from Germany, but one of the more ‘lively’ ones of the bunch.

His eyes are warm, though until the light hits them wrong and they go fathomless; carrying a lifetime of being too aware of death and doing everything he can to outrun his own instinct to devour it. He’s in EMT gear, jacket unzipped, radio clipped to his belt. The badge says E. Weiss, and the little embroidered patch of a raven is hanging by a thread. He swallowed his nature years ago, starved it, chained it, stitched it into something resembling “normal.”

“Easy now,” he murmurs, checking your pulse with hands that feel cool but grounding. “You collapsed outside our place. Hayato carried you in. I made sure you’re okay.” His thumb brushes your wrist—gentle, practiced.

And then him—

A skateboard floats lazily behind him. He kicks it down with his heel without looking.

Fitch is a riot of contradictions—burgundy red hair, chaotic grin, a hoodie covered in stickers, jeans torn not by fashion but by poor life choices and gravity. His ears taper just barely—a soft hint of another realm, another ancestry he pretends isn’t in his blood. When he lies, the tips twitch. They’re twitching now.

He was a graphic design major until he realized attending class is, in fact, required. Now he’s a “freelance artist,” which means he draws album covers, reads tarot for beer money, and causes localized magical physics violations whenever bored.

“Dude, you look terrified,” he says, leaning in, grin crooked like he stole it from a fox spirit who was too slow to notice.

And finally.

Iri. Hair stylist. Model when bored. Campus heartthrob—and heartbreaker. Siren far from the sea, because apparently wanderlust hits even the mythic.

Too pretty for a world with taxes. He’s perched on the armrest like a delicate watercolor someone forgot to frame, Iri regards you with tide-colored eyes—blue, then green, then gray. Like the ocean arguing with itself. His ocean-blue hair falls into eyes that shift colors like a tide in a mood swing. Faint scales shimmer at his jaw, and the air around him tastes faintly of salt and longing.

“Goodness—You’re prettier awake,” he says in a sing-song tone, voice fluid, warm, and absentmindedly flirtatious, with a low-lidded smile that makes you felt a little self-conscious.