Reflected In the Mirror, I'm A Maze

I'm In Front of You, You're Looking At Me

Felix was once again assisting Minho with the ritual. It was his friend's fourth attempt that night, and he didn't seem any closer to succeeding, unfortunately enough. While the older went to check his books yet again to see if he'd missed anything, Felix curiously walked over to the summoning circle. It looked absolutely flawless, in his opinion. 

He was mindful not to mess with any of the drawings as he took a few steps inside, murmuring under his breath the incantation he'd come to learn by heart after hearing Minho cast it so many times – mostly doing it out of instinct, to see if maybe his friend was simply pronouncing something wrong.

But then, without warning whatsoever, the entire summoning circle started glowing as the wind in the room picked. Felix closed his eyes as a blinding flash of white light bathed the entire classroom, his ears barely registering Minho's worried shout behind him – and then everything fell completely still.

A small meowing noise echoed in the abrupt silence.

Hesitantly opening his eyes, they quickly went wide when he noticed the beautiful, fairly large white cat now sitting in the middle of the circle, with two cute little black horns popping out of its head right next to its fluffy ears.

"What—"

"I- I did it!"

Minho's breathless, joyful exclamation made Felix glance back, just in time to see his friend now rushing toward him. Walking past Felix to crouch before the cat, Minho reverently reached out to pet it but, the moment he tried to touch it, the familiar hissed at him – and then pounced on Felix. The freckled boy let out a startled yelp, slightly scared, but then the cat settled down on his chest and began to purr happily. Felix gazed at it with wide eyes, uncertain of what to do, before looking up to find Minho staring right back at him.

"Minho—"

"What did you do?" he whispered, his voice trembling a bit.

"I- I don't know, I was just walking around and I- I was muttering the spell but I didn't—I wasn't trying to cast it or anything, I swear—"

"You must have used some sort of residual magic from my previous attempt," realized Minho, his eyes going wide for a brief second before narrowing in anger. "You stole my familiar! I can't believe—I finally manage to summon one, and you jump in and make it bond with you instead!?"

Felix's eyes went wide as he jumped to his feet, the cat now in his arms. "No! It's not like that! I didn't think—"

"You messed up my ritual and now my familiar is bonded to you! Do you realize just how messed up that is!? It was already hard enough to summon this one – there's no way I'll manage to summon another!"

"But you still- you still summoned it, right? So maybe you can say it's yours—"

"I can't! If we don't have a bond, then it won't be of any use to me and it will be a danger for everyone! We'd need to banish it so I could try summoning it again, but demons aren't exactly keen of bonding again when you literally banish them back to hell the first time around!" Enraged, Minho kicked one of the candles. "I can't believe it! My deadline is coming up and now there's no way I'll be able to summon another one and bond with it in time!"

Felix felt like crying as Minho kept on shouting, holding the cat a little tighter to his chest. He never meant to mess up Minho's ritual, he didn't even think it was possible to bond with someone else's familiar. But now Minho was mad at him, and with good reason, too.

Still, it was just an accident...

"Give it here," sighed Minho, pinching the bridge of his nose. "We're gonna have to go to a teacher to get it banished at once—"