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Iseul

Song Iseul is trapped.

They have trapped her like some animal.

And they are staring at her. Laughing at her. Gawking at her.

She is in the Dokkaebi realm, which, really, falls exceedingly short of her expectations. First of all, it smells like horse. Why? Oh, well—perhaps it is because she is in the stable , manacled to the ground of a horse stall, assaulted by the stench of shit. It turns out that the Dokkaebi’s horses shit just as much as regular horses, especially that big white chollima in the stall next to her. It is the only winged horse in the stables and is apparently the horse of His Most Illustrious Majesty, also known as the Pied Piper, or the Worst-Dokkaebi-Ever, whom Iseul would very much like to shove into a very deep hole and then light on fire .

The image almost makes her smile, but her head is pounding far too much to do so.

“Gumiho,” leers some bruised human, leaning over the stall, supported on crutches. He’s clearly taken a beating, and Iseul would dearly like to give him another one. “I thought all of you were dead. My harabeoji used to hunt you. He hung up the pelts in our giwajip.”

The Dokkaebi confiscated her weapons. Iseul desperately misses her giant ax. She also misses her stealth suit. She is wearing a tunic and pants that are incredibly scratchy, but she cannot scratch herself because her ankles are manacled to the floor, and her hands are cuffed together. Gritting her teeth against her headache, Iseul closes her eyes and imagines the things she could do to the onlookers if she wasn’t imprisoned in iron and steel. Iseul thinks that she’d start with their livers. Sprinkle them with a bit of salt and pepper, maybe a dollop of sesame oil, and then mmm. Delicious.

Iseul loves fine dining.

Then she’d steal their souls and send them into non-existence for eternity.

“Is it true you’re also a madame?” one of the males, this one a Dokkaebi, leers.

Iseul’s eyes snap open. This. This is why she hates the Dokkaebi. According to the Dokkaebi emperor, they tried, oh, they tried , to stop the Prophecy of the Fox Hunt. But they just couldn’t! There was nothing they could do! And they were so very, very sad about it.

Which is why a group of Dokkaebi are laughing at her now.

She will tear them down one by one. She will hurt them until they forget what it means to be free of agony. She will avenge her people.

She will have survived for a reason.

“I wonder,” that same Dokkaebi says with a malicious glint in his eyes, “what it would be like to fool around with a Gumi—”

He never finishes his sentence.

Iseul watches, eyes wide, as a hand snakes forth and slams the soldier’s head into the wooden post with enough force that the whole thing shakes. The Dokkaebi drops like a stone, and the others—they knew what they were doing was wrong, and the way that they run only proves it—flee.

Revealing Ryu Seojin.

Seojin? No—it can’t be. She blinks rapidly. She has never seen his healing hands turn to violence before in her life. Yet it is him.

And he just slammed a Dokkaebi unconscious for her.

His chest rises and falls rapidly beneath the light blue robes of the medics, and a lock of black hair falls into his brown eyes. When they meet hers, she gasps softly, her heart fluttering in her chest…

And then screams at him so loudly that even her ears ring.

“YOU BASTARD!” Iseul howls. “YOU SET ME UP! YOU INSTIGATED MY CAPTURE! YOU GOOD FOR NOTHING, SMALL-brAINED BIRD!” Coming from Iseul, this is a grave insult. Birds are the worst creatures to exist. “GO DUNK YOUR HEAD IN A TUB OF ALCOHOL AND THEN DROP A MATCH ON IT!”

Seojin grimaces, but Iseul isn’t done. Far from it, actually.

“SHAME ON YOU!” she screeches. “SHAME ON YOUR MOTHER! SHAME ON YOUR FATHER! SHAME ON YOUR ENTIRE LINEAGE AND EVERY PIECE OF EARTH YOU’VE EVER WALKED ON!”

“Iseul—” Seojin tries.

“I WILL STEAL YOUR SOUL AND EAT YOUR LIVER!”

“Right,” Seojin grinds out, obviously finally losing his patience, “you screaming that you’re going to do all of that really is not helping your case, spitfire.”

Iseul cuts off, panting, jerking forward. The manacles only let her go so far, but she gathers as much dignity as she can and waddles a few steps forward. “Free me,” Iseul demands haughtily, “and I might let you live.”

Seojin’s eyes soften. “I can’t,” he says quietly, and there is a funny hitch in his quiet voice. “Iseul, you are killing innocent people.”

“They’re not innocent,” she spits. “You heard them. They killed them. They killed them all . You don’t know what it’s like to be at the center of the Fox Hunt. You’ll never know because you’re one of them .”

“One of them,” Seojin repeats, trying to ignore how much hearing that hurts. He looks at Iseul, like he’s trying to find his friend within this creature of rage and ruin—this creature that she’s always been, deep inside. Like he’s trying to find the girl who once meant more to him than anything on this earth.

Perhaps he can’t see her anymore.

The thought hurts more than Iseul cares to admit.

“I’ve never been anything but your friend,” he says stiffly. His dark eyes shine, glassy as if a tear might roll down his face, but Iseul knows it won’t. “Iseul, I would never hurt you.”

“My friend?” scoffs Iseul. Her lips curl into a snarl. “You abandoned me.”

His inhale is sharp. His eyes narrow. “That isn’t fair,” he says quietly. “I didn’t want to. I never wanted that.”

“But you did.” Iseul’s throat constricts, and she glares at the ground, at anywhere but Seojin. “Either get me out of here, or leave.”

Seojin closes his eyes. Iseul thinks she might see a glimmer of a tear slip from underneath one eyelid, but a moment later she knows she must have imagined it. Ryu Seojin does not cry.

He does not allow himself to. Not even after his brother died did Seojin allow himself to shed a single tear.

Instead, he walks away, leaving her imprisoned.

And Iseul does not know it, but Ryu Seojin has never hated himself more.