Page 10

Chapter Ten

Seokga

“I t has to be some sort of conduit that allows for cerebration transference,” muses Kisa, hands cupped around her late-night coffee, knees drawn up to her chest as she sits across from Seokga in the Creature Café—which is now a twenty-four/seven chain, practically a dream come true. The café is empty save for them, and the weary worker behind the counter. “It’s exciting, isn’t it? Although, I think if it was constant, we’d both go positively mad. The thoughts seem to be transferring at random. I wonder what function it serves. And you’re hearing mine in Korean?”

“Yes,” Seokga confirms, which sparks a lengthy musing on cerebration transference translation from English to Korean. Kisa has been vocally pondering the red thread, this new development of hearing each other’s thoughts, for the past fifteen minutes they’ve been in the café. Seokga, grudgingly taking Hwanin’s advice, has simply let Kisa talk. And in this time, he’s learned that Yoo Kisa is frighteningly intelligent, with a mind that works at least twice as fast as his own. Her thoughts, which he hears in short clips, are spat into his brain so rapidly that he can hardly make sense of them. They’re like frantic scribbles, marking the ridges of his mind in smudged ink.

The greenhouse “fiasco,” as she put it, is less than an hour behind them, but Kisa seems to have warmed back up to him already. One other thing he has learned: Yoo Kisa is quick to forgive.

“Intimacy,” Seokga suggests, taking a long drag of his iced coffee and savoring its coldness. His body feels uncomfortably warm underneath Kisa’s gaze. Hani’s eyes.

Kisa blinks, cheeks tinting blue. “I, er—what?”

“Its function,” he explains, unexpectedly finding some amusement in the way Kisa is blushing. So different from how Hani would have reacted—a coy smile, a sweetly sarcastic joke—but it’s…it’s endearing. “Hearing each other’s thoughts. It lends a sense of intimacy, don’t you think?” He can’t help but smile a bit wickedly and take at least a little delight in how Kisa squirms, still blushing. “The red thread connects soulmates,” Seokga continues explaining as Kisa buries her nose in her cup. “Maybe they’re strangers at first. But what better way to know somebody intimately than to hear their thoughts?”

—wish I could—stop blushing—intimacy—intimacy—my cheeks are blue—ugly—

“Your cheeks aren’t ugly when they’re blue,” Seokga says with a small frown that masks a smile. It’s the first time her thoughts have been anything other than swiftly calculated jumbles, and it sends a little fissure of hope through him. She’s not as clinical, as emotionless, as he’d thought. It occurs to him, for the first time, that Kisa is just as nervous as he is. Already, their second meeting in this coffee shop is going much better than their first one only this afternoon.

Even if she still views him as an exciting research project, perhaps they can still become…friends. Seokga will take as much of her as he can, or as little as he’s allowed. After thirty-three years of searching, he’s finally found her.

But she’s dead, he remembers, and something tightens deep in his stomach.

No. He won’t think about that right now.

Kisa is peeking up at him over her mug. “Thank you,” she mumbles. “That’s very nice of you, actually.” A hand rises self-consciously to her indigo-stained cheeks before she hastily looks away.

He shrugs, even though he’s preening like a peacock inside. “Yes,” he replies, tracing the lid of his coffee cup. “I’m very nice.” It is important to him that she knows this. So important that Seokga risks sounding like a bumbling fool. Which he does. He grits his teeth and takes a long, long sip of his drink.

Kisa’s left eyebrow raises, nearly touching that little heart right above. “Hundreds of history books and tonight’s events might suggest otherwise,” she retorts. “You’re notorious for being, well, a bit of an unpleasant person.”

“I’m very nice,” he amends, “to the people I like.”

“And to the people you don’t?” Kisa looks like she might—just might—be hiding a smile. “Do you usually shape-shift into crows and attack them?”

“I usually prefer to shift into a panther and maul them,” he deadpans. “But the greenhouse was too small for that.” A moment later, he regrets it. Hani might have understood his dark humor, but Kisa…

Kisa stares at him and Seokga clamps his mouth shut, feeling embarrassed in a way that a god most certainly should not feel. Seokga, the great trickster, the prince of Okhwang, feels awkward. It is a terrible emotion and he wishes immediately to pull it out of his skin, then set it on fire.

But then something peculiar happens. Kisa’s eyes scrunch in the corners and a strained, quiet laugh escapes her. Seokga freezes. Her hand flies to her mouth, but it’s too late. Triumph has welled inside of him, and Seokga can’t help but smirk as Kisa covers her face in her hands.

“That’s horrible,” she whispers, sounding mortified, “and I should not be laughing. I don’t know why I am, really.”

—I can tell—he means it—too—a panther—

Seokga settles back in his chair, his smirk transforming into a slow grin spreading across his face. “Aside from being very nice, I’m also terribly funny. Perhaps you’d like to take that into account,” he says with an indolent wave toward the Red Thread of Fate. “I’m told I have many other pleasing traits, too. I can gather and organize them into a list, if you’d like.” It seems to be the sort of thing that Yoo Kisa might appreciate.

“Humility clearly isn’t one of them,” Kisa replies before her eyes widen and she hastily raises her mug to her lips, cleverly hiding her face, which Seokga has seen is burning blue.

—cannot believe—I said that—it’s like I—know him already—shouldn’t feel comfortable—

A startled burst of laughter erupts from Seokga’s lips. The weary barista behind the counter practically gapes at the trickster god as he laughs, one hand on his stomach. That statement was so Hani.

“Please don’t smite me,” Kisa murmurs into her cup, but she’s smiling again.

“Smiting people takes too much energy.”

—“smiting”—that reminds me—need to ask—can’t not ask—

“Speaking of smiting,” she begins, and he’s coming to recognize that thread of eager curiosity in her voice as an insatiable thirst for knowledge, “do you recall the exact number of Unrulies you killed during your penance on Iseung? There’s so much speculation—”

“I lost count around thirty thousand.” Seokga folds his arms and tries his best to look Very Cool and extremely worthy of the red thread currently shaking (like it’s laughing at him) around their pinky fingers.

Her brows furrow. “I thought your penance was only twenty thousand?”

Shit.

Seokga now finds himself desiring a speedy exit where he can suffer through humiliation properly in peace. He shrugs, a bit awkwardly, and finishes off his coffee. Kisa is quiet, face thoughtful as she traces words in the table’s wood. There’s still a hint of a smile on her face, a wry one this time.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” Seokga asks as he stands, not wanting to push her, or come off as a creepy, obsessed stalker even though—admittedly—that’s how he feels.

Kisa hesitates. “You’re going to contact the CEO, right?”

“Yes.” A twist of guilt. “I will. I swear on Hwanung. I’ll do it right now—” He takes out his phone, and with difficulty (he is exceptionally bad at typing on touch screens) sends the god a quick message.

She stands, too. “Then, um, if you wanted…” Kisa hesitates, averting her eyes to the thread between them. “At night, on Decks 9 and 10, if you look at the river, you can see ineo swimming along the boat. Well,” she amends, “dead ineo. Ineo gwisin. But I like to go up at night, to watch. If you wanted to come with me, I wouldn’t mind.”

Seokga feels his brows raise. Ineo, mermaids, are notoriously rare in the world above, having been hunted by sailors for their scales. It makes sense that there would be an abundance here…But it’s not the prospect of seeing them that has him fighting back a grin. Kisa wants to spend more time with him. “I’d love that,” he says honestly, and when her eyes light up, he nearly falls to his knees.

Deck 10 is the highest point on the ship, an expansive sundeck stacked right above Deck 9’s pools. As he leans over the metal rail with Kisa, a night wind lashes at his face, carrying the bittersweet smell of the Seocheongang River, which flows with a vengeance. The river is currently bordered by dark, massive mountains—the natural lands of the underworld that Yeomra has not yet developed. Strange sounds echo from those mountains, and once in a while, there will be the sound of beating wings far up above. Seokga is not worried. Whatever demons lurk in this realm, they know better than to provoke Yeomra’s wrath, lest their lands be plagued with office buildings and then polluted with the thick yet invisible smog of corporate workers’ miseries.

Kisa’s curls are whipping in the air, and she’s smiling—smiling so widely, and so happily that Seokga’s heart stumbles—as she points to something in the water below. “There!” she cries, and—to Seokga’s pure joy—tugs on his sleeve. Suddenly, the jondaemal doesn’t seem so cold. Not as she nearly hops up and down, loose curls bouncing in excitement. “Do you see her?”

—always wanted—learn—about them—nearly extinct—conservation efforts not nearly—

He doesn’t bother to look at the water. He’s looking at her, at the way she becomes a bundle of excitement when she’s learning something new.

—I hope he—realizes—how wonderful—this is—

Kisa, glancing his way, frowns slightly. Her nose scrunches. “Seokga,” she says breathlessly, “you have to look —she’s marvelous—” Her gaze catches on something over his shoulder, and her face briefly flashes with pity before she turns back to the river. Seokga barely notices, so urgent are her demands for him to lean over the rail and stare down into the currents.

The corner of his mouth twitching, he humors her request and stares into the scarlet depths below where an ineo keeps pace with the SRC Flatliner. She’s long and lean, dark tail lashing through the air as she dives and surfaces. Her long, inky hair is crusted with barnacles. As if sensing their stares, she glances up at them for a split second with a pale face and glittering black eyes. Thin lips stretch to reveal pike’s teeth before she dives back into the water.

Seokga tightens his grip on his cane, feeling strangely wary. That smile was, if he is being quite honest and lets go of his massive ego, quite terrifying.

Kisa’s mouth is agape. “They’ve never looked at me before,” she breathes. “That was—”

“—disgusting,” Seokga offers. Back when ineo on Iseung were common, they weren’t nearly as terrifying. The waters of the underworld must do something to them.

“— magical, ” Kisa finishes, glaring at him.

“She was severely lacking in dental hygiene,” Seokga mutters. Kisa rolls her eyes—and he freezes. That —that, too, is so completely Hani, down to the exact fluttering of the lashes. It nearly kills him. Perhaps, he thinks, heartbeat accelerating, perhaps the ship isn’t a completely different ship.

Kisa pushes off the rail, shooting him a curious look—and he knows she heard that.

His throat dries out.

“I didn’t ask you that question to torture you,” Kisa says hesitantly, as they step into the stairwell, feet melting into the velvet carpet. “I really didn’t mean—I wasn’t think—” She cuts off a moment later, stumbling back into him, gasping so sharply that Seokga grabs her, spins her around, and frantically checks her small body for any signs of injury, any—any—

It happens so quickly that Seokga does not have time to realize that it is a hilt of a dagger—a scarlet dagger—before she is gripping his hand in hers and dragging the tip of the blade downward to her chest.

Hani guides the dagger they both hold through her heart.

“Hani,” he whispers, feeling sick, before he can stop himself. “Hani—”

Kisa flinches, but he barely notices, for he’s finally examined her face. It’s so pale, and her eyes are brimming with tears and panic. “Seokga,” she says in a wavering voice, “Seokga, I-I’m fine, but he’s— he’s —”

Slow, cold realization trickles through the god. Heart sinking in his chest, Seokga gently moves Kisa aside, not knowing whether he really wants to look, knowing that this will change everything …

On the stairs below them, Emperor Hwanin’s body is crumpled face down. His expensive hanbok is soaked through with blood, rich, thick, warm blood that permeates the stairwell with its horrible smell. There’s a keening sound, a low wailing, and Seokga does not realize it is coming from his own mouth as he rushes to his brother, flips him over…

And turns away, retching, tears sliding down his cheeks.

Hwanin’s heart has been torn out of his chest.

His brother is dead.