Page 13

Chapter Thirteen

Seokga

“M ake him stop this ridiculous babbling,” Seokga hisses as the four of them—one god, one shaman, one gumiho, and one supposed K-pop idol whose hair rivals Seokga’s own (fucking idols, they’ve basically replaced the pantheon, stealing their worshippers)—creep through the SRC Flatliner ’s shadowy second level, where the security room is tucked away at the end of the corridor’s corner. At this time of night, Kisa has promised that Officer Shin Korain will be on Deck 8’s bridge with the watch, ensuring the currents remain stable and no demons swoop in to attack while the captain is asleep. Korain is, apparently, the most capable security officer on board. The others aren’t even haetae, but bored souls who were dropped down into the security den because they were extremely bad at cleaning staterooms. “This is a stealth mission.”

“ Eeeegreeek! ” Baby Hwanin gurgles in Kisa’s arms.

Seokga cannot wait for him to regain both his adult body and memories so he can deck him. How— how does an all-powerful emperor get himself killed? Save for one, his natural powers were even more impressive than Seokga’s own: control over the heavens (Hwanin had liked to ruin Seokga’s good mood by turning a stormy sky sunny), the generation of a heavenly light that he insisted on using for dramatic entrances, the ability to fly, and—most bewilderingly—the capability to shape-shift into either a cloud or a star. And like all gods, Hwanin had also been able to teleport.

But Hwanin’s true power had come from the throne on which he sat. The throne in Cheonha Palace gifted Hwanin with abilities that no other god shared, and influence over the other deities to an unholy extent. The catch, of course, was that Hwanin had to be sitting on, or at least near, the throne to do things such as cross into other gods’ jurisdictions (like reincarnating Hani the first time around), play with time, grant immortality, astral project…The list goes on and on and on.

The security room’s iron door looms into view as they round the corner, its one small square window giving nothing away. The lighting on Deck 2 is nothing like the warm, expansive glow above: It’s hard and roughly contours anybody unlucky enough to be below. Glancing behind him at his companions, Seokga initiates a series of silent, quick signals using his hands. He does it very skillfully, he thinks, and the quick, capable motions from his days of Unruly-hunting are sure to impress Kisa.

She nods with a wise expression as if she knows exactly what he means, but a moment later her thoughts betray her.

—why—hands flapping—like—pigeons—

The red thread, winding past Hajun, shakes like it’s fucking giggling. At Seokga’s offended, but amused, expression, Kisa flushes blue.

“Here,” Somi whispers at the back of their line. “I’ll create a distraction. When they run out, you can run in.”

Seokga narrows his eyes. The gumiho has come a long way from the timid girl she once was…and despite everything she’s claimed, he still doesn’t trust her.

Somi crooks a finger at Hajun. “I’ll need to borrow you,” she whispers.

The boy’s eyes widen. “Me?” he whispers, cheeks flushing a light blue that seems equally pleased and scared.

“Yes, you.” Somi grabs his shirt, bunches it in her fingers. “Unless you’re too frightened ?”

“I, um, I, um…” Hajun straightens, staring down at a smiling Somi. “I’m not frightened at all.”

Seokga, sensing that it will be best for him and Kisa to keep out of the way, steps back around the corner and gently tugs Kisa with him. His heart flutters as he touches her, and as she stands with her back to him, nearly against him. Seokga hears her breathing hitch, and a moment later she’s turning around so she faces him directly. Seokga’s stomach sinks as he realizes she’s gone a bit pale.

Does she not want him to touch her? He won’t, if that’s the case, but it hurts all the same.

“It’s…” she murmurs as around the corner, Somi whispers something to Hajun. “It’s not…that. I just prefer not to have people directly behind me, if I can help it. An odd quirk, I suppose.” He would look away in embarrassment, but she’s worrying her lower lip and he’s fixated.

The unmistakable sound of a door crashing open hits him in full force. There are a few gruff cries of startlement, and then Somi’s voice, slurring slightly. “Oh, sorryyyyy,” she sings. “I thought this was our rooooom!” And there’s another unmistakable sound: this one of a sloppy kiss.

Kisa’s eyes widen, and her mouth drops open. Seokga can’t hold back a snicker of his own as Kisa begins to giggle. Hwanin grins up at the trickster as he laughs, and Seokga reluctantly gives the baby something that’s not quite a scowl. His brother is delighted, grabbing his own foot and shaking it excitedly as Seokga rolls his eyes. Kisa’s smile grows as she adjusts her grip on him. She really is so natural with him, and Seokga once again wonders how.

“Oh,” Hajun says hoarsely, sounding incredibly dazed and therefore entirely drunk as well. “Oh, wow…That was…I’ve never…Um…”

“I’ve always wanted to dooo it in public,” comes Somi’s response, and Kisa loses it. Seokga can hardly breathe as she covers her mouth with her hand and laughs, eyes pinching in the corners from the effort of smothering the soft, gentle peals. And he can tell, even with Kisa’s hand muffling the sparkling chimes, that her laugh is Hani’s laugh, as much as her eye roll was. “Do you mind if weee take your chair? Pleeeaaase?”

“No! Get out!” A struggle ensues, and less than thirty seconds later, footsteps are pounding out of the security office and down the hall, echoing through the mostly empty corridor.

“Let’s go,” whispers Seokga (although part of him would like to stay in the hallway and listen to Kisa laugh forever) and together, they slip into the now-abandoned room, shut the door, and lock it. The large room is plain except for the fact that it’s filled with dozens of monitors, footage from dozens of locations on the SRC Flatliner feeding onto the screens.

Seokga stares in bafflement at the many keyboards spanning the long, neat white desks. The most that he has ever managed to do with technology includes, one, operating a cellphone (nowadays, they don’t have enough buttons: Seokga’s fingers keep slipping on the ever-growing screens) and, two, having once used New Sinsi’s nineties technology with passable proficiency (but those days are long gone, and keyboards are not supposed to be this flat ). Where are the wires? Where are the bulky consoles and fuzzy screens? In the thirty-three years since Seokga has left the New Sinsi haetae precinct behind, technology has morphed into something he has no clue how to operate.

Aware that Kisa is hovering expectantly beside him, Seokga attempts to conceal his complete bewilderment with an expression of absolute capability and sharp intelligence. Hopefully she believes it, and he can manage to figure out how to play back all monitors to previous footage without fumbling too badly.

“I heard that,” she half-laughs. His cheeks flame as Kisa slides into one of the rolling chairs and flexes her fingers, having sat Hwanin down carefully on her lap. “I think I can do it. Would you watch the door?”

“I suppose,” Seokga grumps, wishing he’d been able to impress Kisa by hacking the mainframe, or whatever the fuck it’s called. Reluctantly, and with a profound sense of defeat, he turns to face the door.

Her fingers dance over the keyboard before she clicks something with the mouse and swears under her breath. “The security system is asking for a password,” she says over her shoulder. “Unfortunately, I’ve no idea what it might be.”

There’s still no sign of Somi or Hajun, nor the security workers, but Seokga isn’t fooled. They don’t have much time. What, he thinks, would a dick like Yeomra choose as his security system password? “Try Y-e-o-m-r-a,” he says. “Or d-e-a-t-h.” Yeomra is not high enough in Seokga’s esteem for him to believe the death god is capable of imaginative passwords.

“It didn’t work.”

Seokga grimaces.

“Isn’t there any way you can ask him?”

Personally, Seokga would like to avoid interacting with the god in any way he can, but under Kisa’s pointed look, he reluctantly tugs his phone out of his pocket.

“Seokga,” Kisa whispers impatiently a moment later, bouncing a leg nervously. “What has he said?”

“I’m still typing,” he mutters back.

He can practically hear her wince, and Seokga turns to glare at her before he can stop himself. She surprises him by glaring right back, cheeks blue with flustered panic.

“Please just hurry up,” she hisses, eyes darting nervously to the door.

“I am going as fast as I can,” he grits out.

Seokga: whats the pissweee

Seokga: I wasn;t don e sending that

Then, with painstaking slowness:

Seokga: What is the passwoord for securty systm?

Seokga: answer no w

A moment later, his phone vibrates and he nearly drops it on the ground.

“Ultimatevacationcruiseship2235,” Seokga reads before shoving the damned thing into his pocket. Kisa nods and—quicker than he would ever have thought possible—enters the password. “Playback button,” she muses, staring intently up at the monitor. “Playback button…here.” There’s a quick click, and then the screens are shifting, the strolling people on them moving backward. A second later, there’s a sharp knock on the door.

“It’s us,” Hajun calls, sounding breathless.

Reluctantly, Seokga lets them in. Somi is grinning.

“We led them on a wild chase,” she says. Her usually immaculate bob is mussed and her eyes are bright. “They’re somewhere on the upper decks, convinced we’re hiding around any corner. Isn’t that right, honey ?” She bats her eyelids at the idol, who blushes blue and grins while ruefully rubbing the back of his neck.

“Nicely done,” Seokga grudgingly admits.

“I learned from the best.” Somi glances over to Kisa, smile falling when she doesn’t look back and share the grin. Instead, Kisa is staring up at the screens.

“We ran all over the ship,” Hajun pants, laughter in his voice. “I mean, all of it. We found a karaoke bar—I didn’t even know we had one here.”

“And a candy store,” Somi adds, and elbows Hajun conspiratorially. The boy snorts as he reaches into the pocket of his scrubs and pulls out a handful of wrapped sweets. The white-on-red font reads Kopiko .

“Here,” Hajun says, and tosses them to Seokga. “She says you’ll like them.”

He closes his fist around the candies in disdain. “Doubtful.” Seokga loathes mortal sweets. He prepares to toss them in the garbage.

“It’s coffee-flavored,” Hajun tells him with a knowing smile before walking over to stand behind Kisa with a casual, gentle hand on her shoulder before she noticeably tenses and he, with a distinctly apologetic cringe, hurriedly stands off to the side.

Seokga pockets the candy and also moves toward Kisa. The monitors are quickly playing footage in reverse, so quickly that Seokga nearly misses it—but Kisa’s sharp eyes catch the flare of white on the upper-left screen. She quickly pauses the others, rewinds, and presses a few buttons that seem to make the footage play normally, at a neutral speed.

Hwanin, in all his towering adult annoying-ness, paces in a corridor with his phone held to his ear. His lips are moving silently, perhaps almost angrily. Seokga leans forward, reminding himself not to stand directly behind Kisa and positioning himself next to her instead.

“I know where this is,” she says slowly. “It’s part of the I-95 on Deck 0.”

“Part of?” Seokga asks carefully.

“Due to its massive length, the rest of the corridor isn’t on-camera. He’s near the center.” Kisa is so focused that her words are absent-minded and perfectly factual. Seokga wishes he had time to admire how her brows pucker and her lips purse when she focuses, but unfortunately, his brother is about to be murdered onscreen.

For a brief, bitter moment, he wonders if he even wants to solve this mystery. If solving it means letting go of Kisa so soon, perhaps it’s not even worth it. Perhaps he’d rather have Hwanung lose his shit and possibly strip him of his godliness once more if it means keeping Kisa close…

But Kisa isn’t a butterfly that he can keep trapped in a jar for his own amusement. He tries to remind himself of that. A part of him is disgusted that he’s even considered sabotaging this bargain. For a moment he wishes that deceit wasn’t so very ingrained in his nature, that he didn’t have thoughts like these. Dr. Jang has tried to weed it out of him, but it’s as much part of his nature as his DNA. It composes him.

And as much as he may deny it, Seokga is deeply furious at whomever hurt his brother. Nobody is allowed to do that—except him. Never mind that he’s been fucking saddled with a drooling baby with chubby cheeks and a button nose. Somebody hurt his older brother. And that somebody wasn’t him.

Somebody has killed a god.

And that somebody must be punished.

Seokga leans in farther, watching the tight set of his brother’s mouth, the way he drags a hand down his face—the same way that Seokga does when he’s tired and irritated. “He’s speaking to Hwanung,” he realizes. His brother and his nephew often fight. Every month, Seokga will wake up in his own palace to angry shouting literally shaking the heavens and causing him to tumble out of his bed and bonk his head on the hard floor. The indignity of it. And in the hours before both Hwanin and Hwanung exploded, Hwanin’s facial expressions would be much like this. Tense, with a certain air of Why did I have a son, again?

Baby Hwanin gurgles sleepily, as if in agreement.

“They’re arguing,” Kisa muses analytically. “Hwanin is agitated. His attention is fully focused on whatever’s being said on the call. What was their relationship like?”

“Hwanung is a little shit,” Seokga answers, rolling his eyes in great disgust. “Although he did for a while, he now refuses to accept that his occupation is the god of laws and kept promises.” In other words, he’s the divine equivalent of an angsty teenager. It is baffling to him how the delinquent can possibly have been the founder of the original Sinsi on Mount Taebaek, or the mayor of New Sinsi when he can barely remember to do his laundry. “He wants to be the god of sex, drugs, and rock and roll.” The only time Hwanung seems to act as a law god is, conveniently, when he is trailing Seokga and attempting to catch him red-handed in wrongdoing. Gone are the days of Hwanung copying his father down to wearing beautiful hanboks even to the simplest occasions. The god now prefers—to both his father’s and uncle’s dismay—faded T-shirts advertising mortal bands that do little but scream into their microphones.

It’s horrific.

Hajun looks surprised. “Can gods change their occupations?” he asks.

“No,” snort Seokga and Kisa at the same time. There’s an exception, of course, but not just anybody can become heavenly emperor.

Even if they try very hard by, say, instigating a coup.

Kisa hesitates, and as the footage continues to show Hwanin angrily speaking into the phone, she picks up a notebook lying on the table. Seokga watches as she grabs a pen and flips to an empty page, writing down Hwanung in smudged, scrawling letters, followed by an almost frantic question mark, the dot nearly puncturing through the paper. Briefly, he remembers Hani’s looping font as she scribbled notes on his couch, puzzling over Suk Aeri’s frustratingly obscure clue from their Daegeumsan excursion. Kisa’s writing, he notes with twists of guilt and disappointment in his gut, is messier. As if her hand is trying, futilely, to keep up with the whitewater river of her mind.

“Interesting,” muses Somi, jerking his attention away from Kisa’s scrawl. “Do you think the crown prince did it?”

Seokga frowns—but his gaze is immediately drawn back to the screen. Hwanin has pocketed his phone into the folds of his hanbok with a black scowl and is taking a deep breath. Seokga holds one of his own as he watches his brother’s gaze slide to somewhere down the corridor…and as his eyes flare wide, blue and panicked and dotted with stars.

So rarely has Seokga seen Hwanin panic.

On the monitor, his brother stretches his arms out wide. The time reads 8:32 p.m .

Oh, no. Seokga well knows what follows from such a dramatic pose and curses his brother as a moment later a brilliant, bright white light engulfs the screen. Seokga winces, shying away and wondering why, exactly, Hwanin decided to protect himself against whatever was approaching with a harmless display of light. Panic, he seethes. Hwanin, the idiot, panicked. And in a knee-jerk reflex, he’d released his flashy divine light rather than reaching for one of his more useful powers.

What had made a godly emperor like Hwanin panic?

“H-holy shit, ” breathes Hajun. The light slowly recedes, and there’s…nothing.

Nobody on the floor. No signs of a struggle. No heavily breathing murderer, splattered with blood.

Just…nothing.

The camera flashes white and black before going entirely black.

“As a former mass murderer, if you killed a rather tall man with divine powers,” Kisa says to Somi, “and you didn’t want to be seen lugging his body around a ship, how would you go about that? Hypothetically, of course,” she adds with a hasty glance at a seething Seokga. “It’s all hypothetical. ”

The five of them are on the humid I-95 in the belly of the ship, having exhausted their eyes searching for any clues they might have missed on the monitors. Even after sifting through the other recordings, no new footage of Hwanin has surfaced. But he’d had to have been dragged through the ship, below the dozens of other security cameras. It doesn’t make sense.

Nothing about this makes sense.

Somi seems to be smothering a yawn. The gumiho is leaning wearily against Hajun’s side. He looks equally wary and shyly pleased. Somi looks as if she views him as a convenient doorpost upon which she can lounge. “I would chop him into little pieces and then put him in my pocket,” she replies.

“For fuck’s sake,” snarls Seokga, in no mood for games. “Answer the question.”

Kisa begins to pace. The harsh lighting makes her frown stand out on her small, heart-shaped face and highlights a subtle smattering of freckles across her scrunched nose.

“It’s getting late,” Hajun says with a frown, arm twitching as if he wants to wrap it around Somi protectively, but doesn’t quite have the courage yet. “We’re all tired.”

Chest tightening, Seokga slams his cane down on the ground. The resounding thud echoes throughout the hall. “We’re not done.” They won’t be until the murderer is found. Preferably by dawn.

“Hajun’s right,” Kisa quietly argues a moment later. “Hwanin needs to go to bed. And, I think, so do you. We won’t solve anything if we’re exhausted.”

Seokga spares a glance at his tiny brother. He’s nestled against Kisa, face pressed into the crook of her neck, asleep and whimpering softly. A flicker of guilt stabs through him. Oh, brother, he thinks, suddenly stooped with fatigue. It’s always one thing after another for us.

“We’ll reconvene in the morning,” Kisa is saying, rubbing a circle on the baby’s back. “Tomorrow, we’ll split up. Look for witnesses, return to the stairwell. Figure out a motive. Get some alibis. Hajun and I have shifts in the med bay—you can meet us there.” She hesitates. “Until we’re sure Hwanin was the only target, we need to be careful. Somebody on board this ship is a murderer. They killed a god. Don’t let your guard down, not even for a moment. They can’t kill us, but you…” She glances at Seokga, who grits his teeth. “You have a lot to lose.”

“I hope the murderer comes after me,” he half-snarls. “It would save us a lot of time and investigation.”

Somi laughs at that, walking past them down the I-95. “With your rotten luck,” she calls over her shoulder, “I’m sure they won’t be striking again tonight. Good night,” she adds in a kinder, more hesitant—maybe even shy—tone to Kisa. A few moments later, after a quiet farewell between himself and Kisa, Hajun leaves, as well. Soon, it’s just the three of them in the abandoned corridor beneath the mammoth ship.

“You have a way with children,” Seokga says carefully as he and Kisa hesitate there, the red thread swirling between them, his baby brother snoring on her shoulder.

Again, there’s that wondering. There’s so much he doesn’t know about Yoo Kisa.

Kisa’s shy smile is small and almost sad. “When I was alive, my goddess was Samsin Halmoni. My father’s side of the family have been her shamans for centuries. My mother wasn’t involved in the Korean pantheon in any way. Although sometimes I wonder if other pantheons exist, if she was connected to the Anglo-Saxon one…Have you ever met Woden, perhaps? Or—”

“Samsin Halmoni?” Seokga grinds out. “Did you say Samsin Halmoni ?”

Kisa blinks. “Yes.” She’s swaying slightly, soothingly rocking Hwanin. “Her patronage allowed me to heal mothers and deliver their children, as long as they were creatures.” A funny expression crosses her face, and her voice becomes pinched. “Only creatures. I wished…I wished I could help humans, too. My mother, she, well, she died delivering me. There’s a certain irony in that, don’t you think?”

“I’m sorry,” Seokga says quietly, anger at the goddess banking in the face of Kisa’s hesitant vulnerability. He knows the pain of losing a mother well. Although Mago is alive, she has slumbered for near an eternity, lost to her sons.

Kisa gives a funny little shrug and clears her throat. “I became so sick of it—the work, I mean—but I sometimes miss it now. No, I miss my life. It’s like this…sharp longing in my chest. An ache in me that won’t go away.” She smooths Hwanin’s hair away from his sleeping face, a small frown crossing her own. “Although…I suppose it’s abated, actually,” she murmurs. “With everything that’s happened, I suppose it’s harder for me to wallow in my own self-pity…” Kisa trails off, lips twitching a bit wryly. Yet Seokga doesn’t smile back.

For in her encroaching silence, his anger toward Samsin Halmoni has returned, crawling through his veins with a molten, deadly heat. He inhales thinly through his mouth, struggling to keep his composure so as not to frighten Kisa.

But fuck.

Samsin Halmoni, the old bat. It was her. She kept Kisa from him all these years, leaving him to find her only when it was too late, when she’s dead. A murderous rage tints his vision red. Controlling his fury is now an exercise in futility.

—looks—upset—why—

“Seokga?”

He is going to march right up to Okhwang and give Samsin Halmoni a piece of his mind. He is going to send his shamans on a war against hers. He is going to explode as his blood pressure continues to rise and rise and rise …

Kisa’s face swims into his blurry vision. “Let’s get you to your room,” she murmurs in concern, and he’s acutely aware of how her free hand wraps around his arm, guiding him back up toward Deck 7 after he manages to mutter what suite he’s staying in. Room 7345. Kisa makes a quick stop in the sick bay, stuffing some jars from the medicine cabinet into a bag which Seokga carries. He supposes he should carry his brother, but he’s much too overwhelmed to tote around a baby. What if he drops him? Sure, Seokga has had dozens of children in his long lifetime, but the children aged so fast in comparison to himself that he usually forgot to pop down for a visit until they were at least twenty-five (or forty-seven, maybe even sixty-two).

Babies are foreign entities to him.

He doesn’t think he likes them.

At all.

Back in the suite, Kisa sets Hwanin down on a stuffed settee in the adjoining room between the two brothers’ suites. Seokga slumps into an armchair in exhaustion.

Kisa looks at him curiously over her shoulder, pausing from fussing over the child. “Something crinkled when you sat down.”

“Oh,” he mutters, hand drifting to the pocket of his dark pants. Seokga pulls out the candies that Hajun gave him and wrinkles his nose. “These.”

She raises her brows. “Have you tried them?”

“Shan’t,” he says, rather mulishly. “I don’t like sweets.”

“You seem to like coffee,” Kisa points out, sitting down before the fire and rummaging around in her tote bag. “Those will taste like your Americano.”

Seokga sighs but unwraps the hard candy anyway. He gives it a tentative sniff while Kisa watches in amusement. Reluctantly, he places it in his mouth.

“See?” she asks with a satisfied expression as Seokga experiences a moment of complete and total euphoria when the taste of coffee explodes on his taste buds. “I told you…”

Seokga decides he needs to find the SRC Flatliner ’s candy store immediately and raid it for more of this magical concoction. He finds himself calming down from his earlier exhaustion and rage as he plays with the wrapper. In its hearth, the fire pops and crackles, illuminating the stray strands of curly hair framing Kisa’s face as she takes the jars out of her bag, glancing up at him across the length of the thread.

His tired puzzlement must show on his face. “He needs to eat soon,” she explains and Seokga curses himself. Shit. Yes. He’d forgotten that babies have appetites and that, since Hwanin is now a baby, he needs to eat far more often than he did as a god. Kisa pulls out a mortar and pestle, adds the dried flower petals to the earthen bowl.

“Salsarikkot,” Seokga says, recognizing the pale golden hue of the flowers. It’s one of many flowers from Hallakkungi’s flower garden. Its properties are nothing short of impressive: With salsarikkot, flesh can be regrown. It’s the flower that reincarnated gods live off, one that aids their growth. Combined with bbyeosarikkot, a flower that brings bones back to life, infant gods will grow strong and healthy once more. The reincarnation flowers are precious, and he watches with interest as Kisa grinds them into a fine paste. “How do you know all of this?” Never has he met a mortal that knows so intimately the secrets of the gods.

Kisa gives him a slightly amused glance as she pours a vial of water into the bowl, thinning the paste to a shimmering liquid and placing the mortar on the edge of the fire where it heats while she stirs it counterclockwise. “Samsin Halmoni,” she says, and he grinds his teeth together. “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me why you seem to hate her so much?”

“No,” he says sulkily, not wanting to dwell on it. He finishes the first candy and starts on the next. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

Hwanin gurgles and he turns his attention to his brother, who has captured one of his own feet in a tiny hand and is staring at it in shock.

Kisa pours the liquid into a small bottle from her bag. “I didn’t know if we’d have the flowers,” she murmurs, almost to herself. “But the sick bay is so stocked …”

“Ironic,” mutters Seokga, wondering if he should remove the foot from Hwanin’s mouth.

“It’s only for Restorations,” she says with a sigh, and hands the bottle to Seokga. “Not that it’s not rewarding, but, well, you can’t save anyone if they’re already dead. Even these flowers won’t change that. Restorations are really only cosmetic at this point. You have to hold him,” Kisa says abruptly as Seokga stares in thinly veiled confusion at the bottle. “To feed him.” She raises her brows impatiently. “Seokga, really.”

—acts like—Hwanin—has rabies—or something—

“I’d rather not,” says Seokga, and is immediately bombarded with more impatient thoughts from Kisa, the red thread quivering between them. “Fine,” he groans, and with complete indignity, props Hwanin on his lap and administers the drink to him as Kisa watches. Hwanin sucks greedily and drools all over him. Disgusting. “Ew. Please take him back?”

“No.” She looks distinctly amused.

Seokga assumes an expression of supreme distaste as Hwanin’s drool taints his black cashmere sweater. Kisa sits back on her heels and looks as if she’s watching a very entertaining show.

“You and him,” she suddenly says as Hwanin makes disgusting little slurping noises. “I take it you weren’t close.”

Seokga sighs, staring down at the chubby blob in his arms. “We were, and then we weren’t. And then we were…getting there. Until he went and got his heart ripped out of his chest.”

“Yes,” says Kisa, looking slightly queasy. “That was unfortunate.” She hesitates. “I don’t want to, well, exhaust you more than you already have been…”

He raises his eyes to hers and thinks that he would gladly be exhausted for her. Hells, he went to Antarctica for her and poked around the penguins and fat, snarling seals. Kisa blushes, and he knows the red thread carried that particular thought of his down to her.

“I just,” she says, and then frowns. “You went to Antarctica ?”

“Yes,” he grumbles. “It was cold.” Too cold, even for him. “There were penguins.” Would you name them, if you saw them? he wants to ask, but refrains, and waves a languid hand. “Continue.”

Kisa blinks, and then clears her throat. “I just want to revisit what I said about most leadership assassinations being political in nature.”

Seokga fixes her with an exasperated look as Hwanin continues to drool all over him. “I know my reputation precedes me,” he drawls, ignoring the small stinging in his chest, “but I promise you, if I wanted to kill him, I would arrange it so I didn’t get stuck with babysitting duty. This is the very last thing I ever dreamed of doing.”

“No…” She looks entirely unimpressed and even slightly annoyed. “I wasn’t going to point a finger at you. I was just going to ask if there was any controversial legislation Hwanin had passed recently. That could give us some sort of starting point.”

“Oh,” says Seokga, attempting to appear nonchalant and not at all jubilant that Kisa trusts him to some small extent. “Well…” He thinks back. Most of Okhwang’s recent laws are a direct result of him. There is, for example, that law forbidding certain gods from duping other gods into extremely elaborate pyramid schemes. Then there’s that one prohibiting “pranks of a malicious nature, specifically theatrical re-enactments of coups, no matter how ‘innocent’ the intent.” The latest decree explicitly forbids Seokga from shape-shifting into his brother and forcing the pantheon to arrange surprise parties for a certain trickster god. Unfortunate.

Some deities just don’t know how to have fun.

Kisa is watching him suspiciously.

—he is—most certainly—hiding—something—

Seokga purses his lips and puts on a good show of thinking very hard. Those recent laws were controversial to him, but all the other deities had seemed unanimous in their opinion that they were necessary. “Not really,” he says. “Many of the new laws pertain to very small things.”

—he likely means—they pertain—to him —

He tries to look grievously offended at her train of thought, but Hwanin burps a moment later and Seokga sets down the bottle. As Kisa tilts her head, apparently lost in thought, Seokga lifts his brother so that the two are eye level. “What am I going to do with you?” he murmurs. “Really, brother. This is embarrassing. For you,” he adds as Hwanin smiles a gummy smile and blinks innocently back at him. He rolls his eyes.

“I’ve never solved a mystery before,” Kisa mumbles, almost to herself. “I’m not sure I’ll be any good at this.” She nibbles on her bottom lip, looking anxious. Seokga softens. He is beginning to get the sense that Kisa is harder on herself than she is on others.

“You’re right. It’s late,” he says, setting Hwanin down to wipe his drool away with his sleeve (a great and terrible sacrifice).

“Right. Yes. Come to the sick bay in the morning,” Kisa tells him as she rises and slings her bag back over her shoulder. The jars clatter within. “We can continue on then.” She hesitates, and when she speaks again, her voice wavers slightly.

—feel like—owe him—some explanation—

“I’ve been on this ship since 2018. I was so tired when I died, and I’m tired now…All I want, really, is to rest. Just for a little bit.”

His gaze pulls up to her, to her eyes glazed slightly with tears, to the haggard lines of her face. Throat suddenly dry and tight, Seokga swallows hard. The taste of coffee in his mouth suddenly turns to sour ash and a heavy mourning pulls at something deep within him. He’ll have to let her go. And he will. Gods, he will. For her. For Hani, for the woman she became. For Kisa.

Once this mystery is solved, Kisa leaves. And who knows if he’ll be able to find her again.

After thirty-three years, has he found her only to let her go?

Fate’s cruel streak never fails to wound him.

His thoughts must seep into her mind, for Kisa blinks rapidly. “Good night,” she whispers, and before Seokga can reach for her, she hurries away. The door clicks shut behind her.

Seokga stares at the fire and holds the child close to his chest.