Page 16

Chapter Sixteen

K i s a

“D id you get it?” Korain asks. Kisa and Somi exchange wide-eyed glances behind the housekeeping cart as Chaeyeon shrugs, flicking a strand of hair away from her face.

“Are you gonna arrest me if I didn’t?” she asks with a wry smile.

Korain doesn’t look amused. “This is serious, Chaeyeon. Did you find anything or no?”

A long sigh escapes Chaeyeon’s lips, and she glances furtively around the empty hallway. As the vacuum starts up in one of the nearby rooms being cleaned, Kisa strains to hear what’s being said over the dull roar. “It’s basically barren in there. The bed is still made. I went through his suitcase, but it’s all pretty standard. I did, however, find out that he’s more of a briefs guy—”

Thoroughly bewildered by whatever this is, Kisa gapes as Chaeyeon pulls something out of her back pocket. Underwear. Hwanin’s underwear.

“I also found something else…” Her voice is drowned out by the vacuum.

The briefs. Whatever possible reason—?

Next to her, Somi snorts, and then hastily presses a hand to her mouth and nose. Chewing nervously on her lip, Kisa wonders— with increasing concern—what plot, exactly, is unfolding right beneath their eyes. Korain says something in reply, but with the vacuum cleaner roaring in the background, Kisa cannot make it out. Determination lowering her brows, Kisa rises slightly from her crouch and wraps her hands around the cold metal of the cart’s handle.

“We need to move closer,” she whispers to Somi.

If either Korain or Chaeyeon notice the housekeeping cart very gradually scooching closer to them, neither let on. When they’re near enough to hear the next words, both women duck back down and exchange satisfied looks.

“—gets what he deserves,” Korain is saying in a low, hard voice. “When you let the boss know that we took care of him, we get what we deserve.”

Well. Kisa’s hands are suddenly very sweaty around the cart’s handle. This is, she thinks, exceptionally incriminating. Her anxiety mounts, and she does her best to package it up nice and neatly in a little box and shove it into a corner of her mind. This requires focus, after all. Unless the context in which she’s taking this conversation is terribly wrong, it seems that Somi and Kisa have managed to find the murderers.

Yet, even as Somi nudges her giddily, Kisa forces her mind to slow down. It’s not helpful to lose all rationality at the sight of a clue or two: even as damning a sight as this one. She still must think this through.

Eyeing the two, she writes down a list in her mind. Motives: Both were upset by Hwanin—or someone related to Hwanin—at the greenhouse party. Evidence: Chaeyeon vocally expressed her anger at Hwanin and Seokga:

“The CEO will hear about this. I’m so tired of working down here. But all my points for good behavior will be docked because of tonight. Yeomra will see my name on the list of greenhouse workers.”

She left at the same time as Hwanin. She is currently standing outside of Hwanin’s door, holding his underpants. In their conversation, they have mentioned a “boss”—somebody sent them to dispose of Hwanin?—who could possibly be Hwanung if her theory is at all correct.

Something still doesn’t seem right.

“Did you hear that?” Somi whispers so quietly that Kisa can barely hear her. “Got ‘what he deserved,’ they ‘took care of him’…”

Wait, Kisa mouths, intent on listening more. If they rush them now…Korain is an incredibly strong haetae—one who possibly tore the heavenly emperor’s heart right out of his chest. Somi and Kisa are both immune to death, but there are other considerations that they cannot ignore. Korain might get away. So might Chaeyeon. And something about Chaeyeon is worrying her…Other than the fact she’s holding Hwanin’s underwear. An instinct low in her stomach tells her that now would be the wrong time to strike.

The haetae draws his phone out of his pocket. “I can call Boss right now—”

Chaeyeon stiffens, holds up a hand. Her eyes suddenly shrewd and unnervingly birdlike, she looks around the hallway. Her eyes land on the cart, and Kisa holds her breath, heart hammering rapidly against her ribs. Somi is silently snarling in anticipation, and summons her claws. The ravaged talons appear, and the gumiho’s face goes pale—as if she forgot.

The girl’s eyes finally move away from the cart. “Not now,” she says. “Go somewhere more private.” She rolls her shoulders, turning—and Kisa’s stomach drops as she sees the faint outline of feathers on the girl’s arms and neck, bare underneath her collared white shirt. As if they were sketched onto her skin with pencil, and are growing darker, more lifelike, by the second. Alarm blares through Kisa, and she frantically riffles through her memory to confirm that she is correct in her assumption that Chaeyeon is…

The creatures’ bodies, when in alarm or otherwise tense situations, will unconsciously begin the shift into their great and powerful animalistic form. Anatomically, it is impossible to say where the animalistic form is stored when the human form is in place, but it is generally assumed that the transformation process is a transformation of “inside-to-out” (Lee et al., 2004). When watching these individuals transform, it is fascinating to note how the feathers seem to push up from underneath the skin to commence the process—soon after, the human form will be entirely replaced by the body of a gigantic bird—or, in rare cases, yong—save for the face, which remains human…

Anxious sweat breaks out on the back of Kisa’s neck as Chaeyeon hesitates, scanning the hallway one last time before finally turning and following after Korain, the feathers fading back into flesh. As the two disappear, Kisa whirls to Somi, whose face is unusually grim.

“The feathers,” Somi says, and there’s even a hint of fear in the Unruly gumiho’s eyes. “That girl is an inmyunjo. And I’ve never, never, met an Unruly inmyunjo.”

“It can’t be her,” Kisa says, staring down at her flat white. “Inmyunjo are the biggest proponents of peace and harmony…” Her head swims.

They attempted to relocate both Chaeyeon and Korain, but to no avail. Now, they wait for Hajun, Seokga, and Hwanin to join them in the bustling Creature Café as they sit in a corner, barely listening to the pleasant jazz music and hardly tasting their drinks.

“It’s them,” Somi says, stirring her boba thoughtfully. The straw is smudged with her red lipstick. “I can’t explain it, either, but it has to be…”

Kisa shakes her head. Facts. They’re what Kisa lives off, they’re what she has always thrived on. She lives and breathes facts—cold, unshakable logic. Comfort can be taken in facts’ unchanging rigidities, and facts tell her that inmyunjo are no more inclined to be Unruly than a mouse is inclined to attack a mountain cat. “I don’t think it’s Chaeyeon and Korain,” she says as she pulls out her notebook, flipping to the Suspects page and nibbling on her pen. “It doesn’t fit. ”

“What other context would you take the conversation in?”

She falters. “I don’t know what context to take it in. The underwear…”

“No, that was strange.” Somi sighs as she chews on a boba. She lets Kisa scribble away in silence for some time before asking abruptly, “Do you—do you still like romance books?”

Her pen falters at the startlingly random change in topic. Setting it down, Kisa blinks. “I, well, yes, I do,” she admits slowly. “Did…Hani?” Could a serial killer enjoy something as wonderful as a sweeping love story? Surely not.

Right?

Across from her, Somi smiles a bit bashfully—a startling contrast to her usual confident grins—and reaches into her vintage black YSL purse. “I took a few things down with me,” she says, and Kisa grimaces, reminded of the hell that is turn-around day. “This book was one of them.” From the leather depths she withdraws a book that is in the worst possible condition a book can be in. Kisa, who kept her books meticulously uncreased and had heart palpitations whenever she accidentally cracked a spine, cannot help an offended gasp at the sheer mess the novel is in. Yellow pages that look like they’ve been drenched in water at some point or another, a cover that’s half falling apart, and a distinct smell of mildew.

“ Great bloody hells, ” Kisa hisses, staring at Somi in ripe offense and wounded accusation. “Did you do this?”

Somi blinks, and then smirks, pushing the book over to her. “I preserved it as best as I could, actually. That was all you, unn—Kisa.”

That is the worst thing anybody has ever told her. “Sacrilege,” Kisa croaks, feeling rather faint, and delicately smooths out the cover as to better see the artwork and title.

Kidnapped by the Time-Traveling Highland Pirate-King, the font over the clinch cover reads in shiny English. A shirtless man stands on the lookout post of a pirate ship, one hand around the wooden pole as both his hair and bright red kilt stream in the wind. In his other arm is a buxom blond woman who seems to have swooned.

It looks delicious. The sort of smutty delicious that Kisa would hide in her dormitory from Yuna, reading only at night under her covers with a flashlight and a pounding heart. It’s been so long since she held a book like this in her hands. Seven years. Her mouth practically waters.

“That was your—Hani’s—favorite,” Somi says with a hesitant smile. “I grabbed it from my room this morning, because I thought you might like to read it.”

“Have you read it?” Kisa asks curiously, delicately flipping to page forty-five. The black letters are dark with water stains, but still perfectly legible. Kisa blushes as she reads a few interesting sentences in chapter fourteen. Oh, yes. This looks quite good indeed.

“What if I told you…” Somi suddenly giggles, before masking the almost girlish sound with a cough. “What if I told you I learned English just to read that book?”

“No,” Kisa chokes out, caught between laughter and shock. “Did you really?”

“ Yes, ” Somi replies, grinning, and Kisa decides in that moment that she might even be glad she met Nam Somi—even if they met because Somi had tried to eat somebody. “I have a trunk full of them in my room if you want more. There’s this one that I’ve read thirteen times…”

“What is that ?” Neither woman had noticed Hajun as he silently crept to their table, but he’s here now, holding a sleep-bleary Hwanin. He’s staring at Kidnapped by the Time-Traveling Highland Pirate-King in horror.

“Er, nothing,” Kisa blurts, stuffing the mass-market paperback in the deep pocket of her scrubs.

Somi grins at Hajun a bit devilishly. “A very, very dirty romance book.”

Hajun goes blue. “Uh,” he says eloquently, clearly fumbling for words. “Is this a book club? Could I join? I know how to read—”

“We know you can read, Hajun.” Kisa quickly rises before he can embarrass himself further. The look he gives her says thank you and oh my God, why did I say that. “How’s Hwanin?” she asks as she takes the baby.

“I just fed him, with the recipe you left me,” Hajun replies, clearing his throat and glancing nervously at an amused-looking Somi.

“Oh, good,” Kisa breathes, and then frowns. “Where’s Seokga?” The red thread stretches out of the café, and the god that it connects her to is nowhere in sight. A hand flutters distractedly to her heart as she feels a small, insistent tug deep within it. “Weren’t you two working together?”

Hajun takes the seat across from Somi. “He was pulled away by an old woman with huge sunglasses, actually.”

“His therapist,” Kisa realizes, smoothing Hwanin’s hair away from his small face. “Did you find any passageways?” Chances are slim, she knows, with a lack thereof on the blueprints—but she still feels a prickling of hope.

“Um, unfortunately not…It was a great idea, though, Kisa. One of many more to come from your gigantic brain, I bet,” he ribs. “Besides the, uh, book—what else did you guys find?”

Somi opens her mouth to explain, but a moment later, a very disgruntled-looking Seokga is stalking up to their table, slamming his cane down on the floor with each step as if he’d very much like to cleave the SRC Flatliner in two. Kisa’s hand falls from her chest as the red thread shakes, and she resists the urge to flip to the page in her notes on the Threaded connection and observe how even the string seems afraid of Seokga’s moods. But she resists, keeping the pages on the list of suspects and scrawling down what they’ve learned while Somi quickly relates it to the two men. Kisa peeks up at the seat across from her where Seokga sits, eyeing her flat white like he’d gladly guzzle the caffeine despite it not being iced as she’s noticed he favors.

Don’t do it, she tells herself. Don’t you dare do it. Squash instead.

But then he’s looking up at her, eyebrows furrowed in a way that tells her he’s heard her thoughts, and the notorious, infamous god looks so—tired. So vulnerable. And she’s remembering how he watched the mermaids with her, grinning as night air whipped his dark locks, entertaining her excited ramblings in a way that even Hajun sometimes grows tired of.

Well, drat.

This won’t be at all conducive to her determined squashing.

Hesitantly, and with a sense of great defeat, Kisa pushes her cup toward him. His eyes widen in surprise. She tries, furiously, not to blush as she returns her attention to the notebook, but she’s very aware of how he raises the mug to his lips and tentatively sips it.

—needed—this—fucking—therapy—daddy issues—Mireuk—damn it—want—Kisa—coffee—

His thoughts are a distressed jumble, and Kisa is suddenly overcome with the intense desire to smooth them out. Something happens then, in the Creature Café, in the midst of a murder investigation—something that is incredibly fascinating from a scholarly level, and amazing from a, well, Kisa level. The bond between the god and the gwisin begins to glow at Kisa’s end—not scarlet, but a calm silver. Silver travels from her pinky to his, where it seems to seep into his skin…And a moment later, the lines on Seokga’s forehead smooth.

What in the world…? Kisa’s lips part in confused wonder a moment before Somi concludes, with no lack of confident gusto, that she is 99.99 percent certain that Shin Korain and Lim Chaeyeon are the perpetrators they’re looking for.

Shaking her head to clear it, Kisa rips—with a difficulty that surprises her—her gaze away from Seokga and focuses it on Somi. “We can’t ignore that .01 percent,” she informs them, absentmindedly stroking a dozing Hwanin’s head. “Inmyunjo Unrulies…”

“…are practically nonexistent,” her god corrects. No, not her god—Seokga. Seokga. Kisa’s cheeks flush. This is horrible. “It was my job, thanks to this one here”—Seokga gives his baby brother a withering glance that reluctantly softens a moment later when Hwanin toothlessly yawns—“to hunt down twenty thousand Unruly monsters. In all the ten thousand something I hunted, I never once came across an inmyunjo. Not even in Gamangnara.”

“Ten thousand?” Kisa can’t help but repeat with a wry smile before she can stop herself. “Not thirty thousand?”

Seokga grimaces and mutters something into her coffee. Kisa attempts to wipe the smile off her face and fails quite miserably.

“There are always exceptions,” Somi rebukes, glaring at Seokga who returns her glower with animosity. “There are Unruly haetae. Why not inmyunjo?”

“Inmyunjo take the values of peace more seriously than any other creature. It’s ingrained in their culture…And it’s too easy,” Seokga snaps. “And anything that’s too easy is wrong.” He glances at Kisa, and the weight of his stare is heavy and sad. “I learned that the hard way.”

Her hands spasm in her lap and she squashes the urge to reach for him.

“We can’t just ignore this, though,” Hajun argues, drumming his fingers on the table.

“No,” admits Kisa. “No, of course not. I’m only saying that we shouldn’t view this case as fully closed yet. We have enough incriminating evidence to focus our attentions on them, but we can’t close our minds off to other possibilities—although I struggle to come up with an explanation as to why they were snooping through Hwanin’s room, or said the things they did…” It’s hard to write with Hwanin in her lap, but Kisa manages. “Seokga, is there any way you might contact Hwanung without revealing what’s happened? If he’s the ‘Boss’ they spoke of, he might let something slip.”

Seokga nods, then curses. “I should have grabbed Hwanin’s phone,” he hisses. “There might have been evidence on there. Texts, calls…Fuck. Fuck! ”

“World’s shittiest detective,” Somi sings under her breath, and nudges Kisa with a smile that’s rather smug. “Aren’t you so happy to have me ?”

A zip of green shoots down the red thread from Seokga to Kisa, and she is suddenly struck with an intense feeling of jealousy that is most decidedly not her own.

“Erm,” she eloquently manages, hands itching to flip to the page on the red thread in her notebook. “Er…” Her mind whirls. First silver, then green. It can’t be a fluke. Emotional transference? She has decided that yes, the red thread is some sort of conduit—a conduit through which thoughts—and now emotions—can be shared. Does this new development mean that the red thread is growing stronger?

The thread itself quivers, and Kisa gasps as it twists itself into scarlet letters— WOULDN’T YOU LIKE TO KNOW— but smooths itself out so quickly that by the time Kisa has kicked Seokga under the table in alarm it’s a perfectly normal Red Thread of Fate. Figures.

Seokga frowns at her, reaching down under the table to rub his shin.

—why—kick me—

Perhaps she imagined it. Kisa clears her throat. “Can you get the phone now?” she manages to ask Seokga.

“It will have disintegrated with the body,” the trickster seethes. “Blinked out of existence. But, yes, I can call Hwanung on my own. Although he’ll undoubtedly be suspicious. The last time I called him, it was to read him an entire Godly Gossip article about how his fashion sense has diminished in recent years.”

Hajun winces. “I think Godly Gossip is distributed down here, too,” he says, and Kisa is quite sure that Somi is playing footsie with him underneath the table (judging by his half-pleased, half-frightened expression that so often pops out around her…and the suspicious thumps on the table’s underside). “It’s a magazine, right?”

“Hwanin’s ti—I mean, Hwanung’s tits.” Seokga scowls. “It’s down here, too? Is there no escape?”

“It actually reminds me of…” Alarm rises in Kisa when she sees Hajun’s face fall as he trails off. The footsie abruptly stops, and Somi’s eyes widen almost imperceptibly with concern.

“Did I kick you too hard?” the gumiho asks nervously, but Kisa knows it’s not that.

“Hajun…” Kisa reaches across the table for her friend. His fingers are trembling slightly as they wrap around hers.

Every so often this will happen—her kind, sweet friend will be dragged down by his demons. In the weeks after Kim Hajun arrived, bits and pieces of his story trickled out. During the last years of his life, Hajun had been hounded by paparazzi. His name was everywhere in the tabloids, vicious rumors swirling after he met a girl he liked for lunch at a small ramyeon shop. That was all she was—a girl he really, really liked—but she happened to be in the public eye as well, and their innocent, hopeful meeting started off a chain reaction that ended, ultimately, in a torrent of malice surrounding both idols. Hajun’s agency hadn’t let him leave the complex in which he and the other members lived until the storm died down. But for Hajun, the storm had begun a long, long while ago.

When he’d arrived on the SRC Flatliner, Hajun’s weight had been significantly lower than it should have been for a man of his age and height. During the Restoration process, Kisa had almost immediately diagnosed him with anorexia nervosa, specifically the binge-eating/purging subtype—not to be confused with bulimia. The demands of the idol life had taken an extreme toll on him after his debut with ST4RL1GHT. Hajun would eat meals that seemed nutritiously fulfilling, even excessively healthy—but would purge them from his body straight afterward with extreme and obsessive exercise paired, at times, with vomiting. His expertly styled hair had been so brittle, his skin so dry.

It broke her heart. Kim Hajun had been called the “golden light” of the K-pop industry. He was heralded as one of the happiest, kindest idols—videos of him laughing during fan-signings had at least half a million views on YouTube each—and when he died by his own hand, Kisa has no doubt that the same tabloids that tormented him published long, money-grabbing pieces mourning him. His agency, too, seems no better from what Hajun told her. ST4RL1GHT was the driving force behind Hajun’s disorder: policing what he ate, how he dressed, scrutinizing his every smile, every word he spoke or sang. Parts of Hajun’s audience were no better. One quiet night aboard the Flatliner, her friend whispered to her some of the comments he’d received—and they were awful, truly awful. She’d felt the slow crawl of horror as she realized that Hajun had memorized them so completely he could recite them, word for word.

It had been Hajun’s hand and razor that cut through his veins, but Kisa feels a surge of anger at the world that put the blade in his hand in the first place. She squeezes Hajun’s palm tight, holding his eyes with her own—which are suddenly swimming with tears. The love she has for Hajun is so very deep that his pain is her pain. He’s the brother she never had, and she hates seeing him slip back into such a dark place.

“They’re not here,” Kisa tells him firmly. “They can’t get to you here. Godly Gossip only focuses on the pantheon. Never mortal idols. You’re safe here, Hajun. I promise.”

A glistening tear slips down his face, and he hastily wipes it away, shrinking down in his chair in clear embarrassment and shame. Kisa feels her throat tighten. If Somi makes fun of him for crying, she’ll…she’ll…Well, really, Kisa has no idea what she’ll do, but it won’t be pleasant. At all.

But the gumiho surprises her. Somi abruptly stands from her seat and pushes her way to the front of the Creature Café’s line. When she comes back a minute or two later, she’s holding a large boba drink. She places it in front of Hajun, along with the fat straw. “Stab it through the plastic covering on top,” Somi tells Hajun as she slides back into her seat. “Stab it hard, and then take a long drink.”

Kisa slips her hand away from Hajun’s grip as he stares at Somi in bemusement. “Why?”

“It helps,” says Nam Somi with a tremor in her voice, and Kisa feels a surge of remorse—not for the first time—about how horrible her death must have been. “Stabbing it can be cathartic.”

A little bit of light blinks back into Hajun’s eyes as he unwraps the thick straw and—with a swift, almost violent motion—does what Somi says. It stabs through the thin plastic covering the cup, and Hajun laughs before he takes a sip of the drink, dark boba blurred within the slightly transparent pink straw.

Kisa feels a small surge of surprise, relief, pride. A few months ago, Hajun would never have touched the sugary drink despite the food in the underworld being pretty illusions with no caloric benefits (save for candies like Kopiko, smuggled from the world of the living above). Now, he takes a second sip, and then smiles a tiny, hesitant smile. “This is…really good,” he whispers. “I love it, actually.”

“It’s winter melon with honey, boba, and grass jelly,” Somi replies with a grin around her own straw. “Mine’s jasmine milk tea with lychee, if you want to try it.”

Kisa glances at Seokga, wondering if she is the only one feeling as if she is witnessing something unexpectedly profound and delicate. The god’s face is surprisingly soft as he watches the two switch bobas. Somi tries Hajun’s and laughs—an unexpectedly girlish sound, innocent and bright. When she met Somi for the first time in the sick bay, she never would have thought the gumiho’s laugh would sound like that. Like tinkling bells.

“It’s so sweet!” she half-gasps, spluttering. “I didn’t expect it to be so sweet!”

Hajun’s lips tilt upward. “Yeah,” he murmurs, “me neither.” But he isn’t looking at the drink.

He’s looking at Somi.