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Epilogue

Seokga

A lone cherry blossom is carried away on a soft breath of wind, swooping and soaring through New Sinsi’s bustling streets and past glittering skyscrapers. It flutters by a Creature Café, where coffee roasts and pastries bake, rising and glistening with pearls of sugar in ovens. The cherry blossom is content to roam New Sinsi until it flutters delicately to the ground—but something peculiar happens first.

Perhaps the sudden gust of wind is summoned by one of the wind deities—Yeongdeung Halmang, or one of her wily sons—or perhaps it is simply one of those spring gusts that carry with it the recent memory of a winter storm. Whatever the case, the cherry blossom rises up, up, and up, floating far above the mortal realm and into the heavens where it finds itself flying toward a dark forest where heavenly maidens wash their wings in a burbling brook, and where a small wooden palace sits nestled between the maples and oaks. Through the narrow crack in the dark door the cherry blossom squeezes, escaping into a world that is so much bigger than it appears on the outside. A new sort of forest, where the trees have transformed into scrolls and fluttering pages and the soft, mossy ground into a smooth, yet uneven, floor.

The breath of wind, with one last exhale, sends the blossom fluttering deep through the stacks, too fast to note that each vast section has been meticulously organized by an expert hand. There is everything from tattered, raunchy romance novels to historical tomes the size of a small horse. Yet the blossom sees only the small cottage nestled peculiarly in a bookish grotto, encircled by swirling shelves. It has a thatched roof and a small green door, and the cherry blossom is just as confused as a cherry blossom can manage to be as it finally comes to rest atop the cheery welcome mat outside.

Welcome! greets a jaunty but messily embroidered scrawl.

Keep Out or Else, reads a much spikier font below.

A moment later, the door swings open. Seokga the Trickster steps on the fragile blossom as he ventures into the library’s depths, hiking three miles for the specific book its librarian requested.

Hwanin giggles as he sits atop Seokga’s shoulders, small hands stretching out to brush against the spines of books. His older brother smiles.

They’re in the Dark Stacks now, where the light from the Shallow Stacks’ window doesn’t permeate. He and Kisa have done an admirable job cleaning the Shallow Stacks toward the front of the library from its snow-like piles of dust and pest infestations, but back here, it’s as wild as ever. Mushrooms sprout from cracks in the floorboards. Bats rustle up above, and there’s a small demon population inhabiting the Deep Stacks of the library.

More than once, he and Kisa have ventured into the Deep Stacks armed with a sword and a large baseball bat, respectively, only to find themselves sprinting back to the cottage. (It had been a gift from Samsin Halmoni, who apologized to Kisa with such emotion that one would think Kisa was the goddess. The closest thing to an apology that Seokga received from her was something that might have been a remorseful smile if he squinted.) Seokga doesn’t even want to know what resides in the shadows past the Deep Stacks—the Deepest Stacks. Kisa has hypothesized that there just might be a coven of witches, and is quite eager to meet them. Seokga, considerably less so. Whereas shamans draw their magic from the gods, witches draw their powers from demons like eoduksini.

The Dark Stacks are oddly silent, save for a faint chittering that sounds suspiciously like a minor plague demon. It’s a relief when Seokga finds the book he’s looking for and can turn back before the foul thing causes Hwanin to come down with a cold. The cottage’s small windows glow with candlelight, a welcome sight in comparison to the Dark Stacks.

When he slips through the door, Kisa jumps up from her desk in excitement, hurrying to grab the heavy tome from his hands.

“Oh, this is perfect!” she cries in excitement, and he watches like a man in love as she flips reverently through its pages. The red thread forms into little hearts as he gazes at her.

“Stop that,” he mutters to the scarlet string. Its fully revealed sentience has, quite a few times, made Seokga wish it was possible to strangle it. Yet Kisa has theorized it only becomes truly solid during times when its Threaded partners are in mortal danger. The most Seokga has been able to do to the again-insubstantial thread is swipe at it in annoyance.

HEHEHE, is the amused reply, written out in taunting loops. SHAN’T.

So dazed by Kisa and distracted by the bond, Seokga barely notices as Hwanin—with a mischievous, toothless smile—rises up into the air.

Kisa rushes back to her desk before one of the windows, where a laptop (stolen from a Samsung store in Seoul, courtesy of Seokga) sits open and blinking, a massive document filled with text awaiting her return. That beloved notebook from her time on the SRC Flatliner lies open, her messy hand detailing everything from the red thread’s first appearance to her discovery of its sentience. She sets the new tome on the one scarce inch of free space on her desk, eyeing it reverently. Seokga peers over her shoulder. The header on the left page of her ever-open Word document reads, Fate’s Thread.

A delighted squeal has Seokga whirling around. Hwanin is currently doing somersaults in midair, much to the weariness of the trickster god, who cannot for the life of him coax the little menace down. “Hwanin,” he tries, only for the child to snicker at him, rolling into the small kitchen, brushing through the dried flowers hanging from the rafters, which Kisa uses to make the baby’s food. He grimaces as Kisa comes to stand next to him.

“He’ll come down eventually,” she says, watching Hwanin as he hovers over the small, round dining table.

Seokga rather wonders why, for the life of him, he ever desired what others describe as “domestic bliss” as Hwanin begins to shriek, as if horrified to find himself in the air, despite it being his own doing. Brothers. After some fumbling, he manages to drag Hwanin down by his big toe.

“You monster,” Seokga murmurs, kissing the top of Hwanin’s head. The baby squirms happily as Seokga turns back to Kisa. “How’s the book coming along?”

“Just about as well as it was this morning.” Kisa sighs, running a hand through her curls. She’s wearing one of his sweaters and he’ll never get used to the joy he feels at seeing her out of those scratchy SRC Flatliner scrubs. “We might have to try and venture out into the Deepest Stacks tonight…There’s another reference I need.”

Seokga grimaces.

Kisa grins. “Don’t tell me you’re frightened…”

“Never,” he mutters as Kisa steps forward, smoothing out the crease between his eyebrows with her thumb.

“Poor little god, so scared…” Her kiss is soft and sweet, casual in a way that has Seokga’s knees weakening. Whenever she kisses him, simply because she can and she wants to, he wonders how his wicked soul ever came to deserve this. “We can always ask Hwanung to come along with us again.”

Seokga grimaces, remembering the one disastrous Deep Stacks expedition they had with his nephew. He still has not recovered from the music Hwanung chose to blast on his portable speaker while Seokga and Kisa fought off a horde of chubby, salivating baegopeun gwisin. He couldn’t concentrate with heavy rock in the background, and had ended up nearly getting his leg chomped off. “Please, Kisa, no—”

He cuts off as there’s an abrupt knocking at the door of their small cottage. Kisa’s surprise flares down the thread. Hardly anyone visits the cottage in the library, save for Hwanung’s biweekly visits where he stomps into the cottage in his ridiculous studded boots and treks in mud, dust, and other grime along with a dramatic exhaustion and complaints of how “being interim emperor is so tremendously hard.” Seokga never has much sympathy for him. But Hwanung visited two days ago, which means whoever’s at the door, it’s not his nephew.

“I’ll get it,” Seokga says, tightening his grip on his cane.

“No, I will,” Kisa retorts, pushing past him.

“I have the sword —” Seokga tries to step in front of her, only for Kisa to nimbly trip him with one of her feet. He staggers to the side, irate.

“ I’m the dead one,” she tells him over her shoulder, and before he can formulate an argument to that unfortunately logical statement, she opens the door.

And freezes. Her back stiffens and her shoulders rise as the red thread between them flares purple in her growing panic and alarm.

In a flash, Seokga scoops Hwanin up from the floor and staggers to stand behind Kisa’s shoulder, transforming his cane into a sword with a flick of his wrist.

When he sees what lies beyond Kisa’s slender shoulder, Seokga nearly drops both his brother and sword in shock.

A woman with skin the color of spring leaves and hair no less dark than the richest soil stands on their welcome mat, dressed in a simple brown hanbok. She’s yawning, as if having just awoken from a long slumber, stretching her arms out as her lips part. In her hands is a glossy magazine.

Sexy Seokga’s Sordid Tell-All! the bubbly pink headline reads, followed by a rather unflattering photo of the trickster god glowering down at a camera in a dimly lit broom closet.

“Mother?” whispers Seokga, hardly daring to believe it.

Her eyes, as green as Seokga’s own, crinkle warmly in the corners. “I don’t suppose,” says Mago, goddess of the Earth, rightful empress of Okhwang, and Seokga’s (no longer) slumbering mother, “that you’d like to tell me what this is all about, Seokga?”