Page 5

Chapter Five

K i s a

K isa wonders how, exactly, one should wait for their soulmate. For a good moment or two, she thoroughly contemplates posing on one of the sick bay’s beds, head propped up on one hand and the other resting on her hip. After a brief attempt, the cot squeaking uncomfortably beneath her, Kisa abandons that idea and instead decides to artfully lean against the clinic’s polished-granite front desk, a fixed smile on her face.

Although her heart is racing, she has come to the sensible conclusion that there is no point in running from whomever is attempting to find her. They’re attached by a red thread, for the heavens’ sakes—there is nowhere she can run, nor hide. So really, the most reasonable thing Kisa can do is to make a good first impression. Currently, she is smiling the smile that has landed her internships and jobs. Very professional, and extremely calculated.

“What are you doing ?” Her co-worker Kim Hajun is staring at her with abject horror from where he’s restocking one of the white medicine cabinets. The former K-pop star looks unsure as to whether he’s meant to laugh or to stride over and shake Kisa’s shoulders.

Hajun is one of Kisa’s only friends on the SRC Flatliner, despite having met each other just six months ago. He is one of the newest crew members on the ship, having died in April. Kisa had been the one to Restore him, carefully binding his bleeding inner wrists and treating the slender singer for blood loss.

The true treatment, though, should have been focused on his mind. There was such darkness inside of him, a sort that nobody would ever expect from a boy with such a sweet smile and sparkling eyes. Certainly not even the jeoseung saja in charge of SRC recruitment, who took one look at his file, saw K-Pop Star in huge red letters, and plopped him into servitude without a care for the stress Hajun must have been under while alive. Kisa fervently attempted to school herself in the field of psychology with the limited medical journals on board, but she was utterly out of her depth. She is a doctor of flesh and bone, and is terrified of damaging the fragile system of the psyche with indelicate hands. So for now, she can only offer Hajun one thing: friendship.

And it’s so easy to be friends with him. Hajun is a gentle, kind soul who has made her time on board so much easier. He’s quick at learning medicine: Under her watchful eye, he’s becoming a capable ship medic. She likes to think that he’s healing, too, away from the pressures of the entertainment industry. He certainly laughs more these days.

“Kisa?” Hajun repeats anxiously.

“Hajun,” says Kisa, careful not to drop her practiced smile, “I am in a perfectly natural state of pleasantness.”

“You look…constipated.” He shuts the cabinet and turns back to her, eyebrows high on his delicate face. “And your left eye is twitching.”

“ That, ” she retorts, dropping her pose, “is because of you. ” Kisa shifts from foot to foot nervously, glancing at the medical center’s swinging doors that have yet to open. The red thread is growing shorter, tighter. No doubt that signifies that whoever is at the other end is approaching Deck 3. “If you must know,” Kisa says with a sigh to a confused Hajun, “I am waiting for my soulmate.”

He chokes. Hajun is the only person Kisa has confided in, and although he can’t see it, he stares at her pinky where the thread is wrapped. “Right now? The thread?”

“Yes,” says Kisa. “The string is growing shorter by what I estimate to be ten inches per every thirty seconds. If each foot represents space traveled, then—”

“Oh, please,” Hajun murmurs, but he’s smiling softly. “Not the calculations.”

She pins him with a glare. Hajun doesn’t seem to notice, face suddenly stricken with some realization as he hurries over to her.

“Kisa,” he whispers urgently, “what if he’s horrible?”

“Thank you, Hajun, that is precisely what I needed to hear right now.”

“No, really,” her friend insists, grabbing her shoulder with wide, worried eyes. “What if he’s one of the dokkaebi? Or an imoogi? Kisa, what if he shifts into a giant serpent and eats you ? Worse…what if he’s one of the demons you’ve told me about? An eoduksini?”

“There hasn’t been a recorded eoduksini spotting since spring 1992,” Kisa replies factually, although a distinct sweat has broken out on the back of her neck, dampening her bun of curls. They are, after all, in the underworld. Although the eoduksini are kept under lock and key in the Torture Department, it’s possible one could slip out…

No. She shouldn’t let her friend frighten her. Hajun has taken the whole creatures-from-mythology-exist learning curve with about as much grace as a beached whale. Kisa is a respected shaman…or she was. At any rate, she is perfectly capable of handling herself.

“What if he’s an inmyunjo ?” wails Hajun, who had nearly shat himself the first time he’d come across one of the winged creatures on board—even though Unruly inmyunjo are nonexistent. “Or a gumiho? What if he steals your soul?”

Kisa is exceptionally conscious that footsteps are now echoing down the corridor’s hall, that the red thread is practically choking her finger, that she is very possibly about to experience something hardly ever documented in any academic literature—something that will gain her significant conversance regarding a rare phenomenon and, possibly, impressive accolades should she somehow manage to share such valuable knowledge. And Hajun is ruining it. “Please be quiet,” she mutters to him. “You’re interrupting a pivotal moment in mythos experience—”

Her friend ignores her. Breathing hard, Hajun looks wildly around the clinic’s small front room and, before Kisa can stop him, launches himself over the counter and grabs a paperweight. “It’s okay, Kisa,” he pants. “I’ll protect you—”

It’s as if Hajun’s voice plummets underwater, becoming muted and unintelligible as something—something so very important— shifts. She’s only experienced something like this once before, this feeling of a great and terrible change…The moment before she fell.

It’s as if the world is slowing again, as if the opening doors are not blasting open as they truly are, but instead gradually swinging open as a tall figure steps out of shadows, every step a slow-motion montage that causes Kisa’s breath to catch in her throat.

Inky black hair stirs softly in the air as the doors begin to shut behind him, lifting upward from a tense forehead where thick, dark brows slant together. The red thread between them begins to glow scarlet, and Kisa wonders for a brief moment if its material is naturally bioluminescent before her thoughts slow to a crawl at the sight of his deep green eyes—as if she is staring into a forest of raw emotion. No eyes that she has ever seen match that shade. Such raw, undiluted color should not be possible. There is something familiar about him, she thinks as a peculiar feeling overtakes her chest. It’s an insistent tug that makes her gasp, then what feels like an almost mechanical shifting of parts and pieces into place, clicking together to produce an odd feeling of…fullness?

Perhaps it’s heartburn, Kisa thinks vaguely, still captivated by those eyes. The man opens his mouth…

And time is no longer a slow, sluggish thing. Behind Kisa, Hajun is roaring a battle cry—and then the paperweight is flying through the air, a heavy glass orb that smashes into the side of the man’s head before either of them has time to react. Kisa gasps as the man stumbles backward, slips on the polished tiles, and crashes to the shattered glass littering the floor.

For a very long moment, the entire sick bay is very silent.

The red thread, almost abashedly, slowly stops glowing and sways awkwardly in the air.

“ Ergggkgggk, ” groans the beautiful man on the ground.

Kisa, jerked out of her reverie, spins around to glare at Hajun. “Did it look like he was about to attack me?” she demands. “Really, Hajun—”

The idol runs a hand through his messy ash-brown hair. “Uh,” says Hajun, suddenly looking extremely guilty. “I, um, I panicked?”

Gritting her teeth, Kisa forces her brain to launch into doctor mode. She’s attempted to form many theories explaining why the dead can feel pain and be injured (rapid soul-adaptation to a hostile environment?), but it seems that it’s simply because they are used to it and expect to be hurt when struck. If they could turn off that expectancy…Kisa pushes aside the thought.

Whatever the reason, this gorgeous—this man is hurt. After forcing her limbs to unlock, Dr. Yoo Kisa hurries to his side, leaning above him. His right temple is bleeding, and shattered glass dusts his dark hair like snow. There is something wrong, something off about the scene, but Kisa is far too frazzled to dissect it. “Hajun,” she snaps, “cloth. Now.”

As Hajun hurries toward the supply closet, Kisa gently lifts the man’s head. To her surprise, he lets her—for some reason, she had been expecting resistance. Perhaps it’s due to the intensity of his eyes or the exact curve of his mouth, as if it is used to resting in a perpetual sneer. But the man seems to be quietly stunned as she lifts him, brushing the glass from his hair, checking for any embedded shards. None.

“Can you sit up?” she whispers, voice barely audible. Kisa sits back on her haunches, trying to remain clinical, even as he obeys, gazing at her the entire time. The intensity has blood rushing to Kisa’s cheeks, warming them a pale indigo. She’s suddenly conscious of the color, ducking away. It’s the one thing that seems to have changed from their lives above: Here, the dead always, always have blue blood. Perhaps it’s Yeomra’s reminder to them, a way to ensure denial is impossible. Or perhaps Jeoseung has no oxygen, and they breathe in something else entirely. It doesn’t matter. Perhaps it’s her little vanity, but Kisa hates it.

To hide her sudden disconcertion, she turns her attention back to the man’s hair. His eyes flutter shut for a moment as she brushes through it again to make sure there are no cuts. Only then does Kisa realize he’s trembling, just like a baby bird. When his eyes open again, she finds that she’s unable to look away. It’s as if, she thinks, they are opposite poles, and he is drawing her toward him despite her best efforts. The red thread rises between them, swirling happily, forming into tiny little…hearts? The sight is enough for Kisa to blink, breaking the man’s soft—yet intense—gaze.

“Kisa? Here.” Hajun returns with the cloth and the red thread quickly straightens itself out as Kisa snatches the fabric, presses it to the man’s head, dabbing it against the red blood…

Red blood.

Red. Blood.

“Will I live?” the man asks. His voice is low and raspy. He stares up at her with wide, sparkling eyes.

The cloth falls from Kisa’s hand. She didn’t notice it before, but she does now—and that means…That means…

He’s alive.