Page 6

Chapter Six

Seokga

K isa.

Her name is Kisa.

And she’s staring at him, small mouth agape, curly brown hair a mess as it escapes its band. This close to her, he can count the exact number of freckles on her small nose while, all the while, his heart slams itself frantically against his ribs. She has a small, heart-shaped birthmark above her left eyebrow. He can’t look away from it, mesmerized by something that—on anyone else—would be so small a detail, so insignificant, that he wouldn’t bother to notice.

It’s as if Seokga is existing within a dream, a dream where Hani’s long-lashed wine-brown eyes stare at him as if he’s an absolute impossibility.

Thirty-three years.

Thirty-three years of desperate searching and she’s finally here. Hani. His Hani, his gumiho, with her sharp-tongued wit and cheerful, hot-chocolate-loving soul. There is no visible similarity but for the Korean heritage and wine-brown eyes, but—this is Hani. Undoubtedly, irrefutably Hani. He feels it in his soul, so powerfully that he trembles.

And she does not know him.

He has found Hani, his best friend, his soulmate, and she does not know him. It is in the way her touch is gently clinical, even when her fingers ran through his hair. Those beautiful eyes have no hint of recognition within them, only a growing puzzlement and something that looks remarkably like a ravenous curiosity.

You expected this, he scolds himself. How many times has he wondered who she might be, clutched by the fear that she’d be different, too different, than who she once was? In the thirty-three years he’s waited for her, he’s imagined her as hundreds of thousands of people. There was one particularly harrowing nightmare in which Hani’s reincarnation was an elderly man with a penchant for passing gas in his retirement home’s crochet group. Seokga had awoken screaming and drenched in sweat, the walls of his Okhwang palace shaking with the force of his cries. The explanation he’d muttered to a panicked Hwanin (and the army of fifty warriors the emperor had brought with him to Seokga’s residence) had somehow found its way into Godly Gossip the very next day.

Humiliating.

And so there is a terrible sort of common sense deep within Seokga, one that tells him that Kisa does not know him. That, really, he doesn’t even know her. But the trickster still cannot help hoping that as her small hands take his face, she is about to kiss him…

No. No, of course not.

Seokga bites back his disappointment as Kisa simply stares at him, brows furrowing, lip pulled in underneath one of her front teeth. “Fascinating,” she murmurs, tilting his head left and right, staring at the cut that will soon begin to heal itself over. “I wonder…Hajun,” she says suddenly to the boy who threw the paperweight. Normally, Seokga would make him regret being born—and assuredly, he will later—but he’s in too much of a daze to do anything but send the boy a withering sneer. It’s delightful to see how he pales. A sudden stab of envy cuts through Seokga’s skin. If they’re a couple…“You could have killed him.” Kisa passes the cloth to Hajun, who looks even more like he’s about to keel over.

“Well,” the boy says uncomfortably, “I didn’t think he was alive in the first place.”

Seokga holds his breath before her gaze returns to his.

“You’re truly living,” she says in accented Korean. British, perhaps?

“And you’re…you’re dead,” he breathes, before the enormity of that fact hits him in full. Suddenly unable to move, Seokga fights to think past the roaring wave of grief as it threatens to consume him. She died. Before he could reach her, she died. How? How did it happen? How…He’s vaguely aware that she’s saying something else, but he cuts her off before he can think better of it. “When?” he croaks and grabs her right hand, the hand where the red string is tied. “When?”

Kisa blinks. “March twenty-fourth, 2018, eight-thirty p.m. , Seoul,” she reports factually. “Cause of death: fatal fall from a rooftop.”

Seokga nearly chokes as he finally scrambles to his feet. The same day the Red Thread of Fate appeared. She was in Seoul. How did he miss her? How did he not find her? Why couldn’t he save her? It feels as if knives are tearing him apart from the inside.

Kisa climbs to her feet, as well. “The living typically aren’t allowed on this ship,” she says slowly. “I’m very curious to know how you’ve done it. Can you confirm my theory that Jeoseung’s plane of existence is merely a designated holding place for the dead: a sort of storage closet with a chute to reincarnation, if you will? Was there a door you came through? Can you confirm this realm could be hospitable to living organisms? Is there actually oxygen?” Her speech has become much faster by this point—Seokga can barely keep up with her. All he knows is that she’s using jondaemal, her words so formal that Seokga can barely breathe.

It’s really all gone, is all he can think, all the memories, all the love and friendship that had bloomed between him and Hani, erased and replaced by fucking jondaemal. An ache shivers through his heart, splintering into a sharp, bitter pain as Kisa continues to speak, addressing him as a stranger. He presses a shaking hand against his chest in a desperate, and thoroughly futile, attempt to keep himself from falling apart completely. “Is the realm’s physical or metaphysical structure able to be manipulated to support carbon-based, natural and biotic—”

As her line of interrogation continues, Seokga sucks in a small breath. You expected this, Seokga tells himself, but he’s beginning to think that he hadn’t, that he hadn’t at all. “Jeoseung is not accessible to regular living mortals, although it can be to creatures, if they know where to look,” he rasps after a long moment once she’s finished talking, his mind still whirring, still teetering on the edge of a magnificent mental breakdown. He is speaking automatically, the words fed to his tongue by the small part of his brain that isn’t muddled in shock, longing, and grief. “The pantheon, too. I’m a god.”

Hajun gasps and slowly retreats to a back room. But Kisa—Kisa looks at him for a long moment, and he has the distinct impression that her brain works like a book, and she’s currently flipping through its pages, searching for something. It’s almost extraordinary to watch those familiar eyes narrow and widen, to sense the knowledge being riffled through behind them.

“Green eyes… Green eyes. Seokga,” she finally whispers, and his name on her tongue…He fights to remain standing upright instead of sinking to his knees like some bumbling fool. “I knew you looked familiar.”

His agonized heart stutters, stops, and refuses to restart. “I…I do?” he stammers. Inelegantly. “You kn-know me?”

But Kisa, to Seokga’s eternal disappointment, isn’t throwing herself into his arms and swooning with infatuation while rose petals shower down around them. Instead, she’s looking at him as if he is some sort of fascinating insect underneath a magnifying glass. Again, that horrible, splintering pain. “God of deceit, of trickery. Subject of The History of Deceit: An In-Depth Examination of Prince Seokga’s Fragile Ego Throughout the Years by Professor Lee Miyoung. I had a few critiques on that book,” she muses, drumming her fingers on her chin. “The professor was highly biased. Her brother was killed by the eoduksini back in the nineties…It was a glaring conflict of interest. Professor Lee unfortunately didn’t seem to take the criticism very well,” Kisa adds, shaking her head and looking incredibly affronted.

Seokga blinks. If Kisa had access to that blasted novel, to the professor who wrote it, that means…that means she’s a shaman. But to which god? The entire pantheon knew, for years, that Seokga was searching for a girl with distinctly one-of-a-kind wine-brown eyes. Who kept her from him? Seokga can barely breathe as rage replaces his heartbroken mourning, but his anger falters as Kisa pauses, eyes drifting to the red thread.

Seokga holds his breath, terrified that she’ll find him unworthy. That she’ll shun him.

Her next words nearly bring him to his knees again. Those damned eyes are suddenly sparkling again as she looks to him, and there’s a slight blue flush to her skin. “This is brilliant,” she breathes, taking a step closer to him. “Absolutely brilliant.”

Do not fucking cry, Seokga warns himself as she clasps her hands together, grinning. Happy tears are for fools.

“Do you mind,” says Kisa eagerly, and he notices that her nose scrunches when she smiles, “if I ask some questions?”

Every inch of Seokga is still shaking as he stands in line at the Creature Café located on Deck 8. The SRC Flatliner has long since taken off, and the café’s glass windows overlook the shimmering red waters of the vast Seocheongang River. The familiar smell of roasting coffee beans comforts him. He knows it’s not real: Food and drink here are memories—even ghosts—of food and drink above, generated by Yeomra. There are no caloric benefits from drinking the large iced coffee with one cream and one sugar that Seokga orders at the register, but he doesn’t mind. It tastes real, and should he grow hungry, Hwanin and Dr. Jang brought along a grocery store’s worth of food in their luggage.

“And for you?” the café worker asks Kisa, punching in Seokga’s order and looking bored. Seokga feels a pang of nostalgia, remembering when it was Hani behind the counter, purposefully messing up his order.

“Hot chocolate,” Seokga replies before he can stop himself. It just slips out.

“Actually,” corrects Kisa, shaking her head, “I’ll have a small flat white, please.”

Seokga swallows hard, gripping his cane tight. Hani hated coffee. She loathed it.

But she isn’t Hani, he reminds himself. Her name is Kisa. It’s fine if she likes coffee. She’s not going to be the same person that she was in her past life. You know this.

At least she isn’t an old man.

At least she isn’t an old man.

At least she—

“Are you all right?” Kisa asks politely, and he realizes that she’s staring at him, eyebrows furrowed.

Seokga hastens to arrange his expression into something other than abject horror as the barista passes them Seokga’s coffee and Kisa’s…flat white. “Perfectly,” he manages to wheeze. “I am perfectly fine.”

Kisa does not look in the least convinced, but leads him to a circular wooden table and sits primly in one of the chairs regardless. “I have to be back at the sick bay in twenty minutes,” she says, sipping her drink. Seokga is slightly disappointed not to see a grimace of disgust, as Hani might have made. “Lots of gwisin will complain of seasickness on the first day of the cruise. Our mentor finished her penance on this ship a few months ago, so it’s only Hajun and me working there at the moment.” She sets down her drink and leans forward. Seokga wants, badly, to brush a stray curl out of her eyes, but refrains with notable effort.

She’s his lover and a stranger all at once.

Oh, he’s very much struggling, torn between intense feelings of both distance and familiarity. “I’m assuming we’re soulmates,” Kisa says matter-of-factly. “Threaded soulmates.”

He nearly spits out the long draw of coffee he’s taken. “Well—I—yes,” he sputters, choking. Great job, he thinks. Very smooth. Even better than falling to the floor and saying “errrgkkk.”

“Hmm,” Kisa hums, calmly taking another sip. “Why?”

The café hustles and bustles around them, cheerful jazz music playing on the speakers. Meanwhile, Seokga is frantically dabbing at his suit with a napkin and trying not to hyperventilate. “ Why? ”

“Yes. I mean, statistically, apparitions of the Red Thread of Fate are minuscule. I would estimate them to be less than one percent. The last Threaded couple was rumored to be centuries ago, and even then, they were allegedly both gods. I assume you know who I’m referring to?”

“Haemosu and Yuhwa,” Seokga mutters, remembering that particular fiasco. Relations between Haemosu and Yuhwa’s father, Habaek, are still frosty at best.

“There must be a reason we’re Threaded,” Kisa continues, tracing invisible words that look awfully like an entire paragraph on the table with her index finger. “So far, I’ve come up with a few hypotheses but narrowed it down to the one that makes the most sense logically.”

“And that is?” he breathes.

She meets his eyes and cocks her head, frowning slightly. “You knew me in a past life,” she says, pausing in her scribbling. “We fell in love, then I died. You were looking for me. The Red Thread of Fate manifested on March twenty-fourth, 2018, which was—coincidentally—the day that I died in this life. In accordance with what I know of the red thread, it may manifest at an emotionally fraught time. For example, Yuhwa and Haemosu became Threaded in the middle of running away from her father, Habaek. That’s why it manifested on my death day. It could sense…something.” Kisa takes an idle sip of her coffee as Seokga lurches forward in his seat.

Does she remember? Does she—

“Before you ask,” Kisa says primly, “no, I don’t remember anything. But I’ve learned a little about my past life. You seem like the type of person who would fall in love with a woman who is very good at stealing money from ATMs. I based my working theory off that. Although I’m sorry to tell you that I’ve never stolen anything before.” She hesitates. “Also, I did read an issue of Godly Gossip, once. When I was ill. Not that it wasn’t academically stimulating, in its own sort of way, but…” Kisa clears her throat. “You were in love with a gumiho, weren’t you? During the nineties’ Dark Days?”

Seokga has become aware that he is making a wheezing sound, and really does try to stop. It is, unfortunately, impossible. “Yes,” he manages to whisper.

Kisa nods, looking thoughtful. “So I suppose I was her? Or, she is me? Rebirth philosophy is such a convoluted field. I don’t suppose you’ve heard of the Ship of Theseus problem?”

He shakes his head, trying to steady himself. Trying to breathe.

It’s not working.

“It’s a thought experiment. Is Theseus’s wooden ship, which has all of its parts gradually replaced by stronger timber, the same ship?” Kisa chews on her bottom lip. “Some philosophers say no. How could it be? A ship of pine isn’t the same thing as a ship of, say, oak. A gumiho isn’t the same as a shaman…”

It’s as if the floor has dropped beneath Seokga’s feet, and he grips the edges of the table as Kisa muses on. Collect yourself. She’s right.

“But some philosophers say that there are two Ships of Theseus. One oak, one pine. Both the same, yet compositely different. It’s fascinating, really. What do you think?”

“I think,” rasps Seokga, “that I’d need something stronger than coffee to answer that question.”

She’s so different from Hani. There are no quick jokes, no mischievous grins, no strawberry egg buns on the table in front of them. Hani was always quick, but Kisa’s mind is working at such a speed that Seokga feels he cannot hope to ever possibly keep up. And this thought experiment…It is sending him into a state of panic. Has he lost Hani completely, after all?

Stop, he orders his spiraling mind as he watches Kisa’s eyes dance over his expression. Stop—

But it’s too late. She’s seen his ragged edges peeking out from underneath his facade, the bitter disappointment and confusion. Kisa’s own face falls, then blushes blue.

“I’m sorry,” she says, clearing her throat. “I didn’t think…” He watches, momentarily frozen as she scratches awkwardly at the tabletop, seemingly struggling to find words. “You use banmal with me,” Kisa finally continues, and Seokga feels a rush of hot embarrassment. He’s been using the informal with her, and even though this is not uncommon—he generally speaks banmal with everyone, due to his advanced age and overall superiority—it humiliates him to know that his motive for using banmal, a friendship and love that don’t exist for Kisa, is so glaringly obvious. “I shouldn’t have brought up the ship.”

“No,” Seokga says after a long moment, in which he slowly and painstakingly glues himself back together. “Thank you for sharing it with me. It’s…” Horrifying. Depressing. Going to keep him up at night. “…relevant. I hadn’t heard of it before.” You can use banmal with me if you’d like, he wants to add, but somehow cannot find the courage.

Kisa nods, blush receding, back to business. “Perhaps we can solve it,” she offers and smooths down her light blue scrubs. “I really am quite excited to be working with you on this development. I think our collaboration will be beneficial to so many parties.”

Seokga freezes, then flinches. Her voice is so—professional. Eager, but only in a hungry, scientific way, stilted by the jondaemal she still uses. It hurts more than any weapon ever could. Fuck. Anything—even the old man passing gas at his crochet club—would be better than this detached clinical-ness. Like this thread between them is nothing more than a cold, dead scientific phenomenon meant to be studied, not something so pure and magical and alive.

“Red thread manifestations are so rare that we would be foolish not to, well, investigate it entirely. A, well, research collaboration could benefit so many in the magical communities…If we record our findings, it could be instrumental in the understanding of Threaded soulmates. There are so few books about it, you see, unless they’re kept away in Okhwang’s Heavenly Library, which I’ve always wanted to learn more about, by the way…”

Her words fade to a dull roar, for Seokga’s mind is being crushed with waves of deep, bitter hurt. He sees what this is. For him, it is his best friend, his lover, reincarnated. For her, it is an experiment. Research.

For him, it’s love.

It’s as if he is being ripped apart, but somehow, Seokga still manages to stand. If he stays here, he knows he will break down entirely and there will be nothing left of him but bones and dust. And then what will she think of him? Kisa will be frightened away before he can collect himself. “I’m sorry,” he hears himself saying, his voice thankfully cool and collected rather than the shaking mess he is inside, “I have to go.”

Kisa hesitates. “Oh,” she says, looking uncertain. “Okay.”

He opens his mouth to say something else, anything else, but he knows if he uses his voice again it’ll be a jagged cry. Hurriedly, heart breaking in his chest, Seokga turns on his heel and leaves.

The red thread stretches longer and longer with each step he takes.