(ty for readin', this is a v long one as it's packed w/ a lot of things, and the style might be a little stranger than it's been, a more vignette style if you will, so bear with me haha. the little star is grateful for your patience as the update schedule changes, so ty ty ty!)

(EDITED)(Note to readers: Some chapters ahead may not be in line with the new edits.)

Mercy had lived for twice the years she looked to have. She had seen some things.

"Wash your hands." She tossed me a rag, it's white fabric instantly going red with the blood coating my fingers. "You'll dirty up this whole place. Ghostie. Don't you know you have to look presentable? People don't trust people who don't even like themselves."

I needed the sink to wash out the death from under my fingernails. I said, "Why are you doing this?" I was sixteen and hopeful. I had seen more death than life and more bodies than people. I had questions. No answers.

Mercy frowned in the doorway of the Red Room. The underground made everything damp and cold. In Korea, in America, no matter where I went, I was always trapped somehow. 

"What do you mean?" she asked. "Wash your hands?"

She knew. "The bodies. The organs. Why?" I said. "You have so many more people who could do it faster, better, than me. Why?" My voice sounded pleading, desperation cracking through in splintering fragments. "Why are you making me do this?"

Mercy blinked like the question was an unfunny joke. She said, "Why not?" I stared. Mercy's grin was fang-toothed, cruel at the seams. She walked over towards her steel-trap boxes of fresh organs and bagged blood. "Let me tell you something you ought to remember, Ghost."

I said, "Don't."

She lifted a heart. I swore I could still see it beating. I gagged in the back of my throat, burying my nose in the crook of my elbow. But everything smelled of iron-bloated blood.

"Your father sent you to me to, eventually, kill you. See you off before your brother has the chance. Give you a quick and nameless death whether you knew it or not. Handsome pay for it, too. He'll tell you it was to see whether you could survive. But truthfully, it was to cover the mess your death would bring," she said. "I am not going to kill you. Ask me why."

When I didn't, the thud of the heart in the ice made me jolt. I gritted out, "Why?"

"Because I don't believe in an unfair fight," she said. "I don't think anything should be 'put out of its misery'. Why so? The harsher the hammer, the stronger the steel. It's just not right to not give you a chance."

"What chance?" I said, and showed her my hands. "A chance at being a goddamn butcher and a ghost for the rest of the my life? I'd rather you kill me."

"Then be killed! I give you plenty of opportunity," she drawled. "I'm not trying to keep you alive, Ghostie. Don't get me wrong. You have only lived this long because you wanted to. Do you hate this life?"

"How could I like it?"

She shrugged. "Why is that my problem? I have my own career to worry about! You're a fresh set of hands with a good eye for detail. That's it. Maybe if you were smarter, you would make a lesson of it."

"Of what? A life?" I threw the rag into the sink. "This isn't a life."

"How do you know a sword?" She plucked the scalpel from the tray and brushed her finger along it. "You have got to know its body. You want a life, Ghost? You should learn how to survive long enough to get one."

"Then let me go."

"Is this thing on? I believe we've covered this already." She tapped the blade against her tongue. "Aren't you supposed to be the smart twin?"

I clenched my fists. "What's your point?"

She gestured at the organs, then at me. "There are no chances. There are only choices," she said. "Stop whining about chances. You will whine until you're dust. Hey, Ghost." She pointed the blade at me, right between my eyes. "I own you. Right down to the last cell in your pinkie. What are you going to do about it?"

I turned my back to her, and grabbed the rag. "Hate you until I'm sick."

"Then be sick!" she cackled. "That is your choice."

She disappeared. The scent of metal and flesh lingered in her wake.

There are only choices.

Then I could only hope I would make the right one when I needed to.

_________________

In all my nineteen years, I had slept dreamless, or with nightmares. The last good dream I'd ever had, well. My memories don't go that far back.

That being said, for a moment when I woke, I wondered if that pattern had finally changed.

I blinked away the sleep, my eyes bleary and stinging with the incoming light. The AC attempted to ward away as much of the sun's heat as possible, but to little avail seeing as my skin felt potent with warmth the moment I came to. I yawned, stretching my arm over my head.

A hand wrapped around my wrist halfway through. "Don't elbow me."

I craned my head.

Kane's eyes were still closed, but his hand was up by his neck to protect himself from my directionless arm. I said, "Oh. It's you."

Kane scoffed. He let go of my wrist and I grabbed the pillow under his head to haul out and into my own side. An arm snaked around my waist. Kane rested his chin in space between my shoulder and neck, his nose to my skin. My chest ached from it. He said, "It's nine. We gotta go or Nami's gonna break down my door."

"Nami is just a well-dressed, paid stalker and you know it."

"Sunhee's probably making breakfast. You're gonna miss it."

"Darn," I replied, and pressed my face into the pillow.

Kane tugged at my ear and I yelped. He said, "You're gonna sleep through Korea?"

"Well, clearly not with you here," I replied.

Kane pulled the pillow from my grip and tossed it back to his side. He wrapped his other arm around me and pulled me into his body, trapping me against his chest. "Fine. Sleep."

"Does your all-purpose stalker know I'm in here?" I asked.

"Don't call her that," he said, and, "No."

"Ah, because we're friends."

Kane pulled away to raise a brow down at me. "Sure." I hummed. Kane said, "Do you not want to be friends?"

I said, "The friend status has already been established, it's too late."

"Oh, so you're mad."

"What? No."

"I could call you something else."

"I'll kill you. In your sleep."

"Jagiya."

"I'm gonna throw up. I'm gonna throw up on your face."

"Gongjunim."

"Oh, you're kidding."

"Yeobo."

I grabbed the pillow to push into his face and he let out a muffled laugh. "You're not funny," I said. "Princess?"

He shrugged, lying back against the pillows and folding an arm behind his head. "Your hair," he said. "Like that peach character."

"She's blonde. And a pixie. You calling me a pixie?"

"You're small enough."

I turned my back to him. "I'll take out your trachea."

"My what?"

"What?"

"What?"

"What? Wait, don't—"

"There's an echo in here," he said.

I flopped on my back. "Forget it. Just take out my trachea."

Kane shrugged. "Keep your trachea," he said, and leaned over to catch me mid-reply in a kiss.

The sunlight made his mouth warm, the heat soft on my tongue and against my teeth. I reached up, sliding my hand over his cheek and jaw until I grasped his hair. The cotton of the sheets and the faintest scent of seaside salt made the whole thing feel like one, fever-fueled, good dream.

Kane said, "Breakfast."

I said, "Later."

His smile tasted like summer.

I was sent into the lion's den alone.

"I've gotta take a shower," Kane explained, grabbing clothes from his dresser. "So go change and head down. My aunt is probably home, so you can go meet her."

"I can wait for you."

Kane pulled off his shirt and frowned to himself. "Why?" I stared at the patches and KT tape around his shoulder, trailing down to his midsection.

"Why...not?" I replied.

Kane said, "It'll be a while."

"How long do you need to get ready for a breakfast?"

Kane reached for a door notch. He shrugged. "Nice to be presentable." He slid open the door.

I didn't think it was possible for Kane to own more clothing than he already did, but the walk-in closet packed to the brim with shelves, rows, drawers, and dressers full of clothes for every occasion or weather pattern imaginable, lit up for optimal access, fully said otherwise. Mirrors were situated on either side of the walls, the wood sparkling and half-hidden under a smooth, white carpet. On the left, an entire wall, from corner to corner, was dedicated to rows upon rows upon rows upon rows of shoes.

I said, "You have a problem."

Kane raised a brow. He leaned against the doorframe, still shirtless, and I had to seize my chest to keep the sin from bursting right out of my heart. Tall, lean, lycan sin. If I hadn't already gutted so many bodies, I was sure the thoughts alone would reward me with a one-way ticket to Hell's front door.

Kane gestured at me. "What's your outfit then?"

I broke my daze and looked down at my jeans and quacking goose shirt. "This is."

Kane stared. "Where are all the clothes we bought you?"

"I left them," I said. "By accident."

"By accident." Kane turned around. "I'm not taking you out like that. Someone's gonna think you're a Make A Wish kid."

I scoffed. "Like anyone would waste their dying wish on a cranky college kid with the soul of a sleep-deprived soccer mom."

"Yeah, because the candy-haired Chihuahua with the attitude of a frenzied toddler is such a step above." He walked over and snagged me by the sleeve. "Come on."

I gaped. "Did...you just out-insult me?"

"Come on."

"I don't even know who I am anymore."

Kane deposited me somewhere near the shoes. He opened a set of doors, revealing a line of summer linens and spring cottons, powder blues nestled against sunlight creams. Kane sifted through them with practiced fingers.

I said, "Your aunt is generous."

Kane's lip quirked. "She is," he said. "She didn't get me this, though."

"I thought she bought the house."

"She bought most of the house. After I turned eighteen, I had to buy my own part of it." He withdrew a thin blue shirt. "I had this built last spring." He handed me the shirt, then withdrew a linen button down the same shade as a milky latte. "It's not all mine, though. Sungki keeps some of his old clothes in those corners."

"You bought your own part?" I said. "Why?"

Kane seemed to consider how to phrase it. He closed the doors, heading for a new set of doors. Shorts and pants from thin to thick denims or cottons were laid out before us. "It's part of an agreement that I, my parents, and my aunt have."

"They can't buy you anything?"

"Maybe a meal or something," he said. "But nothing like this." He gestured around us. "I think it's better like this, though."

"Why?"

He shrugged. "I don't owe anyone anything," he said. Kane withdrew a pair of navy blue capris. He said, "It'll be loose but it's better than that." He grimaced at my shirt, to which my goose sneered back at. "Go change and I'll meet you downstairs."

His words lingered in my head with an uncomfortable weight, but I forewent commenting. "You can't be serious about leaving me alone down there."

"They don't bite," he said with a small laugh. Kane snagged a pair of linen pants and a button shirt that had COW CLUB embroidered on the breast pocket for himself. "Go."

I stood where I was. Kane sighed. He leaned down, and for a moment I thought he'd push me forward by force. But instead, he brushed my bangs from my face, and said, "You'll survive, I promise."

I clicked my tongue. "You say that now." I turned on my heel. "Thanks for the outfit."

"Burn that goose of yours."

"Make me."

I left him in the bedroom, my heart tender and splintered in my chest.

It took me a few minutes to find the kitchen.

The house managed to be lavish without being daunting, which was a very fragile balance that I'd never thought I'd live to witness in real time. Although the ceiling was high and the floors were spotless, the walls wide and the stairs sleek, the warm color of the lights alongside the honey-painted wood softened the interior altogether into something far more digestible. Greenery grew tailored yet wild from their white pots nestled in planters situated in the wall or in the center of emptier rooms. Wooden lattices decorated doors, dividers, and windows. With more windows than walls, sunlight was the god of the house, spilling over every available inch, its reign an endless, sea-salted wave across the floors.

I'd lost my way out of a tall door that had been left wide open for the summer air to filter in from, only to find myself in a small courtyard decorated by the blue sky and spruce trees and the house's giwa rooftops. I knelt down from my place on the stone path, brushing my fingers through the dewy, green grass. Cicadas and seagulls sang simultaneously in the humid heat.

"Ahem."

I paused. I turned around.

Nami stood in a fresh linen button-down and breezy, white pants. Her black hair was coiled into a scalp-stinging bun, not a single hair out of place. Her red eyes bore into me with something like thinly-veiled suspicion.

"I have been asked to retrieve you for brunch," she told me, then raised a thin, black brow. "Unless you are...busy."

I hurried to stand. "No. Sorry. I was just looking."

She hummed. She looked me up and down, seemed to decide something in her head, then said, "Come." She turned on her heel, heading left.

I tugged at my collar and followed. I rushed a bit to keep up with her.

"I thought vampires couldn't be in the sun," I asked as we passed through the windows' blocks of light.

"Ortus and rimor vampires can be," she said. "Incutio vampires cannot." At my pause, she gave a sigh. "You don't know those."

"Thought bloodsuckers were just bloodsuckers."

"Lycans," she muttered as we turned a corner to take the stairs. "So self-absorbed."

We finally descended the stairs into a wide open kitchen, a long, dark wood island situated in the center between the counters and the dining table. One of Nami's henchmen was already nearly finished with cooking, half a dozen pots, pans, and plates scattered about on the granite as he worked. The scent was hot and savory and so delicious, I figured I was imagining it. I waited to wake up, and was half-relieved and half-horrified when I didn't.

Nami spotted someone on the island and immediately bowed her head in their direction. "Good morning, Miss Wang."

I looked up.

A woman sat perched at the very end of the island, her face a mix of youthful cosmetics and older age, her slender hands holding chopsticks full of rice and a spoon full of soup. She caught my gaze in hers, short black curls framing a moon-shaped face, painted eyes staring at me with an indifferent curiosity.

I bowed my head. "Hello," I tried, my Korean faltering at its foreign edges. "I'm sorry for being late."

Her voice was the same texture as the cotton on my back. "You must be Kane's friend?"

I faltered at that, but nodded. "Yes," I said. "My name is Echo."

"Echo?" she said. She said it like "Eko".

I nodded. "Echo."

The woman placed her chopsticks and spoon down gingerly on a napkin. She slid off her chair, her silky blue suit falling around her in a cascading breeze. She was a slender woman, her shoulders broader than her hips, her arms long at her sides. She walked with intent towards me. "I'm Chaemin Wang," she said, holding out her hand. "You can call me Miss. Wang, if you'd like."

I didn't know a better thing to call her so I nodded. I took her hand. I hoped she couldn't smell the iron on it. "Nice to meet you, Miss. Wang. Your nephew speaks highly of you."

Her grin was amused. "I'd hope so. I barely hear from that boy as it is." She turned to Nami. "Speaking of, where is he? I thought I told you to bring him down here, too."

"Gao is searching for him now," Nami assured, then sighed, "Always searching."

"I told you we should have had him chipped," someone called from the stairs.

I glanced behind me. Sunhee was bounding down the steps, her jean skirt trailing behind her along with the trails of the silky bow fastening her pink blouse. She spotted me and waved with a glittering smile.

"Echo!" she said. "The guest is up before the host. No manners on that kid!" She wormed her way in between Nami and I. "Did you sleep well? Nami said your room was empty when she checked in the morning."

I stiffened at that. Nami raised a brow at me, demanding an answer.

"I slept great," I said. "I just got up early."

Sunhee grinned. "That's good," she said. "Are you hungry? Tang is making breakfast." She gestured at the henchman in the rose-patterned apron, who simply nodded in our direction. "It's stew with rice and banchan."

I willed Kane to hurry the fuck up and get over himself and his utterly excessive closet. "Sure," I said, squeezing on a smile. "Sounds good."

Sunhee sat by her mother and patted the space next to her. Nami cleared her throat. "Typically, Mister Wang—"

"Oh, break the rules, Nami, Kane is too busy picking out a shirt," Sunhee said, patting her shoulder. Nami frowned, but stepped back, sending me a look. Sunhee patted the seat. "Kane loves soondoobu, so better eat it some while you can."

I hesitated. I stood stiff. "Oh, I...don't eat meat."

Sunhee grinned. "I know. Kane told us. Don't worry, it's mushroom."

I didn't know what to make of that, but I was grateful nonetheless and slid into the high chair, albeit with some difficulty all things considered. Tang pulled out three pristine, white bowls, and a ladle. He pushed metal bowls of rice towards us, and Nami set pairs of silver chopsticks by our hands. She said, "It's not real silver."

I said, "Ah."

And just like that, I was trapped.

Miss Wang returned to her seat, plucking her chopsticks up from their place on the counter. "So, Echo," she said. "Where are you from?"

I swallowed. Considering the no-meat tidbit, I wasn't sure what Kane had or hadn't told his family about me already. I'd be smart to keep the details somewhat aligned, even if only vaguely. "Incheon, ma'am. But I grew up in America."

"Incheon," she said with a smile and a nod. "Have you ever gone back?"

I shook my head. "This is the first time I've been back to Korea."

"Your family is not here?"

So he hadn't said that much. "No."

"Where did you grow up in America?"

"LA county."

"Did you go to a lycan school?"

"No. Mixed."

Sunhee took her bowl of soup with an excited look in her brown eyes. She turned them on me. "How'd you get into racing?"

Survival. "I watched it a lot growing up. It was the only sport I was good at."

"Do you want to go pro?"

Desperately. "I don't know yet."

"You're a biochemistry major, right?" she said. At my nod, she said, "I was a biology major. Could have been a doctor! Family duty, I suppose. How do you like it?"

"It's bearable."

She laughed. It was a threadbare thing, soft in what was left, an echo of Kane's. "Do you want to pursue that instead?"

I chewed the inside of my cheek. I shrugged. "I'll...have to see."

Sunhee smiled. "You're young. You've got time."

"Aren't you only twenty eight?"

"Only!" she said with a huff. "I can feel my bones aching by the minute."

"Ahem," her mother said with a pointed look. "I'm right here."

"You age backwards, Umma."

"Don't be sarcastic with your mother."

Sunhee shook her head at me. "Mothers are never pleased," she told me with a flick of her wrist. "Do your parents ever want to come back to Korea?"

A knife sank through my spine. I stared, a little dumbfounded by the ache.

"No," I said. "Not that I know of." The answer made Sunhee a bit confused. I turned to my stew, stirring the spices and the mushrooms and the tofu around until it was nothing but a red hurricane. I missed Korea as much as I resented it. It was a white noise war, a bloodshed background. It had been a long time since I bothered to turn around. "There's not much to remember."

Sunhee must have seen something in that confession that even I hadn't, because she was quick to place her hand on my shoulder, a warm gesture like sun.

"Well," Sunhee tried, picking up her own spoon. "Once we're done with you, you'll never want to leave, I promise. We're gonna scale Busan and Daegu this week and you'll have seen so much of Korea, you'll feel like you've lived here your whole life."

Miss Wang cleared her throat. Her face went surprisingly soft. "And if you like it enough, you can come back with Kane next summer, too." She waved her hand through the air. "The city's overrated anyway. Most people think Seoul and Incheon is where you should go to see Korea. But take it from an old ajumma like me, Echo. Out here—" She gestured around us. "—is where Korea really is."

I said, "Thank you."

Sunhee turned her head. "Ya," she called. "You're late! What gives?"

Kane called, "Sorry. I was picking a shirt."

Sunhee sent me a told you so look. The laugh that escaped me was lighter than the ocean air.

Kane sat on my right in a cream white shirt that read BOY WHO CRIED WOLF! in strange, cursed lettering on the back and blue jean shorts. His black hair framed his matching eyes, the sun a soft shadow on his face. He said, "What are we talking about?"

Nami said, "If you weren't late, you'd know."

"Thank you, Nami," he said, sending her a look. Tang pushed his bowl of soup to him. Kane glanced at me. "What are we talking about?"

I took my spoon up and swallowed a mouthful of piping hot soondoobu. The tofu and spices slid down my throat and tongue with a far-off, sweet and spicy familiarity. I relished it.

"Nothing," I promised.

____________________

"Thyroid."

I placed the scalpel above the throat of the unidentified human. I watched red iron spill from the open wound, dripping in fat drops onto the steel table. It ran down my gloved fingers, settled in the divet of my exposed wrist.

"Go on. We don't have all day," JJ sighed.

I cut deeper, sliced through veins and coagulated blood. The squelch of the wrecked muscle and tissue was sickening as I reached in to cut around the palm-sized organ. I took in a breath, but it was all corpse blood and death, and I gagged.

"Lung. Left. Watch the...?"

I pulled out the thyroid. I swore I could feel the veins still pumping.

"Watch the...?"

"Interstitium," I spat.

JJ nodded. I sliced through the skin and tissue of the body's chest.

JJ said, "Better get over it, kid," he said. "This is the rest of your life after all."

"Stop."

"Why?" he asked, and scoffed when I had no answer for it. "What else are you good for?"

I sliced right through the interstitium, and felt the cut of it right through my back, blood as warm as summer sun burning into my skin.

This is your life.

I sank the scalpel right between the ribs, and watched the red turn my vision into fire.

____________________

I found the hallways while Kane and Sunhee brought the car around.

I was to wait by the door to the garage, but there were many doors and none of which looked like anything that would lead into a garage, and half of which were locked anyway, leaving me wandering about on my own without supervision through the gargantuan house. Even my house with my mother hadn't been so big, and in fact, was a rather small place meant only for a few bodies to be in it at a time. The biggest thing had been the moon of a window. The biggest thing in this house was, well, I hadn't found it yet.

I found a narrower hallway down a set of stairs. It had apparently been where most of the more personal photographs of the family and relatives had been relegated to. Wooden frames captured generations before, some candid, some posed, some young, some old. I found one of what seemed to be Sunhee, Sungki, and Sungho, the three situated under their mother's and father's arms in front of what seemed to be the house I stood in now.

I glanced at another photo of Kane from what seemed to be only a few years ago, mid-race, helmet half off and face lit up with a likely victory. I smiled.

"Snooping, I see."

I jolted. I spun around.

Miss Wang was descending the stairs, her smile knowing on me. She clasped her hands behind her back. I bowed my head.

"I'm sorry," I hurried. "I didn't mean to."

She waved me off. "I'm only teasing," she assured. "Nami insisted we put newer photos upstairs and leave all these old things down here for storage. I like coming down every now and then when I get melancholic, though. Nice to reminisce."

I just hummed. Miss Wang pointed at the one of Kane. "Took a lot of convincing to let me get that printed. For a champion, he's so self-conscious, you know? Ah. Young kids."

"Lycans," I added.

She laughed. "Yes. That, too."

I said, "Has Kane always come here in the summers?"

"Since he was born," she said with a nod. "I don't think the city was for him either. Kane is a soft soul at heart, you know. Sungki and Sungho would always tease him when he was young, and he used to come running straight inside to Sunhee for her to comfort him." She pointed at a different photo of Sunhee hugging a young boy to her body, wrapping him in a blanket and laughing at the camera. "Kane was like her long lost little brother."

I stared at the photo. "I can see that," I admitted.

Miss Wang said, "I'm glad you're here, Echo." At my confused face, she let out a sad sigh and said, "The last time Kane came here with someone, he couldn't come with her again. For a while, I thought he wouldn't bring anyone again." She grinned at me. "But, it's nice, that he found someone to enjoy it with."

I said, "Her?"

Miss Wang opened her mouth. But my phone rang, and broke the delicate conversation with a cleaver.

I answered it with a hurried, "Hello?"

Kane said, "Wherever you are, is not the garage, by the way."

I sighed. "I'm coming. Stay there."

"Where else would I be?"

"Good to know vacation doesn't dilute your attitude." I hung up.

Miss Wang stepped to the side. "Enjoy Busan, Echo."

I stared at the photo. I thought of the one on Kane's wall, of the closed door of his old room.

I said, "I will."

I slid into the backseat of the Stinger, Sunhee in the passenger, Kane at my left, and Gao in the driver's seat. He fixed his black glasses on me.

"Where to?" he asked.

I glanced at Sunhee. Sunhee glanced behind at us. "Where to?" she said.

Kane considered me, then her, then Gao. He sat up and said, "Gamcheon?"

Gao just nodded and put the car in drive. I turned my head to watch the sun burn up the skies outside. Korea sang in crystal waves.

Sunhee began to regale us with this Gamcheon and its accompanying stories, rambling on about when her brothers and her used to go until Kane was old enough to come with. "Gao knows," she said, and elbowed the man. "Gao. Tīng wǒ shuō. You took us all the time."

"I was told to take you," he corrected calmly.

Sunhee waved him off. She smiled back at me. "King used to whine all the time that we didn't take him. He used to get all pouty and hole himself up in his room. "

"I didn't," Kane snapped.

"He cried once."

"I didn't. Stop talking about it."

"He was a total crier, actually."

"Thank you, noona."

"He used to get this trembling lip and stare up at you with all this indignance and then boom, burst right into tears." Sunhee imitated it, then fell into a dramatic weeping position.

"Thank you, noona," he snapped.

My lip quirked. "So you were always the pouting type?"

"Let's talk about anything else," he said, closing his eyes.

Sunhee giggled to herself. She patted Gao's shoulder. "Right, Gao? I remember he used to cry when it got too hot or cold, or if they were out of something at the grocery store, or if someone was going somewhere without him. I remember a bird once flew into our window too hard and broke its wing, and Kane started crying when he found it."

"I think he gets it," Kane said.

Gao said, "He did cry a lot."

"Gao."

I said, "So you were always moody."

Sunhee cackled. She winked at me. "He's plenty moody, huh? Always got a pout on him."

Kane slid down in his seat. "None of you are funny. Noona, stop telling him those stories."

"Oh? Why? He seems to already know about your moodiness."

"I'm not moody," he snapped. "And Gao, who's side are you on?"

"This does not involve me, Mister Wang," he said.

I said, "Don't cry over spilled milk, Kane."

Sunhee burst into a bright laugh as Kane glared at me. She said, "I like your friend, King."

Kane shook his head, propping his head up by the window. His lips quirked. "Makes one of us," he muttered.

Her laughter filled the car, and I felt my chest lighten with it.

Gamcheon was a storm of color.

It looked like a normal, crowded seaside village, the buildings all piled up on each other, shoved into the hills and pushed toe-to-toe with their neighbors. The streets were narrow with little space between structures to catch your breath. The only difference was the paint job of the town, as if a loom had broken halfway through a chromatic quilt and left the threads and patches out of order and disarranged. Stairs were coated in banners of paintings and drawings. Walls were the same shades as butterfly wings. Statues and signs were storybook pages. Even the plain walls were decorated in little banners and ceramic tiles of patchwork patterns. The sea's wind encapsulated it in an unbreakable salt-and-sand bubble. A city colored in by a child's lawless hands.

We traveled down the hill, taking side streets and alleys. Sunhee pointed out all the different murals, Kane supplying their backgrounds, their eyes tinted mirrors of the colorful town. Kane stopped in front of a fish made of thin, printed flags posted on a wall.

He pointed at each one. "Little fish," he explained, then gestured at the entire image. "One big fish."

I said, "Like a family?"

Kane grinned. "Like a family."

We walked on.

Kane stopped at two statues, one of a boy in a green coat and pants, one of a little fox, the two watching Gamcheon side by side as the wind overtook us. He said, "It's the Little Prince. There are book characters all over the town."

I reached up, running my hand over the boy's blond head. "What's The Little Prince?"

Kane said, "It's a story about a pilot and a prince who try to return home." He stared at the statue, his eyes following the red scarf around the boy's neck.

"Do they get home?"

Kane softened. "The pilot does," he said. "You never know if the prince does."

I said, "Do you think so?"

Kane stared at the little prince for a moment longer, then turned on his heel, and walked away. "I like to hope," he said.

I followed after him, leaving the little prince in our wake.

We stood in front of a staircase, a hundred different book titles painted across the steps. Kane said, "Poppy and I came here a few years ago."

I glanced at him. The sunlight broke over his figure, leaving a shadow cut out of the light before us. I could see the veins of his heart in the black of his eyes. The ocean salted the colorful steps below us.

"Do you wish she was here now?" I asked.

Kane considered that. He said, "I'm glad she was here at some point."

"Did she like it?"

Kane said, "She loved it."

I inhaled the sea. "It's a lot like her." At his quizzical look, I said, "Bright, that is."

Kane's smile, for the first time since he'd talked about Poppy, was happier than it was sad. "Yes," he agreed. "A lot like her."

He headed up the steps. When I stared after him, he turned around to hold out his hand. The silver rings glittered in the light.

"Come on," he said. "We're only just starting."

I slid my palm into his, and felt the heat of August under our skin.

Kane stood between people, but they weren't people, but were mirrors. I said, "Why?"

Kane shrugged. He propped his arm on one's shoulder. "Dunno. I don't question it."

"Kane King not questioning something," I said. "How's that?"

He smiled. "Relieving." He peered at himself and me in the mirror body of the figure. He watched Gamcheon on the other side with a small grin sewn into his lips.

I hesitated for a moment, watching the wind toss his hair from left to right, the silver swiping over his brow. Then, I reached into my pocket and took out my phone. I raised it up at him, and pressed the button.

He heard the click and looked up. "What're you doing?" he asked.

I stared at the photo, Kane lit up by the sun and the watery, silver reflection of the mirror, the town like a flower field behind him, the air hazy with summer.

I said, "Just messing around."

Kane slung his arm over my shoulders and wound us around to head down the stairs. "Mess around down here," he said. "You ever had dalgona?"

I frowned. "Dal-what?"

Sunhee pushed us under the awning of a red booth, the iron griddles laid out for candy-making, an older man and woman situated inside as they mixed great bags of sugar with greater bags of sodium bicarbonate. The woman beckoned at us with a plastic-covered hand.

"Dalgona, dalgona," she shouted. "You make it yourself, yeah?"

I frowned at Sunhee. "What is it?"

Sunhee handed the man a few bills and he grabbed a small bowl of crackling sugar and bubbling baking soda. "It's like a candy," she explained. "It bubbles up, makes a pretty color. It's delicious."

Kane said, "It's all right."

"Hey. Let him decide."

Sunhee pointed at a trio of star molds and the man nodded, pouring the mixture into each. Kane said, "You think you can cut it out?"

"Why would I cut it out?"

"You get your money back."

I said, "Done."

The thin caramel-colored candies were laid out, piping hot, before us. We each took a needle and crouched down.

"Ya, Echo is cheating!" Sunhee shrieked when she looked over at mine. She pushed the needle in too far and the candy cracked down the center. "Ah, jinjja."

Kane broke his own not a moment later. He popped the uneven half into his mouth. "I'll win one day," he murmured, and glanced over at me. He raised a brow. "How do you do that so well?"

I popped the star out of its candy socket and raised it to my eye level. The heat made the caramel melt in my fingers, sticky and sweet. I thought of the needle like a scalpel, the childish candy like a corpse.

I said, "Beginner's luck."

"I'll say," Sunhee said as the man handed back a bill with a bitter look sent my way. She waved it in front of me with a laugh. "Winner! You pick where we go next then. What do you want to try?"

I glanced about the booths lining the colored streets, their roofs adorned with chalk signs and wooden boards, the fresh savor and sweetness wafting into the hot air. In a way, I had never seen Korea at all, in the city or the outskirts. I had only ever been in the houses of my parents, nothing but the windows there for me to watch everyone else see it for themselves.

Fear will kill you faster—

I said, "Everything?"

—than hope ever will.

Sunhee linked her arm through mine. "Good choice," she said.

Kane retreated with Gao to a booth for spicy fried chicken, while Sunhee and I stood waiting for hotteok. The blue rooftops shimmered like a lapis mirage far ahead.

Sunhee said, "When we first came here, we stayed almost until closing because Kane wanted to try all of it." Her face went soft with fondness. "He ran up and down the booths because he was so excited to taste everything. I felt like my stomach would burst right open, we ate so much! But he was so determined that I felt like I had to keep up, you know?" Sunhee's smile was cloud-like, cotton-esque. "He was such a happy kid."

I smiled at the image. It was difficult to imagine Kane as a young, excitable child, running around without a care. But, to know at one point it was a reality, was almost comforting.

"He always talks fondly of Korea," I said.

Sunhee smiled at that. "Yeah?" I nodded. "That's good. I'm glad. I'm glad he has you and Corvus. You need family, you know? Everyone needs someone to go back to."

I thought about that. I said, "It's good he has you."

Sunhee patted my shoulder. "Ah, who am I? Just another noona." We got to the front of the booth. "I just hope he's happy wherever he goes."

We ordered our hotteok and reconvened with Kane and Gao at the center of the street. I lifted the hotteok to him, and he tore off a bite for himself.

Kane said, "Sweet."

I said, "Like me?"

Kane pushed my bangs over my face with a laugh. "In your dreams," he said, and tore off a piece of the hotteok for me.

I tossed it into my mouth. Brown sugar and toasted nuts were warm and gooey in my mouth. I gaped at it in my hand. "God?" I said.

Sunhee burst into a laugh. Kane swiped the syrup from the corner of my mouth and said, "That's not even the best thing here." He pointed up ahead. "What next?"

Sunhee eyed both of us for a split second, then smiled. "Let's eat!"

Kane pointed a stand of a dozen types of cotton candy. "Hey," he said with a mischievous grin. "You match."

"You think you're funny," I said. "You think you're funny but you're not."

"It's identical, really."

"It is not."

Sunhee pointed, lighting up. "Echo! You match!"

Kane snickered behind me. The man operating the booth waved at me, then pointed at the rainbow cotton candy, then at my hair. I sighed.

"Is this discrimination?" I asked no one in particular.

Kane pushed me forward. "Come on. Let's try it."

He handed the man a few bills, and the man gestured at the available animals. "Which one?"

Kane said, "Don't do it."

I pointed at the goose. "This one. Definitely this one."

We watched the man grab the stick for the candy floss. I glanced at Kane. "Thank you."

Kane said, "Don't thank me for a goose."

"Thank you, in general."

Kane shook his head. He reached over and ruffled my hair with a gentle hand. "Don't thank me," he said.

The man handed me the cotton candy. The smell of sugar filled my lungs.

Sunhee clapped her hands behind me.

"Okay, sajin, sajin!" she said, pushing us towards the railing of a cafe's balcony we had stopped at for caffeine fuel. "Gao! Put that americano down, come take this with us!"

"I will just take the photo," he assured, putting his iced americano down on a blue wood table.

"You have to be in it."

"I can take it," I said.

Sunhee gaped. "We all have to be in it, obviously. Come here." She raised her phone up. "Say cheese!"

We smiled. We said, "Cheese!"

My heart was a tender thing behind my skin.

Kane and Gao went ahead down the stairs. Sunhee sidled up beside me, and showed me the photo of us all. Even Gao had mustered up a grin.

"Echo in Busan," she said with a giggle. "An adventure?"

I smiled. I said, "An adventure."

The world was a long, endless, blue thing.

I was lying on the floor when Kane said, "Let's go to the beach."

I sat up. He frowned. I said, "It's not like that."

"Why are you on the floor?"

"Onset of reality."

"What?"

"What?"

Kane came over and sat down beside me. The sunlight broke through the window, cascaded over his rug, turned the whole place a toasted golden, hazy dream. He ran his fingers through my hair, pushed it back from my forehead.

"It's gonna be dinner in an hour or two," he said. "Let's go to the beach beforehand."

"What's at the beach?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Not much. That's what's nice about it."

I considered that. I pushed myself up. Kane smelled ever so faintly of silver. I said, "That sounds nice."

"The beach?"

"The not much."

"Ah."

"Today was fun."

"Was it?"

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me."

"You always say that." I sighed, flopping back down on the carpet. "Why do you always say that?"

Kane shrugged. He placed his hand beside my waist, trapping me in as he looked down at me. "I don't know. Makes it sound like a favor."

"Isn't it?"

He chewed his lip. He said, "You don't owe me anything, Echo. I don't ever do anything for you to owe me."

I blinked up at him. "Neither do you," I felt the need to add. "You've never owed me anything either. So, why do all of this?"

Kane frowned. "Because I want to."

"Why?"

Kane fished for an answer. "Couldn't tell you," he said. "It'd make me sound greedy."

"You're a champion square racer," I scoffed.

He snorted. "Then I'll assume you already know."

"I don't. I'm no champion. Tell me."

"You made it to Red," he said. "That's pretty champion of you." I shook my head. Kane sighed. "Come on. Let's go, before it gets dark."

"It's nice here, though," I murmured. "Tell me."

"If you get up." He got to his feet and held out his hand for me.

I took it and let him pull me up. Standing was dizzying, pushing and pulling my head in every direction. I leaned against his shoulder. "I got up," I said.

Kane turned around and headed for the door. "Never said when," he called with a slight grin. "I'll meet you at the front."

I gaped after him, the sunlight seeing him out.

Kane had returned to the grass above the coves, looking over the cliffside where it trailed into a shallow, sandy hill, until it hit the shore of the sloshing ocean. Sunset was beginning to crawl through the sky, the sun a wounded god in the clouds, trails of amber ichor in its wake, dripping through the flushed horizon. Droplets fell into the the ocean and set it ablaze. The waves burned and burned and burned.

I found him staring at the watery flames, his skin painted gold, the silver in his hair and eyes a faint marigold. I stood beside him. "It's pretty," I said.

Kane said, "It is."

I said, "I've never been to the beach."

He frowned. "No?"

"I've been to the Han River," I said. "I used to live by it. But never the ocean. Not even in LA."

"You live in California and you've never seen the ocean," Kane said. "Can you swim?"

I shrugged. "I can float. Maybe."

Kane brushed past me, heading for the sandy hill. "Let's go down."

We descended from the dewey grass to the still-warm sand. Kane slid from the plants to the shore and kicked off his sandals, letting them land somewhere off in the brush. He pulled off his button-down to toss on top of them, and headed for the waters in nothing but his summer shirt and shorts.

"What are you doing?" I called, the wind picking up the closer we got.

"It's warm," he promised as his feet grazed the white and orange waves. "Come on. While the tide is out."

I tore off my sneakers and rolled up my sleeves. The taste of salt was pungent on my tongue, the air brisk on my skin and biting at my heels. The water soaked my feet and I shivered. "Barely warm," I corrected.

Kane shrugged. "Pretty warm."

"You're just saying that."

"Yeah?" Kane said.

I raised a brow. "Yeah."

He smiled. "Wanna bet?"

"What?"

"I said, wanna bet?" he called, and ran.

Kane bolted for the waters without a sliver of hesitation. The waves swallowed him up to his hips, his waist, his chest. I gaped at him, my body halfway between running after him and staying safely where I was.

"What the hell are you doing?" I yelled.

Kane spun around to look back at me. There was a smile on his face, a wide, pearlescent thing that crinkled his eyes and overtook his expression. It was startlingly care-free, uncharacteristically young. And I knew what Sunhee had meant, about Kane as a child.

I wondered, briefly, where it had gone.

He said, "Just come in!"

I shook my head. "You couldn't pay me." Kane scoffed. He headed for me. I held up my hands. "Oh, no, no, Kane, don't you fucking dare—"

Kane wrapped his arms around my waist and yanked me into him. He fell back, right into the waves. Salt and sun and water filled my vision in a thunderous crash.

I yelled. My limbs flailed frantically in the waves as I attempted to get to my feet. Someone was laughing in my ear.

"Drowning!" I gasped, hacking out the seawater. "Drowning as we speak!"

"You can stand, Echo." A hand hauled me to my feet and pushed my now-wet hair from my eyes. Kane laughed down at me. "So dramatic."

I slapped his arm. "You almost killed me!"

"I did not."

"I'm a weak-boned man, Kane. What makes you think I can survive the ocean? What makes you think that?"

"You look alive and well to me," he said. Then, bent down, and splashed me with a handful of seawater. I yelped, stumbling back. "See?"

I stared. "So you have chosen death."

"Drama," he said, and splashed me again.

Well. If it was going to be like that.

I bent down and sent a wave of water at him. He ducked out of the way, heading into the waves. I raced after him, splashing him with as much vigor as I could muster up. His laughter was a low ripple breaking through the air. I chased after it, my lungs aching with laughter, my face aching with a grin.

"You think you're clever," I snapped.

"I think you think I'm clever," he said.

"Where'd you learn all this attitude?"

Kane splashed me and I sputtered. "Where do you think?"

"Touché," I coughed. "But I do it better." I sprang on him, grabbing him by the middle.

We both went tumbling onto the sand below the waves, the water crashing into us and pushing our bodies back to shore. I couldn't tell if my ribs ached from the laughing or the water's force, if the warmth was from the fading sun or Kane's body.

I sat against Kane's knees, content to wait as he lied back against the wet sand, hair splayed over his head like a black octopus. I leaned over until I could plant my hands on either side of his head. He opened his eyes to look up at me. He smiled. 

"Now," he said with a small laugh to himself, "you can definitely say you've seen the ocean."

I had never felt so light in my life.

"Shut up, man," I said, and leaned down.

He tasted like amber and stars, like the minute before dawn and the hour after dusk, like the translucent line between a dream and a hope. That line that was a second between a supernova and a blackhole. That line between to love and to fear.

I kissed him until we both went tumbling over it.

_________________________

The rest of the week was a color-filled blur with a good menu and a hell of a country to see. I couldn't recount all of it even if I tried. But, let's try:

I stretched my arms up above my head, yawning into the empty air. The sunlight was warm, don't get me wrong, but it was not made for making a man get up in the morning. I craned my neck back to see if Kane had risen yet.

Nami stood in a blue suit and black glasses. She said, "Good morning."

I nearly catapulted myself right off the bed at the sight of her, flailing for just a moment as I scrambled to grab the covers and yank them over myself. She stared at me, unperturbed.

I said, "How...did you get in here?"

She pushed her glasses down and narrowed her eyes. "I could ask that of you as well, Mister Echo. Seeing as this is not your assigned room."

"What is this, a bootcamp?" I said. "We were just...talking. I fell asleep."

She looked me up and down. "Talking. Without your clothes?"

"I'm wearing clothes," I lied.

Nami pushed her glasses back up. "I am watching you, Mister Echo."

"I'm flattered, but I'd rather you not."

"Not that kind of watching."

"So you say."

"We are done with this conversation. There is breakfast downstairs. If you are wearing clothes as you say, we can go now."

"Haven't brushed my teeth." She held out a toothbrush and toothpaste. I said, "My hair." She took out a brush. I said, "No...shirt." She reached behind her and withdrew a shirt. I said, "Oh, come on."

"Nami." Kane emerged from the bathroom at the other end of the bedroom, a towel atop his head and his face completely unamused. "Really?"

Nami said, "This is protocol."

"This is you and noona being nosy. We'll meet you downstairs for breakfast," he said. He frowned. "Is that my shirt?"

Nami frowned. "I took it from his bag."

I gaped. "You went through my bag?"

Nami glared. "You took Mister Wang's shirt?"

"'Took' is a strong word."

"Strong and correct." Kane sent me a look. He waved Nami off. "We'll meet you, promise. Go, go."

Nami clicked her tongue and spun on her heel with a sharp huff. "No respect in this generation," she muttered, and let the door slam behind her.

Kane sat beside my legs. He raised a brow at the abandoned toothbrush, toothpaste, and brush, but didn't ask. I sat up and reached to rub the towel into his hair.

"Tell your resident bloodsucker she's freaking me the fuck out," I told him.

Kane laughed and took my wrists in his hands. He peeked out at me from under the towel. "She's just making sure you're not an assassin."

"A what?"

Kane pushed my cheek away. "Get dressed."

"What's today?"

"We're going into the city," he called. "Dress nice."

"In what?"

Kane slid open the door to his closet and said, "Have at it."

I flopped back against the pillows. "Rich people," I muttered.

"I heard that!"

Korea's cities were jungles, were mazes, were wonders, were paintings.

Sunhee pushed us through the market, pointing at each and every stand or booth to explain what each one sold. "Fresh fish! Echo, you know the fish here is the best you'll find in the main cities? Unless you go to the outer islands, this is it."

The fish stared at me with knowing eyes. I said, "I'll pass."

"A lycan that doesn't eat meat!" she cried and shook her head. She slung her arm over my shoulders. "One day, we'll take you out to barbecue, and you'll wonder what you missed out on."

I shook my head. "One day."

Kane found us at a novelty sock stand with two bungeoppangs in his hand. He handed one to Sunhee and the other to me. "I used to eat a whole pack of three as my lunch," he told me. "Try it."

I took a bite. Hot red bean and crispy bread melted on my tongue. I said, "I've found Heaven."

Kane took a bite of the head and said, "Let's try the odeng."

"Do you save your appetite for the entire year eating nothing but salads just for Korea?" I quipped.

Kane paused, just for a moment. Then, gave me a thin grin, pushing my hair over my eyes. "Just eat your food," he said with a sigh. "Come on, it's probably more fresh right now."

We headed through the maze of stalls and strangers, stained-glass awnings and colorful signs. Sunhee said quietly to Kane, "Here. Eat mine. You should eat."

"Noona," he said. "It's all right." Kane brushed past her to walk beside me instead. The colors of the city bled.

I halted. I pointed up at a small woman's booth, adorned from top to bottom with racks of hats, pouches, and character backpacks. I said, "Look."

Kane looked. "Oh, God," he groaned.

Sunhee laughed. "Echo," she said. "You like HELLO KITTY?"

Kitty White in a glorious, red and white backpack form hung from one of the metal hooks, her fuzzy arms awaiting to be held. I said, "I need that backpack."

"No," Kane said. "No, you don't. No one needs that backpack."

"I needed that backpack yesterday."

"No, you didn't."

"I'll need it until I die."

The woman grinned and gestured at the backpack. "Very cute, very sturdy! Only fifteen dollars!"

"That's a meal," Kane said.

"I'll starve." I fished through my pockets.

"Please don't waste your money on that," Kane said.

Sunhee clapped her hands. "Good deal, though. Here." She pushed her sunhat back and popped open her bag to withdraw her wallet. "King's right. Don't waste your money. Too much good food to eat."

I paused. "Wait, you can't—"

The woman snagged the bills with a hungry eye. She unhooked the backpack and placed it into Sunhee's waiting hands. Sunhee smiled down at the cat, then handed it to me.

I shook my head. "No, I can't take it. Give it back."

"What? But you wanted it."

"I...no, it's okay, you shouldn't have—"

"Ya." Sunhee took my hands and placed the bag in them. "It's okay," she promised, smiling. "Take it. It's cute."

Kitty White smiled up at me. I said, "Thank you."

Sunhee patted my shoulder. "Don't thank me." She wrapped an arm around me and guided me down the booths. "Just enjoy, yeah?"

I glanced at Kane, then her. "Yeah," I said.

My heart welled.

Miss Wang found me in the backyard at some point, an odd hour between lunch and dinner, when the sun was at its hottest, the day at its slowest, the city-going pitting Kane and Sunhee into deep naps and leaving me to roam about the house alone. Mostly alone.

I sat in an open corner where the grass dissipated into concrete pathways, before ultimately ending in a small pond filled with nothing but sky and summer bugs. Water bubbled from a stone spout at its left, phthalo green with the algae and weeds. I crouched over it, watching my reflection break across the waters, listening to the buzz of cicadas around me.

"I love coming here." I turned around. Miss Wang, draped in linen and fitted with blue slippers, her hair tied back in a wiry bun to let the light whiten her face, walked towards me. "It's always so peaceful, isn't it?"

I blinked, a little speechless. Not because of her or her sudden appearance,, but because the words she spoke to me were in perfect English.

"It...is," I said in English. "Very much so."

Miss Wang seemed to notice my surprise, because her smile was sheepish. She pulled a sun chair closer towards me and settled in. "I studied in America for my college years," she explained to me. "In LA, actually."

I perked up. "Did you really?"

She nodded. "Bit of an intense area, what with the city life and all," she said with a laugh. "But I enjoyed it. Very different from here, huh?"

I sat on the grass, facing her. "Do you ever want to go back?"

Mrs. Wang hummed. "No," she admitted. "It wasn't a place I was sad to leave, to be honest. Maybe a place I was sad to see go?" She grinned down at me. "Do you like it there?"

I considered that. "I don't really know anywhere else."

She nodded like she understood what I meant. "Well," she said. "Never too late to."

"To what?"

"Know somewhere else," she said. She took a breath of summer into her lungs, exhaling back into Korean. "Even though Kane isn't one of my children, he comes here so often I feel like he is. When he decided to go to America, a part of me felt very heartbroken that he chose to leave. I even offered for him to stay here, go to school nearby. But he wanted to go."

I said, "Why?" I thought of his terminated contracts. I thought of the black crawling up his skin.

Miss Wang cocked her head from side to side. "I think Kane had something to prove to all of us," she said. "I think he wanted to show his parents that he could make something of himself, by himself. Some chaebol children love that comfort of their parents and their successes. Some find it to be their greatest enemy."

Ramos's words echoed briefly in my head from months before. "Is that why he changed his name?" I blurted.

Miss Wang startled at that. She whipped her head to me, the nostalgia draining from her face in place of shock. She opened her mouth, decided against it, then tried again. "You know he changed his name?"

You've been a lot of people.

I knew a sacrifice when I heard it. 

It was too late to lie and I cursed my carelessness. I nodded. "He told me a while ago," I admitted. "But, why change his last name, too?"

Miss Wang adjusted herself, her face pensive at that. She glanced at me like she was unsure if she should even say. After a few beats of quiet, she said, "There is always a sacrifice, leaving things behind. Leaving LA, I had to fight my way in the industry here. I think, for Kane, there was a sacrifice in leaving Janchi. As much as he wanted his parents' approval, he didn't want to be known for them." Her face had changed, a solemn sadness crossing over it like a summer storm. "It became very apparent very quickly that Kane wanted to do things by himself, or not at all. But, a mindset like that...I always wonder if he's lonelier than he says." She sighed. Her dark gaze was inquiring. "How is Kane these days?"

I considered that for a long moment. It flashed across my vision like a darting rabbit: the silver in Kane's blood, the black in his veins, the bruises around his throat, the patches on his shoulder, the rings on his fingers. Everything panged like the aftermath of a sucker-punch. Boom. Split. The vivid desperation in Kane's voice, the ticking timer above his head, above mine. It felt cruel just for me to sit there with her at all. To tell her any comfort, to ask her any question, when I was the last person to be of any help to her or her nephew, to know I could not change the way the year would end for anyone, was altogether too much to bear.

"He's all right," I lied. I got to my feet. I headed for the house. "It was nice talking to you, Miss Wang." 

I walked away, leaving her in the wilting sun.

__________________

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[INCOMING CALL - kane]
[Swipe to answer]

"Hey."

"Hey."

"I'm literally down the hall."

"Do you want to get dinner?"

"I thought you said your bloodsuckers are off for the night."

"Not here. At Emart."

"Emart?"

"Let's go. Before Sunhee hears."

"What's Emart? Kane."

[Call Ended - kane - 3 minutes and 23 seconds]

What was Korea, if not convenient?

Emart24 was the all-purpose, twenty-four hour convenience store boasting anything from instant ramyun to disposable phone chargers to powered coffees to every flavor of potato chip but original. It was a block of a store, a cubic thing with stands and rows crammed up against each other, overflowing with any and all kinds of goods you could possibly think of given the hour of the day. Downstairs supplied people with snacks, drinks, last-minute necessities, and a cashier constantly on the verge of becoming either a vegetable or a serial killer. Upstairs held a bevy of foods that could be eaten either straight out of the refrigerator racks or with the help of some hot water and very low standards. The walls were a bright gold, the floors black like shadows, and the tables boasting patrons from young to old, near-dead to already-dead, drunk or sober, and all under the watchful eye of the blinking neon "emart24" logo shuddering atop the concrete roof for the entire night to see.

I'd been to my fair share of convenience stores, and The Audrey had taken much of its inspirations from Korean convenience stores itself, but it was very different to have experienced sections of something versus the entirety all at once. Standing in the midst of it, I was a little lost, to say the least.

I said, "I didn't know rich people ate at convenience stores."

Kane rolled his eyes. "No one is above easy food," he said. "Sungho and I used to walk down here all the time when he was studying for his entrance exams. I think he only took me so he wouldn't have to cook me an actual dinner when his aunt and Nami were out on weekends."

"So you just don't wanna cook."

"Nope," he admitted. "But let's say I'm also giving you a Korea-only experience."

I shrugged. "I'll take it."

Kane stopped by the first level's counter to buy a few packs of cigarettes and candy before we headed upstairs. He rifled through the boxes before tossing a pack to me, ESSE scrawled in serif on the indigo front.

I said, "Stop buying me unnecessary shit."

Kane said, "What do you wanna eat?"

He found the stairs by cases of unopened snack bags and large boxes of powder espresso cups. Kane frowned at the maze for a few moments, then reached out until his hand could touch the low beams of the ceiling. One hand's ring clinked against them, the other feeling for a wall. When his ring hit the metal rack of plastic sunglasses, he took a left turn and ducked under the beam. He pressed his palm against the inside wall of the stairs, and took a step.

We went up the winding staircase until we found the upper level. The dangling lights flickered above racks of instant ramyun and stews, microwaveable rices and tteokbokki. A hot water machine, a self-checkout with utensils, and holes for trash cans were situated on a counter in the corner, right by a panel of windows. Outside, the town of Busan bustled left and right in the heat of the summer night, neon in their blood, salt in their hair, the peninsula's heart beating below them.

Kane headed around the racks to find the rows on rows of soups. I stood beside him, gaping.

"I didn't even know this many instant things existed," I said.

"This is a smaller mart," Kane said. "You should see the ones in Seoul."

I shook my head. "I'd never leave."

He laughed at that. He snagged an instant ramyun by a name I'd never seen before in America and headed for the counter. I scoffed. "I'll buy it all. Get me a basket."

"We can come back," he assured, amused. "We're here for another two weeks."

I shrugged at that. "I know what I'll be bringing back. I gotta tell the witches about this."

I snagged the most interesting thing I could find—instant yukgaejang?—before following after him. As he scanned the items, he said, "We should go to the Gwangan Bridge."

"What's that?" I asked, then reached over. "Don't do it, hey—"

Kane inserted his card into the machine and waved me off. "It's not even six dollars for both of these," he assured. "It's the second longest bridge in Korea, after the Incheon Bridge. It's pretty."

I frowned at his card, but said, "It sounds fun. Frankly, I'll go anywhere you guys take me."

"Don't say that," he said, tearing open his ramyun to place under the hot water spout. "Sunhee will drag you to every corner of Korea with that."

"Any corner not worth seeing?"

"Seoul is overrated," he said with a shrug. "But Sunhee will probably take us through there to see Sungho and shop." He took his ramyun to a little wood table situated by the windows.

It took me a few moments to figure out the layers of my yukgaejang before filling it with hot water and sitting by his side. Kane pushed a pair of chopsticks at me. I glanced at his hand.

He tore off the rest of the ramyun's cover, and I said, "Where did you get all your rings?"

Kane frowned to himself. "My rings?"

"I almost never see you without them," I said.

Kane hummed. He stirred the noodles as he thought, the broth steaming with heat and spice. Kane watched pairs of strangers wander the sidewalks from our perch by the window, and began to slide the rings off his fingers one by one by one.

"Only these are decorative." He pushed three at me; one held the face of a lion mid-roar, another imprinted with a large-beaked crow, the last one holding nothing but a single, hand-drawn star on its square face. "Diego bought me the crow for my twentieth birthday, and I bought the lion when we went to New York in my first year."

"What about the star?" I asked.

He paused. "Poppy," he said. "When we won Red."

I pursed my lips.

Kane pushed them aside to replace them with the rest of his rings, all adorned with flat signet-shapes or bulky, geometric faces. "These are thick, but they're hollow, so I can get a sense of what I'm hitting. This one spins if I need to measure how far something goes." He wound the ring around, each side of its octagonal shape sliding against the tabletop. "And this one vibrates near anything hot." He held up a black and silver ring, the edges blinking with microscopic sensors.

"That's...actually very practical," I said, holding them up to the light. "Does it make it easier?"

"Once you get used to it," he admitted, slipping them back on. "They help in crowded or unfamiliar areas."

I lifted the star ring up to my face, pressing my nail into the carving of the star. "Do you ever miss driving?" I asked. "Going out at night? Things like that?"

He considered that, taking up a chopsticks-full of ramyun to eat. "Sometimes," he admitted. "I used to like going out on my own a lot more, but since my eyes got so bad, I don't really risk it. I only really go out with other people or in the day. Not that it matters." His lip quirked. "I was a shit driver anyway."

I scoffed. "Kane King, amateur racing prodigy, bad at driving," I said. "How?"

"Better the racer, worse the driver," he said. "You're too impatient."

I rubbed my thumb over the ring's band. "Can I ask you something harsh?" Kane raised a brow at that, but nodded, waiting. I placed the ring between us, the metal heavy on my fingertips and clinking as it hit the tabletop. "Why is Kane King so important?"

Kane stared. "What?"

"You could have been Kitae here, and still raced," I said. "But you left. Changed your name. Left your parents. It's twice as hard in America than Korea. So, why?"

Kane blinked. He set his chopsticks down, leaning on his forearms. He looked familiar with the topic but unsettled by its tone. He stared down at the ring, watching his inky eyes in the reflection.

"I felt I had something to prove. Coming to America, I got greedy to feel I'd proven it," he said. "I got scared that if I always had my parents, I'd never really learn to be the best. I'd always be cushioned. I wouldn't have to learn to do it on my own." Kane made a gesture of a square. "Racing is all-or-nothing. You either win or you don't, you know? I wanted to win. But I'd never own that win if it wasn't on my own account." He shrugged. "I didn't own me. I didn't feel like I could really be a winner if I didn't own the person winning."

To own. It felt light years from me.

Kane said, "Can I ask you something?"

I looked up from the ring between us. "Something harsh?"

Kane shrugged. "Something honest."

I said, "All right."

Kane took the ring in his fingertips. "Those scars on your back," he said. "What are they from?"

It was blunt enough it could have been downright rude between different people. But I knew he meant it in earnest. I shrugged, made a faint gesture. "The work I did for my family had to be precise. I risked a lot of money going down the train if I did it wrong. So they used to test me, and if I made a mistake, I'd get cut. I think they figured it was negative reinforcement," I said. "They never fully healed because of the retracing. Omega genes don't help either. Ramos said it'll be years before they fully fade, so, for now, I've just got an aversion to tank-tops and pool parties, you know?"

Kane paused. "You're a pawn." I nodded. He frowned. "You shouldn't be."

"If I did everything I should do," I said wryly, "I'd be in a very different place right now." I sighed. "Detaching yourself from your parents, is that why your aunt isn't allowed to buy you anything?"

Kane nodded. "When I said I wanted to be on my own, it meant everything was on my own. No one from my family is allowed to do anything for me other than buy a meal or a gift every now and then. It keeps things from getting sticky," he said.

"You were a kid."

Kane peered at me. "You were a kid," he repeated, then softened. "Your mother dying. You don't have any siblings. Weren't you lonely, growing up alone?"

"Everyone gets lonely growing up," I replied. "You were alone."

"Yeah, but I chose it," he said. "I would think it's harder to be alone by chance, rather than by choice."

It struck me sharply. I didn't reply to it. I glanced at his ring-adorned fingers, knuckles well-acquainted with bruising, palms good friends with blood. There were no rivers, no oceans, deep enough to hold all the memories of that life I'd never truly know. I figured, perhaps, that was the point. Still, I couldn't shake one key question.

"Can I ask you one more thing?" I murmured.

Kane said, "All right."

I pursed my lips. I said, "Why do you blame yourself for Poppy's death?"

Whatever the question Kane was expecting to come out of my mouth, it must certainly have not been that, because he went stiller than concrete where he sat in front of me, face going blank and tumultuous all at once. He stared at me, then through me, like he could see the answer somewhere on the wall, scrawled in a scripture of curses and damnation.

He kept his palms to the table. His rings were faint clicks against the wood. The night waned left and right, like a flickering candle, like the appearance and disappearance of a port wine flowering birthmark, seen in light, hidden in shadows. When he remained silent, I thought he wouldn't answer at all, and I'd pushed too far over the delicate lines. 

I shook my head. "Never mind," I tried. "I shouldn't have asked, that wasn't—"

Kane placed the ring down, his eyes too dark to hold up. The end of the universe. The beginning. All of it, crushed and compressed, into those too-full eyes.

"I brought them," he replied quietly. "The people that killed her."

I said, "What?"

Kane kept the ring between his fingers. He looked years younger and wounded, like a lost child. The air was thick, pungent with a secret so concentrated, it could have poisoned you.

"I was a reckless kid at the time," he said. "I got myself into all kinds of stupid trouble for no other reason than my own selfish pride. And there was a kid I raced and beat—not for any other point than to say I won. But he got angry, and when I didn't give him back the money I'd won, he called people to take it back from me. I never told Coach, because I was already on suspension, and I was too scared to get another warning. I only told Poppy.

"I had a car at the time," he went on. "And athletes used to park in a back-end lot behind the Corvidae. Not a lot of lights. No cameras. Shit service. It was after practice, Friday or a weekend or something so a lot of people weren't on campus. I forgot something in the car. I don't remember what. I just wanted to get it before we went to dinner. I don't remember why, it was probably something stupid, a jacket, maybe. I don't know. Poppy told me she'd get it since she had to go to put her stuff away anyway. Kenzo told me she shouldn't go alone. Too dark, you know? Poppy was tough, but she was still a girl. But I said it'd be fine, and she'd done it so many times, I didn't think anything of it. I just said okay and let her go. Ten or fifteen minutes had gone and I figured maybe it was locked, maybe she didn't have service. So I finally went to go see what had happened." He closed his eyes. "There was the guy from the race, him and a whole group. I never really got a look at their faces. One of them was with her, like they were fighting, and when one of them spotted me, shit just went downhill.

"They had knives," he went on. "I didn't realize they were silver because everything went so fast. The only reason they didn't kill me was because they heard sirens and thought someone had called the cops. But it didn't even fucking matter, because they'd already gotten to her and she's—she wasn't an Alpha, not even a Beta, she couldn't sustain it. Not something like that." His sigh was fragile, frayed. "If I hadn't been so prideful, those kids would have never come in the first place. If I'd just thought about it. I should've never told her. It was my fault they were there. It was my fault she tried to help me." Kane shook his head. "It's my fault she died."

The entire thing fell into place one tile after the other, the pieces finally coming to in a coherent picture. Kane's sudden change. The wound in his side. The records in his files. The sealed case. The hesitance of Ramos. The obliviousness of Corvus. The rings around his fingers. That same guilty, aching look in his eyes.

He can't feel responsible for her death. He wasn't there.

I stared at Kane for a long, long moment. I said, "Corvus doesn't know."

He shook his head, like the very idea was illegal. "They don't know why Poppy was there before I was," he said. "She and Ramos were the only ones who knew who those guys were."

It took me a few moments to catch my breath. I thought of standing before my mother, her body lifeless, her skin blue, my scalpel clean. I thought of my brother, the yakgwa fresh and sweet in his hands, one soul split between two different lives. Chance and choice. Chance and choice. Where did one start and one end?

My mind drew blank, after blank, after blank, after blank.

Save for one.

I said, "It's all right."

Kane looked at me, but remained silent. I chewed the inside of my cheek.

"It's all right," I said, almost to myself. I leaned forward. "Bad choices don't make you a bad person. You can own who you were and still choose who you are. You can't punish yourself for the 'what-ifs'. If Poppy was or wasn't here, it doesn't matter. It can't. You can't blame yourself forever for something that's over." I flipped the ring over. "You can be angry, man. But you can't live in one choice forever. No one killed Poppy but those assholes. No one killed anyone with anything but a knife."

For my entire life, I had long resented my past, but I had always done nothing but chase the future. I'd bounded after it, and spared no time waiting for my past to change, only to catch up to me. So it was strange, to face Kane, who had always done the opposite. In a way, I wondered which sentence was a crueler one.

I peeled off the seal of my now-lukewarm instant yukgaejang. I picked up my spoon and chopsticks. I said, "I think Poppy would be proud of the choices you've made up until now, if it helps. I think she'd like this Kane of yours." I pushed the star ring to him. "I do, at least."

Kane took the ring up. He pressed the pad of his thumb into the star, until it imprinted itself on his skin. He stared at it for a long, long, long moment.

After a beat, he pushed the ring back to me.

"Keep it," he told me.

I hesitated. Kane reached and took my hand in his. He placed the ring in my palm, the metal warm with body heat, the star blinking in the mart's light.

"She," he whispered, "would have really liked you."

I closed my fingers over the ring.

We ate in silence, nothing but the heat of our palms and the star between our fingers there to keep us warm.

August burned like the ocean.

_________________________

I sat on the roof. Sunghee had something to say about it.

"Echo?" she called. I stopped mid-smoke, and looked down. She placed her hands on her hips, her blue blouse billowing out around her like an ocean's wave attached to her body. "Smoking on the roof? You know this is a shed. For nothing."

I said, "I'm sorry."

"You and Kane," she scoffed, hiking up her delicate pants to cuff them at her shins. "Terrible habit. Now you both will smell!" She grabbed hold of the notches in the wall and the edge of the tiles' low awning. In one graceful swoop, she hauled herself onto the rooftop, mumbling to herself as she went. The sun was a cruel god today, angry and full of unprecedented heat, its weight so heavy you tired just by holding out your fingertips to the light's rays. "Where is Kane anyway? Don't tell me he went running off somewhere."

"I don't know," I admitted. "He was gone when I woke up."

Sunhee eyed me at that. She settled down beside me, cross-legged. She held out her palm. I frowned. "But you said—"

"Ah, I know what I said! Come on, cough one up."

I snorted. I let one slide out into her palm. She stuck it between her lips, and I flicked on the lighter to let it lick the end into life. August swept through the home, the yard, the low rooftop's perch and the aventurine sky. Heat wept from my skin in droplets.

I blew the smoke into the earthy air, letting the wind catch fire. Sunhee followed suit. She said, "You are from the city, aren't you."

I looked up. "How'd you..."

"Dialect," she said through a mouthful of smoke. "Your Korean is very good for someone who has not been back for a long time."

I let the cigarette hang precariously between my fingers. I said, "It helps to have someone to talk to."

Sunhee nodded. She said, "Do you want to help me with dinner?"

I blinked. "I'm not a cook."

"So? Neither am I. I just can cook."

"I...don't think I can do that either."

"Can you boil water?"

"On occasion."

"Good enough. Gaja."

She plucked the cigarette from my fingers. "Home can get so heavy, you know? Memories can hurt no matter how much time passes," she said. "Sometimes you need to remember things differently, because you're different."

I stared. The taste of the cigarette lingered on my tongue, acrid, bitter, sweet like the ocean's waters. I said, "I don't know what you mean."

Sunhee gave me a look that told me she knew I was lying, and that she was perfectly all right to let me do so. "I mean, you can't make King cook for you forever. I hear you live off nothing but candy and instant meals back home! Ya. Echo." She hopped off, feet back in the grass's clutches. "Nothing wrong with a little learning."

She headed for the house, and I had the sneaking suspicion she didn't really mean any of those words for me.

I followed in her wake.

Sunhee tied the apron tight around my waist, dancing cows printed on the blue plaid in the front, and pushed a plate of freshly-washed vegetables to me. "Cut those up," she told me, pointing at the knife block, then said in English, "Dice, dice!"

My lips quirked. I unsheathed a knife from the wooden block. The sun glinted off the blade, the edge sharp enough to cut muscle in one slice. I tightened my grip around the handle, pursing my lips. I swore I tasted metal in my mouth.

I grabbed a clove of garlic. "Have you and Kane always been close?"

Sunhee considered that as she opened a cabinet, withdrawing a bag of potato starch. She smiled. "Yeah. For a while, I was fully convinced he was really my little brother. People used to say we had the same eyes." She tapped the side of her eye. "He's prettier than me now, though. That bastard."

I scoffed. "Was he always a racing fanatic?"

"Ah, no, actually. Only when he got a little older. He was always a history nerd, though. I remember he used to buy all those Magic Treehouse books and sit on the roof reading them for hours," she said, heading for one of the two heavy duty, steel gray fridges. "I did little leagues when I was younger, though. When he came to watch one, I think that's when he fell in love with it." She placed two blocks of tofu on the cutting board. "What about you? Were you always a racer?"

I shrugged. "Something like that," I admitted. "I joined the team in high school to get out of sixth period."

She laughed. "Fate, then," she said. "Will you go pro?"

I sliced the green onions into even candy-sized bits, then crushed the garlic into separate cloves under the cool knife. "I don't know," I murmured. "It'd be nice."

"I told King we would go to see his first pro match, all of us," Sunhee said excitedly. She took a knife and swaddled the tofu in a towel. "We would joke that we would start placing bets on which team would snag him first."

I clutched the knife. I thought of silver, silver, silver. "You'd...be placing a lot of bets."

Sunhee laughed brightly. "We would, huh?" She sliced the tofu up with ease. "That's King for you. Never good until he's best."

I raised a brow. "He's always been this hell-bent, then?"

She considered that, knife stopping halfway in the tofu block. "No," she decided on after a few moments. "Not always." She cocked her head to the side, her smile tender. "Actually, he used to be the opposite."

I paused my chopping. I turned my head to her. "The opposite," I repeated.

Sunhee nodded. "More content, I suppose."

He was such a happy kid.

I opened my mouth to question that, but someone beat me to it.

"Noona." Kane walked into the kitchen, his feet silent in their slippers sliding on the hardwood. He frowned at her with disapproval. "What are you talking about?"

Sunhee hesitated, then waved him off. "Ah, nothing. Echo and I were just chatting, that's all." She beckoned for him. "Come here, help us with dinner. You can get the ingredients." She pointed the knife at him. "And just where were you anyway? Slipping away without a word."

"I was at the beach," he assured, slipping around the corner to clink his rings against the fridge. "Mapadubu?"

"Yes, yes, get the gochujang."

Kane took a container from the fridge and set it on the counter. Sunhee situated herself between us, chattering on about the heat and the news and the celebrities of Korea, filling the silence of the kitchen.

I slept on the floor because I could.

The carpet was criminally plush as it was, and one of the pillows of my designated room had magically fallen from the mattress and onto the floor, an equally-overtly-plush item. And what with the ungodly heat soaking into the skeleton of the house, I figured there could be no harm in taking the easy route of solution and sleeping on the floor.

Someone said, "Echo."

I opened my eyes. I sneezed from the dust. I rubbed my vision into place.

Kane sat above me. He frowned. "Why are you on the floor?"

I yawned. I craned my head. The sky outside was still sodalite blue, leaving me with the assumption the hour couldn't be anything rational. I said, "Why not?"

Kane looked unimpressed with that. He said, "It's one AM. Get up. It's dusty down there."

"I've slept in worse."

Kane sighed. I wondered if he was sick of my bullshit enough to pluck me right up by the back of my shirt. But a bit of rustling and the heat of a body next to me told me otherwise. I turned my head.

Kane lied beside me, arms crossed and eyes up to the blank ceiling. I said, "Dusty, huh?"

He didn't answer. We lied in the night, the moon a broken, soupy thing spilling over us in fractured puddles. 

I said, "Are you all right?"

Kane considered that. "No," he admitted. "But that's all right."

I took a ring from one of his fingers. I spun one around and around and around. "Sunhee said something I think she meant to say to you."

He paused. "What'd she say?"

"Home can get heavy. Memories can hurt no matter how much time passes," I reiterated. "Sometimes you need to remember things differently, because you're different."

Kane's lip quirked. "Sounds like her."

"Sounds like she knows something."

Kane shrugged. "It's Sunhee," he said. "She always knows more than I do."

I slid my fingers into the spaces between his. "Is one AM a bad time in Busan?"

Kane glanced at me. "Why?"

He was such a happy kid.

Poppy's ring was heavy on my hand. But so was Kane's palm, so was Corvus's trophies, so was my mother's body, so was my brother's yakgwa. The world was never not a fight. And I was never not losing.

But maybe there were some things I could take with me on the way down.

I sat up. I said, "Do you have a bike here?"

Kane shook his head. "I've seen you on the track," he said. "I'm not getting on that with you."

I scoffed. "This is not even a racing bike! It can barely go over 110. It's got a goddamn daisy on the wheel." I gestured at the bright pink flower attached at the spokes. "Besides, no one else can drive."

"We could walk."

"To Gwangalli?"

"It's a few miles."

"That's a few miles too long." I patted the back of the pink leather seat. "C'mon. I got my license. Even if it's fake."

"Wait, what?"

"What?" I handed him a bright pink helmet. "Sunhee used this for little leagues, right? It's perfectly safe."

"But are you perfectly safe?"

"I'm a square racer," I said. "What kind of question is that?"

Kane rolled his eyes. He said, "Don't break the speed limit," and snagged the helmet from my hands. "And where the hell is your helmet?"

"This hair is helmet enough," I assured, gesturing at the mess of rainbow locks on my head. "Get on. Before I take a photo and start calling you Pinkberry."

Kane got on. He said, "You know how to work this?"

I'd only ever ridden regular TRAX bikes before. The Drachmann racing bike I had with Corvus was about as much exposure as I'd gotten to the gears. But, for all the shit I'd done on my feet up until then, I figured riding a bike was likely not one of the more complicated things.

I shrugged. "Sure, sure."

I turned on the engine, and pressed my foot on the accelerator.

When nothing happened, Kane said, "It's not on."

I sighed. "No one likes a smart ass."

"That's not being a smart ass. That's common sense, Echo."

"Well then you turn it on."

Kane flicked on a switch and grabbed the handlebar to squeeze the clutch. He kicked my left foot. "Push that," he said, gesturing at a thin pedal in front of me. I pushed down on it and he twisted the other handlebar as he slowly let go of the clutch. The machine rumbled, sputtering and popping as it awakened. "All right. Now go."

I scoffed. "You could have said something earlier."

He shrugged. "I wanted to see if you could bullshit your way through."

"Hey," I said, pulling us forward by the throttle. "When has it ever failed me?"

"You wanna review?"

"Bet. It worked on you."

"What's that mean?"

The bike sputtered alive, and began to move. "Means hold on, asshole," I said.

Kane wrapped his arms around my waist. "Don't kill us," he said.

We drove into the summer's night, the wind a wild flag in the air, the heat soft and sleepy on our skin. I grinned up to the air, where even the stars could not find us. The world was an endless, empty road ahead.

Gwangalli Beach was a pale stretch of sand and sea that stopped the city in its tracks to let the oceans breathe.

We pulled up on the end of a concrete ramp, parking the bike lopsided against a withering tree. The winds were strong from the moon's hands, all heat dissipating under the force. Nothing but the faint glow of the city and the small moon in the sky provided any light for us. The sands were flat scapes of shadows. The sea was dyed with deep black ink.

Up ahead, a long, white suspension bridge sat like an idol in a temple, lit up by passing cars, powerful spotlights, and starlight. It breathed with life. It watched us as closely as we watched it.

Kane shucked off his shoes and tossed them near the bike along with the helmet. I slid off my sandals to hurry after him. Wind tossed his hair left and right, exposing his dark eyes to the world. His black-veined arm and shoulder showed fragments of the poison's scars like the vein of a geode. As if the moonlight had infiltrated him through his eyes, melted into his blood, colored his hair and muscles into ivory. How cruel, I thought, to make death so lovely.

He said, "Sungki and Sungho used to take me here sometimes," he said. He stared at the bridge ahead. "We would come here after dinner and talk."

Kane stood right at the edge of where the sand remained just dry enough not to reach the greedy waves. I stopped beside him. "About what?"

He shrugged. "Anything. Everything. Sun and I would drive through, just to see the coastline."

I nodded. "It's pretty." I knelt down, sifting through the sand, before procuring a thin, half-broken shell, the same color as the dark waters. I held it up to the city's lights. "You have a lot of good memories here."

Kane didn't respond at first. He took the shell from my hands, thumbing the sand from it. "I'm sorry," he said, "that you didn't get to grow up with good memories."

I shook my head. "I have good memories."

"You know what I mean."

"Not really, I don't." I plucked another shell from the sands. Pink, like watered-down blood. "I spent my whole life accepting everything my past laid out for me. I always chased down a future I thought I had to take." I washed the shell out in the white foam. The waves tickled my feet, soaked a part of my pant leg. "Joining Corvus, I realized there's no 'should', you know? Nothing's ever as it should be. There's just 'is' or 'isn't'. I don't wanna think about the 'should'." I handed him the cleaned shell. "I wanna take things as I make it."

Kane took the shell. He turned it over in his hands. He looked down at me, staring over me like trying to read between the lines of my eyes. I watched those eyes like I'd find a different world somewhere in it. A world with no shoulds. A world by will.

Kane reached up to push my hair back from my face. "You amaze me," he murmured.

I stared back. I reached up to take his wrist and press my thumb into the tendon.

"You scare me," I admitted.

Kane frowned. "Why?"

I chewed my lip. I pressed into his skin until I could feel the heartbeat running through there. You make me want to live a life I can't have. You make me want to fight a war I have never won. You make me want. You make me want.

I said, "You make me feel real." I let go of his wrist. "You make me real."

The waters were demigods, striking the sands, destroying the rocks, crushing salt and gravel up between their unbreakable teeth. The air bent and bowed to it, watched the heads of worldly monsters pile up in their wake. No mercy. No chances. One winner.

Kane reached through the crossfire. He pulled me against him.

I kissed him like biting through a bullet, swallowing the smoke whole.

(ty for reading, this chapter is very, very long and jumps around a lot a lot a lot, but i am grateful for your patience, as is the little star situated in the corner :) ty for 2k reads, and i luv u all very much)