Chapter 15
After a hot shower to get rid of the chill from the dip in the pool, Grace tried to focus on something other than her godly guest.
But after spacing out for twenty minutes in front of a blank document that was supposed to be her AP Lit essay, she knew it was a lost cause. She dragged her hands over her face, trying to snap out of it.
Not for the first time, Grace wished her halmeoni were here. But for the first time, it wasn’t just because she missed her grandmother, but because she had so many questions that she felt only her halmeoni could handle.
“I wish you could tell me what to do,” she whispered.
She could practically hear her halmeoni’s reply: Do what you do best.
“What I do best?” Grace pondered that. Then pulled up her folder of ideas and concept sketches for Sun God. She had an entire document somewhere of old research she’d done for the comic. Maybe there would be some kind of clue in there about what to do about Haemosu.
But when she found the document, it was frustratingly sparse.
This had always been the issue. Her halmeoni had said that the history of the old gods had often been told orally. Some had been lost to time as Korea had been invaded and attempts to completely erase the culture had almost succeeded.
She’d made note of a vague description she’d found of Haemosu in the legends: He was depicted as a youth wearing a crow-feathered headdress.
It’s why she’d drawn him as a teenager.
But why does he look exactly like my webtoon hero? she wondered. That was still a big fat mystery.
She read on in her old notes. Carrying the sword Yonggwanggeom—dragon’s light—and riding Oryonggeo pulled by five dragons, Haemosu attended to state affairs in the morning and in the evening ascended back to the heavens.
Grace had underlined the bit about his sword.
It had been a good subplot in the comic.
A kind of side quest for him before the true conflict arose.
Maybe there was something there. A god’s weapon was often a source of their power.
She highlighted the words before getting up to search out the only person who might be able to give her any insight.
She found Hae in the kitchen, the floor and counter covered in crumbs and crusts of bread.
“What is going on?”
Hae’s head shot up like a child caught raiding the cookie jar, a slice of bread half shoved into his mouth.
“You made a mess! Did you eat all of this?” She picked up the empty bag. She’d just bought that loaf of bread the other day.
“Yeah,” Hae mumbled through a full mouth.
“I thought you said gods don’t get hungry.”
“We don’t. This body must be defective,” Hae claimed. “I was watching that streaming thing you showed me on the television and my stomach started making weird noises.”
“You mean your stomach was growling?” Grace asked.
“No, it was more like a gurgling.”
She rolled her eyes but let him continue without interrupting again.
“When I came here to tell you, I saw this on the counter and I suddenly had the urge to taste it. It’s amazing. Did you make it?”
Grace laughed. “Not unless my name is Sara Lee.”
“Well, you need to tell Sara she did a great job.”
“You act like you’ve never had bread before.”
“I haven’t,” Hae said, shoving the last slice into his mouth.
Grace gaped at him. That seemed impossible, until she remembered what he’d told her. He’d disappeared from existence a millennium ago. She didn’t suppose bread had been introduced to ancient Korea.
“Well, do you want some milk to go with your…slice?”
“Thure,” he said through his final mouthful.
Grace couldn’t help but smile at how messily mortal he seemed as he enjoyed something as basic as a piece of honey wheat bread. Grace wondered what he’d think of mac and cheese.
He’d probably be a terror at an all-you-can-eat buffet.
Then Grace realized what she was thinking. She shouldn’t be planning things to do with him, even if they were hypothetical. The whole goal was to send him home. To get him out of here so her life could go back to normal.
Grace quickly poured him the milk. “So, I was actually doing some research.”
“About?” Hae asked after taking a long sip.
“About what the old legends said about you.”
Hae rolled his eyes at that. “Humans liked to exaggerate and embellish things when it came to us. Until they got bored of us.” His voice sounded flippant. But Grace noted that his tone dropped in the end.
“How true are the legends?”
“Tell me a legend, and I’ll tell you if it is right.” It sounded like a dare.
“There’s really just one that everyone still knows.”
Hae’s lips dipped into a half frown. “And?”
“It’s about how you met Yuhwa.”
Hae laughed. “Really? Why that story?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they think it’s exciting. It’s about your battle with Habaek.”
Now Hae scowled. “Why would people care about that contest?”
Grace hesitated in answering. She didn’t want to give him a bigger head than he already had. But she was curious. “I think some people thought you were a bit clever. Kind of.”
He grinned now, clearly pleased. “I was very clever. We agreed that we’d transform into one creature for each round. And because of his pride, he insisted on choosing first. But in the end, it gave me a chance to find a form that could beat him on land, sea, and air.”
“Really?” Grace asked. “And you didn’t think it would make you look insolent in the eyes of Yuhwa’s father?”
“He said he wanted to make sure I was really the son of the celestial king.”
Grace laughed. “So, he hurt your pride.”
Hae’s expression darkened. “He doubted my word.”
Yup, it was about pride. Why was it always pride with gods?
“So, when he turned into a carp, you turned into an otter to hunt him down. When he transformed into a deer, you transformed into a wild dog. He chose pheasant, and you chose hawk. You fought dirty.”
“I fought smart. He chose forms that were considered beautiful. Talk about pride. I chose forms that were scrappy and strong.”
He took the final sip of milk, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand after. It was such a normal motion. Something she’d seen Lincoln do dozens of times before. Something she probably did herself. It felt so modern, so average. Not something she’d have imagined a god to do.
“Do you know what I’d like?” Hae said with a small grin. Grace didn’t like the glint in his eyes.
“What?” she asked hesitantly, unsure how big the ask would be.
“I’d like to read the webtoon.”
“Why?” she squeaked.
“You wrote it about me, right? Can’t I see it?”
In a mortifying flash, Grace thought of all the angsty almost-kiss and romance scenes she wrote.
“Well?” Hae prompted her, bringing her back to the moment.
With no clear way to deny him, she gave in. Grace picked up her tablet and opened the webtoon-reading app before holding it out to him.
He skimmed the panels, scrolling quickly down the episode before clicking to read the next.
“Oh, you can just read one,” Grace said. But he ignored her, speed-reading the next one before clicking on the following episode.
Grace bit her lip, wondering if she should just leave him to it. It felt too nerve-racking to just watch him read the whole thing. But before she could escape, he spun to her, eyes wide as he shoved the screen at her. “When did you write this?”
She had to blink to bring the screen into focus. It was a scene of Hae pulling Yuhwa out of the path of a speeding bus. Very K-drama-coded.
“I don’t know, three months ago?”
“I remember this,” he said, staring at the scene.
“You remember reading it?”
“No, I remember doing this.”
“That’s not possible. I made this up. It’s not based on an actual legend or anything.”
Hae looked just as perplexed as Grace. “I don’t know what else to tell you, except that when I woke up in this world, I had a jumble of memories, and this is one of them. Bus and all.”
This felt like too many coincidences. Grace sucked in her cheeks, wondering if it was the right time to bring up her theory. She wasn’t sure how he’d react, though, and that stopped her from blurting it out.
But Hae’s eyes narrowed on her face. “What is it?”
“Huh? What? Nothing.” Grace blinked up at him, leaning away, but he caught her hand before she could evade completely.
“You know something. I can see it on your face. It’s getting easier for me to read.” He squeezed her wrist. “Tell me what it is. Please.”
It was the final quiet please that got to her. “I do have a theory. It’s just a theory, though. I haven’t verified it yet. Which really we should, with experiments and data and—”
“Tell me.”
“All right,” Grace said. “But you have to promise to keep an open mind.”
He didn’t promise. He only eyed her expectantly.
“I already think there’s something weird going on because you look just like the Haemosu in my webtoon. But you also share some undeniable skills and traits with him, like playing piano. And now, hearing you think you remember some of these scenes, it makes me wonder if maybe…I…created you?”
Hae laughed, his eyes crinkling with mirth. He sobered when Grace didn’t join in. “You’re serious?” he said. “You think you created me? That’s impossible. I’m a god.”
Grace felt ridiculous trying to convince someone she’d created them. But she really couldn’t think of another explanation for all the coincidences. “I don’t want to have created you,” she said. “But it’s just the simplest explanation, isn’t it?”
“No, it’s impossible.”
“Well, your return to the world of the living is connected to my webtoon, whether you like it or not. And I don’t see you coming up with any big theories.”
“Maybe your powers just manifested me this way.”
“I don’t have powers.”
Hae gave her a pointed look. “If I have to listen to the idea that your webtoon brought me back, then you have to listen to the idea that you have powers.”
Grace hated that he had her in a corner here.
But any good scientist wouldn’t completely reject a theory without working it through first. Innovation couldn’t happen if people kept dismissing things they thought were impossible.
“Fine, we’ll add that to our pile of possibilities.
Now, knowing all of this, how do we test these theories? ”
“If your webtoon is so great, make it send me back.”
“It’s not a magic wand,” Grace said.
“Well, if it brought me back, how did it do that?” Hae lifted a brow.
But Grace refused to give up on this. Not until she’d thought it all the way through. A hypothesis needed to be tested before it could be proven or disproven.
“I just drew you. Nothing fancy.” Her eyes widened as she had a sudden thought. His expression reflected hers with a twin realization.
“Draw me going home,” Hae said.
Grace nodded. “It could work. If it can bring you back looking this way, why can’t it make you go home?”
She switched her tablet to a different app and started sketching a scene: Hae climbing out of the raging river after the attack.
She tried not to remember how he looked soaking wet in real life, shirt plastered to him. Her hand moved fast over the tablet, the click of her stylus the only sound. Hae peered over her shoulder.
“What are those blobs? That does not look like me.”
“They’re guidelines,” Grace said as she focused on the scene she wanted to draw.
“How does that become a person?”
“It’s just to help me create the shapes first,” Grace said. She added a layer for tracing. Then roughly inked it and added simple shades to create the trees, the water, and the rays of the sun.
“I can see it now,” Hae breathed. “It is like a kind of magic.”
Grace felt a swell of pride. She’d never really let anyone watch her work before.
Not even Zoe. But hearing how impressed Hae sounded gave her a satisfaction in her work that she’d never experienced before.
An instant satisfaction at getting immediate feedback.
Like when she’d finished a drawing when she was younger and immediately ran to show it to Halmeoni.
She felt a prick of tears at the back of her eyes and blinked hard.
What was this reaction? Just at the mere thought of her halmeoni.
Or was it something more? Something about this moment with Hae, making her art for just one person.
Not worrying about how it would be received by the thousands of fans who read her webtoon.
It felt intimate somehow. A moment shared just between two people.
It was something she hadn’t experienced since she’d lost her grandmother.
She bit her tongue between her molars to make herself focus as she sharpened the lines. It was rough. Nothing like the finished products she liked to post, but it got the image across. Hae floating toward the heavens, the sun’s rays as his guide.
“It looks good.” Hae gave an approving nod. “Now what?”
“I don’t know,” Grace admitted, staring at the drawing, almost willing it to come to life.
But nothing happened. No ray of sunlight appeared from above to carry Hae away. They waited so long the tablet darkened into sleep mode.
“What do you usually do next?” Hae asked impatiently.
“I post it.”
“Then, why aren’t you?”
Grace laughed. “Because this has no continuity with the story.”
Hae raised a brow. “Really? You care more about your webtoon when this is my life?”
A heavy sigh escaped her. He had a point.
But it hurt to think that she’d post something that would make no sense to her readers.
Still, Hae was right. If her webtoon was the reason he was here and stuck in this situation, then it was kind of her responsibility to get him back to the realm of the gods.
So she opened the webtoon app to upload the panels. And when it asked her if she was sure she wanted to post, her finger hovered over the button.
“Do it,” Hae said.
Grace forced her finger down onto the screen. It barely took any time to upload, being only two panels. Too soon, the tablet chirped the alert that the episode was live. Her phone beeped as a notification appeared to let her know a new episode of Sun God was available.
There, it was done.