Chapter 38
It was agreed that Hae and Yuhwa would take shifts patrolling for the sonnimne and Habaek.
According to Yuhwa, she’d sensed four of them when she searched the town.
It was more than Grace was hoping, but then again, a part of her had wished they’d somehow left on their own volition.
Then Yuhwa let her know the legends told of fifty-three sonnimne, and Grace decided four was a much more manageable number.
Hae insisted that he’d recovered enough to search for the sonnimne with Yuhwa now.
And when Grace offered to go with, they’d both shut her down, telling her that she was already a target.
Everyone seemed to agree, except for Grace. Who continuously voiced her objection and was continuously shot down.
So now she was up in her room for her de facto house arrest, pretending to work on her interview guide for BU. But really worrying about what Yuhwa and Hae might find out there and if they were staying safe.
Finally, she gave up and pulled up the research she’d been doing on the gods. If she couldn’t help with finding the sonnimne, then at least she could help by trying to find a way to fight Habaek. They had to be prepared for whatever the water god had planned.
In an old book of translated myths Grace had found among her halmeoni’s things, there was a version of the story of Habaek and Haemosu that ended with Yuhwa regretting her decision to leave with Haemosu and returning to her father.
Instead of welcoming her back with open arms, he was infuriated, blaming her for his humiliation.
And he’d stretched her lips until she turned into a carp, throwing her into the ocean and abandoning her to a fisherman’s net.
Grace had heard a version of this ending before, but reading it now, after knowing Yuhwa and Hae, it hit differently.
She could imagine Yuhwa, young and brash, wanting freedom from a restrictive father and thinking Haemosu the answer.
But committing to a life in the heavens when all she’d known was this world, it had to have been overwhelming.
Instead of trying to understand Yuhwa’s feelings, Habaek had only cared about his own embarrassment.
Maybe Yuhwa had been right to warn Grace about trusting Habaek. If his pride and anger caused him to treat his own daughter that way, then there was no telling what he’d do to mere mortals.
Not wanting to stare at the illustrated depiction of carp-Yuhwa caught in a fishing net, Grace flipped the pages and landed on a story called “Bari Degi.”
“What are you reading?” Hae asked, stepping into the room.
Grace jerked around so fast, she spun out of her chair, flopping onto the floor. Hae was by her side in a second, his hand on her arm to help her up. But just the touch of his skin against hers made goose bumps prickle. She pulled away, returning to her chair.
“Are you hurt?” Hae asked.
“I’m good. I’m just a klutz.” Grace brushed at her pajama pants, even though there wasn’t anything on them. She just couldn’t bear to look up at him right now. “I didn’t hear you come back. Did you find anything?”
“No, it seems the sonnimne have gone to ground for tonight.”
“That’s a good thing, right?” Grace asked. “It means they’re not attacking anyone either.”
“Yeah, or it means they’re doing something else that we don’t know about yet.”
Grace shivered at the thought. “Well, I’m doing some research. I thought maybe there would be something else that could help us stop Habaek.”
“That’s a good idea,” Hae agreed. “What are you reading?”
Grace pulled the book off the desk to show to him.
“Ah, Princess Bari.” Hae grinned. “She’d love being in this time where women have rights.”
“Not enough, if you ask me,” Grace uttered under her breath. She doodled absentmindedly on her tablet.
“A foundation has to be laid well before you can build skyscrapers that will stand the test of time,” Hae said.
Grace laughed. “Where did you hear that?”
“Somewhere.” Hae shrugged. “Or perhaps I made it up myself. I can be pretty clever.”
Grace rolled her eyes, but couldn’t hide her smile. “What was she like?”
“Don’t your books tell you?” Hae nodded at the stack by her elbow.
“There are only a couple of myths that describe her virtues,” Grace said, leaning over her sketch, adding more details. “But they don’t say what she liked, her favorite food or her favorite hobbies.”
“That’s not really what makes legends.”
“But she was more than just her myths. She was a person with likes and dislikes, right?”
She looked up to find Hae studying her curiously now.
“What?” she asked self-consciously. “Is that disrespectful? To want to know those things about a god?”
“No, it’s just different. I’ve never known a mortal who cared to know any of that about one of us.”
“Maybe you just never talked to the right humans,” Grace said with a little grin.
Hae replied with one of his own. “Yeah, maybe I didn’t.” He thought a moment, then said, “She ate a lot of fruit.”
“Ah, so she had a sweet tooth.” Grace added an apple to her sketch. “What kind of fruit?”
“Pears. Plums.”
Grace adjusted the shape of the fruit to match a pear instead. “Maybe it’s a god thing, having a sweet tooth. You seem to love sugar.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“No, but your inability to wash a dish after you use it is a bad thing. Oh, and you never make the bed.”
“I don’t think I like this game.” Hae frowned.
Grace laughed. “What? It’s endearing to know you have flaws.”
“Really?” Hae seemed to ponder that a moment, then grinned. “Then I suppose I should keep not doing the dishes. Since it’s so endearing.”
Grace laughed. “Of course that’s the message you take away.”
Hae’s smile became cheeky as he leaned in to look at her sketch. “Hey, that’s good. But what character is this? I don’t remember them from the comic.”
“Oh,” Grace said, fighting the urge to hide the drawing.
“It’s nothing, just what I guess I think Princess Bari might look like, if she lived now.
” She studied the crude sketch of a fierce-looking Korean girl with cropped hair leaning defiantly on an F the Patriarchy sign staked into the ground, a taunting grin on her lips.
“I like it.” Hae hummed in approval. “Do another one.”
“Another god?” Grace asked.
“Yeah, it’s kind of fun to see how you’d imagine us,” Hae said. “And, now that I’ve had time to think about it, I don’t mind what your imagination thought up for me.” His cocky grin made his handsome features shine.
Grace couldn’t hold in her laugh. “Sure, why not. Actually, this is a game I used to play with…” She trailed off, her fingers stopping mid-stroke.
“With your halmeoni?” Hae guessed.
She nodded.
He laid a hand over hers. “We don’t have to play if it’s upsetting to remember.”
But she wasn’t upset. In fact, she felt kind of glad. For the first time in months, she could think of a memory of Halmeoni with something almost akin to joy. It was a sensation she wanted to hold on to if she could. “No, let’s play. I want to.”
“Okay,” Hae said, watching her carefully. “If you’re sure.”
Grace set her shoulders. “Give me a deity, any deity.”
Hae laughed at her enthusiasm and picked up the book, flipping through the pages. He stopped and sent her a sly grin. “Okay, let’s go with this one.”
Grace laughed at the story he showed her and nodded, accepting the challenge. “You’re on. Tell me what you know about them.”
“Hey, where do you think your father is?” Grace asked as she shaded in a sketch of Samshin Halmang, the goddess of childbirth.
Hae was absently flipping through a book of children’s folktales on the couch in the pool house.
They were sharing a bowl of popcorn, which Hae had mostly hogged.
But Grace didn’t mind. She’d just made the snack out of habit. Halmeoni had always loved popcorn.
“My father?” Hae lifted a brow at the question.
“Yeah, he’s in Sun God too.” Grace finished defining the soft bun she’d given the grandmotherly figure, adding a small wink of diamond earrings like her own halmeoni had always worn.
“What are you talking about? When is he in the comic?” Hae glanced at Grace’s sketchbooks that held her first iterations of her characters.
“He’s in the first few episodes. He never appears, but he talks to you. So, why isn’t he around like Habaek? Floating around in this world?”
“I’m not sure, but I think he might be gone.”
“Gone?” Grace looked up from her sketch. Hae was leaning back on the couch, gazing out the window at the pool. The rain made small ripples on the water. “Weren’t you all gone?”
“Yes, but I never sensed him in the dark, like I could the others.”
“The dark?”
“The place I was before I returned.”
Grace was surprised. This was the first time Hae had ever volunteered information about where he’d been. She spoke carefully now. “You mean the underworld?”
“No, I know what the underworld is like. This place was empty. Complete nothingness. Somewhere I couldn’t move or speak or…exist.”
“That sounds so lonely,” she whispered.
“You know, sometimes I’d see pieces of this world. Strange images that would show me things I’d never known or imagined before. I think maybe it was from your webcomic.”
“How?”
“The same way it brought me back? People started believing enough, so it had the power to reach me,” Hae said. “If you’d never written this comic, then maybe I’d never…”
She couldn’t imagine him trapped in some dark, unknown place. “I’m sorry that you were ever forgotten.”
“It’s past. I don’t ever have to go back there. I won’t ever go back there.” His eyes darkened with a hard conviction, and Grace gently took his hand.
He turned to stare at their joined hands in surprise. “I won’t let you go back either.”
Hae’s face softened, and he turned his palm to grip hers. “Thank you.”