Chapter Twenty #2
I ducked into a clothing store and scanned the shelves for a sweatshirt I could steal.
I needed something with a hood so the supervising agent wouldn’t spot another Mina and realize something was amiss.
As the employee at the counter headed to the back, I reached for a pink sweatshirt.
It looked baggy enough to hide me and had an oversized hood that would cast shadows over my face.
As soon as my hand closed around the fabric, I froze.
I remembered Hana, a gun in her hands, wearing a baggy pink sweatshirt. Was this the same shade? It was hard to say, since Hana had been standing in the dark when she shot me.
But had it really been Hana at all? If I’d left myself the note in my apartment, maybe the shooter had also been one of my Echoes. My fist clenched tight around the sleeve, stretching the fabric. That moment was all I had left of Hana, and now it might not even be real.
I drew my hand back, then turned and pulled a blue sweatshirt off its hanger and hurried out the door.
I set down my bag outside and tugged the sweatshirt over my head, letting out a breath once I was safely swathed in blue—not pink—fabric. I might have tricked myself into writing Hana’s note, but there was no way I could accidentally shoot myself. I didn’t even have blank rounds on me.
The flow of the crowd carried me near the stairs where the other Mina and Yejun were standing.
I didn’t want to get any closer and alert the supervising agent, but it was the only way through.
Maybe I would even get a better look at Hana this time before she ran off.
I wanted to catch her and never let her go, but it was dangerous for her to show herself at all, much less in front of a supervising agent, and the last thing I wanted was for Hong Gildong to apprehend her because of me.
The crowd grew denser so close to the front, and I couldn’t force my way through no matter how hard I tried. I would have to wait until everyone started running to make it to the other side.
I stood by a light pole as Min Sungho’s car arrived at the far end of the walkway and security stepped out. As the other Mina and Yejun talked, I scanned the crowd for anyone in a pink sweatshirt, but counted over a dozen on this side of the barriers alone.
Then someone bumped into me from behind, jolting me away from the streetlight.
Hot liquid seared across my face and neck. I fell forward onto my hands, my eyes stinging. A boot stomped dangerously close to my fingers, but before the crowd could crush me, someone yanked me up by the arm.
Someone with a pink sweatshirt.
I rubbed the liquid from my eye as some of it trickled into my mouth. Coffee, I realized, as the scent wafted over me. Someone spilled their hot coffee on me.
“I’m so sorry!” a man was saying over and over again. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said, tugging off the soaked sweatshirt and using it to dry my neck and face. I squinted up at the man even though my eyelids felt gummed together with sugar and cream. He was young—probably a college student—wearing a pink sweatshirt and clutching a crumpled coffee cup.
His face suddenly turned red and he ripped his own sweatshirt off, handing it to me. “Here, you can have this,” he said.
“I don’t need your sweatshirt,” I said, trying to look around him at Yejun, but he only pushed it closer to me.
“Your shirt,” he said uneasily.
“What about my—” I looked down, and realized why he was so uncomfortable—the coffee had made my white tank top see-through.
I sighed and snatched the sweatshirt from him, tugging it over my head and moving as far away as possible. It didn’t matter if I was wearing a pink sweatshirt anyway. I still wasn’t going to shoot the other Mina.
Min Sungho was heading up the walkway now, and I could see the other Mina frowning as Yejun put his gun away. Hana needed to make her move soon, but I still couldn’t see her in the crowd.
Counterprotesters started yelling as Min Sungho drew closer, trying to push their way to the front. The crowd carried me closer to the stairs, angry humans stomping on my feet and elbowing my ribs to get past me.
Something snagged on the ladybug key chain on my zipper, yanking me to the side. The left shoulder strap on my backpack finally tore, and my bag hit the ground. I reached for it right as something metal fell out of the front pocket and clattered to the ground.
Firearm cartridges.
The ones Hyebin’s Echo had given me at school. I held one up to the streetlight, running my thumb over the flat paper surface where a projectile was supposed to be.
They were blank rounds.
I hadn’t known it at the time, since I hadn’t had firearms training yet, but now I was certain.
I remembered how pale and unraveled Hyebin’s Echo had looked under the yellow light of the bathroom stall.
Had she come back to help me because I’d used live rounds and died, or because the descendants had caught me the first time?
I clutched the handful of cartridges tight in my palm, then rose to my feet and turned to the other Mina and Yejun, who were still in a tense discussion. There was no one else in a pink sweatshirt pushing through the crowd. No one but me.
I looked to the sky. Really, Hana? I thought. You’re gonna make me do this part too? Just how lazy are you?
The sky crackled with thunder, and I let out a dry laugh.
It was the most sisterlike interaction I’d ever had with Hana, if you could call it that.
I could imagine her response, even if it was nothing more than a story I told myself and the real Hana was nothing like that at all.
But, like Yejun said, sometimes stories were all you had.
You can’t expect anyone else to save you, Mina, Hana would say. This was your plan, so you can finish it.
I sighed, my hand curling tighter around the cartridges.
Fine, I thought. I’ll have to save myself.
I yanked my hood up, then pulled out my gun and emptied the live rounds onto the ground. It didn’t matter who saw—the crowd was going to stampede in about thirty seconds anyway. I jammed the blank rounds in, hoisted my bag over my shoulder, and shoved through the crowd.
“I won’t do it,” I heard Yejun saying as I drew closer.
You can’t, I thought, elbowing someone out of my way, but I can.
The other Mina had clearly noticed me approaching, her body angled toward me, one hand still on Yejun’s sleeve.
I squared my stance and pulled the trigger.
In the moment after the gunshot, the world fell silent.
Everyone turned toward the source of the sound, waiting for their brains to make sense of what they’d just heard.
In that moment, I was in a world all by myself, pushing upstream through the paralyzed crowd.
Then the first scream came, and the world exploded with noise.
Everyone started to run.
Someone elbowed me in the ribs, someone else shoved me forward, another person screamed in my ear. I stepped on something that felt suspiciously like fingers, but I couldn’t stop now, not for anything or anyone.
I broke free from the crowd, falling into the glass doors of a convenience store that swung open and dumped me on the tiles.
I was up before the cashier could ask if I was okay, disappearing behind the chip aisle and shrugging off my sweatshirt, which I stuffed into the gap on the shelf where fire ramen used to be.
I put Hana’s sweater back on, and only then, when I was neither crushed beneath a stampede or handcuffed in the back of a police car, did I let out a breath.
I bought a black mask at the counter and slipped it on as I headed outside, where cops were circling the block and the crowd had started to thin.
I tried to even out my breathing and walk as casually as possible to the meet-up point, though I found myself running around the last corner and nearly crashing into Yejun.
He caught me before I could slip into a puddle, spinning me around and setting me on my feet in the alley.
“You’re back,” he said, smiling and brushing my hair out of my face. Then he looked around me, and the light left his eyes. “Your sister?”
I shook my head. Seeing the pity in his eyes stung just like I’d expected it to, but this time it was tempered by the fact that this wasn’t over yet.
“There’s one last thing I need to try,” I said. “I need to get to Hong Gildong’s scrying pool.”
Seulgi’s eyes widened when she saw me and Yejun enter the building together. I grimaced, wondering if literally everyone in the office but me knew I was being played.
“Hi, Seulgi-nim,” Yejun said, smiling and bowing casually as if we didn’t just fake my death. “We have an appointment with the boss.”
“You do?” she said. “He’s not due back for another hour.” I didn’t miss the way her gaze fell to my empty hands. I forgot the banana milk, I thought. On the one day I could really use a bribe, I didn’t have one.
“Can we just wait for him there?” I said, pointing toward his office and fighting the urge to check my watch. I knew seeing the time would only make me panic-sweat. It had taken us a good eleven minutes to rush over here from the rally.
It was the wrong thing to say. Seulgi’s expression hardened and she crossed her arms. “You know that’s not allowed, Mina.”
“But Hyebin—”
“Hyebin is a senior agent and Sajangnim knew she was there,” Seulgi said. “Why do you want to go there so badly?”
I looked to Yejun, but he was staring at his shoes with a grim expression, like he knew as well as I did that there was no logical reason for us to be in Hong Gildong’s office, that no excuse was going to cut it.
Well, I thought, if you can’t outsmart a dragon, submit to them.
I dropped to my knees and bowed to Seulgi, who flinched and backed away. “Please,” I said. “It’s an emergency. I can’t explain right now, but I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t important.”
Seulgi looked to Yejun as if he could explain, but he only shrugged pitifully. Some partner in crime he turned out to be.