Chapter Forty-Two Sunny
Chapter Forty-Two
Sunny
Ethan catches my gaze when Minju and I return to the audience hall, raising his brows in question. I widen my eyes innocently and offer him a closed-mouth smile.
I’ll tell him everything when it’s time. No matter what, he will be by my side through it all. I will not be alone, even in death. Especially in death.
Forgive me, Ethan.
“Is everyone ready then?” Gyun asks.
“I’m ready.” Hailey nods, calm and determined.
“My king.” Jihun bows formally to Ethan, then raises his head with a wry quirk of his lips. “Try not to die.”
“I’ll do my best.” Ethan claps him on the shoulder, grinning back at him.
I honestly can’t get enough of the bromance between these two. I’m so happy they have each other.
Then Jihun turns to me and bows, a fist over his heart. “My queen.”
I had his loyalty before I became the queen, but now he has sworn his allegiance to me. I was grateful then, and I am grateful now.
“Thank you.” My chest aches, and I hold my breath without realizing it. Jihun clicks his tongue and wraps his arms around me. I exhale and say in a tremulous voice, “For everything.”
“Be safe.” He gently sets me away from him.
Cheyun and Minju take turns hugging me and Hailey. Even Bora hugs me. I hate goodbyes, but I linger over this one. I am definitely stalling.
Fuck this.
I have a long way to go till the finish line. I can only jump one hurdle at a time.
“Let’s get on with it.” I work my features into a bad-tempered scowl, but Ethan looks at me like I’m the cutest thing and kisses the tip of my nose. And I further undermine my badassery by making heart eyes at him. I catch myself and clear my throat. “How far is purgatory, Gyun?”
“I wouldn’t say it’s far at all,” he says enigmatically, then turns to Hailey. “Are you all right?”
She’s chugging water straight from the teapot, hydrating in preparation for expending her jeoseungsaja powers. Generating all that creepy fog around her really wrings her dry.
“Mm-hmm.” She pulls the spout out of her mouth. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason.” The judge looks so bemused that I have to bite my lips not to cackle. With a sharp shake of his head, he holds his arms out to me and Ethan. “Your Majesties.”
My husband obliges without hesitation and seems perfectly at ease when Gyun wraps a beefy arm around his waist. Ethan has never been prone to masculine posturing—males with true confidence generally don’t bother with that nonsense.
I have no idea why, but I salute the Queen of Sky and the King of Underworld—probably because I didn’t get to hug them goodbye—then step into Gyun’s free arm. From the judge’s other side, Ethan catches my gaze and mouths, I love you. And like a sap, I mouth back, I love you too.
Ignoring our admittedly cringy exchange, Gyun nods at Hailey, and she promptly switches to her grim reaper mode.
Her skin leaches of color, her eyes glow red, and her hair floats around her like sinister shadows. Then she rises off the floor on a cloud of icy fog. Her transformation is so fast and so sudden that I can’t hold back my horror-queen scream. I clap a hand over my mouth and squeeze my eyes shut.
“Here we go,” the Judge of Tenth Hell says.
We levitate into the air, then that eerie sensation of not existing shrouds me. I would shudder if I could feel my body.
“We’re here.” Gyun drops his arm from my waist.
“How?” I open my eyes and take in my surroundings. “Even moving through the Kingdom of Underworld took longer than this. And if we’re really here, then why do I still feel . . . unreal?”
We are somewhere, though, because I’m standing on wood floors . . . in a large room . . . I stumble back half a step. It’s the audience hall at the Celestial Palace.
But everything looks faded and washed out—nearly transparent. And there isn’t anyone here but us. Our friends, who had just been surrounding us, are gone.
I don’t like this.
“This is purgatory?” Ethan spins in a slow circle. “And I agree with Sunny. I still feel like I’m fading away. My consciousness is intact, and I’m still me, but I don’t feel . . . alive.”
“That’s because purgatory is the in-between place dividing life and death,” Hailey explains, back to her beautiful self. I breathe a sigh of relief. At least there’s that. “This is where souls who lose their way come.”
“Like the stranded?” I flip my hands back and forth to make sure I’m not as see-through as I feel.
“No.” Gyun motions for us to follow him out of the audience hall. “The stranded are truly dead. Their han merely holds them back from moving on to their next life. Whereas the souls here are neither dead nor alive.”
“How does that happen?” Ethan asks.
“When someone is severely injured in a traumatic incident—like car accidents, natural disasters, wars—their souls sometimes get lost in purgatory, while their bodies lie in a coma.” Hailey shakes her head.
“They have to find the courage to wake up and continue living or let go and move on to their next life. Until they make their choice, they remain in limbo here.”
“Poor souls.” I shiver.
“And the longer they stay,” Gyun picks up, “the harder it becomes to choose—to remember—because there is no time in purgatory.”
“No . . . time?” I follow him into the phantom streets of the Kingdom of Sky.
“There can be no passage of time without life or death,” the judge says as we round a corner.
“Whoa.” I stumble to a stop. “Are we in the Kingdom of Underworld?”
“Yes, the capital.” Gyun glances around him as though he, too, is surprised by the sudden shift. “As you can see, space becomes jumbled here as well.”
“Then how do you know where we’re going?” Ethan’s brows dip as he takes in the faded metropolis.
“I am the Judge of Tenth Hell. I know the Ten Hells and purgatory like the back of my hand.” Gyun then concedes, “Even so, finding my way here is not easy.”
We trudge through the deserted streets in grim silence. After five minutes or three hours—I can’t tell for the life of me—the modern city abruptly shifts into a wide open field. Hailey gasps at my side, and I grab her hand as my pulse spikes. Purgatory is a creepy-ass place.
“That’s going to take some getting used to,” Ethan mutters.
“It is rather jarring.” Gyun scans the field, then does an about-face. He squints into the distance, then nods in satisfaction. “This way.”
“If you say so.” I follow our guide, tugging Ethan close. I do not want to get lost here. “How did you find the gods anyway?”
“When the gods of Underworld, Water, and Heavens arrived in purgatory, they put themselves into a deep sleep to hide their presence,” the judge answers without slowing down.
My short legs work double time to keep up with his long ones.
“But even in slumber, a trace of their magic leaked through. I didn’t understand what I was sensing for a long time—this place distorted their magic beyond recognition—until I came upon the first sleeping god. ”
I nod, out of breath from marching across the desolate field that stretches on endlessly. “Are we even going in the right—”
“Whoa.” Ethan skids to a stop, shooting an arm out in front of me. A sheer cliff had appeared out of nowhere.
Gyun points toward the horizon. “Yeomla, the god of Underworld, sleeps there.”
“There’s nothing there.” I squint, following the trajectory of his finger. But as soon as the words leave my mouth, I see a long, dry river snaking through a rocky landscape. And a lone, thatch-roofed hanok stands along the curving path. “What is that place?”
“It’s the Tea Shop,” the judge murmurs. “Or the shadow of it, at least.”
“The Tea Shop?” Ethan arches an eyebrow. “The one where they serve the tea of forgetfulness?”
“It sure looks like it. In a creepy, washed-out way. The real Tea Shop is quite charming.” Hailey rises to the tips of her toes for a better look. “But why would Yeomla choose to sleep there?”
Gyun reaches toward her but catches himself and drops his hands back to his sides. “Maybe he was being sentimental.”
“Or maybe he did something he wanted to forget,” I murmur. “If that’s the case, it must be something truly awful. If an immortal god messes up, they gotta mess up big time.”
“Do you think it wise to awaken such a remorseful god?” an echoing voice whispers in my ear.
I spin around with a gasp . . . but there’s no one there.
“Sunny.” Ethan grasps my arm. “What is it?”
“I . . .” I shake my head. “I thought I heard someone . . .”
“What did they say?” Worry pinches his brows.
“They wanted to know if it was wise to awaken a remorseful god,” I whisper, wondering if I’m losing my mind.
“Well,” the voice drawls, “do you?”
This time all four of us whip around to face the most terribly beautiful being, floating naked in the air. I throw a hand up to shield my eyes from his brilliance but squint to peek through my fingers.
Liquid ribbons of vibrant red fabric whip through the air, draping over his shoulders and wrapping around his torso and legs. By the time his feet touch the ground, he is dressed in a resplendent, ruby-red robe.
“Because personally”—he brushes imaginary dirt off his shoulder and walks toward us—“I think it would be a bad idea.”
Gyun drops to his knees and presses his forehead against the ground, his dark, powerful voice unsteady as he says, “Lord Yeomla.”
The god of Underworld.