What in the world…? Kisa’s lips part in confused wonder a moment before Somi concludes, with no lack of confident gusto, that she is 99.99 percent certain that Shin Korain and Lim Chaeyeon are the perpetrators they’re looking for.

Shaking her head to clear it, Kisa rips—with a difficulty that surprises her—her gaze away from Seokga and focuses it on Somi. “We can’t ignore that .01 percent,” she informs them, absentmindedly stroking a dozing Hwanin’s head. “Inmyunjo Unrulies…”

“…are practically nonexistent,” her god corrects. No, not her god—Seokga. Seokga. Kisa’s cheeks flush. This is horrible. “It was my job, thanks to this one here”—Seokga gives his baby brother a withering glance that reluctantly softens a moment later when Hwanin toothlessly yawns—“to hunt down twenty thousand Unruly monsters. In all the ten thousand something I hunted, I never once came across an inmyunjo. Not even in Gamangnara.”

“Ten thousand?” Kisa can’t help but repeat with a wry smile before she can stop herself. “Not thirty thousand?”

Seokga grimaces and mutters something into her coffee. Kisa attempts to wipe the smile off her face and fails quite miserably.

“There are always exceptions,” Somi rebukes, glaring at Seokga who returns her glower with animosity. “There are Unruly haetae. Why not inmyunjo?”

“Inmyunjo take the values of peace more seriously than any other creature. It’s ingrained in their culture…And it’s too easy,” Seokga snaps. “And anything that’s too easy is wrong.” He glances at Kisa, and the weight of his stare is heavy and sad. “I learned that the hard way.”

Her hands spasm in her lap and she squashes the urge to reach for him.

“We can’t just ignore this, though,” Hajun argues, drumming his fingers on the table.

“No,” admits Kisa. “No, of course not. I’m only saying that we shouldn’t view this case as fully closed yet. We have enough incriminating evidence to focus our attentions on them, but we can’t close our minds off to other possibilities—although I struggle to come up with an explanation as to why they were snooping through Hwanin’s room, or said the things they did…” It’s hard to write with Hwanin in her lap, but Kisa manages. “Seokga, is there any way you might contact Hwanung without revealing what’s happened? If he’s the ‘Boss’ they spoke of, he might let something slip.”

Seokga nods, then curses. “I should have grabbed Hwanin’s phone,” he hisses. “There might have been evidence on there. Texts, calls…Fuck. Fuck!”

“World’s shittiest detective,” Somi sings under her breath, and nudges Kisa with a smile that’s rather smug. “Aren’t you so happy to have me?”

A zip of green shoots down the red thread from Seokga to Kisa, and she is suddenly struck with an intense feeling of jealousy that is most decidedly not her own.