His smile is small and sharp. Dagger-like. If Soo-min knows what is good for her, she will run away. Very fast. “Mere sniveling mortals have no business meddling in the affairs of their gods. I will spend as much time with Kisa as I please, and if you choose to interfere, I’ll make your job as cruise director more of a living hell than it already (and literally) is. Now, if you’ll excuse me”—Seokga takes a menacing step closer to her, letting her hesitate in his shadow, allowing his eyes to darken and fill with ice—“I have a bonnet to buy.”

Chapter Eighteen

Seokga

Seokga is not sure which he hates more: Adult Hwanin or Baby Hwanin. Both are exceptionally annoying, but only one wails so loudly that Seokga fears his ears might fall off. Sitting on a sun chair on Deck 10, Hwanin in his lap, Seokga closes his eyes and wishes for the end. He has tried everything to cease his brother’s relentless crying, but the child seems determined to make his every moment miserable by screaming his head off…

Often, Mireuk had told Seokga that he had been the most difficult out of the two to raise. With Hwanin shrieking loud enough to scare away some of the sundeck’s guests, Seokga feels entirely inclined to vehemently disagree. Hwanin is a nightmare. A raging nightmare shaped into the form of a tiny person.

“Please be quiet,” he begs his brother.

Hwanin’s response is to glare at him.

Seokga glares back and—to his complete and utter shock—Hwanin grins and abruptly cuts off his wailing.

A shadow suddenly falls over his face, and he protectively scoops Hwanin closer to him. Although the mustachioed man leaning over him looks generally harmless with his salt-and-pepper hair and bespectacled eyes, it would be a lie to say that every moment spent on this damn ship isn’t taking a toll on the trickster god. For motives still relatively unknown, his brother was murdered. Seokga has absolutely no desire to be reverted to baby form, and is well aware that he could be next—hence why, before he slept, he transformed his cane into a sword and slept with it in one hand while waking every ten minutes to ensure he—and the baby—were unharmed. Seokga is running on fumes and caffeine at this point: Apart from waking every ten minutes, Hwanin also apparently took a great delight in screeching his lungs out during random points in the nighttime.

An effective torture method. Seokga took copious notes.

So, needless to say, Seokga is inherently suspicious of this man, even as he takes in the white suit and its shoulder stripes, indicative of the ship’s captain. A gold name tag indeed reads, Captain Lee.

“Is there something in particular you want?” Seokga snaps, very rudely.