Yes, a-a scientific misstep. Perhaps there’s something else to discover instead. She’s experiencing the Red Thread of Fate, after all. Squashing is not at all helpful to understanding such a rare phenomenon, the very act of squashing is not at all conducive to—to what she’d originally set out to do. Researching the red thread in all of its effects. No, the squashing is holding her back. Making her recite smut down their bond, smut—

Have some fun with him while you wait for reincarnation. You need it, and I think you’d like it—”

It’s for science, Kisa tells herself as she exits the sauna and follows the thread to Seokga. For science.

Every single part of her knows she’s lying to herself.

Chapter Twenty

Seokga

The cold water of the secluded cavern bath is bliss on Seokga’s too-hot skin. The private room, by some magic of Yeomra’s—or, possibly, the spa’s interior designer—perfectly resembles a small cave. This spa is certainly more impressive than any mortal one would be.

Stalactites hang from the dark ceiling, and the waters themselves could easily be an underground pool with the way the rocky ground slopes to create both a shallow end and a deep end. The illusion is only ruined by the room’s gray door, which Kisa could come through, but he knows she won’t. Seven hells. People who met only two days ago don’t swim naked together—even if there’s the history of a past life between them.

He tips his head back in the water, floating somewhere in the pool’s middle. The sauna had become too much for him. Seokga doesn’t do well with heat. He despises summer and just barely tolerates the spring. Seokga only likes the cold, and his body revolts when subjected to too much warmth. He is a cold thing, a statue of ice, a frigid god who shrivels in the sunlight.

Except when he’s standing with her. With Hani.

I swear on Hwanung, the god of laws and kept promises, that the sun will shine on us both once again.

Seokga lets himself drift underwater, letting his naked skin soak in the water’s frigidity. When he breaks back through the surface, shaking his head like a dog, there’s a small hitch of someone’s breath.

Blinking back droplets of water hanging from his eyelashes, Seokga’s blurry vision clears to reveal Kisa, who hovers hesitantly near the door. Her eyes are on his crumpled stack of clothes.

Shock jolts through him. Seokga hadn’t thought she would come. He’d only been teasing earlier, convinced that Kisa would rather perish than swim with him…But she’s here. Something flutters in his chest, and Seokga is reminded—as he always is around Kisa—that he actually has a heart. She’s surprised him.

Yoo Kisa can be spontaneous.