“It gives me great delight to refuse your offer.” Seokga smiles coldly. “I couldn’t be less interested in taking a trip on your little boat.”

“It’s not a little boat. It has ten decks—”

“I don’t care.”

Yeomra sucks on his teeth, glowering although he’s sinking lower in his seat. Seokga’s don’t fuck with me grin, he is pleased to note, seems to have a universal effect on both mortals and death deities alike. Smugly, Seokga straightens the collar of his slightly rumpled black trench coat and congratulates himself on a job well done.

Yet across from him, Hwanin catches his eye, and his expression has Seokga’s heart sinking before the words even emerge. “Too bad,” his older brother says without an ounce of sympathy. “I’ve already bought three tickets. We leave tomorrow morning.”

“I’d rather skin myself alive,” hisses Seokga on instinct, and then pauses a moment later, brows knitting together. “Wait. Three?”

Chapter Three

Kisa

Yoo Kisa had once thought she knew suffering.

But that was before her first turn-around day.

Aboard the SRC Flatliner, Kisa hustles down the ship’s “I-95”—a long corridor spanning Deck 0, and the main point of travel for loading supplies and luggage on and off the ship. She grits her teeth as she pushes the luggage cart down the humid hall, where even the white-painted walls drip with sweat. One would think the dead pack lightly, but alas. It seems Jeoseung’s CEO insists the Flatliner’s esteemed guests board with every trivial item they could possibly want. Clothing from their past lives. Books. Laptops. Entire TVs. Once, Kisa had the pleasure of loading an entire liquor cabinet onto the ship.

She huffs and puffs through her teeth as she reaches the end of the I-95 and passes the luggage cart on to a solemn-faced grim reaper. He’s dressed in a smart black suit and a bowler cap, which he tips slightly in greeting before wheeling the luggage through the ship door leading to a lowered metal plank, which will deposit him—and the suitcases—onto the pavement of Port Jeoseung, where the disembarking guests will have the opportunity to bring their belongings with them to whatever waits past Port Jeoseung’s terminal. Kisa pants, wiping her brow with a wrist as she lingers by the door, letting a cold kiss of underworld air cool her hot skin.