After his own fall from the heavenly kingdom, Seokga fantasized about journeying to Jeoseung and staging what would be an impressive prison break filled with his own fantastic heroics. His father would be waiting for him, and would smile when Seokga—drenched in sweat and splattered with the blood of his enemies—freed him. His handsome face, so like Seokga’s own, would glow with pride as he spread his shackled arms in greeting. “My son,” Mireuk would say. “You are very impressive and I am so extremely proud of you. I now vastly prefer you over your brother and forgive you for locking me up in here in the first place. Let’s go exact our bloody revenge, and stop for some soju on the way.” Then he’d take Seokga’s hand in his, and they’d have some lovely father-son bonding time while sieging Okhwang.

Sometimes, when Seokga is feeling especially evil (an ingrained tendency for trickster gods), he revisits that little fantasy. But he’s gotten better at jerking himself out of it and imagining harmless pranks instead—like gluing Hwanin’s ass to the throne or starting up a grand pyramid scheme to cheat other gods out of their money. The latter was how he spent most of the 2000s. The former is how he spent the last half of the nineties.

Dr. Jang is waiting expectantly.

“No,” says Seokga.

“I don’t believe you,” Dr. Jang says, not unkindly.

“And why’s that?”

A rueful shake of her yellow-bonneted head. “You, specifically, would amaze and baffle Freud. It’s as if your unconscious id rules where your ego should—in consciousness. And the id lacks a certain ethical code that the ego does…All of this is undoubtedly due to your nature as a trickster god. I want you to feel comfortable with me, Seokga. You can tell me the truth, whatever that truth may be. I’m here to help you.” Her voice is warm and earnest, reminding him almost of his mother, Mago.

But the back of his neck is itching fiercely, and Seokga shifts uncomfortably in his chair. Although the therapist’s tone is kind, he automatically shirks away from her words. Nobody truly wants to hear the trickster god admit that he’s not as reformed as the world believes. All the other members of the pantheon are so high and mighty—deities of harmless, fun things, like babies or doors, rainfall or fortune. They fear him, the god of deceit. He doesn’t fit. He never has.

He never will.

Seokga already has the distinct feeling that he’s on thin ice, what with Hwanin being murdered and all—and one misstep will send him plummeting into the cold waters, drowning in loneliness and a familiar bitter hatred.

“I barely think about my father at all,” Seokga lies in a hard voice.