“I see,” replies his therapist, and he has the feeling that behind those ridiculous glasses, she really does see more than he ever intended to reveal in the first place.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Kisa

Kisa snatches Hwanin down by his foot as he rises into the air in his sleep. She does so without missing a word of the muffled conversation beyond the bedroom door. It’s wrong of her to eavesdrop—she knows that, of course she knows that. It’s an invasion of privacy, a terrible thing to do, listening in on something like this…But the voices carry, and something about the conversation has struck her as odd.

Not the part where Seokga called her beautiful, although it’s constantly playing on a repeat in her head. Beautiful. Beautiful. He thinks I’m beautiful. Kisa knows she’s pretty, in a factual sort of way, but that’s never stopped her from overanalyzing the slightly uneven curl pattern of her hair, or the way her eyes are constantly rimmed with some form of exhaustion. To hear what Seokga truly thinks of her has her heart fluttering in an odd and spastic rhythm that would, if she were alive, worry her.

Just friends, she reminds herself, but cannot deny that a small, secret part of her is entirely relieved that she no longer must keep up the tiring pretense of squashing. Friends, after all, are allowed to…to feel things that not-friends mustn’t.

Hearing him call her beautiful…It has sent warmth blossoming in her chest and her cheeks, but it’s certainly not the part of the conversation she marked as odd.

Perhaps it’s the way the therapist has initiated this conversation as “off the record.” Perhaps it’s the focus on the Mad God, the subtle prodding toward…something. A manipulation. She gnaws on her bottom lip and presses her ear back to the door.

By the time Dr. Jang leaves, Kisa has the beginnings of a tension headache. As Seokga, with a look of exhausted relief, opens Hwanin’s bedroom door, Kisa wastes no time.

“What sort of creature is Dr. Jang?”

She watches as he blinks once, then twice. “A shaman.”

“Whose patronage?”

“Hwanin’s, I suspect.”

“You don’t know?” Could it be Hwanung?

Orange crests down the thread, and Kisa stiffens when she feels Seokga’s irritation as he eyes her. “Dr. Jang is not on the list of suspects,” he tells her in a voice lacking some of its usual warmth—enough for Kisa to balk momentarily underneath his gaze. “She’s not a claw-carrying creature.”

She takes a small breath. “I wasn’t trying to imply that she’s who we’re looking for,” Kisa says, although they both know it’s a lie. “It just crossed my mind. She seemed unusually interested in the Mad God, and broke more than one code of conduct—”