Gods, she is so confused—and confusion has never been an emotion that she handles well. Clear comprehension has become, through years of study and discipline, Kisa’s resting state, as easy as breathing. To be plunged into total incomprehension is like drowning. She cannot breathe like this.

Her muscles burn as she sprints, sweat trickling down the nape of her neck. Kisa barely feels the annoyed glares from the throngs of guests she pushes past on the stairs, doesn’t hear the cries of watch it! and hey! All she hears is the dull pounding of blood in her head, and her own panicked thoughts. Kisa doesn’t even realize where she’s going until she bursts onto Deck 10, legs turned into absolute jelly, hardly able to breathe as she staggers to the sundeck’s rail and leans over it so her tear-blurred eyes can take in the roaring, red Seocheongang below. Even from the highest point on the SRC Flatliner, a mist of the river’s cold water sprays her face.

Before she can stop herself, Kisa is falling back on an old, terrible habit. She’s swinging a leg over the rail, hands clutching the cold iron and feet slotting in between the lower bars as she swings over her other leg. Her hair whips wildly through the air as she perches on Deck 10’s safety railing, hundreds of feet in the air, a deadly drop before her.

But she’s already dead, isn’t she?

And Seokga—he’s so alive. So utterly and painfully alive, with his sharp smiles and glittering eyes. The way he tilts his head back when he laughs. The way his eyes soften when he looks at her, like she is someone more than precious to him, more than the anxiously frazzled ghost she sees herself as.

The way his blood runs red.

A god and a gwisin.

It is an impossible thing.

Isn’t it?

A bitter laugh swells up in her tight throat, along with a painful ache in her chest as she stares down at the water through her tears. At the hospital, when it all became too much, sitting on the skyscraper’s roof had been a way to, by facing imminent death, regain control of her spiraling thoughts. Perhaps it was also a way to punish herself—for not being as capable of withstanding the long hours and stress as she should have been. Now, Kisa doesn’t know what will happen if she falls into the river, but she won’t die. That ship has long since sailed. A tear trickles down her cheek, and Kisa furiously scrubs it away—only for more to follow.