“Seokga didn’t do anything wrong,” she tells her quietly. “But I’ve been—keeping something from him. From…all of you.” Pained, Kisa meets Hajun’s eyes. She knows what he believes, and she’s never tried to tell him otherwise, thinking a lie by omission wasn’t so bad if it made the broken boy feel less alone. She doesn’t want to tell them what happened that night on the roof. But friends, she thinks, taking them in—the gumiho, the idol, and the god—confide in one another. And this might be one of her last chances before the cruise ends and she leaves for the DAR queue. She takes a deep breath. “That night, I didn’t fall. I didn’t jump.” Kisa clutches her shot glass so hard that it could shatter and she wouldn’t be at all surprised. “I was pushed.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Kisa

For a terrible moment, nobody speaks. Hajun is frozen, dazed eyes beginning to clear as he stares at Kisa, who trembles under the similar stares of Somi and Seokga. Even Hwanin begins to make a soft, sniffling sound, bottom lip trembling as he buries his face in the crook of his brother’s neck. Nervously, Kisa clears her throat. “The roof was my sanctuary, and I won’t pretend that I didn’t understand the dangers of sitting alone up there like that…There was an approximate ninety-seven percent chance of falling. I just…I needed it. I hadn’t gotten help, like I should have, so I-I used the roof.” She hates how weak, how pathetic, she sounds and avoids their eyes. “That night, I was exhausted. I was…well, I certainly wasn’t in a good place.”

The memory of that exhaustion, the kind that went deeper than her bones, threatens to send tears spilling down her cheeks. Kisa blinks rapidly. “I was on the edge, staring down at the city. Seoul. It was always so beautiful at night…I didn’t realize that I wasn’t alone up there.” Her heart begins to pound and her palms begin to sweat, black spots beginning to overtake her vision as panic claws at her insides, much like the way it did in the elevator. This is why she does not think of that night. Her voice is so unbearably thin as she tries to rush past the worst part, as if speed can force away the flashbacks that seem to lurk always just outside the edges of her consciousness, needing only one reminder of her murder to infiltrate her mind. Captain Lee’s killing had sent her over the edge, and Kisa fights not to fall from it again as she blurts out: “All of a sudden, there was a hand on my back, pushing me into the air…And then I was falling…” Her vision swims—