“You figured it out before,” the gumiho says then sighs, shaking her head. Her voluminous brown hair shines underneath the lights of the city, in the incoming red and blue flashes of the ambulance. “But you dismissed it, and now you’ve done the puzzle all wrong. Try again.”

Her spine stiffens. As it begins, Kisa sucks in a shallow breath, tasting something bittersweet at the back of her throat. It reminds her of her stepmother’s fixation with anti-aging creams.

Reminds her of her stepmother’s fixation with anti-aging creams.

This time, when Kisa falls to the ground, her body doesn’t shatter into hundreds of pieces. She lands on her feet in front of Hani, who cocks her head. “See? You’ve cast aside a very large clue, darling. And I’m wondering if you need your eyes checked if you can look at this mystery and consider it correctly solved.”

“No,” Kisa says at the other woman’s meaningful look. “It was Hwanung and Soo-min. The two murders are unconnected. They have to be.”

Hani rolls her eyes. As the sirens begin to wail in the distance, her pink-polished fingers close around Kisa’s nail-bitten ones. “Come with me,” she says, tone brooking no room for any argument. Kisa has no choice but to run after Hani into the dark city, racing through the streets that become less and less familiar—the infrastructure transforming from glittering skyscrapers and sleek roads to grungy sidewalks and significantly smaller buildings. They’re no longer in Seoul. A cherry blossom floats by the two women as they run, somehow keeping pace with them before veering off toward a shop with a sign reading Weapons, War Armor, and Other Wants where a blurry, dark-haired man seems focused on breaking the doorknob to allow himself entry.

“Where are we?” Kisa asks, not recognizing the new city.

“New Sinsi.”

That can’t be true. This looks nothing like New Sinsi, nothing at all. “Are you sure? I—”

Hani grins over her shoulder at her. “This is my New Sinsi. Welcome to the nineties, Kisa.”

“How—what—how is this possible?” Kisa splutters as Hani drags her down a seedy alleyway toward a dilapidated apartment complex. “It shouldn’t be—I shouldn’t be able to remember what New Sinsi looked like in the nineties. My mind shouldn’t be able to—to generate such sharp images, not like this. Everything about this…is defying the laws of dreams.” For instance, the world remains the same even when Kisa looks away for ten seconds. It’s completely fascinating from a scientific standpoint, the suggestion being that past lives might resurface through unconscious dreaming, but utterly baffling from Kisa’s personal perspective.