She pins him with a glare. Hajun doesn’t seem to notice, face suddenly stricken with some realization as he hurries over to her.

“Kisa,” he whispers urgently, “what if he’s horrible?”

“Thank you, Hajun, that is precisely what I needed to hear right now.”

“No, really,” her friend insists, grabbing her shoulder with wide, worried eyes. “What if he’s one of the dokkaebi? Or an imoogi? Kisa, what if he shifts into a giant serpent and eats you? Worse…what if he’s one of the demons you’ve told me about? An eoduksini?”

“There hasn’t been a recorded eoduksini spotting since spring 1992,” Kisa replies factually, although a distinct sweat has broken out on the back of her neck, dampening her bun of curls. They are, after all, in the underworld. Although the eoduksini are kept under lock and key in the Torture Department, it’s possible one could slip out…

No. She shouldn’t let her friend frighten her. Hajun has taken the whole creatures-from-mythology-exist learning curve with about as much grace as a beached whale. Kisa is a respected shaman…or she was. At any rate, she is perfectly capable of handling herself.

“What if he’s an inmyunjo?” wails Hajun, who had nearly shat himself the first time he’d come across one of the winged creatures on board—even though Unruly inmyunjo are nonexistent. “Or a gumiho? What if he steals your soul?”

Kisa is exceptionally conscious that footsteps are now echoing down the corridor’s hall, that the red thread is practically choking her finger, that she is very possibly about to experience something hardly ever documented in any academic literature—something that will gain her significant conversance regarding a rare phenomenon and, possibly, impressive accolades should she somehow manage to share such valuable knowledge. And Hajun is ruining it. “Please be quiet,” she mutters to him. “You’re interrupting a pivotal moment in mythos experience—”

Her friend ignores her. Breathing hard, Hajun looks wildly around the clinic’s small front room and, before Kisa can stop him, launches himself over the counter and grabs a paperweight. “It’s okay, Kisa,” he pants. “I’ll protect you—”

It’s as if Hajun’s voice plummets underwater, becoming muted and unintelligible as something—something so very important—shifts. She’s only experienced something like this once before, this feeling of a great and terrible change…The moment before she fell.

It’s as if the world is slowing again, as if the opening doors are not blasting open as they truly are, but instead gradually swinging open as a tall figure steps out of shadows, every step a slow-motion montage that causes Kisa’s breath to catch in her throat.