A delighted squeal has Seokga whirling around. Hwanin is currently doing somersaults in midair, much to the weariness of the trickster god, who cannot for the life of him coax the little menace down. “Hwanin,” he tries, only for the child to snicker at him, rolling into the small kitchen, brushing through the dried flowers hanging from the rafters, which Kisa uses to make the baby’s food. He grimaces as Kisa comes to stand next to him.

“He’ll come down eventually,” she says, watching Hwanin as he hovers over the small, round dining table.

Seokga rather wonders why, for the life of him, he ever desired what others describe as “domestic bliss” as Hwanin begins to shriek, as if horrified to find himself in the air, despite it being his own doing. Brothers. After some fumbling, he manages to drag Hwanin down by his big toe.

“You monster,” Seokga murmurs, kissing the top of Hwanin’s head. The baby squirms happily as Seokga turns back to Kisa. “How’s the book coming along?”

“Just about as well as it was this morning.” Kisa sighs, running a hand through her curls. She’s wearing one of his sweaters and he’ll never get used to the joy he feels at seeing her out of those scratchy SRC Flatliner scrubs. “We might have to try and venture out into the Deepest Stacks tonight…There’s another reference I need.”

Seokga grimaces.

Kisa grins. “Don’t tell me you’re frightened…”

“Never,” he mutters as Kisa steps forward, smoothing out the crease between his eyebrows with her thumb.

“Poor little god, so scared…” Her kiss is soft and sweet, casual in a way that has Seokga’s knees weakening. Whenever she kisses him, simply because she can and she wants to, he wonders how his wicked soul ever came to deserve this. “We can always ask Hwanung to come along with us again.”

Seokga grimaces, remembering the one disastrous Deep Stacks expedition they had with his nephew. He still has not recovered from the music Hwanung chose to blast on his portable speaker while Seokga and Kisa fought off a horde of chubby, salivating baegopeun gwisin. He couldn’t concentrate with heavy rock in the background, and had ended up nearly getting his leg chomped off. “Please, Kisa, no—”

He cuts off as there’s an abrupt knocking at the door of their small cottage. Kisa’s surprise flares down the thread. Hardly anyone visits the cottage in the library, save for Hwanung’s biweekly visits where he stomps into the cottage in his ridiculous studded boots and treks in mud, dust, and other grime along with a dramatic exhaustion and complaints of how “being interim emperor is so tremendously hard.” Seokga never has much sympathy for him. But Hwanung visited two days ago, which means whoever’s at the door, it’s not his nephew.

“I’ll get it,” Seokga says, tightening his grip on his cane.