“Hwanung is a little shit,” Seokga answers, rolling his eyes in great disgust. “Although he did for a while, he now refuses to accept that his occupation is the god of laws and kept promises.” In other words, he’s the divine equivalent of an angsty teenager. It is baffling to him how the delinquent can possibly have been the founder of the original Sinsi on Mount Taebaek, or the mayor of New Sinsi when he can barely remember to do his laundry. “He wants to be the god of sex, drugs, and rock and roll.” The only time Hwanung seems to act as a law god is, conveniently, when he is trailing Seokga and attempting to catch him red-handed in wrongdoing. Gone are the days of Hwanung copying his father down to wearing beautiful hanboks even to the simplest occasions. The god now prefers—to both his father’s and uncle’s dismay—faded T-shirts advertising mortal bands that do little but scream into their microphones.

It’s horrific.

Hajun looks surprised. “Can gods change their occupations?” he asks.

“No,” snort Seokga and Kisa at the same time. There’s an exception, of course, but not just anybody can become heavenly emperor.

Even if they try very hard by, say, instigating a coup.

Kisa hesitates, and as the footage continues to show Hwanin angrily speaking into the phone, she picks up a notebook lying on the table. Seokga watches as she grabs a pen and flips to an empty page, writing down Hwanung in smudged, scrawling letters, followed by an almost frantic question mark, the dot nearly puncturing through the paper. Briefly, he remembers Hani’s looping font as she scribbled notes on his couch, puzzling over Suk Aeri’s frustratingly obscure clue from their Daegeumsan excursion. Kisa’s writing, he notes with twists of guilt and disappointment in his gut, is messier. As if her hand is trying, futilely, to keep up with the whitewater river of her mind.

“Interesting,” muses Somi, jerking his attention away from Kisa’s scrawl. “Do you think the crown prince did it?”

Seokga frowns—but his gaze is immediately drawn back to the screen. Hwanin has pocketed his phone into the folds of his hanbok with a black scowl and is taking a deep breath. Seokga holds one of his own as he watches his brother’s gaze slide to somewhere down the corridor…and as his eyes flare wide, blue and panicked and dotted with stars.

So rarely has Seokga seen Hwanin panic.

On the monitor, his brother stretches his arms out wide. The time reads 8:32 p.m.