I stop in the thin alley I came out in and rethink my decision to return to the girls and Taraana. I can still run away from him. He must be one or two degrees over angry. How will I face his anger? I halt my steps and look down at my hands. They are not covered in blood, but they may as well be.

That moment on the rooftop in Marrakech. How could I hug Taraana when I don’t deserve his embrace? What if I sully him? What if I don’t go back? What if I turn around and go back to the Between and—the thought of never seeing Taraana again terrifies me, and the fact that I’m terrified terrifies me.

I am a mess. You heard it here first.

I take a deep breath and feel the cold air cool my insides. Okay. I won’t think about all of this here in this stinky alley. I most certainly won’t have a breakdown here. I put my chin up and start walking again. We chose Gamcheon Culture Village as the location for our safe house for one simple reason: the area is young enough to deter other middle worlders from settling here. The magic here is too thin to sustain them for long, but it is old enough to easily keep us.

I follow the road for a bit before turning from it to climb the first of several flights of stairs. The corners are hairy and the going difficult, but I make it through with minimal wheezing. Finally, I make it to a house with bright pink walls and an equally bright blue roof.

Gamcheon Culture Village started life as a slum, flooded with refugees fleeing the Korean War. A government initiative turned this town built on the side of a mountain into a tourist destination. All the houses here are painted in happy colors reminiscent of a pastel rainbow, and that is just the first and most obvious way the place was transformed. The walls feature murals or graffiti art; the stairs are decorated with paintings. Art installations invite tourists to take pictures, and small cafés do brisk business serving visitors who need a place to sit down and recover from the many steep hills and stairs that compose the town.