Gil-young wakes up with a headache like rattling pebbles in her skull. The car smells of smoke and scorched metal. She can't move, and there is no one to help her, but she is not alone.
.
She has never particularly believed in eternal life, though she has hoped for it. Hoped that when she dies, she'll see exactly one face flash before her eyes. And if anything must stay, forever, let it be that.
There's so much blood in the human body. So much weakness. So much love, and Gil-young slams her slipping hands down once more, trying to put the life back inside the old man's ribcage.
She owes at least that to Hwa Pyung.
.
She and Yoon help him back from the bridge. He stumbles, and she looks over the top of his head to Yoon, whose gaze burns with sympathy. Hwa Pyung doesn't speak; they don't ask him to.
It seems like injustice, that the stiff-backed priest knows more than she does about comfort. It's just that she has been alone so long, chasing down leads instead of life, and she doesn't know what to say when the man she might care for as a man collapses in on himself. He lost his father. When he finds him, he only loses him again.
Gil-young, with her longing for the sight of one face, should know what to say to that.
.
Instead, she chases leads.
Into the blank stare of the woman with power in her hands and nothing human in her eyes. Into the secrets of decades past. Into the yawning tunnel, where holiness shrouds evil, now as always.
Trust no one. Her mother did not tell her that, but maybe she should have. Maybe her mother should not have trusted anyone, not even the stuttering little boy on the dusty road.
Especially not him.
Gil-young ducks lower in her car, her fist against her ribcage, trying to put something back inside. She can't wish for a change in the past anymore, not completely. Not since she has come to care for him—for both hims. Not since she fights their battles.
(She still isn't certain about eternal life.)
.
At his father's funeral, she thinks Hwa Pyung has lost himself, too.
Should she take his hand? Should she pray? Should she tell him that his father lives again, somewhere far from here?
(She has no skill for any of these things.)
Doubt creeps, fear freezes. Gil-young keeps fighting. She's probably going to die this way. At least death comes quickly, no matter what comes after it.
Her partner, always open-faced and kind, is trembling and sweating beside her, flooring the gas. He is not well, she realizes. He is not himself.
.
(These leads and lives are going to kill her.)
Gil-young wakes up bleeding, gaze scattered, thinking of her makeshift friends, their eyes like children's eyes, and their hearts like men's. She calls out, and there is no one to hear her—
But she is not alone.