You're in a car with a beautiful boy,

and you're trying not to tell him that you love him, and

you're trying to

choke down the feeling, and you're trembling, but he

reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist,

and you feel

your heart taking root in your body,

like you've discovered something

you don't even have a name for

- Richard Siken

i.

Ha Jin has no plan. She escapes the museum gallery at last, still burning under Yeon Hwa's stare. Yeon Hwa didn't know her. None of them know her. None of them remember.

Ha Jin has no plan, and she leaves before the erstwhile Queen Yoo sees her. She limps along the pavement with tears beginning to bubble up and over. She swipes at her wet cheeks.

Who can explain this? They are all gathered in perfect preservation…Wook as inscrutable as ever, Yeon Hwa as haughty, all the rest as rich.

And So is nowhere to be seen.

If she dreamed it, how did she get it so right?

If she did visit Goryeo, how are all of them here?

She needs to find Ji Mong again, more urgently than ever. Not because he will tell her who does and who does not exist—she has answered that question for herself.

No, she needs Ji Mong because Ji Mong may be able to answer her questions on reincarnation.

They seem to be the only two who knowingly walk through time.

She wonders how to find Baek Ah. Because he must be real too, mustn't he? Baek Ah…please God, Eun too, and Jung…all the ones who loved her simply and forever, or at least as long as forever lasted for them.

"Miss—are you alright?"

Ha Jin blinks away her tears. This voice, too, is familiar, but she doesn't place it until she sees the speaker.

A waitress, hair piled high atop her head in a springy knot.

Chae Ryung.

Many thoughts collide in Ha Jin's mind. The first is that Won was nowhere to be seen at the party, though she caught a glimpse of Yo—

—and the second is the memory of how Chae Ryung betrayed her, and paid a price higher than any Hae Soo would have set.

She has trained herself not to be shocked. The numbness helps, with that. "I…" Think fast, Ha Jin. You threw yourself into this, and there will be no one else to get you back out. "I was supposed to meet my boyfriend." She sighs dramatically, channeling a little of Yeon Hwa's loftiness as best she can. "And he didn't show."

"At that party?" Chae Ryung asks, nodding in the direction of the glowing museum lights. "Seems…fancy."

Chae Ryung is wearing fire engine red lipstick, very dressy for a waitress. Ha Jin suspects that Chae Ryung knows more of the party than she lets on.

"Yes." Another sigh. And now, the gamble. "I decided I'd just meet him at his house, but I always get so mixed up…curse you, Baek Ah!"

Chae Ryung takes the bait. "Baek Ah? Oh, he…he's a regular at the coffee shop where I work." She sketches an arc with her hand as if she's holding a paintbrush. "Likes to draw?"

"Yes." Ha Jin dabs at her cheek. As with Wook, it's hard to tell if Chae Ryung is playing some sort of game, or if there really is a conflict in her heart, after all this time.

Maybe she and Wook and Yeon Hwa can feel the pull of time's magnet, whether they remember anything or not.

"He lives a few miles from here. Let me call you a taxi, unni."

If Ha Jin shuts her eyes, she will see Chae Ryung, misshapen and bleeding and gone. She does not shut her eyes. "Gomabseubnida," she says. "Thank you."

ii.

He leaves Mu's house with a heat like fever rising in his blood. He hasn't seen his father yet; he's never really had his father's blessing.

It isn't his father whom he goes to visit now.

Years don't change her habits. She hosts many meetings and opportunities for social prostration with the other chaebol wives, none of whom dare to cross her.

But every night—late into the night—she takes tea (and liquor) alone in her room, and reads.

So is not much of a reader. Kang boarding school couldn't beat it into him—not for lack of effort. It's Yo who inherited her intellectual hunger. Yo, like So, has to try to be perfect in her eyes.

Yo, unlike So, succeeds.

He picks the lock, which is reckless, but the pounding in his head won't let him think straight.

So slips past the entrance to the kitchen, where the stainless steel clatter is already in full swing for tomorrow's breakfast and any American "brunches" that the Wang household sees fit to hold for its foreign visitors.

There is a back stair to her elaborate chambers. So takes it.

He feels eager, like he always does, like this time will change anything.

He raps his bruised knuckles on her door and waits until one of the staff opens it. The girl blanches when she sees him, but So stares her into silence.

"Who is it?" rings an impatient voice he knows too well, and his mother comes into view.

She goes paler, too, but not like the maid. No—Yoo's face hardens like white marble, and So has to check the urge to drop to his knees and beg.

There will, he thinks bitterly, be plenty of time for begging.

"What are you doing here?" she hisses, when she has dismissed the maid with a sharp gesture.

He's still in his travel clothes, dark jeans and low boots and a leather jacket with blood ground into the cuffs. He feels about five years old.

"I've come home," So offers humbly.

"You have no home here," she says coldly. "You're a man now. A twisted one, yes, but a man. Your home is the streets of Seoul, or Incheon. Not Daegu."

"I'm not asking permission." He hooks his thumbs in his pockets, as if bracing himself. "I know that Father is dying."

It is a gamble. Not one that Mu, probably, would want him to make.

But Yoo's face doesn't flicker with surprise and So knows he's only telling her what she already knows.

Already knows, and has no doubt been using to her own ends.

"So you came back to assert your usefulness to me in this troubling time?" His mother lifts her eyebrows. "Where are your gifts? You always bring some pyemul." She scoffs. "Something to soften the blow of your visit."

"A storm's coming," So tells her. His bruises seem to have spread from his fingers to his whole body over the course of a few moments. "I think it is likely your storm." He raises his eyes to hers again. He had let his gaze slip to the ground. "And I am your son."

The corner of her lip curls; a sneer, not a smile. "Hardly," she says. "Now, get out."

iii.

"Come away from the window! Your nose will get cold."

Kiha does not listen. His hands are pressed against the glass, too, and Min Seo sighs. No matter how many times she reminds him not to get his hopes up, he doesn't listen.

Then again, he's only four.

She turns back to the stove, where a late pot of tea is boiling. Their apartment is small and tidy. It could be larger, if she took all the money Kiha's father offers her.

It could be much smaller, if his father had shunned them when everyone else did.

Still, nothing is perfect.

"Kiha." She sighs. "I told you. It's past your bedtime. Appa isn't coming tonight."

iv.

He can't stop thinking about the girl. Two minutes at a train station, and apparently Baek Ah, long the unsinkable ladies' man, is weighed down.

He'll have to dispatch his spies and find the girl with the stony glare in Daegu.

He is, after all, a believer in fate.

He's also a believer that Jung and Eun are wily bastards who will do their best to get out of anything. Here he is, at yet another gala for Wang-Hwangbo, and his potential socialization prospects are Yo, who despises him, and Wook, who…

Well. Baek Ah's relationship with Wook, ever since Wook's girlfriend Myung Hee died two years ago, is fraught.

Baek Ah, of course, was the only one who knew that Wook was cheating on her before she even got the diagnosis.

No, he has nothing to say to Wook tonight. Wook has a flawless reputation and Baek Ah has never told his secret, even though it burns in the space between his ribs every time he remembers it. Strange, that So is such an outcast but is undyingly loyal, while Wook is welcomed and trusted by all.

Baek Ah sips at his drink, and tries to forget Myung Hee and the girl at the train station, two bright and different stars in a constellation of complications. He needs someone easy to flirt with tonight, someone to take his mind off things.

That's the trick to being a ladies' man, after all.

v.

The door of the coatroom is barely ajar, but Chae Ryung pulls away from Won to stare through the gap.

He hums with irritation.

"Is Baek Ah here?"

"Yes, of course he's here. Why, do you want to have us change places?"

"Strange," Chae Ryung murmurs.

"What is?" Won asks, stroking her hair as one might stroke a dog. "That one so handsome as I would love you?"

"No." She is absent-minded, and she forgets to praise him. "I saw a girl outside. She was looking for Baek Ah, and she said he wasn't here…I directed her to his house."

"Baek Ah always has a girl at his house." Won purses his lips. "What of it?"

Chae Ryung shakes her head, and cuddles up against him again, amid the coats. "Nothing. Just—a feeling. I don't know."

vi.

Baek Ah's house is a modern structure, all clean lines and soft, cool shades, even when seen at night.

He is an artist in this world too. Ha Jin is comforted by that. She slips off her heels so that she can approach on silent feet. The front door is, incredibly, unlocked.

She almost turns back. Is she delusional? Does she have any right to meddle in the lives of those who know nothing about her?

I had a child there.

We had a child.

It is enough.

Ha Jin opens the door.

The sound of running water filters into the hallway. Ha Jin follows the sound along a tiled parquet floor, until the hall opens up into a room that stretches up to the second story, ringed by an elaborate loft railing. In the center of the room is a pool, endlessly rippled by a fountain.

Her chest pinches with longing.

And then, a splash.

He rises out of the water, skin glistening, a slash of hair plastered across his face. When he runs his fingers through it, smoothing it away from his forehead, the scar on his face is exactly the same.

Ha Jin stops breathing.

What happens next happens quickly. He sees her, barefoot on the tiles in her ill-fitting red dress, and he hoists himself out of the pool with lethal efficiency to tower over her, eyes flashing.

She wants—

Well, there are many things she wants. She wants to raise her lips to his and breathe his name into his mouth. She wants to trace the familiar map of scars across his shoulders and chest, scars she has kissed, and tell him that she isn't going to die, not this time, not if she can help it.

She wants to remind him that he used to be a king, or that in some eternal way, he still could be.

Ha Jin knows that she can do none of this.

"Who are you?" he growls. It reminds her of how he was at the beginning and at the end, half threat, and half the pain of a broken bone.

Before Goryeo, she never thought of herself as clever. She was skilled as a makeup artist, and her exams were never anything to be ashamed about, but she wasn't brilliant.

In Goryeo, she began as a child. Foolish and brave.

Now, she has to take a different tack.

A name hurls itself at her out of the depths of a past. Ha Jin risks it all, and says, as calmly as a person can who would sooner be sobbing, "Park Soo-kyung sent me."

She prays that So will recognize the name of the old general.

Mercifully, he does. He takes a step back, a muscle jumping in his neck—still in attack mode, but waiting to learn more. "Is that true?"

"How else would I know where to find you?" Ha Jin flattens her hands against her thighs. "You need eyes on the inside. I'm just here to help."

"I could call him right now and test this story," So tells her, punctuating his words with a jab of his finger. But he's only wearing sodden shorts; he doesn't have his phone.

Ha Jin forces her shoulders to lift in a shrug. "Go ahead. But you need all the help you can get, so you might as well take mine."

"And you know this—how?"

Because I know you, because I used to watch you sleep, because I love you, I love you—"Because that's what I was told. Am I wrong? Are your brothers not vying for the crown? Of the business, I mean."

So paces like a watchful cat, his eyes never leaving her. She knows that somewhere in his heart he must want to trust her. He always did, back then. From almost the first moment they met.

"Come back tomorrow," he says, so coldly that her heart almost falters. "We'll talk then."

He isn't well. His face is drawn tight with misery. She wonders if he's been with his mother. Only his closest blood could hurt him like that.

His closest blood, and her.

"Please," she says, imbuing it with every touch of gentleness that ever nearly saved him, "I don't have anywhere else to stay."