or he had arrived at his own conclusion

and that was

for him a relief even if he was separated

even if his hands were frozen

even if the wind knocked him down

- Gerald Stern

DAEGU, KOREA – SEO DISTRICT

i.

Weaving through a crowded train station is no easy task, especially for someone who's been out of the metropolitan rush for a long time. Woo Hee ducks and bobs, one slim travel-bag tight under her arm. She has a change of clothes and a few hundred thousand won, which will cover a night's stay. The address for the hotel is crumpled in her hand. The contact will meet her there.

Chae Ryung. Chae Ryung. That was the only name she'd been given, and she turns it over in her mind to pass the time. Calm and focus are the only things that will serve her, but the narrow lines concealed under her sleeve reveal that Woo Hee has never been an expert at calm.

Only at precision.

She turns a corner and collides against another traveler. It's no fault of hers, no lack of precision—this mi-chin-nom was completely oblivious to where he was going. She keeps an iron grip on her luggage and glares stormily at him, biting back the sharp words on her tongue.

"I'm sorry," he says, formally. Formally? She's surprised. Her clothes are dirt-cheap and her eye makeup is several layers too heavy. She looks like a geol-le-nyeon. That's the point.

As for this crazy bastard—he's anything but cheap. He's wearing a loose, flowing jacket over a silk shirt patterned with shadowy flowers, and there are multiple rings on his graceful fingers. His hair is smooth over his brow, and his skin is—well, it's flawless.

He's beautiful.

Woo Hee is not here to gawk, or to make eyes, or whatever she has found herself doing in a very short span of time. She's come to Daegu for a particular—and particularly dangerous—mission.

"Thanks," she says, almost gruffly, and would push past him.

But one of those elegant hands catches her wrist and holds her fast. "Buy you a drink for your troubles?" He has no right to such a warm smile. No right at all. "It's a cold day."

She frees her wrist instead of leaning into his touch. "I'm in a hurry."

That smile again. "I can see that." He releases her. "May we meet again." And then he actually sketches a little bow, lowers his expertly coiffed head a couple inches, making Woo Hee's traitorous heart flutter.

She sprints off without looking back.

DAEGU, KOREA – JUNG DISTRICT

ii.

One eggshell-thin teacup slides off the tray and shatters in a sparkle of flaky shards.

Silence falls like snow, broken only by the sound of the maid's terrified breathing.

Sinmyeongsun Yoo, Wang Yoo by marriage, smiles.

"That cup," she says, in a tone as thin and sharp as the fractured porcelain, "Was from a two-hundred year-old set, gifted to me by my grandmother."

"Mrs. Wang," the maid whispers. "Please…I am so—"

Yoo stoops. Her white linen dress remains, somehow, uncreased when she straightens her spine. The largest fragment of the teacup is in her hand.

The ladies around her—gathered for an informal book-group, as they did, twice-monthly, at the Wang's palatial penthouse home—collectively gasp.

Blood drips from the meticulous, deliberate slice across the flesh of her oval palm. Her face hasn't changed at all, not even a flinch or twitch of muscle. She drops the shard, lifts one stilettoed foot to cross the wreckage, and holds the wound at the maid's eye-level.

"The whole set," Yoo explains gently, "Will have to be packed away. Unusable." She presses her hand against the maid's face, dragging a wet red smear across nose and lips and chin, and finally, down to stain the pale uniform blouse.

The younger woman whimpers, but does not dare to move.

"Clear away this mess," Yoo says. "And call a doctor."

iii.

Baek Ah takes one step inside the door and thunders, "Eun! Get down here!"

The place reeks of sweat and spicy noodles and beer. Gingerly, Baek Ah sets down his polished leather luggage in the entryway and skirts around a heap of empty food cartons.

Footsteps sound on the stairs. In peacetime—peacetime being when Eun and his brother-in-arms, Wang Jung, are kept firmly under control—the loft apartment is a luxurious haven. The open floor plan allows for lounging and parties, centered around the gem of chaebol heir hangouts: an enormous indoor pool sunk in the middle of the floor and ringed with three different kinds of marble in graduated steps. The winding staircase that curves above the ever-bubbling fountain leads to the sleeping quarters, which are arranged under a constellation of skylights.

Baek Ah considers it his second home.

At the moment, he's considering tearing the whole thing down.

"Aish," he mutters, kicking at a rumpled towel. "You good-for-nothing little…"

"Hyung!"

This is Baek Ah's trouble: his heart is easily melted. All it takes is the sight of the ultimate culprit, Eun, tumbling downstairs, and…he's lost all his anger. Most of it, anyway.

He submits to Eun's fierce hug and tries to remember to scold. "You call me hyung as you welcome me to a place in this state?"

Eun glances ruefully behind him. "Ah…OK. You came at a bad time. No offense!" he adds, skipping out of the way of Baek Ah's reprimanding backhand. "Jung and I had a few visitors last night."

"Jung lives here now?"

"No." Eun rolls his eyes. "Like the Mother Dragon would ever allow that. He just…stays, from time to time. We didn't know you were coming back!"

It has been a long time since Baek Ah was in Daegu. As a child, he expected to pick up where his father (and more to the point, though less publicly, his mother) left off. They were the chief design team for Wang-Hwangbo International Textiles, and not a day has gone by since his father's death that Baek Ah hasn't felt that larger hand guiding his pen and paints.

Mother still lives, of course. But she hated the city, and the business, and the Wangs most of all, and so she lives in the countryside now, and does not answer her phone.

Lately, it has felt like Baek Ah is following in her footsteps. Tucking himself away into mountain villas. Surrounding himself with comforts. Mother's comforts take the form of exotic teas and silk-screen embroidery; Baek Ah prefers more…vivacious entertainment, but the fact remains: he has been gone.

And he isn't quite ready to tell Eun why he's come back again.

"Call the housekeeper," he says. "I'm not going to live in a sty."

Eun misses the chiding tone by a mile and settles on the kernel of a promise. "You're staying!"

"Yes. I'm staying."

At least for as long as So needs him. And Baek Ah has a feeling—an artist's haunted predilection of the future—that the need may be great.

iv.

"Miss, the exhibits are closed today. Private event."

Ha Jin shakes her head. "What—I just—" The notebook in her hand seems like the simplest excuse. "Student project."

"Private event." The guard is already getting impatient. Behind him, delivery workers are carting in bolts of what look like…textiles?

A strange prickle runs along Ha Jin's spine. She cranes her neck to get a better look, and asks, in a less insistent tone, "What kind of event?"

The guard glares. "Who are you, to get to know?"

She waves the notebook again. "I just need something to tell my teacher, ahjussi."

The guard sucks at his teeth, lips poking outward. "Textiles," he says. "It's a tradeshow for the new season."

"I…manage acquisitions for some prominent clients…"

"Oh!" she squeaks, because a little touch of aegyo won't hurt. She has the face for it, the wide, perpetually child-like eyes and rosebud mouth. It's strange to wear a face that looks so young, when Ha Jin feels anything but. "That's perfect! I'm a design major. Can you tell me who's featured?"

The guard is charmed enough. "Wang-Hwangbo International," he says, a little puffed up, glad to represent his museum. "Surely you've heard of them."

…

She has.

…

At home, Ha Jin's heart beats too fast. The doctor has cleared her for any heart-related issues, but sometimes she thinks about how it killed her last time, the perpetual pulse and the fear and the love, all things that seem tied together with this fickle lump of flesh in her chest. She sits on the edge of her bed, listening to her mother rattling around in the kitchen, the rise and fall of her father's voice as he discusses the weather.

She needs to find her own place to live.

She needs to find her way into the museum tonight.

Ha Jin swallows down something too hopeful to be a sob.

She has no idea what she will find there.

v.

"My love. Are you sure you don't want rest?"

Her hand is ice-cold on Taejo's forehead. Her left hand; the right is neatly bandaged across the palm.

"You're hurt," he says, avoiding her question. It seems safer, to avoid that question.

Yoo's eyes bore into him, sloe-black. She's never had a soft gaze, not even when he was young and she was younger, when she whispered lovely nothings to him in gardens atop skyscrapers, and won enough of his heart to keep all of him. "It is just a scratch," she says. "I'll wear gloves tonight."

He sits up. He had woken from a restless nap to find her standing over him. "I'll be ready in half an hour," he promises. He told Mu he would be there, and he never breaks his word to Mu.

vi.

"Call for you, Mr. Wang."

Yo stretches. There is still an hour before the gathering—which is at a museum, of all places, because his father has no sense of modernity—and he is weighing carefully the risk of having a third drink. He cannot afford to have dulled senses tonight, or any night.

Won, of course, is not allowed to drink at all. He is loose-lipped when he drinks, and even Won holds too many secrets these days for such carelessness.

"I'll take the call," he says, and waits for the transfer. It's probably IMG, offering him the Givenchy winter campaign for Southeast Asia. He's been waiting for that ask, though he probably won't take the deal. Time to change careers, in a manner of speaking.

"Mr. Wang."

"Has the agent arrived?"

"Yes. She arrived in Seo-gu a few hours ago."

"Excellent. Anything else?"

The man on the other end of the line hesitates. Yo snaps to attention. Reluctance is never a good thing. "Tell me," he orders.

"Your brother was seen in Daegu today."

"Jung?" Yo asks. It's a venomous pleasantry, and a last line of defense. He knows the man doesn't mean Jung.

"Wang So."

Yo bites the inside of his cheek until it bleeds.

vii.

The sky is clear when So arrives in Daegu. His right hand is still smarting from last night's altercation, but the pain is the least of his concerns today.

He spent the train-ride facing the window. Of course, this did not stop the round-faced schoolboys across the aisle from whispering about his face, but So has had twenty years to hear every manner of commentary, and shuffles that to the lowest level of concern as well.

His father, after all, is dying.

Nobody took the trouble to tell him this, including the man himself. Mu likely would have, in time, but Mu is overly cautious.

Perhaps So should have waited to be called. That would be the dog in him, after all. Crawling on all fours for the scraps of being needed. He picks at the bandage wrapped around his fingers and frowns.

Whoever is behind the sabotage of Wang-Hwangbo's shipments is likely close to the heart of the company. In his own mind, there's no need for veiled suspicions.

His money is already on Yo.

Yo has the most to gain by destabilizing the fragile line of succession. Yo must have sensed, as So actually knows, that Mu would just as soon not take on the family legacy.

If Mu is halfway convinced, turning the shareholders against him will topple him inexorably. Shareholders are not overly fond of stolen shipments and money trickling away like water.

Wook would urge caution, in pursuing this theoretical line of inquiry, and So should probably listen to him. Wook is closer to true brotherhood with So and Mu than their brothers by blood, though Wook is the son of their father's late partner. Hwangbo Ji Hyuk was a kindly man, more openly affectionate than Taejo.

Everyone, of course, is more openly affectionate than Madame Yoo.

So shuts his eyes; he doesn't want to think about his mother any sooner than he has to.

When he gets off the train, he hears a camera shutter snap somewhere to his right. Life has taught him to be suspicious.

It has also taught him to be resigned.

viii.

Ha Jin waits until 7:30, when her parents have settled down to watch reruns of The Great Doctor, and slips outside. She has on her nicest dress, which hangs a little loose on her frame, and a pair of heels almost too high to walk in. With her hair slicked back and her best makeup skills put to use (and oh, there is one for irony), she hopes she can pass for a plus-one of some lesser tradesman.

The front entrance of the museum is ablaze with light. Garment trunks are still being unloaded and carried through the service entrance, while businessmen filter through the main doors. The women who lean against their arms are as sleek and fair as flowers.

Ha Jin remembers Princess Yeon Hwa, and bile rises in her throat.

(She doesn't know what she will find here.)

The service entrance seems like her best bet. She passes a row of trays, one of which is laden with champagne flutes, and snatches one up.

Props, remember? Whether it's a notebook, or a hastily stirred-up foundation palette, she's always been good with props.

(She misses him. She misses him so much.)

She walks a little tipsily, which isn't hard in these damn shoes, and melts into the crowds of waiters.

"Miss!" one calls, right on cue. "Miss, are you lost?"

"Sorry," she says, as blasé as she can manage. "I-" She waves her wine glass. "Can you help?"

"Through there," he says. He looks young, young enough to be Eun's age. Ha Jin's heart twists in her chest. She follows his gesture to the door marked Goryeo Gallery, steps through, out into a blur of glamour-

-and comes face to face with Wook.