They too know all too well that some cracks were built just for us to fall through.

We live in a world that tries to steal spirits each day; they steal ours by taking us away.

- Tanaya Winder

i.

Baek Ah finds So with his back turned, dressed like he's ready for a fight. His hands are deep in the pockets of a leather jacket that Baek Ah can tell has seen better days.

"You're here," Baek Ah says softly, joining So by the wide window that looks out into the yard. "I didn't know that you would be coming until tomorrow."

So's hair has wet, but it hasn't been raining. Baek Ah casts a glance over his shoulder, where the pool bubbles and churns.

"It's already begun," So says, hoarsely. His face is reflected as a pale twist in the dark glass. He is shorter by half a head than Baek Ah, but he has always felt so much older, so much greater, like someone capable of plucking a knife from between his own ribs and using it to kill.

"What has begun?" Baek Ah asks carefully. And just like that, he realizes that they are not alone in the room.

The girl is a slip of a thing, in a red dress that is passé and too large in the shoulders. She opens her mouth when she sees Baek Ah, a look like longing.

So, without turning towards her, explains. "She says she knows Park Soo-kyung."

Soo-kyung is a hardboiled police detective who was forced to retire when a bullet shattered part of his jaw. His Seoul department was too image-conscious to have a lead detective who struggled to speak, and so they'd saddled him with a heavy pension and effectively shown him his way out.

Baek Ah knows all of this because he knows So. When So was kicked out of the Kang boarding school for the last time, his mother had refused to take him back. The eponymous Kangs hadn't wanted him anymore either. Somehow, the grizzled Soo-kyung had come to know him and had welcomed So into his home.

The Wang-Hwangbo complex is aware of this, though it is communicated only by whispers. Baek Ah is also aware that Soo-kyung taught So how to fight.

Baek Ah reads people. It's part of being an artist. He can tell, at least, the beginning of someone's story—even if he doesn't always guess the end.

Right now, he doesn't think that this girl in the red dress looks anything like a threat.

"Hello," he says gently. He offers her a hand to take it. "I am Baek Ah."

"She says she has to stay here."

"Please," the girl adds. She is staring at the back of So's tense shoulders like she is going to die.

"Did you threaten her?" Baek Ah asks.

"No." One of those shoulders lifts. "Well, not a lot."

"I'm not afraid of him," the girl says, which makes So go stiff. "I truly am here to help. I know that the family…business is in trouble. Soo-kyung would have sent—" she pauses, and Baek Ah thinks, aha, a gambler, but the impression is fleeting—"Soon Deok, his own daughter, if he thought she would not be recognized."

"What use is a woman?" So wheels around, eyes flashing. "Whatever you think you know—"

"That," she answers quietly. "A woman is useful because she is always underestimated. Believe me, I do not always trust myself."

"Aish," So breathes out, and turns back to the window.

Baek Ah has no idea what is going on. When this is true, he finds it wisest to follow his heart. "What is your name?"

"Go Ha Jin." She is in her stocking feet. Baek Ah wonders if she is cold; evening sets in with a chill, here. "I…was at the tradeshow tonight. You would do well to watch Won's moves."

That gets a response from So. "Kim Won?"

"Y-es."

"What about him?" He has turned again and stalks towards her, eyes narrowed. Baek Ah stems an urge to step in between them.

"He's a greater threat than you think." Ha Jin is doing, by Baek Ah's metric, a pretty admirable job of staring down So. It is not a task for the faint-hearted. "Yo uses him to manage lower-level connections. Spies."

"And you're the alternative to Won's spy network?"

"One alternative," Ha Jin whispers.

So slides his gaze to Baek Ah, as if Baek Ah is supposed to have answers. "A word?"

Baek Ah follows him out of the room. It's his house, so perhaps he should be more worried that this strange intruder will try to lift any of the high-priced artifacts lying around for the taking, but—he isn't.

"What the hell?" So hisses, when they're alone.

Baek Ah had hoped they would meet under different circumstances. That So would come here and get some sleep, something to erase the gray circles under his ever-wild eyes. Instead, he is bullet sharp, too quick for his own good.

"If you don't believe her, why don't you just call Soo-kyung?"

"He's out of the country. I can't reach him."

"Out of the country?"

"Daughter. College. America."

"Ah." Baek Ah rubs at a muscle in the back of his neck. "So Ha Jin, just shows up here…knows where to find you, knows his name, Won's name, Yo's name?"

"It would be like Yo," So observes darkly, "To play some sort of trick. Anything to take me out at the knees." He swears harshly under his breath. "I saw her. She might as well have confirmed it to my face. She's planning a coup. Yo must be fronting it, she wouldn't want Jung in the line of fire…"

He's talking about his mother. Baek Ah's chest hurts. "You went to see her."

"Yes." So isn't looking at him.

"Because you wanted her to tell you the truth?"

So looks at him. It's worse. It's much worse. "No," he says. "I went to see her because I wanted her to ask for my help."

Baek Ah draws in a sharp breath.

"You see?" So laughs, a twisted, ugly thing. "There are so many for whom I'd commit open treason. But no one ever asks me to. It keeps me an honest man." He scrapes a hand through his hair. Baek Ah realizes that he has added to the collection of characters tattooed on his knuckles since their last meeting; they are not quite legible, under the bruising from his latest fight.

"What are you going to do?"

"I would say we throw her out and let her find somewhere else to stay," So suggests coldly, but Baek Ah doesn't think his heart is in it. "Or I stick my neck out for Yo to strangle. Aish, I want a cigarette."

Baek Ah's home is adamantly smoke-free. "Can I get you to trade one vice for another? I have wine."

"Wine?"

"I have soju."

"That's more like it," So says wearily. "No need to throw this Ha Jin out tonight, I suppose. Deal with her in the morning, Baek Ah—but keep her away from me."

ii.

"Are you certain you didn't know her?"

"Wook, you must be trying to piss me off." Yeon Hwa tugs out a hairpin. She had liked the feeling of Yo's eyes on her, and that stung, because she had spent many years pushing away Yo's wiles. How dare they have any effect now?

All it means is that Yeon Hwa's heart is tired of rotting, tired of waiting. She knows as well as everyone else does: So is out of reach.

"Myung Hee would want me to be happy," Wook muses, hands clasped behind his back. Their mother is asleep; Yeon Hwa lives in the family house, and Wook often stays there, though he owns his own expansive flat near the Wang-Hwangbo headquarters. It is like old times, Yeon Hwa thinks. Wook and her, whispering after a party. Him scheming; her trying to untangle her mess of emotions about the Wang brothers.

"Aren't you trying to make some sort of power move?" She takes out her earrings and lays them in a delicate porcelain tray. "Since old Wang is dying? A strange time to worry about a girl. Much less a common nyeon like that one."

Wook lifts his eyes to the ornately molded ceiling. "Hmm."

"If you do a thing, do it completely." Yeon Hwa sniffs disdainfully. She fears her brother when she least respects him, when he moves so slowly it can only be with long-determined purpose. "If you plan to take on the company, and put our name first, keep your focus on that. Leave the bitches to the Wangs. Lord knows they get enough of them."

"Even you?" He says it so softly it doesn't quite register. When it does, she feels the blood rushing to her face.

"I don't know what you mean by that."

Wook smiles. It's a thin smile. She's felt it on her own face, but it chills her, to see it on his. "If you want me to do a thing completely, sister, then be certain you aren't the one to stand in my way."

Yeon Hwa will not tremble. She is stronger than that.

Wook, still smiling, leaves her.

(She trembles.)

iii.

He doesn't sleep, but the girl does. She curls up on one of Baek Ah's sofas as though she is safe in this unknown place.

As though she trusts them.

And maybe she does.

So digs his nails into the palms of his hands and tells himself that he is right to doubt her. It is too convenient. It has always been too convenient for him to be cast off, tricked, left in the cold.

Ha Jin sighs in her sleep. A sudden image, unbidden, thrusts itself into So's mind—his arms around her, her head pillowed in the hollow of his shoulder. He half-fancies that he knows how soft her skin would be under his hands. Half-fancies that there is peace, somewhere, for them.

Them?

He must be going mad. He has had good reason to go mad for years. He rubs at his eyes with his fists and goes in search of Baek Ah's coffee pot.

If he can't sleep, he might as well think.

(Not of the girl, and her soft skin he hasn't even touched.)

(Never her.)

In the morning, he will not let Baek Ah be his messenger. He will be the one to tell her to go.

iv.

"Blood."

Taejo swipes quickly at his lips, but it is too late; Yoo has already seen it.

"My throat is hoarse, damnably. It's nothing."

"Blood," Yoo repeats, "In your lungs." She is dressed simple for night—as simply as she ever is, in a gossamer silk robe over her night clothes. She skims absently over the screen of her phone with a finger. "Never a good thing."

His phone blinks with an unread text from Mu. He watches as Yoo's eyes flicker towards it, cold and curious. "Maybe you're right." He gestures to the wide bed. "I think I should sleep alone tonight."

"Of course, yeobo. I want you to rest." She smiles. "For as long as you need."

When she has gone to her own rooms, Taejo opens Mu's text.

So is here. You should see him.

Taejo sighs and presses the hard edge of his phone against his brow. So is the most difficult of all his children, through no real fault of his own. It began with Yoo, of course—with the only time Taejo had ever seen her really lose control of her hair-trigger emotions.

Unfortunately, on that only time, she had a knife in her hand.

And after that, what to do? It seemed right to send him away and let some other family give him the home he needed. When Taejo discovered that So was mistreated by the Kangs, in school and out, it was too late to make a change.

As for the man he became…

Reluctantly, he replies. Tell him to come and visit me tomorrow. Send Ji Mong as well.

It is better to have someone else in the room, so he doesn't have to quite meet his son's eyes.

v.

She opens her eyes to light, and wakes to the sound of rushing water.

She is Hae Soo again, warm beneath silken coverlets in the palace. He has just left her side for a moment—he is—

"So?"

She catches herself. She is Ha Jin here. Her mother and father are likely wondering where she is, for they will worry over her, over the fact that she has been gone all night and the fact that her interests, since the coma, are focused on something they cannot understand.

She is Ha Jin here, and the man standing over her does not love her in this world.

When he speaks, his voice is level. He looks as though he has not slept, but his eyes are less wild. "Until I can verify your identity," So says, "I'd be a fool to let you stay here."

Ha Jin gets to her feet. She should have expected this. That he would not know her, or want her.

She is certain that he needs her.

"I only want to help you," she says.

"If there is anything for me to do in Daegu," he answers, dangerously soft, "I will do it myself."

Only when he has closed the door of Baek Ah's house behind her does Ha Jin let herself cry.

vi.

"You sent her away?"

He doesn't need Baek Ah's judgment. So tears his gaze away from the window, where Ha Jin is just a red speck in the distance, and lifts a brow as a challenge. "What of it? I know what I have to do."

Baek Ah looks tempted to say, no you don't, but thinks better of it.

This is why So likes him better than practically anyone else.

"I thought you did not want to talk to her."

"I didn't. I said very few words, I promise you."

Baek Ah frowns. "You'll need all the help you can get."

"In keeping my mother and brothers to heel?" He smiles, because it is as easy as doing anything else—so, no very easy at all. "I'm the wolf-dog of Seoul, remember?"

"You mean," Baek Ah asks, "All you want is peace? You're not trying to take your father's place?"

So feels himself go still. Baek Ah can be trusted, he is certain of that. But Mu's proposition is not one he can even bring himself to utter aloud.

He faces Baek Ah head-on, and lets the smile fade away. "I am not my father." The words don't seem forceful enough. "I am never my father."