"They cannot scare me with their empty spaces

Between stars—on stars where no human race is.

I have it in me so much nearer home

To scare myself with my own desert places."

- Robert Frost

i.

This time, Choi Ji Mong finds her.

"So," he says wearily. "You remember them."

"Of course I remember them," Ha Jin hisses. She'd like to shout, but they're in the kitchen, only a few yards away from where her parents are reading at each other, not talking. Ji Mong talked his way in by pretending to be a job interviewer doing a follow-up call, and ever since, Ha Jin has been waiting for an opportunity to throttle him.

"Very rare," he says, tilting his head. "That someone would blend cycles as you have—seeing all of them with open eyes."

"You have too. Although you're no longer a beggar by the waterfront."

"Yes." Ji Mong just shrugs. "Whatever you did in Goryeo changed my fortunes. Linked me inextricably with the Wangs and Hwangbos and all the res. I used to watch from the street corners. Now…"

"Now you can get me in," Ha Jin tells him, flattening her palm against the tabletop.

Ji Mong glares. "That's why I'm here. You've caused enough trouble already, sneaking off to Baek Ah's, seeing So—don't think I wouldn't find out."

"Don't think I was trying to hide from you!" Her voices rises a little and her father peers over the edge of his paper, curious. "I was trying to find you."

"Why, Ha Jin?" Ji Mong asks. "You already lived Hae Soo's life. They lived their old lives as princes of Goryeo, and did what fate and time intended. You have no place among them now."

"That," Ha Jin says, deadly calm, "Is not for you to choose."

He stands up, rounded face set in surprisingly hard lines. "What could you do for them? I remember it too. You couldn't save them, there. You could not save him."

Ha Jin is on her feet, fists balled against her sides. "I didn't know who to trust there," she bites out, bitter and sharp. "Did you?"

His eyes shift away from hers.

"I do not believe in fearing fate," she says, quieter. "Not anymore. Let me help them, please?"

In the distance, thunder.

In the present moment, a cloud of uncertainty on Ji Mong's brow.

Ha Jin chooses her cliff and leaps off it. "How," she asks, "Could I possibly make things worse?"

…

"You'll start as an assistant," Ji Mong explains, when they're crowded into his office. It's littered with papers and proofs, digital renderings of textile prints and flyers for gallery openings. "That's all that we can justify, at the moment, with…the current situation. And if it gets out of hand, you're gone, understand?"

Ha Jin nods. "So do you think Yo or Wook is behind the shipment hijackings?"

"Ah, jinjihage!" Ji Mong throws up his hands. "You're already starting in! Keep your mouth shut and your head down."

Ha Jin feels a smile twisting over her face, utterly devoid of warmth. This didn't used to happen before. "You mean," she says slowly, "Like when I was supposed to marry the king? Is that when I should have kept my head down?"

Ji Mong has the good grace to look ashamed.

Ha Jin scoops up the employment papers from his overflowing desk and counts it as a victory.

…

Ji Mong's office is tucked in the corner of the Wang-Hwangbo highrise. To get out to the street, Ha Jin has to leave the same way she came in: through a vaulted hallway that resembles a western cathedral—

—or an ancient palace.

She clutches her application to her chest, lowers her head, and cross the path of another young woman who glides by her with an easy, confident step.

Ha Jin raises her head, and for the thousandth time in this strange week, she knows who it is she sees. This time, it is the face of a friend who didn't make it out of Goryeo alive.

Woo Hee.

Woo Hee doesn't look twice at her. Just keeps walking, sensible pumps clicking against the tiles.

She must be an assistant too, Ha Jin muses. An assistant seems humble and harmless, but Ha Jin herself is trying to leverage the position towards an invisible goal. And if the Woo Hee of modern Korea is anything like the displaced princess of Later Baekje.

Ha Jin's mouth pinches in a frown. Another person to save.

ii.

Yo steps out of a meeting, having effectively squashed the competition vying to win a capsule collection. It's for a coalition of Parisian designers who are looking to turn attention to the east, and Wang-Hwangbo is in the perfect position to offer high-end taffeta and silk-thread.

It's the last card in the hand he plans to play. The staff and resources used to close the deal are all under the direct purview ofGwangjong, the subsidiary branch of Wang-Hwangbo that has been his mother's game since the beginning. She brought fashion connections to the larger table in the exchange for an isolated holding.

Gwangjong, Yo feels certain, is the way of the future. He is his mother's chosen scalpel—the surgery on the family name will be absolute and life-saving, at least for him.

She set him on the path of a model career in his early teens; she taught him to ferret out weaknesses over drinks and in the boardroom. She did all of this while remaining impeccable and almost out-of-sight.

His mother understands the world without having to be in it.

Now, when his father breaks and calls a family meeting—which Yo is sure he will—Mu will have to come clean about the lost shipments, the wavering market. Yo, on the other hand, will have a bouquet of ripe prospects to present.

His phone rings, breaking the silence on the glass-rimmed tunnel. He turns a corner in the hall and answers it so he can cup his hand over his mouth and speak quietly.

"I'm sorry," he says. "It's been a busy week."

"More like a busy month." She sounds more tired than accusatory. "He stands at the window every night and watches for you."

Yo pinches his brow. This, he suspects, is probably guilt. "I know. I'll…"

Footsteps, only heard when very, very near. He hangs up without telling her why, and meets Wook's serenely smiling countenance.

"What are you doing here?"

"I have an office here too, you know, hyung-nim."

The respect is velvet-touched; Yo doesn't trust it for a moment. "I didn't realize you stayed so late."

"You just left a meeting?" Wook's eyebrows lever upwards. "Did I see…Versace? That's quite something, for an evening meeting. Why not deal in daylight, Yo?"

"I think," Yo says coldly, "That vultures prefer the day. I do not." He slips his phone into his pocket. He hates himself more than he ordinarily allows, but his goddamn heart won't stop ratcheting. He wonders if Wook can hear it.

"You seem uneasy." Wook tilts his head. "A personal call? I didn't mean to interrupt."

"It was Jung," Yo lies, smiling. Sometimes he hates Wook almost as much as he hates So, and that is an accomplishment indeed. "I was cancelling dinner plans. A disappointment for both of us."

Wook trades his attaché from one hand to the other. "The Wangs are more fraternal than expected."

"I would not expect an outsider to understand us." Yo glances at his watch and steps past Wook. "Send my compliments to your sister—at least as many you can stomach."

iii.

"It's slow-going," Chae Ryung explains. She's a talker; Woo Hee has barely been able to get a word in edgewise in the few days they've been staying together. Not that she needs too; it is Chae Ryung who needs to teach her to be an outstanding yet simultaneously unremarkable assistant. Chae Ryung is only a waitress in the enormous office restaurant, but she knows many things.

Woo Hee wonders if she should be taking notes.

"As an assistant, you're not strictly in charge of shipping. They've been upping security, too, lately, since the takeovers have been successful." She finishes braiding her hair for the night and reaches for a green-tea face mask. "Your job is too catch the details when you can, where you can. If you're serving tea in a meeting, or sorting through the mail—always be on the lookout for anything about routes and risk-assessment."

"Risk-assessment?"

"Contingency plans." Chae Ryung presses the oval sheet carefully against her cheeks. "Wang Mu—he's the CEO's oldest son, you know, and when the old man finally shrivels up everyone thinks he'll get it—thinks he's clever. He's certainly cautious; clever doesn't quite count up." She swore. "Aigo, I can never put one of these on without tearing it."

Woo Hee stretches out on the bed opposite Chae Ryung's, in the shoebox-size flat she knows she'll never truly call home. "How many are there again?"

"There are four Wang sons, one Hwangbo son. Then there's Baek Ah and Eun, who are good-for-nothing but might as well be family, if you ask Wang Jung or Wang Mu. Baek Ah and Eun," Chae Ryung elaborates, sitting down cross-legged and staring ghost-like from behind the mask, "Are the sons of the design team who started at Wang Hwangbo…oh, thirty years ago. The husband's been dead since Eun was small. I mean, he's still small. Only eighteen, and a shrimp for his age." She giggles.

"Who else?"

"Baek Ah is twenty-six, which isn't much younger than Hwangbo Wook—he's twenty-eight—but Baek Ah doesn't care about the company." Chae Ryung sniffs. Woo Hee wonders if at any point she is supposed to laugh or swear in return, though neither is really her style. She is more wont to listen quietly, soaking in the prospects of pain or vengeance or cold ambition.

Anything, really.

Chae Ryung doesn't mind the silence, that's for certain. "Kim Won is the son of the original accountant," she says, affection coloring her tone. "He is Wang Yo's right hand. Wang Yo, of course, is the one who deserves to take over the company."

The one, Woo Hee assumes, who is paying me.

"What about the other son?"

"Other son?"

"You said there were four Wang sons."

"Oh. There's Wang So, but he's a murdering mobster from Seoul." Chae Ryung shakes her head. "If he's still alive, I doubt you'll ever see him."

Woo Hee, for her parts, doubts that she will care much for any of them.

iv.

"Jung-ah."

"Nae, Omma?" He was supposed to be at a wrestling match fifteen minutes ago; he's going to miss it. But his mother is more anxious than usual about him; she keeps reaching for his hands and forcing more rice-sugar cakes on him.

That, at least, Jung doesn't mind.

"I don't want you to stay at Eun's this month."

"Heol?" The exclamation of surprise is out before he can stop himself. "Why not? I promise, everything is done in good fun. Nothing to…" he searches for an English expression that will amuse her. "Break the bank."

Her lips tighten at the corners. "You know I never mind you having fun. But I heard that he is staying there."

Jung shifts uncomfortably. His mother—and Yo's—hatred of So is something he doesn't like to think much about, but that doesn't make it less obvious. Mu may only be their half-brother, the son of their father's deceased first wife, but he is the only one of the family is anything near close with So.

"So did come to visit," he answers carefully, "But I don't know if he's staying. He and Baek Ah are friendly."

"Aish, as if he can be friendly with anyone!" His mother sighs deeply, and crumbles the remainder of her own cake in her hand. "He's dangerous, Jung-ah. And he will take it out on you. That is what beasts do, you know. They bite anyone who seems within easy reach." She strokes his cheek, her face twisting with worry. "I couldn't bear it if anything happens to you."

So has killed people. Jung does not doubt this. He also does not think that So would ever try to kill him. The few times Jung has seen So in the past few years, he has been reminded more of a shadow than anything else.

So may have blood on his hands, but Jung wonders how much of it is his own blood.

"I can take care of myself," Jung promises. He doesn't want to stay in the grand house on Songak Street, where his father is always coughing and his mother watches him so closely it stifles him. He loves his mother, but he also needs air. "I'll…stay with Yo, if that would make you happy."

Yo will want him out of the house as much as possible, which will be a convenient compromise. Yo has three spacious floors of a sumptuous penthouse all to himself, but he likes to be alone.

His mother relaxes slightly. "Very well," she says. "As long as you keep clear of him. He can't be trusted, Jung. Never forget that."

Jung doesn't think he ever can.

v.

In two years, his father has become an old man.

So does not take the time or trouble to sort through what is in his heart; he knows it only to be a sorry, knotted thing, serving its sentence under his ribs. But something under his ribs hurts when he sees his father stand on unsteady feet, gripping the carved arm of his desk chair as if he might fall.

So bows. A week ago in Seoul, he nearly killed a man. Now he prays for any appearance of meekness.

Anything that will make his father soften.

Taejo's bloodshot eyes regard him warily, though, which is pretty much what So expected.

"You came all the way to see me," he says heavily. "What is it?"

It would seem strange, for a man who lives by his fists, to say, I was worried about you, and therefore, So doesn't. "Mu tells me you are unwell."

"What else did Mu tell you?"

So bites his lip. Beside him, Ji Mong clears his throat, as if to say, not now, and So knows his instinct of silence was correct.

"You always leave me feeling like I've kicked the dog," Taejo says, and drags a hand over his eyes. "Your timing isn't bad, So. I would have called for you."

"Would you?" That escapes before he can think better of it.

Ji Mong draws in a little breath.

"I would have had Mu call you, at least." Taejo has never liked being pressed on the point of parental devotion, which is why So usually leaves well enough alone. It's all water under the bridge, anyway. Nobody can take anything back. "Yes, I am unwell. Everyone here knows it, whether I want them to or not. I'll hold a meeting soon." He raises his eyebrows. "You should come, but first, dress like one of the family. You look like a thug."

So nods. He is one, but that doesn't need to be said. "Thank you, abeoji."

The word has always felt wrong in his mouth.