A/N: The end of this chapter includes consensual mind control, which seems like a paradox, I know...

"You can make me do something. With your mind."

The words lingered in Rang's periphery, as blurry as the bottle in his hand was, muddled by the tears in his eyes.

Uncomputable words. Foreign.

He thought maybe he'd misheard her, but slowly grew convinced he hadn't.

Confusion set in, then frustration. No human would ask to have their mind invaded. No human except his little human. She was so stupidly trusting, even after everything she'd been through. And it didn't add up. Nor did it make sense that she'd choose now of all moments to tell him she loved him, when he was surely at his most unlovable. Rang didn't believe her. No one was that warm-hearted.

He wrenched his hand away from Ga Eul's.

"You dumb little human," he snapped. "Why would you ask for something like that?"

"Don't you see?" Ga Eul pleaded. "If we can do that, it means I trust you not to hurt me, and you trust me not to...freak out. I'm trying to prove to you that you can trust me when I say I like you. I don't hate you, not at all. I don't hate anything about you." Tears trickled down Ga Eul's cheeks, and she shifted closer to him. "You're my soulmate. I always wanted to meet you. I wished for you my whole life."

"A lot of people wish for a lot of things and get me instead." Rang sneered.

"Maybe. But if I had to make my wish again, I wouldn't wish to meet my soulmate. I'd just wish to meet you."

"Then I can't tell if you're lying or if you're just crazy." He brought his face uncomfortably close to Ga Eul's, but she didn't flinch.

"I'm not lying, and I'm not crazy." She placed her hand on his arm. "I love you just the way you are. Because whatever you are, you're still my pet fox. Nothing I could find out about you would ever change that," Ga Eul insisted, but Rang believed her less and less the more she talked. He'd been deceived before. He was better off not trusting anyone. He knew that. He just wished he didn't want to trust Ga Eul so much.

Well, he knew a way to get rid of his uncertainty once and for all. He hadn't meant to use it. He'd been scared to look at it, but it was the best test he could think of. Surely, after knowing what he'd done to her in the past, Ga Eul would run from him then.

"Really?" he asked. "Nothing would change that? Nothing?"

"Nothing."

"You're sure? One hundred percent?"

Ga Eul nodded earnestly.

Fine, then. She pushed him to it.

"In the drawer of my nightstand, there's a pair of glasses. These glasses show a person's previous incarnation. If you put them on and look in a mirror, you can see what I did to you in your past life."

"What you...did to me?" Ga Eul looked taken aback.

"I promise, it's nothing pleasant." Rang smiled bitterly.

Ga Eul stayed silent a moment, appearing unnerved by the suggestion.

That's right, little human. Run away. Run far away.

"So...these glasses...you've had them this whole time?" She frowned.

"Long enough," Rang noted. When Ga Eul didn't say anything else, he tugged his arm away from her, then casually reclined against the foot of the bed. He stared at his beer bottle, trying to convince himself that he wouldn't care about whatever happened next.

"I see…" Ga Eul trailed off, and he thought she might scold him for keeping this knowledge from her, but after a moment she only announced, "All right. I'll look through them."

Too stubborn. She was too stubborn for her own good. She tried too damn hard to prove she was a good person—so selfless and forgiving. Whatever she saw would be her own fault.

"Try the bathroom mirror," Rang offered scornfully.

Ga Eul got up, and he heard her footsteps as she walked to the nightstand, then the thump! of the drawer being open and shut, then her footsteps again going out of the room.

Her own fault. Whatever she saw would be her own fault. She was too stubborn, Rang kept reminding himself.

Still, his lungs grew tighter with each second that passed.

He was anxious about what the glasses would reveal, of course, and he was irritated with Ga Eul for pushing him to this extreme. He was panicked, too, by the thought of her never looking at him the same way again. But underneath it all, he was struck by the cruelty of what he'd asked her to do. He felt like he'd just told a child to place their hand on a hot stove so he could prove to them it would burn them.

He wanted her to hate him, sure, but now she was going to see something she couldn't unsee. And he loved Ga Eul, even if he didn't trust her.

Wasn't it unnaturally cruel to make her watch her own death? Hadn't that been his aim in giving the glasses to Nam Ji Ah? To make her watch as Lee Yeon plunged his sword through her.

Briefly, his mind flashed with images of blood and torn clothing and eyes full of fear. He saw humans ripped from their beds and bullied into deals and driven crazy by their own minds. He saw Ga Eul stealing his cake at their café and giving him a mischievous side-glance in the elevator and craning her neck over her schoolwork. His little human, always.

Rang was on his feet and in the bathroom before he could think any further. He snatched the glasses from Ga Eul just as she was putting them on her face, then held them away from her.

"W-what are you doing?"

"I changed my mind. Don't look. You can't look. You can't ever look. You..."—he jabbed a finger in her face—"you should just leave right now."

Ga Eul stared at him, innocently confused.

"What do you mean, I can't look? Didn't you just tell me to look?"

"You can't look at it! I forbid you to look at it!"

"Why? What is it?"

"It's...I'm not telling you!"

"Oh, I see. Another thing you're not telling me."

"That's right. I refuse to tell you. I refuse to tell you anything about my past life. So if that upsets you, you should leave. If you want someone to tell you things, you should find someone else." Rang stepped aside and gestured to the hall. "Go ahead. Go away. Go find someone else!"

"Go find someone else? Go find someone else?" Ga Eul raised her voice. "That's what you have to say to me after half a year? Go find someone else?! Earlier, you were talking about marrying me!"

"Didn't you hear what I said?! Leave me alone!" Rang cried, tears spilling angrily down his cheeks.

"I don't want to leave! I want to stay so we can talk about what's bothering you!"

"Well, I'm not going to say anything, so just go away!"

"Well, I'm not going to leave just because you're throwing a tantrum! This is my apartment too! You said it was my apartment too!"

"Well, I changed my mind, so get out! Leave! If you're going, just go!"

Ga Eul flinched as her back hit the bathroom sink, and for the first time since the night she'd left his apartment in tears, she looked utterly betrayed and hurt. And despite himself, Rang immediately took a step back from her. He wanted her to leave, but he didn't want to hurt her. He'd never meant to break her heart, even though it was inevitable. He hated that he loved her so damn much.

"I...hate...you," he managed shakily. Helplessly. "Why can't you just leave?" Stumbling away from her, he collapsed next to the tub, sitting exactly where he'd sat when she'd taught him to play with bubbles from the bubble bath. He wished he could go back to that moment and just live there forever, throwing those silly bubbles at her.

Breaking down completely, Rang curled into himself, hid his face in his arms, and sobbed, tears and snot pouring down his face. As he cried harder, he shrunk into himself, like maybe if he shrunk himself down enough, into the size he was as a boy, he would find a place small enough to hide from his fears. All the things he couldn't say were lodged in his throat, choking him.

Please don't leave. Please stay here forever. I love you. I'm sorry. I'm just so sorry.

Standing in the opposite corner from Rang, still shaken by how vehemently he'd asked her to leave, Ga Eul couldn't help but grow more and more concerned as Rang retracted further into himself and his sobs reverberated around the bathroom. She'd never known that someone as larger-than-life as Rang could make themselves so small.

A minute ago, Rang had looked every inch the asshole she knew he could be if someone pushed the right buttons; now he just looked like one of her students, frightened and small and crying over a lost toy or a missing parent. The contrast was so heartbreaking that the sting of his words melted away until she only wished to wrap her arms around him and reassure him that everything would be okay. Whatever 'everything' was.

He'd gone into fetal mode like he did when he clung onto her in the mornings, and it took her a moment to realize what that meant, but when she figured it out, her heart broke a little more.

Rather than wanting her to leave, Rang was actually terrified of her leaving. She'd seen him do this twice before—push her away before he could get pushed away. The first time was the first night she'd visited his apartment. The second time was the day he'd taken her to the ice skating rink, and he'd thought her distress meant she was scared of him.

Now he thought she hated him...or should hate him...or would hate him once she'd seen whatever she was supposed to see in the stupid glasses he'd tossed onto the floor as he'd retreated into a ball. Her baby fox.

Ga Eul tentatively approached him, then sat down beside him on the floor.

"Rang," she began, softly stroking his hair, "it's okay. I don't have to look at the glasses. In fact, no one ever has to look at the glasses. Watch." Picking up the ancient frames, she tossed them into the trash can next to the toilet. "There. Even if you did do something horrible to me in the past, whatever it was, I forgive you, so you don't have to think about it anymore." She traced circles on his scalp. "Let's just stay like this. Let's eat together and cuddle together and watch shows together until one of us dies. It'll probably be me first, but that's the only way I'm going to leave you. So don't ever tell me to leave again. Don't waste your time saying pointless things like that. One day, I'm going to marry you whether my parents like it or not. You know I'm extremely loyal, right? I waited four years for someone who didn't even give a shit about me. But you're so good to me all the time. You take me on dates and drive me to school and buy me food and tuck me in at night. And you cuddle with me a lot. And you've let me steal, like, five shirts from you. You always answer your phone. And you stalk me so I'm not by myself. I'm not alone anymore because of you. You're the best boyfriend in the world." Ga Eul raised a finger though she knew he couldn't see. "Number one."

Rang kept crying, but he didn't argue with her, so she rubbed his back and continued.

"Hey. Don't hide from me. You're always taking care of me. I'm supposed to take care of you too."

Because of Rang, Ga Eul felt lighter than she had in years. Her heart hadn't healed completely, but it had healed enough that she could love again. On her best days, she felt almost like her old self, and she had Rang to thank for that.

"You really are a good fox, you know," she told him, a fresh wave of tears spilling down her face. "That person yelling a minute ago wasn't you. I don't know where you go in your head when you act like that, but you don't have to go there. I'm right here, and you can just talk to me. You're right that I don't always tell the whole truth, but it's not because I'm trying to deceive you. I get scared too. Not that you'll leave me, exactly, but that you'll reject me in some other way. Rather than risk that, I just don't say things. So you see, we're both scared, but that's okay. We can be scared together. And maybe later, we can stop being scared together. What do you think? Hmm?" Ga Eul paused, resting her hand on Rang's back. She tilted her head, waiting for his reply. When none came but more muffled sobs, she tugged gently on his arm.

"Come on. Put your head in my lap," she commanded softly. "At least, let me pet you properly." Scooting over so he could stretch out on the floor, she continued tugging him until he relented and collapsed face-down in her lap, burying his face in her skirt. "There," Ga Eul said, her voice breaking. "Isn't that better?" She stroked his scalp in soothing circles. "I love you," she whispered, having run out of other things to say. "I love you, my pet fox. I love you so much."

When Rang woke up, a warm body was spooning him from behind. He felt a kiss on his bare shoulder, and then a soft voice spoke.

"I was thinking that...I could make my special pancakes this morning, and then I could answer some of your questions from yesterday. Does that sound good?"

It took a moment for the fuzziness of sleep to lift. When it did, Rang merely nodded. His throat felt sore, and his body felt exhausted, as though he'd fought a horde of zombies during the night.

"I'm going to cook the pancakes now." Another kiss on his shoulder. "You can sleep as long as you want." Ga Eul's fingers caressed his scalp, and he closed his eyes. He felt the weight of her shift, then leave the bed entirely. When he opened his eyes again and rolled over, she was gone. The door to the bedroom was closed.

The night before had felt like a nightmare when he was going through it, and it seemed even more of a dream in the light of morning.

For some reason, Ga Eul was still there, cooking in his apartment. He heard her shuffle around in the kitchen, taking out dishes and pans. Morning noise like that usually irritated him to no end, as it disrupted his sleep; at the moment, though, it was comforting. Somehow, the worst still hadn't happened, and he didn't know what to make of that.

He even remembered Ga Eul carelessly tossing the Tiger's Brow into the trash, as though it were a used tissue and not an ancient artifact of the gods.

How absurd. Everything she did was so absurd, and yet, he was helplessly drawn to her nonsensical treatment of him.

Tears soaked Rang's pillow as he recalled how she'd held him while he cried, how she'd undressed him and tucked him into bed, as he so often had done to her. And all that after he'd yelled at her to go away. Ashamed, he wanted to stay in bed all day; he didn't want to face her. So he stayed in bed much longer than he needed to, but when the knots in his stomach wouldn't let him rest, he finally got up and made his way into the kitchen, dressed in his white t-shirt and beige sweatpants.

Ga Eul's back was turned when he entered the room, but on the counter, she had slices of kimchi pancake waiting for him, stacked on two separate plates. One plate for herself and one for him, he knew. Rather than having them tear pieces off the same large plate, she always divided the skillet-sized pancake and gave each of them an exactly equal portion. 'Since you hate sharing,' she'd mentioned once.

"Oh, there you are." Turning around with a glass of water, Ga Eul smiled when she saw him. "Come sit down." She pushed one of the plates towards him, and Rang approached the counter cautiously. He took a seat on one of the bar stools, and Ga Eul circled around the counter to take a seat on the stool beside his. She slid a glass of water over to him, then broke off a piece of pancake and popped it into her mouth.

Rang noted her every action without comment, feeling awkwardly exposed after having cried so much in front of her. He stared down at the familiar, crispy red pancakes, dotted with spots of green onion, grateful for something to look at besides her. What made the pancakes 'special' was that Ga Eul used her mother's kimchi in them. Ordinarily, he would have already scarfed down half the plate, but he found he had no appetite.

Not wanting to use his mouth to talk, he took a bite anyway and chewed slowly. The pancake crunched under his teeth, spicy and salty and sour and sweet. Maybe a little too sweet. Like most things she cooked, it was imperfect, but he ate it because she made it for him.

Rang swallowed hard.

"It's not that I don't trust you," he said quietly, talking down to his plate. "I just don't believe you exist. It's hard to trust someone who doesn't exist."

Rang's confession hung heavily in the air, and a stiff silence followed it. Ga Eul shifted on her stool, and he felt her eyes on him, but he couldn't look at her.

Suddenly, she reached for his plate, tore off a large chunk of one of his pancakes, and stuffed it in her mouth. When he whipped his head around, her cheeks were bulging. She chewed slowly, looking straight at him. Once she'd swallowed the pancake down with water, she gave him an impish grin.

"There's your proof that I exist. From now on, I'm going to keep stealing your food to remind you." Reaching over, she petted his head. "My pet fox."

Ga Eul smiled again, and though he'd been suffocating under the weight of his thoughts mere seconds before, he found his lungs filling back up with air. This, too, was absurd, but it was what Ga Eul always did; she could make any moment lighter. In his opinion, it was her special power.

"What? You're not even going to try to bite me?" Ga Eul teased. "Lame."

"Maybe I'll bite you when you least expect it," Rang managed, his throat dry.

"I hope so." Ga Eul kicked his stool, eyeing him suggestively. "Anyway," she continued, switching to her all-knowing teacher voice, "this is exactly why we should do a trust exercise. Besides, I really am curious about how you do that mind thing. I want to see what it's like." She smiled encouragingly, looking truly excited about the prospect of having her mind toyed with.

Well, that was what she was asking him for, wasn't it? Her request from the evening before.

Rang still thought it was an insane request, and he would have refused it again, but Ga Eul took his hand and urged, her eyes shining earnestly, "Please. Just one time. If you don't like it, we never have to do it again." She cocked her head and looked so hopeful that he would say 'yes' that he relented, tired of fighting her. Upon his agreement, Ga Eul lit up with happiness. An absurd human through and through.

"Look into my eyes. Don't look away," Rang commanded, holding her left hand in his right.

Ga Eul nodded emphatically, and Rang let his glowing fox eye reveal itself.

"Wait, wait." She stopped him before he could do anything further. "Um, does it hurt?" she asked sheepishly. Unnecessarily. He would never have agreed to it if it did.

"You won't feel a thing," Rang assured her.

"Ah, okay. I'm ready then." Her smile returned, and Rang concentrated on her eyes, opened wide and staring boldly, unblinking, at him.

Eyes were windows to the mind, but perhaps it was better to say that eyes had windows, for if Rang had found cracks in Ga Eul's windows, he would have shot right through. He would have, had there been cracks. Had there been windows. But there were no windows. No doors, no gates, no locks. No...nothing. Inside Ga Eul's eyes lay only a blank expanse for Rang to fill with whatever thoughts or directives he wanted.

Her mind offered no resistance to him at all, and there was always resistance. Always.

But Rang didn't have to try to make Ga Eul obey him. He merely nudged the thought towards her—you want to drink water—and she instantly responded, picking up her glass and drinking from it. Her mind unquestioningly accepted the thought as her own.

Ga Eul didn't tear her eyes away from Rang's the entire time, and several seconds after she placed her glass back on the counter, she said, "I'm ready now. You can make me do something."

Rang momentarily froze, but quickly found his voice again.

"I already did."

"What?" Ga Eul glanced around herself in bewilderment.

"Think about what you did a second ago," Rang hinted.

"Um, I was looking at you, and then...Wait! The water...You made me drink it?"

Rang nodded.

Ga Eul's eyes grew wide.

"Really? But I remember thinking…" She trailed off, visibly confused.

"That was my thought, not yours," Rang explained.

"That's so crazy," Ga Eul mumbled, but she didn't seem upset, just fascinated. "Will you do another one?" She broke into a smile. "That was really cool."

Cool?

Rang swore Ga Eul's reactions never made sense, and he would have protested, but he needed to see what he'd seen again, so he pushed into her mind a second time—or, rather, drifted into her mind as easily as if her mind was his own.

No resistance. Her subconscious didn't try to push him out, which could only mean that it trusted him. Which meant even though Ga Eul had seen what he could do to people's minds the day before, she trusted him. Completely. Without a hint of doubt or hesitation.

Humans could lie, but their subconscious never lied. And Rang had deceived plenty of people by pretending to be their lovers, so he knew there was only one thing in the world that made a human trust someone that recklessly.

Love.

Ga Eul giggled when she realized she had taken the hair tie off her wrist and had put her hair up in a ponytail.

"Ooh, this is fun. It's like a game. I don't know what I'm going to do next." She smiled at Rang expectantly, waiting on him to answer, but he could only stare, his fox tongue frozen in his mouth and his human heart frozen in his chest.

"Hey, are you okay? We don't have to keep going. I just wanted to see what it felt like. I told you I wouldn't freak out. And you said—"

"Your pancakes are too sweet," Rang blurted.

"Huh?" Ga Eul asked, frowning.

Shit.

That wasn't what he'd meant to say. He'd been trying to come up with a word for how he felt in that moment. Accepted didn't quite cover it. Even loved didn't seem strong enough.

He could make people accept him. He could make people think that they loved him.

But Ga Eul saw him, him entirely—she knew exactly what he was—and she accepted him anyway. He hadn't bewitched her; he hadn't forced her to feel that way. But her love for him was so pure; her heart was so true. He could see that when he looked into her eyes, and not in a cheesy, melodramatic way. No, he could actually see it. And with it came the knowledge that all his fears had been totally unfounded.

He had been so wrong. So incredibly wrong.

The little human he'd fallen in love with was a real person, and one that loved him as well. He hadn't been deceiving himself.

Suddenly, all her little absurdities made sense. Her defense of him. Her care. Her pancakes.

Relieved, yet overwhelmed, Rang wanted to cry again. Or launch himself at Ga Eul and give her a hug that would probably crush all the bones in her body. But he found himself glued to his seat.

Dumbly, he persisted, "They're too sweet." He gestured to the pancakes on their plates. "You put too much sugar. You should fix that...next time."

Ga Eul stared at him for the longest moment. So long he almost thought she was performing mind control on him.

Then she kicked his leg. Hard. Impressively hard for a human. He regretted giving her taekwondo lessons.

"Asshole," she scolded. "I got up at seven to make these. Can't you say something nice like 'Jagiya, these pancakes are the most delicious ones I've ever eaten?'"

"No."

"No?"

"If I tell you that, you'll keep making them too sweet, and I'll keep having to eat overly sweet pancakes. I think you should fix that right now."

"Well, I think you should stop being an asshole right now. I'll fix my problem when you fix yours," she retorted, crossing her arms. She scowled at him like she was scolding a small child instead of a nine-tailed fox.

Of course she was. She hadn't been lying. She wasn't scared of him at all. And even though she had no problem calling him an asshole, she didn't hate him. Not one bit.

Not one bit.

Tears welled up in Rang's eyes.

Before he could no longer speak, he repeated, "Your pancakes are too sweet." He smiled, eyeing her fondly, and Ga Eul blinked, adorably bewildered by his response. To his surprise, his next few words rolled off his tongue easily.

"Your pancakes are too sweet. In asshole nine-tailed fox, that means 'I love you.'"

A/N: *Author breathes sigh of relief.* It ONLY took thirty-five chapters...