Present Day, Seoul

I woke up late the next morning and felt so disoriented that I wasn’t sure if the things I’d found in my father’s study the day before had been real or simply a dream. Then I remembered my text to Yun Seo and groaned when I verified that it, at least, had been all too real. 

He’d also sent another text a few hours ago. Come to the estate whenever you’re ready to go.

Sighing, I dragged myself out of bed and glared into my closet for a while.

How should I dress?

Yun Seo responded almost immediately as if he’d been waiting for my reply. The weather should be sunny but cool. Fall temperatures. Wear walking shoes and comfortable clothes.

Thinking about how much I’d sweat in the heat on my run the day before, I replied, Cool sounds nice. I’ll be there in thirty.

See you soon.

I dressed in a lightweight, charcoal sweater and a pair of broken-in black jeans. Looking at myself in the mirror, I debated about pulling my hair back and decided to leave it down now that I knew Yun Seo liked the length. Even though I had no idea where we were going, I decided to bring my camera along. I hadn’t used it since leaving the Wild Hunt, but I was feeling the itch to start documenting my life again and pick up my journaling, if only to have a record to reflect on at some point in the future when life began to make sense again.

Peering into my father’s office as I walked past, I confirmed that everything was exactly where I’d left it, the lockbox, the hard drives and his journal. I’d brought the letter back to my room and tucked it into a pocket of my suitcase. If Chan Wook had noticed the mess in dad’s office, he’d either left the items undisturbed or been careful to put them back where he found them. Chan Wook was nosy, so I suspected the latter.

I quickly drank some cold brew and ate an apple while I decided whether I should leave Chan Wook a note. We were mostly living separate lives even though we were under the same roof again, so the only reason to leave a note would be if I planned to miss dinner, but I didn’t know when I would be back or what I was doing with the day yet. I’d been transparent about a lot more with him lately, but he didn’t need to know everything I was doing. He hadn’t said much when I told him how my reunion with Yun Seo had gone, but he hadn’t been able to completely hide his disappointment. Yun Seo would have his work cut out for him to change Chan Wook’s mind – if he decided that was even something he cared to do.

With a curious combination of anticipation and nostalgia roiling in my stomach, I drove  the familiar route to the Jang estate with absolutely no idea what I was doing. Was I avoiding dealing with my feelings about my father and my uncertain future by seeking Yun Seo out? Was I only trading one emotional turmoil for another? I wasn’t sure I had an answer. I was simply following the flow to see where it led. 

Na Rae answered the door when I arrived, giving me a skeptical look before letting me inside. “So you two are really doing this, huh?” she asked with pursed lips.

“Doing what?” I asked, a little worried she was alluding to whatever Yun Seo had planned for the day.

“Dating.”

I laughed, wondering what Yun Seo had told her. Knowing the two of them, he had said very little and Na Rae had simply filled in the blanks with her own assumptions. “I guess so.”

She patted me on the arm with a serious look. “Good luck. You’re going to need it.” Turning to walk away, she added over her shoulder, “He’s in the kitchen and very caffeinated. So be warned.”

Yun Seo was pacing back and forth across the room when I walked in, anxiety in every taut angle of his body. There was something so human and real about his worried expression that I found myself wanting to step back into the hallway and watch him for a little longer, but he had already noticed me.

“You made it.” A smile sprang to his lips, and even if it was a little forced, the expression was natural enough to be believed. “Would you like some coffee before we go?”

I shook my head. “I’m good.” As much as I enjoyed coffee when he made it for me, I was too curious about what he had planned for the day to delay.

He rubbed his hands together. “Shall we go, then?”

I nodded and followed him back into the hall, taking the opportunity to observe that while he had also chosen comfortable clothes, he was predictably better dressed than I was in a fitted suede jacket over a lightweight creamy sweater and khaki slacks. Even his hiking shoes looked brand new. Slowing as we approached the mismatched door to his bedroom, he turned around to face me, his gaze strangely vulnerable as he held out a hand.

“Ready?”

I smiled and took his hand, letting him pull me close as we walked through the doorway. 

A musty smell tickled my nose when we arrived in a dimly lit room on the other side. We were in a basement, surrounded by shelves stacked with boxes and bags of food. Turning slowly to look around the room, I realized we were in a shop storeroom, all of the shelves labeled and organized neatly.

Footsteps creaked on a worn wooden floor above us, and I realized that I smelled an Unseen nearby, a powerful one. I wasn’t sure how I could tell the difference, but now that I’d started paying attention to this ability I was learning to trust my instincts. Yun Seo gave me a reassuring look before leading the way to a rickety wooden staircase. As expected, we emerged into a quaint, small-town convenience store, something owned by an individual rather than one of the many chains that sold convenience around the world. 

A huge man stood over a box of items near the front window, restocking tchotchke keychains on the rack near the door. The design of the items was unusual, black bears interacting with various objects from giant octopi to bowls of salmon roe, all with the same angry roar contorting their features.

“You,” the bulky man grunted as he glanced in our direction. “It’s been a while.” He was Japanese, I realized, but not the typical compact version I’d come to associate with the country. He had enough weight on his unusually tall frame to require a sturdy structure. “And you brought a friend.” He gave me a curious look, fathomless black eyes studying me with the lazy scrutiny of a predator determining if a creature was a threat or merely prey. He seemed to conclude the latter as he huffed a laugh and turned away, carrying the empty box to the counter and tossing it onto a pile of similar boxes behind him.

“This is Ri Sang Kyu,” Yun Seo said with a gesture in my direction. “Takeshi Kitamura,” he said to me, nodding at the man behind the counter. “He’s an Onikuma.”

Eyebrows lifting, I gave another look at the cheesy souvenirs near the front door, the vicious bears taking on a new meaning in light of the store owner’s identity. “A demon bear,” I said softly, remembering the colorful entry in my father’s journal about the Unseen native to Hokkaido, Japan’s still mostly wild Northern island.

Takeshi grunted his agreement. “They say we avoid humans, but when they drive away your prey, you have to find new ways to live.”

“How’s business?” Yun Seo asked.

“Good. They keep threatening to build a Lawson’s down the street, but I’ve blocked every attempt.”

“Let me know if you need any support. I know a lawyer who could take care of everything for you.”

Growling softly, Takeshi shook his head. “I know how to take care of these corporate fools.” Gazing out the shop’s front window, he said, “I suppose that car out front is yours?”

Yun Seo nodded. “I hope you don’t mind. I asked them to park it somewhere out of the way.”

“As long as you’re taking it with you when you go, then I’ll let it pass.” Takeshi grinned, teeth glinting within his full beard. 

“I will,” Yun Seo agreed. “Take care, old friend.”

We exited the shop onto a sloped street framed by wooded mountains that looked a lot like home except for the Japanese characters on all the signs. While this was obviously a tourist spot, it was not as overrun as most of Japan’s sightseeing destinations, which was probably why Yun Seo had chosen it given his notoriety. 

The car out front was also less flashy than Yun Seo’s usual taste, surprisingly practical to match the setting. The thought that he had arranged to have it delivered to this spot on such short notice amazed me. It was very like him to make flexible plans that seemed spontaneous but actually required a lot of effort to pull off, but this was the first time he’d ever made that kind of effort for me.

When Yun Seo walked right past the car, I frowned. “Where are we going?”

“We have something to see here before we move on,” he replied.

I followed him up a steep slope toward the entrance of a park. 

Hands tucked into his pockets, Yun Seo glanced at me. “You said you liked water, so I found a few different kinds to show you.”

Charmed by the idea, I asked, “How many different kinds of water can there be?”

“Let’s find out.” 

The day was sunny and cool, just as Yun Seo had predicted, but as he led me up one set of stairs and then another I felt a sheen of sweat rise to my skin. Pushing my sleeves up to my elbows, I teased, “You didn’t tell me we’d be climbing a mountain.” 

We’d paused to take a break in the middle of a bamboo forest, looking over a hillside that steamed with volcanic activity, and I lifted my camera to take a few photos, sneaking one or two with Yun Seo in the frame when he wasn’t looking.

“Is this what you call climbing a mountain?” Yun Seo replied with a smirk. “I thought that was what we did in France.”

“Hardly.” Leaning against the fence beside him, I wrinkled my nose at the scent of rotten egg seeping from the nearby vents. “But at least the air smelled much fresher.”

“You told me to surprise you. Are you disappointed?”

Smiling, I shook my head. “Only if this is all there is.”

“Keep climbing and you’ll see why I brought you here.”

The view from the mountain top was impressive, sulfuric fumes rising from pools that swirled with color like oil in sunlight. 

“It’s beautiful,” I breathed, too amazed by the otherworldly view to even reach for my camera, letting my eyes have their fill first.

“The natives used that mountain to predict the weather,” Yun Seo said, nodding to the peak across from us where smoke was rising in a thin column toward the sky.

“The natives?” I repeated.

“The Ainu. The people who lived here before the Japanese conquered the island.”

Studying his expression, I thought about the Japanese invasion of Korea and wars of centuries past and realized that the Unseen had lived through all of it. Maybe not Yun Seo himself, but his mother certainly had. I’d not thought about the consequences of such long lives before, but it made me think of Pehtra and the way she’d talked about death. Would Yun Seo live just as long? I’d never considered the possibility, but suddenly the thought of him living forever without making real connections made me sad.

“What?” he asked when he noticed my scrutiny. 

“Are you immortal?” I asked bluntly, and I could tell the question had caught him off guard, coming as it had out of nowhere.

His laughter eased the tightness in my chest. “No. Just hard to kill.” Lifting a hand to touch the side of my face, he asked, “Why? Are you worried I’ll outlive you?”

“I’d never really thought about it before,” I admitted. “But you aren’t human, not really.”

His hand dropped to his side and he took a deep breath. “No. But I’m also not the only avatar of Munshin. Just as there are many doors, there are many Gasin who guard them.”

This was news to me. “Was your mother also –”

He looked away. “No. She was one of a kind.” Reaching out to squeeze my arm, he said, “Shall we keep going? There’s more to see.”

We wandered along the winding paths deeper into the forest, passing lonely Jizo statues in the bamboo stands along the way, and as we descended the mountain again the smell of sulfur became more potent along with the sound of rushing water. The forest was lush around us now, the path crossing over a milky white brook that babbled and tumbled down the mountainside, steam rising from every waterfall. When we reached a pool at the bottom, I realized why he had brought me here.

“A footbath?” I asked as I read the sign next to the stream.

“I thought a full onsen might be too forward,” he replied, looking a little sheepish. 

Laughing, I walked up to the edge of the stream with a grin, glancing at the other people along the trail and deciding they probably couldn’t hear us over the waterfall nearby. Even if they did, it was unlikely they spoke Korean. “As if we haven’t already seen each other naked.” 

“Yes,” he agreed, “but I don’t particularly want to be seen by anyone else.”

Remembering his scars, I felt a little guilty. “That water looks hot,” I said to lighten the mood, already stepping out of my shoes and tugging at my socks. 

“It does,” he agreed, and the look on his face made me wonder if he might have brought me all the way here only to refuse to participate once we reached our destination. 

I was grateful I’d chosen to wear old jeans because they were loose enough to let me roll them up almost to my knees. “You’re getting in with me, aren’t you?” I asked, giving his nice slacks a skeptical look. 

He shrugged. “Why not?” Bending over, he rolled his slacks like a pro, folding them neatly so the fabric wouldn’t touch the water. Dropping into the pool first, he gave me a triumphant look. “What are you waiting for? Afraid you’ll get your clothes wet?”

I lunged for him as I joined him in the stream, but he easily dodged my attack. And soon I was too distracted by the surprising texture of the water and the way the gritty sand at the bottom felt hot beneath my toes to make another attempt. Catching my wrist, Yun Seo pulled me with him as he waded toward the steamy waterfall, the temperature rising against the soles of my feet with every step. The water itself felt silky, softened by all the minerals swirling around within its pearlescent glow.

“What do you think?” Yun Seo asked, leaning against me as we sank slowly into the fine silt at the bottom of the pool. “Do you like this water as much as the ocean?”

“It’s different,” I said thoughtfully, closing my eyes to savor the dual sensations of the hot sand against my feet and Yun Seo’s warm body so close to mine. “I think it might be a close second.”

“Hm.” He pursed his lips. “So I haven’t won you over yet.”

“I can’t let you win so easily,” I replied. “You should have to put in a little effort first.”

Pursing his lips thoughtfully, he nodded. “I suppose that’s fair.”