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Who am I, if I am not the perfect daughter?
More than ever, now, I was afraid of this love for her, afraid of the intolerable agony that came with loving anyone at all.
But now I noticed the slight tremor in her hand, the way her jaw was clenched, and I knew what she was feeling: han. The feeling of outrage, the vicious urge for vengeance to right the wrong, pierced by the acute pain and grief of knowing our overwhelming odds at ever claiming justice.
“Sometimes,” Yul said, plucking a few and dropping them into my basket, “a little sweetness cheers the soul.”
The ones I loved most dragged me through the darkest of hours. Yet in the next life, I would still love them again.”
I stepped forward, but Daehyun’s hand clung to mine, to the tips of my fingers, holding me to the very end when the current of my decision swept me away. To Suyeon I would go. To the girl I had once resented. To the girl I had always loved.
“You must change the heavens. So go, daegam. Go and move the heavens for her.”
“Hwang Iseul,” his voice rasped, his hands gripping tight onto my skirt, “if by any chance we do not meet again in this lifetime, then I will find you in the next—or as many lifetimes as it takes to see you again.”
“So long as you live, we’ll have the rest of our lives to find each other again. And I will find you again. I promise.”
The dead are dead. He knew that was what they would have said—Hyukjin, Wonsik, his mother, and his brothers. But she is still among the living. Be good to those who are still alive.
We mortals exist for but a season, and yet we love as though we are bound by eternity.
And so I clung to the ghost of him.
After a long, tense moment, he leaned in, pressing his forehead gently against the curve of my shoulder. “Then I will be yours,” he confessed, his voice a soft caress, “and I shall be your ruin.”
