Page 4 of Vicious Spirits

Somin liked to think she was pretty tough. She didn’t scare easily. She would never run from a fight, especially if it meant defending someone she loved. Still, knowing that the monsters in her childhood storybooks were real was a cold shock to the ever-practical Lee Somin. Now she had to readjust her whole way of looking at the world. And for a girl who always liked to be right, it was a hard thing to accept.

As Somin let the door close behind her, she wasn’t sure what she expected, but Gu Miyoung in an apron, dusting the shelves, was not it.

“Did I step into an alternate universe?” Somin asked.

Miyoung glanced up. She was beautiful. With ebony hair that swung halfway down her back, long legs, thick lashes, full lips. But when she looked close enough, Somin saw the worry in the pursed set of Miyoung’s mouth.

“I know how to clean an apartment,” Miyoung said. “I’m not a total slob.”

“Oh, I never thought that,” Somin said. “I just figured dusting was beneath a gumiho.”

“Well, I’m not really a gumiho anymore,” Miyoung muttered.

The only thing weirder than realizing that her new friend had been a gumiho was learning how she’d become a not-gumiho. Betrayal, lost fox beads, a long-lost father, and an overprotective mother.

Somin had grown up hearing stories about gumiho—nine-tailed foxes with the ability to live forever as long as theydevoured the energy of men. And in the span of one night, she’d had to accept that they existed and that there was one who wanted to kill her best friend, Jihoon. Miyoung’s mother, Gu Yena, to be exact. A gumiho who had lived for hundreds of years and had been willing to do anything, even kill—even die—to protect Miyoung.

It had been a few months since she found out Miyoung’s secret, and sometimes Somin still forgot that Miyoung wasn’t just human.

Jihoon walked out of his bedroom, a tall boy with a lanky frame and hair that always looked mussed, probably because, more often than not, he’d just woken up from a nap. He spotted Somin and gave her a sad smile. It looked wrong on his handsome face. His face was better suited for wicked grins that made his dimples wink. But Somin supposed he had nothing to really smile about today.

“Jihoon-ah, are you putting your girlfriend to work while you sleep away the day?” Somin said, but there was no bite to the words.

His smile deepened a bit, so there was a hint of dimples. Like a ghostly trace of the affable boy Somin had grown up with.

“She volunteered for cleaning duty. Don’t offer to do the boring work if you don’t want me to accept.” He shrugged. Jihoon was never one to make excuses, but his blunt honesty was part of his charm, usually.

“I’d rather dust than try to clean out the black hole you call a bedroom,” Miyoung said.

“You make fun of it, but when the government pays me billions to study the natural phenomenon of a black hole right here in Seoul, you’ll be sorry,” Jihoon quipped.

Somin rolled her eyes, but secretly she was relieved her best friend was still able to make jokes on a day like today. “What job should I do?” She glanced at the empty boxes scattered throughout the room. Not even a dish towel packed away yet. Perhaps because these weren’t just things. This was everything that Jihoon had left of his halmeoni—the woman who had raised him. And now she was gone. Somin understood why the boxes were still empty: because packing away these things was like packing away memories.

She started to reach for a box at the same time Miyoung did. When their hands brushed, she felt a spark, like static shock. It happened often when she came in contact with the former gumiho, as if Miyoung’s latent fox abilities still hungered for energy.

“Sorry,” Miyoung muttered.

“No worries,” Somin assured her. “As long as you don’t suck out all my gi, we can stay friends.”

Miyoung pursed her lips at that. She still wasn’t quite able to joke about her old gumiho life. Somin couldn’t really blame her. After all, she figured it had to be traumatizing to survive by taking the lives of others.

“Knock, knock.” Somin’s mother opened the front door. “Sorry I’m late. Traffic was horrible. Iwasgoing to take the subway, but I just didn’t want to deal with so many sweaty people. I hate public transportation during the summer. But then I guess everyone else had the same idea to drive, and it took way too long to get here.”

Somin almost laughed. Usually, it was a toss-up who was taking care of whom between the two. Her mother was all sparkand energy and light. But she was also so scattered she’d forget her own brain if it wasn’t shut securely in her head. Even though Somin was just a nineteen-year-old high school senior, she was definitely the more responsible out of the two.

There was no one in this world Somin loved as much as her mother, except maybe Jihoon. They weren’t quite a traditional family, but Somin considered them a unit.

“It’s all right, Ms. Moon, we haven’t even gotten started,” Jihoon said.

“Some of us have,” Miyoung muttered.

“Well, what should we tackle first?” Somin’s mother clapped her hands together and looked expectantly at her daughter.

Now Somin did laugh. It always fell on her to take charge. “Jihoon, why don’t you take care of your black-hole room. Miyoung, can you do the bathroom? Mom, can you do...” She hesitated, then said, “The back room?” because she couldn’t quite bring herself to say “Halmeoni’s room.”

Her mom gave her a knowing smile. “Of course.” She picked up a box and headed to the back.

Jihoon stared after Somin’s mother as she opened the door to Halmeoni’s room. He still didn’t move as the door closed behind her.

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