Page 71 of Vicious Spirits

“My halmeoni wanted me to give you this,” she interrupted him, and held out a business card.

Junu was so surprised, he took it automatically. She was a precocious one. And didn’t seem at all scared to be talking to a fabled dokkaebi.

The card was plain white with only a phone number printed across it. He flipped it over in his hand, but the rest was completely blank.

“What is this for?” he asked.

“To call, duh.” The girl rolled her eyes like he was the child, not her.

It would have made Junu laugh, but suspicion had taken ahold of his chest. “Why would I call this number?”

“She says that you’ll be too curious not to.” She gave a smile that showed she was missing her two front teeth.

“I don’t usually go looking for things I know nothing about.”

The girl giggled. “My halmeoni said you might say something like that. She said if you did, I should tell you something else.” She scrunched up her face as she raised her eyes to the sky in an exaggerated thinking face. Then she smiled. “Oh yeah, she said when you find hidden the one that seeks to harm, you’ll call.”

Then, without another word, she turned and skipped into the crowd. Junu stared at the card in his hand.

“Thirty thousand won!”

Junu spun around, pocketing the card as Somin stomped over to him.

“What?” he asked, trying to push the strange conversation out of his mind.

“It costs thirty thousand won for just one photo. They’re thieves!”

Junu chuckled. “I could have told you that.”

“Well, I’m not wasting my money on that. Even if it was the greatest photo of all time.”

“You should have expected those kinds of prices at an amusement park,” Junu said, leading her away from the pirate ship ride. “You know, I could take you so many better places. You said you want to travel. Maybe we could just get out of here, travel the world. Go global like BTS on the hallyu wave.”

That surprised a laugh out of Somin. “You know, for a guy who’s hundreds of years old, you’re pretty obsessed with pop culture.”

Junu shrugged. “Being eternal doesn’t mean I have to be boring.”

“What’s it like?” Somin asked, her expression suddenly somber. “Being immortal.”

“Why? You considering a new lifestyle?”

“Is immortality an option for someone like me?” Somin asked, her eyes drifting to a spectral form in the corner. As if these ghosts were making her ponder her own mortality.

“No.” Her words worried Junu, and he couldn’t quite put his finger on why. “You shouldn’t be immortal. Your mortality is what makes you shine, Somin-ah. Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise.”

Somin became contemplative. “Do you regret it? Your immortality?”

“There’s no use regretting something you have no control over,” Junu said, a heavy weight settling in his gut. He lifted his shoulders, as if trying to shrug off the troublesome sensation.

“I’m sorry,” Somin said quietly. “How could she do this to you when she once claimed to love you?”

Junu hated the sorrow in her voice. “I used to ask myself that every day. And then I realized, I’m immortal. I don’t need to spend the rest of eternity worrying about things that don’t matter anymore.”

“Of course it matters.” Somin reached for him, but he didn’t want to be comforted right now. He didn’t think he could handle it. “She betrayed you. You loved her. That means something.”

“I thought I loved her,” Junu said, searching her eyes. But what he found wasn’t the pity he thought he’d see. He saw a fire in her, the kind she got when she tried to protect one of her friends. And now it was burning for him. But would it last? He couldn’t be sure. It was like standing at the threshold of a warm room after being out in a blizzard for too long, but being too scared to step inside. “Now I’m starting to think that maybe what I felt then wasn’t real,” he whispered.

“What are you saying?” Somin asked, her eyes boring into his, like they were trying to find all his secrets. It wasn’t the first time someone wanted to figure him out, but it was the first time he was rooting for them to. It was dangerous. She was dangerous.

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