to believe Nara. But he’d learned that it was unwise not to heed such warnings. The last time he didn’t listen was when Miyoung told him to run and his halmeoni had paid the price.
“What if she doesn’t leave?” Jihoon asked.
“Then she’ll die.”
Jihoon stiffened. “There isn’t a way to stop your halmeoni?”
“She’s too powerful. I couldn’t stop her even if I tried,” Nara said. “Plus, she’s keeping things from me now. I think she’s found someone else to help her. I heard her the other night on the phone. She has something she’s been looking for. She said this is how it should have always been, that the punishment will be ten times worse now. Miyoung needs to leave.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
Jihoon spun around as Miyoung entered the apartment.
“If your halmeoni won’t give up her grudge, then maybe I’ll need to get rid of the threat.” Miyoung’s voice could freeze a fire.
“Please,” Nara stuttered, “I’ve come to you in good faith. Please don’t hurt my halmeoni.”
After a second of frozen indecision, Miyoung replied, “I won’t kill her. I don’t do that anymore.”
“Thank you,” Nara breathed out.
“So you came to warn me and you did. Are we done?” Mi-young’s face was set in a blank mask. But Jihoon saw the turmoil she hid. Like a storm brewing behind her steady irises.
Nara hesitated, her eyes darting between Jihoon and Miyoung.
“Is there more?” Jihoon asked gently, because he felt like he was standing next to two pressure points that were ready to burst.
“The bead,” Nara said. “It’s the center of this all. My halmeoni still wants it. She thinks if she can control you, she can hurt Yena.”
“Does this mean she’s coming after me?” Jihoon asked.
“I think I can do it,” Nara said instead of answering him. “The ceremony I did before to take out the bead.”
“You said you didn’t have enough power,” Miyoung replied.
Jihoon didn’t need to see her face to know she was worried. He felt it like electricity traveling through the air. Or maybe it was the connection from the bead inside him.
“Not alone.” Nara bit her lip. “But I realized this full moon means something.”
“No, it doesn’t. It’s not the winter solstice or the summer. It’s not even a harvest moon.”
“But it is the last full moon before your hundred days. The third since you stopped feeding. Those numbers have significance,” Nara said. “It’s important to you. And that might be more powerful.”
“So you’re saying you can take out the bead, and Jihoon will be fine?”
Nara’s silence answered for her.
“No,” Miyoung said, hard and final.
“I can’t say for sure it’ll work. But I can say it’s your best option, the only one where you can have a hope you’ll both survive.”
“If I make it to the hundred days without feeding, then maybe the bead will be weak enough to come out on its own.”
“And if you die while the bead is still in him? How can you know he won’t die, too?”
“She’s right,” Jihoon said. “The bead is making me sick. The migraines, the seizures. The way I see it, things can’t stay the way they are now. If we do nothing, the odds are pretty high one or both of us aren’t going to make it. I’d rather do something and fail than give up.”
Miyoung gave in. “What do we need to do?”
Nara started to speak when Jihoon’s phone rang.
He glanced at Miyoung, unsure if the moment could handle such a disruption.
“Answer it,” she said. “I need some fresh air to think.”
Jihoon picked up with an impatient, “Hello?”
He listened to the formal voice on the other line as his eyes followed Miyoung to the front door. It opened with a blast of cold air.
“What?” he asked sharply. Miyoung glanced at him curiously.
“I’m sorry,” the person on the other line said. “I hate to tell you this kind of news over the phone. It’s your halmeoni.”
64
THE TWO BLACK lines on the white band around Jihoon’s arm indicated he was the family of the deceased. He stared at them as he accepted the bows of his halmeoni’s doctors, who had come to pay their respects.
Halmeoni’s funeral took place in the hospital’s jangryesikjang. It was filled with rooms for viewings and memorials, a hallway where every door led to death and grief.
Rooms down the hall hosted funerals of other patients. Some had dozens of wreaths lining the entrance, as if showing the social status of the deceased.
Jihoon stood in a daze beside the portrait of his halmeoni that sat on