colder? Was there a strange breeze? Or was that Jihoon’s ragged breath?
“How did you even move it?” Junu whispered, staring at the jar.
“Was it supposed to be . . . locked?” Jihoon asked.
“It wouldn’t be a proper prison if it wasn’t.”
“A prison?” Jihoon squeaked.
“Yes, and you don’t want what’s trapped in here to get out.”
“Why not?”
“She’s not likely to be a benevolent spirit.”
“What is she likely to be?” Jihoon asked, and it was clear he wasn’t letting this go.
“A gumiho.”
“Why is a gumiho trapped in this jar?” Jihoon’s voice wavered.
“That’s not important. What’s important is that she was dangerous and I helped trap her,” Junu murmured, remembering that fateful night when his life had changed. How the moonlight flooded the room. Bathed Sinhye in its glow. How she looked like a demon come to take his soul.
Jihoon’s eyes widened and he took a step back, his hands out as if trying to ward away evil. “And I touched it. I think I’m going to be sick. I feel nauseous. Ugh, my head hurts.” He pinched the bridge of his nose as he leaned his head back.
“Let’s just get out of here before you have a stroke.”
Jihoon looked around. “But we came here for your staff. What do we do now?”
“I guess we start from square one,” Junu said. “But there’s nothing for us to do here anymore. And I’d like to be away from this damned place as soon as possible. But first”—Junu slapped a hand on Jihoon’s back hard enough to make him stumble a step—“we eat.”
JUNU WOKE WITH a start. His brain foggy, like tendrils of smoke wound through it, trying to form shapes that dissipated before he could make them out. Memories nipping at the edges of his mind and dancing away when he reached for them.
Then everything cleared. As he remembered, he’d swung out in defense. But it was too late. He’d already died. And the moment of his death was replaying in his head no matter how he tried to push it away.
The woman he’d loved. The woman he’d trusted. She had revealed herself to be a demon and then killed him.
He opened his eyes to see a different woman standing in front of him. Not his murderer. Not his Sinhye.
She was a shaman. And she explained to him that after he died, his beloved hired her to trap his soul in a new form. Because he shunned Sinhye as a demon, she made him one as well: a dokkaebi.
Though, she could not bring herself to make him hideous, so she gave him a beautiful face and form. This way he would truly know her pain. Because though his face would attract humans, soon they would see his demonic side and they would shun him as he had shunned her.
Unable to accept this, Junu had run home, desperate to see his family. They did not recognize him. He wore a new face; he walked in a new body. And he stood outside the gates, staring at the signs of mourning on his household, unable to tell them he was still alive. Unsure if he was alive.
Dejected, penniless, alone, Junu returned to the cave where the shaman awaited him. She told him that he could get his revenge on the gumiho who trapped him in this form. And in return, he merely had to give up his dokkaebi staff.
Junu hated the thing and what it symbolized to him. He wanted nothing to do with the magic associated with his dokkaebi form. So he readily agreed. Magic had done this to him, and he would use every last bit he’d been cursed with to trap Sinhye forever.
25
SOMIN HATED HAVING nothing to do. Especially when people she cared about were out there risking their lives. She wanted to be in the action, to do something other than pacing the gleaming floors of Junu’s apartment. So she went to his library hoping to find a good book to distract herself with. As she ran her fingers over the piano keys, the sound brought memories of the last time she was here, and she blushed.
Somin purposefully turned her back on the piano and moved to the opposite end of the room. There was no rhyme or reason to the organization of the books on the shelves. But she could tell that most were well-used.
Smiling, she shook her head at Junu’s previous claim that these books were just for show. Her mother had always said that a well-read book was a