Han Nayeon works as a ghostwriter in Hermes Tower, a prestigious company that offers solutions to problems. Choi Junhyub is the man she meets the day she arrives late for work for the first time, the man she's attracted to but has never met before...
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Nestled within a ring of modest torches, the sarcophagus, the one Nayeon and Junhyub came across near the entrance, observed the parade of humans and gwishin before it, a rare scene conjoining species solely capable of fearing each other. Of course, Ramiel was there too.
"He's in there." The Jeoseung Saja sighed. "Really, Junhyub, I thought I had you convinced. If word of the crypt goes out, we're all doomed, and that's exactly what your friend wants."
"Yook Chan isn't selfish," Junhyub said. "You misunderstood him. Why would you want to persuade me to give up on solving his problem? Regret? Self-preservation? What a joke!"
Nayeon tugged his sleeve. Junhyub had always been level-headed, so she didn't get the point of all this ire. "That's enough. He's protecting the gwishin from humans, and vice versa. Can't you see?"
Junhyub made an arc with his finger, slicing the air between him and everyone else before shaking her off. "All of you here are blind to Ramiel's schemes. From hereon, I won't trust him anymore." He whirled around and opened the sarcophagus, his hands shaking with anticipation. He needed to save Yook Chan. No one must stop him, and they couldn't.
Cold cadaverine diffused into the air as papyrus strips unfurled round a motionless body infested with wounds, pink, red, black, the houses of forgotten flesh and feeling, bloody contours the graves of several ants and maggots. Dew-frozen lashes swatted a maggot aside and a grey emerged, and another, two voids encased in human residue. Sour denial enmeshed in the ambience. The mummy rose, all papyruses sliding down to his lap, revealing at once the depths of torture he underwent. He gave his audience a cursory glance and climbed out of the flesh-eating coffin. If Steffie the "fashion whore", according to M, met the gay couple's nudity with disdain, then she was momentarily relieved Yook Chan wasn't fully naked, till the papyruses lay in the sarcophagus.
"Get him some jewel—"
"No."
The single syllable arrested her, the tone gentle yet firm, like the soft click of handcuffs. Junhyub, unlike everyone else, escaped captivity, his gaze on his friend morose and apprehensive.
"No..." Yook Chan pushed past Junhyub and dashed off, screaming of illusions and their tendency to glue memory and reality into a lump of fear. "How dare you bring Junhyub in like this!"
Footfalls rising to the volume of a stampede, wails morphing into shrieks, Yook Chan's gradually distant presence bore scars on the sarcophagus's vicinity, like the phrase carved onto the lid, a permanent reminder to "fear thyself", one he took to mind, to heart. Skulls splits apart and crumbs of bricks accumulated on the floor. Nary an entity withstood the projection of agony; the living and the dead felt it more acutely than the inanimate. The echo chamber of a crypt amplified all repressed emotions and thoughts, forcing veins to tick and microexpressions to slip. Ramiel couldn't smirk unnoticed, Junhyub no longer held his façade, Nayeon's panic hit the brim, Steffie and M and N argued over Yook Chan's right to clothing and nudity, exchanging barbed words in circles. In the heat of arguments and the light of loss, Yook Chan conjoined humans and gwishin. In his waning shadow, they were alike.
