Legend [YEONBIN] ✓

seventy-six ; soobin

I wanted to let the pain take me into the dark. At least then my torment would end.

“If you die, you’ll be going against my wishes.” The words were an angry rasp from mom, her eyes closed against the pain. I almost laughed. Leave it to my mother to command me to live.

“As you wish, Mother.”

I pulled myself up and lurched to my feet, swaying at first. The air sizzled and sparked, an electric energy created through magic and might to hold down a gumiho.

I gathered the last of my strength and charged. With each step, pain engulfed me. It coursed through me like a thousand volts.

Detective Hae’s eyes widened at the sight of me, blood and spit foaming at my snarling lips. Each step pulling a scream of agony from me. “You said they wouldn’t feel pain.”

I almost laughed at my father’s belated concern. But instead another groan of pain escaped.

Fire swept around me, through me, into me.

Pain became my world.

Then a voice called to me. “Soobin! Fight it!”

Yeonjun? Was he alive? Or was he calling me to join him in the world of the dead? My eyes flew open and found Yeonjun’s. He lay across the ground. The bujeok pasted to his chest burned as bright as the flames around me, but he watched me calmly.

“Fight it,” he said again.

“Sunbae!” Like an avenging spirit appearing from the shadows, Sunghoon leapt into view. He grabbed my bead from the makeshift altar on the ground. As Sunghoon cradled the bujeok-wrapped stone, he began to scream.

“No!” Shaman Kim shouted, falling out of her dance.

And for a blissful moment, my pain subsided.

Sunghoon lay on the ground, his arms covered in mottled blisters. He cradled them against his chest, tears tracking down his cheeks to pool in the dirt.

Shaman Kim took up the dance again, even as his grandson lay burnt and battered at his feet. As her song reached a crescendo, she lifted her hands to the sky. Mom’s bead caught ablaze. The bujeok burned away with a flame that arced into the air. And when the fire died, it revealed ash instead of stone.

“No!” It was meant as a shout, but it came out as a whisper from my dry throat.

I spun toward mom and almost fell in shock. Where my mother had lain before, there was now a beautiful fox. Long and lean, with lithe muscles and lush fur. Her nine tails splayed behind her. Like she was reverting to her basic form on her way to death.

Shaman Kim bent to pry open Sunghoon’s fingers. The younger shaman moaned in pain.

“Foolish boy,” Shaman Kim said with a snarl. She pulled my bead from Sunghoon’s hands.

“This is wrong,” Sunghoon moaned. “We’re not murderers.”

“You can’t murder a demon,” the shaman muttered, placing my bead back into the center of the circle of incense. It now sat on the ruins of my mother’s bead.

“You said it would be quick.” Detective Hae stared at the bead, dumbfounded, as if he wondered how he’d gotten there.

“Again!” Shaman Kim said before she took up the chant.

I stood on trembling feet.

My forward motion was so haltingly slow that I knew I couldn’t make it to the shaman before the kut was finished.

“You said you cared about me.” I aimed the accusation at my father, who still stared at the ash-covered altar.

His eyes lifted to me, and he winced at the sight of me. “I’m doing this because I care,” Detective Hae said. “You are evil things. It is better you are gone from this world, where you can no longer hurt anyone.”