Yejun jammed his hands in his pockets, suddenly fascinated with his shoelaces. “How… how were the pancakes?” he said after a moment.
“They were awful,” I said, “but is that really what you want to ask me?”
Yejun swallowed, then met my gaze for a brief moment before looking back down. For the first time since I’d met him, he looked like he wanted to hide his head in the sand. What had happened to the cool, confident Yejun I knew?
“Did you happen to find anything unusual there?” he said at last.
I reached out and took his hand.
His gaze snapped toward me, his hand tensing around mine. “Mina—”
“As a matter of fact, I did,” I said, leaning against him. “I found a letter. A pretty long one, actually. But the gist of it is that we don’t have to worry about this mission anymore. Oh, and that there definitely isn’t going to be a war, so I shouldn’t shoot anyone.”
That hadn’t been all of it, of course. There was a lot about how I should trust Yejun and not doubt my parents’ love and how Hana was always with me even though I was never going to find her.
But none of it mattered, because I hadn’t needed the letter at all.
As the dragon’s golden light had devoured Hong Gildong’s office and carried all of us into a gilded sea, a hand had shielded my eyes from the apex of brightness.
Thank you, Mina, a woman’s voice had whispered in my ear, though it might have been nothing more than the song of wind across a vast blue sea.
When I’d opened my eyes, I remembered.
I remembered the endless eyes of a dragon, and a princess of the sea, and stars in the shape of a clock and pendulum.
I remembered the heat of Yejun’s blood on my hands, the sting of my fangs in my lip, the sound of Hong Gildong’s cry as I seized his yeouiju.
I remembered Hyebin, and Seulgi, and my parents, and Yejun, and the warmth of a hand on my shoulder that no one else could see.
Yejun laughed, the sound bright as starlight. “Yeah, definitely don’t shoot anyone today,” he said.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I didn’t even bring a gun.”
“Me neither,” Yejun said, pulling back his jacket to show that he wasn’t wearing a holster.
“Didyouget a note?” I asked, when it seemed like he wasn’t going to volunteer the information himself.
“Oh, uh, yeah,” he said, looking over his shoulder as if something incredibly interesting was happening to the trash can five feet away.
“And what did it say?”
He let out a sharp laugh. “Not much, actually,” he said. “Just that I should stop being an idiot and do it already.”
I frowned. “Do what?”
He took a deep breath, then met my gaze.
“This,” he said.
Then he put a hand on my waist, pulled me close, and kissed me.
Cheers rose up around us as Min Sungho stepped out of the car and onto the walkway, but my whole world was Yejun, his hands on my face, his heartbeat so loud against mine, and the glimmer of our magic tangled together.
Epilogue
On the eightieth day of my life as Mina Yang, I walked along the Bulgwang stream hand in hand with Yejun, who was carrying my absurdly heavy school bag. It was November and the trees were stripped bare, the sky an empty white. As much as I missed the blue days of fall, I didn’t mind the empty sky all that much. It felt clean and new, like anything could happen.
Yejun hadn’t left my side all day, going so far as to peer in the window of my history class. He had a whole slate of activities planned for us today—everything from an escape room in Gangnam to pancakes in Itaewon to renting bikes along the Han River. I told him it was too much to do in one afternoon, but he insisted. He hadn’t explicitly said why he was so determined to keep me busy today, but I had a pretty good guess.
