Feathers Against Sky
If not for the international arrest warrant, this would’ve been a perfect vacation rather than fleeing.
Warm night breeze. Sound of waves. City lights stacked on the hillside like God had spilled a jewelry box.
And a woman on my arm who, for once, wasn’t actively trying to kill me.
“Cold?” Yeonhwa asked.
Her fingers squeezed my sleeve.
We were walking along the promenade of some Spanish coastal town whose name I still couldn’t pronounce. White buildings. Blue shutters. Tourists taking pictures of things they’d forget by next week.
I shook my head.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Sea breeze feels good.”
“Different from Seoul,” she said.
“Less dust,” I said. “Fewer monsters.”
She smiled a little at that.
Her hair was down instead of tied up. Plain hoodie, long skirt, big mask pulled down to her chin when nobody was looking. International crime lord or not, she still didn’t want her face in someone’s vacation vlog.
To anyone watching, we probably looked like a regular couple.
A guy whose life hadn’t ended twice in one month.
A girl who hadn’t just tried to murder someone in the street.
“Pretty, right?” she said, nodding toward the sea.
“It’s alright,” I said. “Needs more convenience stores.”
“Tsk.”
She bumped her shoulder into mine.
“You really can’t just say ‘it’s pretty’ and leave it at that?” she asked.
“If I start praising scenery, you'll be jealous,” I said.
“Then say you like this,” she said quietly.
Her grip on my arm tightened just a little.
“This?”
“This,” she said. “Here. With me.”
There it was.
I looked at her face, profile against the lights. She was watching the water, not me. Shadows under her eyes said she hadn’t slept much even here.
“Yeah,” I said. “This is… nice.”
“Just nice?”
“Better than Eun-ha’s basement,” I said. “Ten out of ten. Would trade chains for tapas again.”
It wasn’t funny but she huffed a laugh, and the tension in her shoulders loosened a fraction.
For a moment, I let myself enjoy it.
No Blood or Fire. No screaming. Obnoxious System getting in my face.
Just the sound of her sandals on the pavement and the sea slapping against the rocks.
If I squinted hard enough, it almost looked like a normal life.
Which, obviously, meant something was wrong.
“Hey,” she said suddenly. “Can I ask you something?”
There it was.
“If it’s about If I slept with Eun-ha,” I said. “No.”
Although, I didn’t know that.
“On the plane,” she said, ignoring that. “When you said you lost your memories.”
Ah.
That.
The night she dragged me through shadows in front of Eun-Ha, we fled Seoul by ship and swam across the entire fucking ocean until we finally stopped here. She forged new identities, pressed a passport into my hands with my face on it and a name I didn’t recognize, then sat on the edge of the bed and stared at me until I spoke.
“Mm,” I said. “What about it?”
“How did you find me?” she asked. “Black Sun’s Hideout or even me. If you didn’t remember… any of that.”
Her voice was calm. Too calm.
We kept walking.
The pavement under my feet felt a little less solid.
I exhaled slowly.
“I told you,” I said. “I saw you.”
“In my guild,” she said. “After you walked in.”
“Before that,” I said.
Her gaze finally left the sea and moved to my face.
I didn’t look back at her. I watched the line where the dark water met the dark sky instead.
“In my room,” I said. “There were pictures.”
Her steps slowed a little.
“Pictures?” she repeated.
“Yeah, pictures of you,” I said. “In my phone. On the wall. Hidden in drawers. I don’t know how long they’d been there. I just… found them after the raid.”
It was bullshit.
But I acted like I was confessing something that hurt.
“Whenever I looked at them,” I went on, “my heart ached. Like I’d forgotten to remember something precious.”
She didn’t say anything.
“So I checked the name,” I said. “Searched news, records, anything. ‘Black Sun.’ ‘Yeonhwa.’ ‘Slum rat who became an Underworld Boss.’”
“That’s what the articles called me?” she asked dryly.
“That’s what I called you,” I said. “At first.”
A small smile tugged at her mouth, gone too fast.
“With every article,” I said, “I got this… pressure in my chest. Like someone had sat on my ribs. I didn’t know who you were, but my body did.”
I let out a humourless breath, trying to make it more real.
“Then there was the Red Dragon Guild,” I said. “And Eun‑ha.”
I put her name in my mouth like something bitter.
The hand on my arm tightened.
“She told me you were dangerous,” I said. “That you were using me. That you dragged me into your messes. That I’d die if I ever went near you again.”
Of course, all of that was lies. But there was some truth in it.
Didn’t matter.
“Whenever I asked why it hurt to look at your pictures,” I said, “she told me it was trauma. Said you betrayed me. That you tried to sell me.”
My lips twisted.
“Thing is,” I said, “if it was really that simple, it shouldn’t have hurt.”
I finally turned my head enough to see her eyes.
They were very still.
“So I thought,” I said, “‘Fine. If Eun‑ha hates you this much, there must be a reason.’”
Her fingers twitched at that.
“I walked into Black Sun,” I said. “Because whatever I couldn’t remember… my chest kept dragging me toward you. And I was scared if I told you ‘I forgot,’ you’d laugh. Or put a knife in me. Or both.”
“You thought I’d kill you?” she asked quietly.
“You’re not famous for your mercy,” I said. “And I’ve heard what you do to people who waste your time.”
She was silent for a long moment.
The sea kept making its quiet noises.
“And Cha Eun‑ha,” she said at last. “What about her?”
I shrugged.
“She worked me until I couldn’t take it anymore,” I said bluntly. “Every day, every waking moment, she put endless work on me. When I finally cracked and came to you, she labeled me as a traitor and tried to cage me.”
Her jaw tightened.
“She told me you were filth,” I added. “Trash I should’ve thrown away years ago. Said the fact I missed you was proof something was wrong with me.”
I let a bitter laugh slip.
“So yeah,” I said. “If I have to choose who to believe between the woman who hung me in her basement and the one who actually… came to find me—”
I met her eyes fully.
“I’ll pick you,” I said. “Even if I don’t remember why that feels right yet.”
There.
Filthy.
Please work.
Her expression didn’t change for a while.
We walked another few metres in silence.
Then she stopped.
I stopped with her.
Her fingers slid down my sleeve, found my hand, wove between my fingers.
“You really don’t remember,” she said.
“I wish I could,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
She exhaled slowly.
“You’re a terrible liar,” she said.
My stomach dipped.
I opened my mouth to try to salvage it.
Then she stepped closer and pressed her forehead lightly against my chest.
“You always were,” she added.
Her voice shook.
“For idiots like you, every lie sounds like a confession,” she said. “You know that?”
“…Is that good or bad?” I asked carefully.
Her hand freed itself from mine so she could wrap both arms around my waist. Tight.
“I don’t know yet,” she said into my shirt. “But I like this story better than the one in my head.”
I let my chin rest on her hair.
“This story?” I asked.
“The one,” she said, “where you came back to me because you wanted to. Not because you had nowhere else to crawl.”
I didn’t answer.
I didn’t need to.
She hugged me harder, as if she could physically push the past out of my bones and pack herself in instead.
When she finally pulled away, her eyes were a little red.
“Let’s go,” she said. “You promised me churros.”
“Did I really?” I said. “Because I don’t think my legs agreed to run.”
She snorted.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “If you get slow, I’ll carry you.”
“I’m trying to picture that,” I said. “It’s not working.”
“It worked in the slum,” she said.
Before I could ask what she meant by that, she was already walking again, tugging me along.
The conversation folded itself away between two heartbeats, like someone sliding a knife back into a hidden sheath.
Yeonhwa lay on the hotel bed later that night and watched him breathe.
The curtains were half‑open. A line of streetlight slipped in and drew a pale band across his cheek, the rise and fall of his chest.
He had always slept like that.
On his back, one arm thrown over his head, as if he was ready to block a blow even in his dreams.
He said he didn’t remember.
Was a Si-Woo without the memories they shared, even her Si-Woo?
Memory or not, the way he moved was the same. The way his mouth twisted when he lied was the same. The way he always stepped in instead of out when there was danger…
That was the same too.
After all, his soul was still the same.
She’d seen it during that fight with Eun-Ha.
He insisted he’d just been trying not to die.
Maybe that was true.
It didn’t matter.
What she saw was him moving toward the line of fire instead of away from it, because maybe some deep, stupid part of him still thought it was his job to take the hit.
“You really are broken,” she murmured.
On the bed, he snored once, quietly.
Her lips tugged upward.
Old Si‑woo had always tried to pull her toward the light.
“Change,” he’d said, back then. “You don’t belong down here. Let me help you.”
He’d looked at her like she was someone who could still go back.
New Si‑woo stood in the dark with her and said, “I chose you.”
He lied.
She knew that.
But he lied for her. Against Cha Eun‑ha. Against the guild that paid him. Against whatever life he might have scraped together if he’d begged hard enough.
He sat there on that promenade and poured out a version of the truth that put every blade in his own back instead of hers.
It was clumsy.
It was transparent.
It was his.
“Old you would’ve lectured me,” she said softly. “New you crawls into my mud and calls it home.”
Which one did she prefer?
She didn’t know.
She wanted them both.
The boy who’d shared stale bread under a broken stair.
The man who looked her in the eye with affection.
Even if his hands shook a little.
Her gaze dropped to the floor.
Their shadows lay there, overlapping.
Hers, long and thin from the bedside lamp.
His, sprawled, faint.
She reached out with a thread of mana.
The shadow at her feet stirred, slid across the floor, and seeped into his. It sank in smoothly, disappearing into the darker line under his shoulder.
A tag.
A mark.
Her.
A quiet collar where no one could see.
“Run if you want,” she whispered. “There’s nowhere in this world my shadow can’t follow.”
He rolled onto his side, facing her, still asleep.
His hand found the empty space where she wasn’t and flexed once.
Her chest hurt.
She turned off the lamp and lay down facing him, close enough that their foreheads almost touched.
She kissed his forehead. “Sweet dreams… if you dream at all, dream of me.”
A few days later, I woke up alone.
There was no note or dramatic “I’m leaving you, don’t follow me.” Just an empty half of the bed that still smelled like her shampoo.
I checked the bathroom. Empty.
Window. Closed.
My neck. Still attached.
Progress.
My phone—her phone, really, the foreign SIM she’d shoved at me—buzzed.
[Got work.]
[Be back late.]
[Don’t adopt any strays.]
No heart emojis or threats.
I stared at the messages for a moment.
“She really trusts me, huh,” I muttered.
Or she thinks I can’t get far.
On the list of women who’d owned my time recently, Yeonhwa was… better.
She hadn’t chained me.
Hadn’t locked me in a basement.
Hadn’t banned sunlight.
She walked with me in public. Bought me food. Let me talk to waiters without mentally checking their dental records.
She clung, yes. But her clinginess was soft. Warm.
If you ignored the missing criminals and the fact she’d tried to kill my previous captor, it almost felt normal.
I’d been attentive.
Held her hand. Kissed her forehead when she looked tired. Laughed at her jokes. Didn’t glance twice at any woman under sixty.
Survival.
Also… it wasn’t the worst thing in the world to have someone look at you like you were the only thing they had left.
“Eun‑ha would’ve installed cameras in the shower by now,” I said. “I’ll take this woman over that.”
I showered, dressed, and headed down.
The sea was still there. The sky was obnoxiously blue. The tourist crowds were thinner today.
The little rental shack near the beach: kayaks, snorkels, that sort of thing—was open.
The guy who ran our usual outings waved when he saw me.
“Amigo!” he called in clumsy English. “You come again, yes? We go cave today. Very beautiful.”
I’d been out with them twice already.
A small group. Locals, a few travellers. Harmless. People who didn’t know my name, didn’t want my autograph, didn’t want to take advantage of me.
Tempting.
“Yeah,” I said. “Cave sounds good.”
He grinned and started laying out equipment.
I looked around.
Last time, there’d been eight of us.
A British couple who argued about sunscreen.
Two university girls who took selfies with every fish.
A quiet middle‑aged guy who paddled like he was training for a race.
Today, there were… four.
The instructor.
Me.
A dad with his bored teenager.
An older woman with a floppy hat.
“That’s it?” I asked.
“Ah, yes.” The instructor shrugged. “Others cancel. Go back home suddenly. Family thing.” He tapped his phone.
“Message in morning. Very sorry, very busy.”
“Mm.”
The British couple.
The girls.
The racer.
All with “family things.”
All at once
My back prickled.
“It couldn’t be a coincidence, could it?” I thought.
The water rolled up the shore, pretending not to hear me.
