I Can't Hear You
Dan Miryu sank into a chair.
"We very nearly had a disaster on our hands."
He dragged a palm across his brow, already picturing the security details and helicopters that would come swarming at the noise from the crater. Without Hong Yumin's help, they would have been caught dead to rights out on that wide-open plain.
Hong Yumin stood on the veranda with San-gun gathered in her arms. Trouble lay heavy in the eyes she turned toward the sky.
She spoke low.
"Do you know anything of Ilshikgyo?"
"I'm sorry. Very little."
Dan Miryu shook his head. Had the cult reached as far as Korea, he might have known more; for better or worse, Ilshikgyo had never taken an interest in East Asia.
"Is that so..."
Mi Soryeong came to her friend's side.
"You felt something?"
"I did."
"......Felt what?"
"......Evil."
The hand stroking San-gun went still. The faint tremor at her fingertips said the rest.
Mi Soryeong rubbed her friend's back.
"It's all right. It'll work out."
"......"
You only see as much as you understand. Mi Soryeong had no way of knowing what her friend had seen inside that savage black flame. Her friend was an immortal who had touched heaven. She herself was only an ordinary human, the kind you could find anywhere.
"Enough!"
Smack. Unable to stand the gloom, she pounded that back.
"You're just going to sit there looking miserable? That's not like you."
"I am as I always am."
"Always, my foot. You look like a scared puppy."
"Kreung. Kreung."
San-gun agreed.
"Yumin. There's no point worrying over something that hasn't happened."
Mi Soryeong's tone was, for once, entirely serious. She was giving her friend advice.
"......It is not worry. I am considering how we ought to prepare."
"That's worry. And you're going to prepare all by yourself? This is something we do together."
"......Hnn."
Hong Yumin let out a suffering sound. Mi Soryeong snorted a laugh.
"Well, we didn't mean to make enemies of a bunch of cultists, but so what?"
"We have made an enemy of a true god as well."
"And if it's a god, so what? The way we see it, you're a god too. Don't you remember what you did in Korea?"
A divine authority that had rewritten the map. Anyone looking at that power would have called it godly.
"My power does not reach a god. Set beside a true one, it is a drop in the bucket."
An immortal, and a god.
A single word apart, and yet the gulf between them was deep enough to despair of.
"Honestly, the sensible thing would be to run this very moment. The lot of us taking on a god is suicide."
"There's no law that says we have to take him on."
"No. We have no choice but to fight him."
Hong Yumin looked at all of them with grave eyes.
"At the end, when that woman departed. I read the greed the god scattered toward us."
In the instant before the woman vanished, a vast evil had looked straight at them.
Hong Yumin understood, then, why the Eclipse God had sent a believer to them.
He had wanted to confirm it. What sort of food he would be eating. Whether it would sit well. And how good it would taste.
"The next time we meet, it will not be so easy. He may even come himself."
A god could not move lightly. Said the other way around, though, accept the cost and a god could move whenever he pleased.
And there was more than enough here to make that cost worth paying.
"Dan Miryu. Guard that with your life."
Dan Miryu closed his fist around the necklace.
"Should it fall into a god's hands, I cannot even imagine what would follow."
"I will guard it with my life."
His eyes were resolute. He had no intention of handing a charge his clan had kept for generations over to some cult's god.
Hong Yumin said no more. His will was admirable, but before a god he was only dust, to be ground underfoot without effort.
Mask. You infuriate me, but it seems we will need you after all.
The very man who had steered them into this mess, and the way out of it.
Like it or not, she would have to wait for him.
Hong Yumin looked bitterly toward Kilauea. What was the phantom thief doing down there, sunk in the magma?
Whoooosh!
"What is that sound?"
At the noise of something shearing the wind, Mi Soryeong looked up. Hong Yumin sighed.
"Step aside a moment. It would seem that wretch has returned."
"Don't tell me..."
The moment they drew back from the veranda, something came down in the space they had left.
Boom!
"Superhero landing!"
Phantom dropped into the pose, one knee and one hand planted on the floor.
"......"
Hong Yumin, Dan Miryu, Mi Soryeong, and San-gun all shook their heads.
"......Nn? What's going on?"
Roused by the racket, Dan Chuyeon sat up, rubbing his eyes.
Phantom had come in. For a man who had fallen into magma, he did not have so much as a scorch mark on him.
"I'm glad none of you came to harm. I have returned."
"Could you not come back in some ordinary fashion?"
Hong Yumin pressed her fingers to the groove above her lip. Did the brat have some disease that would kill him if he didn't act like a lunatic?
"If a phantom thief were ordinary, he'd have to close up shop."
"Haa..."
Fine. If one were in a hurry, one might well come flying in out of the sky.
"I know you're tired at this hour, but would you follow me for a moment?"
"Did you see something?"
"You'll know when you get there. Come along. There's a god waiting."
Haa. She was tired, but what choice was there?
A god was waiting. What was she supposed to do about that?
Wait.
"......Who did you say was waiting?"
"A god."
Was there a problem?
"A god? Did you say a god?"
"Yes. A god. God."
"......"
Is this bastard screwing with me?
Hong Yumin did not believe him.
And then...
"Hoo..."
The long pipe, lit for the first time in a while, tasted bitter. Perhaps because she had packed it stronger than usual.
"Child of Man, you've brought a force worth staking everything on!"
"Didn't I say I'd show you a way? Trust me!"
"I did trust you, damn it!"
Phantom and the goddess of fire clasped hands and spun in circles.
Why is there a god here?
Pele. Goddess of Hawaii.
The myths recorded that she had created the islands.
Depending on one's view, a being who had reached the standing of a Creator God.
And that being was playing, right before her eyes, with something thoroughly irreverent.
"With these kids, that Eclipse God or whatever he is goes down in one shot!"
"Exactly! He'll come in over his head and run off with his tail between his legs!"
Would the two of you just hold still.
"Kking! Kking!"
San-gun could not settle. She patted the frightened tiger's back.
"Hahaha! We're saved! Saved, I tell you!"
"That's the spirit!"
Hong Yumin shoved her rising anger back down by force.
"Honey... I think she's a real god."
"Whoa. Whoa. A god."
Mi Soryeong and Dan Miryu clung to each other. They were too stunned to spare a thought for their son, collapsed on the floor.
Hong Yumin shot a glare at her fainted disciple and watched, in silence, as god and phantom thief bounced about.
"Ah. Sorry. Sorry. Got a little excited."
Sensing the mood go cold, Pele hurried out an apology.
"Guests show up and I make a scene. Here, sit."
Leaves writhed, then shaped themselves into chairs enough for everyone present.
"Sorry. I'm in no state to lay anything out for you."
"It is quite all right."
Hong Yumin sat on a chair of leaves.
"Oh. There was a child who'd fainted. Wake up. Hyah!"
"Hk!"
Pele flicked her fingers, and Dan Chuyeon shot upright.
"Mom, Dad. Fire! The world's full of fire! It's the end!"
"Pull yourself together. The world is fine."
"Chuyeon. Are you all right?"
He babbled for a moment, then gathered himself and took a seat. A strange company had assembled there: three humans, one immortal, one tiger, one phantom thief, and one god.
"Oh, I love this. You're nothing but treasures, every last one of you."
Pele pointed at them one by one where they sat.
"The Child of Heaven and the tiger. Life's Guardian, his wife, and the Child of Nature besides."
She spread her hands wide.
"What a feast for the eyes!"
"Pele, the praise is nice, but we're short on time, so let's get moving. We're all worn to the bone."
"Irreverent, while a god is speaking."
"You didn't praise me."
"Hey! You're the Child of Man! Do you have any idea how big that is?"
"Everyone's a child of man. What are you talking about?"
"Ugh! Fine! You don't have to get it!"
Pele turned her gaze on Hong Yumin. The sparkle in those eyes was a burden.
"Ignore that guy. Let's talk among ourselves."
"......Very well."
Hong Yumin put the pipe away.
"Lady Pele, why is it you require our help?"
"That's because I..."
The Dan Clan and Hong Yumin listened.
She was sealed, and without her power. Ilshikgyo had made her very, very angry, but she could not leave this place to punish them. And so she needed their help.
With every point, the air grew heavier.
"We, too, mean to bring Ilshikgyo down, but there is a problem."
"I know. The Eclipse God, right?"
"Yes."
Hong Yumin explained the battle that had taken place in the crater that day.
"If a god stands behind them, our defeat is certain."
"From what I hear, he's not stingy with the power he hands out, and his terms aren't fussy either."
The situation was bad, but Pele smiled with perfect confidence.
"Don't worry. Looking at all of you, I've thought of no fewer than three ways."
She held up three fingers. Every eye fixed on her.
"One: slaughter every last believer of the evil god. Not a single one left."
She folded her ring finger.
"But killing everyone in Hawaii doesn't actually solve it. He can just send more. This only buys time."
She folded her middle finger.
"Another is to break my seal with infinite life. Honestly, this one's the most likely by far."
Pele's eyes gleamed.
"Hawaii is my Sanctuary. Even if that god descends, so long as I'm whole, he's nothing."
"Then what is the remaining method?"
Pele pointed at Phantom with her index finger.
"You."
"Me?"
"Yeah."
"I'm an ordinary phantom thief, though?"
"I'm not telling you to fight that god."
Pele hesitated.
"Your ———."
"Sorry? What was that?"
"I said, ———."
Pele's face went pale, then returned to what it had been.
"Forget that just now. It was a slip of the tongue."
"......?"
"All right. We go with the second method."
"What do you mean, deciding that on your own?"
Phantom's face said something had just clicked.
And so their method for facing Ilshikgyo was settled.