c035

"Do you realize," Shim demands,"the enormity of what you've done?"

The raw anger and disappointment on the chief's face hurts Seokga more than it should. Shim, standing outside of his apartment door, quivers in anger. It has been three hours since the attack on the Emerald Dragon. Three hours, and already tendrils of unnatural darkness swirl through New Sinsi, coalescing with the deep shadows of alleyways and hidden crevices, growing larger and growing stronger. Seokga has watched it from the apartment's windows.

"Shim," Seokga says. "Come in." Perhaps he can offer him a cup of coffee, some food, and a place to sit down. Shim looks unsteady on his feet, and—

"No," snaps Shim. The lines on his face are deeper than usual, and Seokga sees that his hand is shaking as he lifts it up and points—points—at the fallen god. Once, Seokga would have felt the urge to smite him, then and there. But with Hani still asleep in his bed, and the eoduksini slowly devouring Iseung, he is incapable of feeling anything but tired remorse. "No. Precinct protocol, Seokga. That's all you had to follow. But instead, you deliberately concealed your plans and went rogue. Your actions cost lives. And what did you gain? Anything?"

Seokga swallows hard. "No. But, Shim, your stakeouts were never going to work."

"My stakeouts," the old chief bites back, "weren't going to kill civilians, either."

The god has no response to that.

"I am incredibly disappointed in you, Seokga," Shim whispers. It would be so much better if he yelled. If he hit him. This quiet rage is too much to bear. "All these years, I put up with your cruel sarcasm and your superiority complex. All these years, I respected you. I even liked you. You reminded me of my son—prickly only to hide a gentle heart. But this. This is the last time, Seokga, you will have anything to do with my precinct. You can find somewhere else. Go to Seoul's haetae, or Incheon's. Busan's. Daegu's. Anywhere but here. I cannot stand the sight of you any longer." He turns to leave, but Seokga cannot stop himself from flinching backward, as if he were physically struck, after all. Cannot stop himself from urgently grabbing Shim's shoulder.

"Wait," he finds himself saying gutturally, "wait. Please."

Shim tenses underneath Seokga's hand.

"I can fix this," Seokga says desperately. "Let me fix this." If he is not reinstated as a god, he doesn't want to leave New Sinsi. It is where Hani is, where coffee is. He doesn't want to leave its precinct, as grimy and cramped as it may be.

But most of all, he doesn't want Chief Shim to hate him.

There's a long stretch of thick silence before the haetae chief sighs and turns around. Seokga's hand slowly falls back to his side.

"Please," Seokga rasps.

Something softens behind Shim's hard, angry eyes. "I don't think you've ever said that word to me before," he says. "Not once, in all the years we've known each other. I came to the precinct at thirty-seven. I'm sixty-three now. And I've never heard you say ‘please' until today."

"I've never fucked up this badly before," Seokga replies.

"Nobody has ever fucked up this badly before. Pardon my language."

"I'm going to fix it. I swear on Hwanung. I'll stop the eoduksini." Seokga swallows hard. "And if I do, you can't banish me. You can't." Is this his fate? To be exiled wherever he goes?

Shim shakes his head, dragging a wrinkled hand through his thinning hair. "I wasn't banishing you," he says gruffly. "I was firing you."

"Don't do that, either." Seokga wonders what he can bribe the chief with. Money? No. Too obvious. "I'll stop having a superiority complex."

"Seokga, I don't think that's possible." But there's a hint of a careworn smile on Shim's face. "I can't let you work with the precinct right now. If you do this, you're on your own. For better or for worse. If I get word that your actions have caused more innocent deaths, then that's the end of it. You won't be coming back."

"I understand."

Shim pulls something out of his pocket, presses it into Seokga's hand. It's a photograph. "Technically, I shouldn't give this to you since it's precinct evidence, and you're no longer officially on either of your cases. But you might want to see this." The chief meets his eye. "We identified the Scarlet Fox earlier tonight. Evidence on the scene indicates she's working with the eoduksini."

Seokga's eyes slowly travel down to the photograph he holds in his hands.

And his blood goes cold.