c004

"I cannot believe that you threw a cup of coffee at Seokga. I can't believe you did that to the god of mischief," Somi laments for the tenth time as she scrubs the café's glass counter with a rag and acerbic-smelling cleaning spray."And that you spoke to him like that! The disrespect! Really, Hani, I cannot believe that you did that. You're so fired—so, so, so fired. Boss is going to kill you when she finds out."

Hani grins from where she is snacking on a cherry tart and reading Somi's Godly Gossip copy, tipping her chair back so it wobbles a bit more than precariously. It is a blessing that, despite being stuffed to the brim with livers and souls, human food is still very enjoyable to her. "She'll only find out if you tell her. Hmm. It says here that Yongwang was seen visiting Iseung and eating a fish sandwich. Isn't that sort of cannibalism?" She never would have pinned the sea god down as somebody to enjoy mackerel.

Somi shakes her head, determinedly rubbing at an invisible patch on the counter. At her silence, Hani lifts a brow and throws the magazine down. It lands face up on the table. This month's cover is a picture of the god-king Hwanin grinning with his arms around Hwanung, his son and the god of laws. In bolded letters, the headline reads: father and son bond over hair care! what's their top-secret routine? Hani snorts.

Both gods have long, glossy silver hair that she would kill for. She wonders what salon they go to. Her hair is due for a touch-up soon. The natural roots have begun peeking out, and it's ruining the overall effect of an otherwise fabulous style.

Hani wears her hair in an expert blowout: the sort that has taken the nineties modeling world by storm, and the sort that Hani has decided looks even better on her. The big locks have been colored rich chocolate brown, since her ordinary deep red makes her feel naked—as if with one look, the world would point at her and announce: The Scarlet Fox!

She'll really need to get her roots touched up soon.

"You're not going to tell her, are you?" Hani demands.

The younger gumiho flushes a pale pink. "In our contract, unnie, it says…"

Hani rolls her eyes. "I know what it says." The contract given to the café workers by Hak Minji, the dokkaebi who founded and owns the Creature Café, explicitly states (more than once) that should a fellow employee act in a questionable manner and it somehow escapes her eye, it should be brought to her attention immediately.

Despite being a dokkaebi, Minji is anything but the fun and spontaneous type. She is the only dokkaebi that Hani has ever encountered who does not party all night. Sometimes Hani wonders if her boss really is a goblin at all.

"But the point is, Somi, that what Minji doesn't know won't hurt her." Somi's eyes widen, but Hani continues on unwaveringly, taking another large bite of her tart. "Look, it wasn't as if it was done completely on purpose. The extra creams and the sugars, yes. That god is a pain in the ass, and I daresay that he deserved a bit more lactose than needed. But spilling it all over his face, his hair, his suit? That, I promise, was at least half an accident. And the upside is, I doubt he'll be coming back ever again, so…" Hani grins through a large mouthful of sugared cherry. "If anything, you should be thanking me."

Somi makes a small, unintelligible noise through thin lips. Hani frowns, noticing that her friend has gone worryingly pale.

A dreadful realization settles upon her shoulders and she sighs in defeat. "Boss is right behind me, isn't she?" At Somi's stiff, jerky nod, Hani lets the chair legs crash to the ground and twists to meet the stare of Hak Minji. Oops.

Hani fights back a wince. She hadn't heard, nor sensed, Minji's arrival, but dokkaebi are notorious for being particularly stealthy. "Hello, Boss," she says, hastily rising to her feet and dipping into a respectful bow.

Minji does not return it.

The dokkaebi scowls instead, folding her arms and clucking her tongue in disapproval. Behind her thick, purple cat-eye glasses decorated with glittering rhinestones that probably cost more than a year of Hani's rent, dark eyes narrow to slits. They're fake glasses—Minji's eyes are perfectly acute, as are all dokkaebi eyes—which somehow adds a comedic effect. But icy blue fire dances in their black depths. Dokkaebi fire. Hani prays that it is not unleashed on her. "Kim Hani," Minji says through hot pink lips, "would you like to repeat, exactly, what you just told young Somi over there? Hmm?"

Minji has always reminded Hani of a gossipy aunt—quick to judge, and even quicker to spread around said judgment. Hani grimaces, her mind whirling with possible statements that could save her. Her eyes dart to Minji's handbag, an enormous pink pleather bag studded with sequins and an unholy amount of glitter. Compliment her bag, Hani tells herself, even as disgust makes her nose crinkle. It's the ugliest bag she's ever seen. Compliment the bag, get in her good graces.

Hani opens her mouth, summoning the words with notable difficulty. "I like your bag," she says feebly. "It's so—achem—gorgeous?" The word nearly gets stuck in her throat, but she forces it out in a weak croak.

Minji preens. "Oh, thank you. I bought it in the shopping district last week." But then her lips curl. "Don't distract me, fox. Are you insane?" She swats at Hani with a perfectly manicured hand, the long pink nails nearly scratching her cheek. "Seokga the Fallen is a god, you idiot. When he returns to his full power and decides to blast this place to smithereens, just know that it is your doing."

Hani bristles, disliking the way that Minji scolds her. At one thousand and seven hundred years old, she is at least one thousand, six hundred and seventy years Minji's elder. But Minji is still her boss. And so Hani bows in apology, and reminds herself to use the formal tongue. "I'm sorry, Boss," she mutters. "It will not happen again." Please don't fire me. Hani needs this job, having not been very wise when the idea of credit first emerged. She supposes that she can always don a new identity, forge more files, or find a new well-paying job, like a position as a doctor or a lawyer, but all options require far too much studying. Hani does not like studying, and hates reading anything but the trashy romance novels she imports from American drugstores. "I will be on my best behavior from here on out. I promise."

Minji sighs through her nose, adjusting those ridiculous glasses. A few excruciatingly silent moments tick by, and Hani cannot help but shift guiltily underneath the goblin's gaze. "Bring me some memil-muk tomorrow," she finally demands, "and all will be forgiven. But one more strike and you're out, Hani." She scowls. "Throwing coffee all over gods. Aish," she mutters under her breath, turning away.

Hani exchanges a relieved look with Somi.

So she's not fired.

Yet.

"I have never understood the dokkaebi obsession with buckwheat," Hani mutters to Somi as the two girls stand in line at Yum Mart to pay for the container of memil-muk. The line is long and crawling at an excruciatingly slow pace. Tinny pop music plays from the supermarket's speakers. More than a few people are nodding along to "I Know," a newly released single by Seo Taeji and the Boys.

Somi shrugs. "Dokkaebi are born from bloodstained, discarded household items," Somi says. "They're bound to come out a little bit fucked up. I mean, that's what happens when you were a spoon once."

Hani snorts. "Not as fucked up as us," she says with a vast amount of pride. "I think that our ability to turn into a nine-tailed fox definitely exceeds a liking for buckwheat."

"And the fact that we were a fox for one thousand years before getting a human form," Somi adds in a whisper, glancing around to make sure that none of the surrounding mortals hear her.

"That, too," Hani agrees. "And our tendency to eat men's livers."

Somi gapes. "That's an outdated practice, unnie."

Ah. So it is. Hani laughs under her breath as Somi's eyes widen farther. "You've never eaten a man's liver?" she asks curiously. "Ever?"

"Of course not," Somi hisses. And then the blood drains from her face. "Have you?"

"Yes," Hani admits with a clandestine grin.

"How many?"

Thousands. But Hani just smiles a secretive little smile. "Enough to satisfy me for a lifetime."

"Hani!"

"What? It wasn't always an outdated practice. Nowadays, people are so sensitive about that topic."

Which may or may not have something to do with the fact that a particular gumiho treated 1888 like it was an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Somi chews on her bottom lip nervously. "What…what was it like?"

Hani pauses and examines Somi's face curiously. The young gumiho is as innocent a one as she's ever met, and looks the part, as well. Her eyes are wide and round, framed only by a thin coating of mascara. Her cheeks are slightly chubby, and flushed with both shock and a petal-pink cream blush. The younger girl's hair is short and curly, falling just to her chin in a cute bob, and she wears a soft white sweater that she has somehow managed to keep devoid of all stains. And yet, there is an undercurrent of morbid curiosity rippling beneath the guileless, heart-shaped face…One that Hani finds she quite enjoys.

"It was wonderful," Hani whispers back, her red-brown eyes dancing with mischief. "Delicious, really. The amount of power you can absorb into your fox bead by eating men is unparalleled. Regular bulgogi is nothing compared to their livers. And their souls…" She lowers her voice. "Their souls are the tastiest things imaginable."

Stealing souls had once been Hani's greatest hobby. A gumiho steals a soul through a kiss, holding her fox bead in her mouth and absorbing life and energy from her victim. The fox bead is a kernel of power possessed by all gumiho, and is able to expand in size and potency depending on how many souls and livers the gumiho consumes. Hani's fox bead is, needless to say, bursting with raw power.

"Did you know the Scarlet Fox?" Somi asks, her voice hushed, eyes wide. "They say that she ate the most men out of any gumiho alive and is thrice as powerful as the average fox."

Hani smirks. "I can only wish that I knew her."

The two gumiho pay for the memil-muk, Hani fishing around in her purse for some spare change and mercifully saved by Somi, who is a bit wiser when it comes to credit.

"I'll see you tomorrow," Somi offers as they stand outside the grocery store, the night air cold on their skin, and the yellow glow from the lamplight laden with fluttering moths who flock to its warmth.

"Do you want me to walk you home?" Hani asks, glancing at the darkened street before them as she tucks the jelly into her purse. Somi might be a gumiho, but the world is full of dangers for both human and inhuman women alike.

"No, no, it's fine," Somi says with a reassuring smile. "I can take care of myself, really. See?" She holds up her right fist, and with a grimace, produces three small curved claws, each one protruding from the spaces between her knuckles. Snick.

Hani grins. "That's my girl."

"I can use my fox bead, too, if I have to," Somi adds, retracting her claws. They sink back into her skin, leaving only angry red marks in their wake. "I'll blast whoever I need to with energy."

Hani's grin falters. For a gumiho like Somi, who has never taken another's soul or eaten someone's liver…Her fox bead is undoubtedly quite small. "Use the bead sparingly," she warns. "You don't want to deplete it." Because if she does so, she will die. A gumiho cannot live without their fox bead.

But Somi doesn't look concerned. "I'll be all right," she says and gives Hani a cheery little half-wave. "Tomorrow, then."

"Tomorrow." Hani winks before the two gumiho depart in different directions.

As she makes her way into the city's heart, her black boots crunching on gravel, Hani pauses to admire herself in a shop window underneath a streetlamp. Vanity has always been her sin. Even when she'd lived as a fox, she had spent hours by a lake's surface, peering at her triangular ears and red fur, grooming herself to perfection.

Now, she takes in the most beautiful woman she's ever seen in the shop's window. Hani preens, batting her angular, tilted eyes—fox eyes—that harbor a glittering mischief within their red-brown depths. She chose a matching lipstick that morning and admires the hue as she tilts her mouth upward in a satisfied smirk.

A sudden motion in the mirror's reflection catches her attention a moment later.

Two men are leaning on the lamppost a few feet away from her, watching, their hands tucked into the pockets of their black jackets, their baseball caps covering their eyes. Hani sighs in exasperation, eyeing them warily as she tightens her hold on her black pleather purse.

College boys, probably, from New Sinsi University. She can smell the alcohol on them…and can smell something else, something sickeningly sweet. Cheap cologne. It hits the back of her throat, coating it in a greasy tang.

Hani rolls her eyes, even as the hairs rise on the back of her neck. She may have been the Scarlet Fox, once, yet somehow, she is still not immune to the discomfort that follows being subjected to stares like these. She bites her lower lip in slight pain as she extends her claws, glossy black curves of sharp bone, from her hand and quickens her pace down Bomnal Street.

The men follow.

Scowling, Hani crosses the street to the opposite side.

The men follow.

"What happens next," Hani warns them under her breath as she increases her pace, "will not be pleasant for either of you."

They do not hear her. Or perhaps they do, and simply ignore her.

Gritting her teeth, Hani turns to face the men. She curls her lips away from her teeth and demands, in a voice of acid, "Stop. Following. Me." Her hands are hidden behind her back; they do not yet see her claws.

The men pause a few feet away. They're big, much bigger than her five foot three. She can make out identical leers underneath the shadows that their hats cast.

"Hey, sweetheart," one slurs. "Whatcha doin' tonight, huh?" His companion snickers, a wet, snotty sound that sends Hani's stomach rolling.

"I said," she repeats softly, tilting her head, "stop fucking following me." It is her final warning.

"Oh, so you're just gonna ignore his question?" the other man scoffs. "Well, that's fuckin' fine. You're ugly, anyways."

"Smile for me, baby," his friend demands. "I wanna see those pretty lips stretch wide."

"I wanna see those pretty lips around my cock," guffaws the other.

"Grab her, Beom-seok. I'll see those lips around me first—"

The men move, but so does Hani.

As they rush toward her, she spins around and narrowly avoids their grasping, hammy hands. Their leers turn into snarls as they hit air. They whirl, redirecting their attack. They are shouting now, senseless yells that send Hani's heart racing in fear.

Fear, even though she is a gumiho who has killed and destroyed and devoured.

Fear, because there is nothing more dangerous than mortal men who believe that they are entitled to the world and more.

Beom-seok grabs her shoulder, and with a feral growl, Hani slashes his hand away with her claws, drawing blood. It sprays into the air in a scarlet splatter, and Beom-seok howls.

"The damn bitch has knives!"

Not knives.

Claws.

Hani sends Beom-seok stumbling back and grins as he hits the ground hard. The other tears toward Hani, only to be blasted back by a burst of golden power that erupts from the palms of her hands. Energy sears her bloodstream as she siphons it from the fox bead within her chest. Her body hums as the bead of power begs for more of it to be released, but there is no need now.

Hani cocks her head as she stands above the two men writhing on the ground. How many women before her have they attacked? How many of those women had not had the luxury of claws, or inhuman speed and strength?

How many women?

She narrows her eyes, stomping down hard on Beom-seok's chest as he attempts to draw himself up. Slowly, she reaches into her purse and withdraws her most prized weapons, vibrant scarlet daggers that she has carried with her for centuries.

The daggers of the Scarlet Fox. The daggers from whispered urban legends, scary stories told in the dark of the bloodthirsty gumiho and her weapons of choice. Perhaps it's foolish to carry them around with her so casually, especially when she has taken pains to dye her hair, but even after all this time…these daggers are a part of her that is not so easily tucked away, not so easily hidden.

They are long, slightly curved, resembling in many ways talons dripping with blood. Their metal is sharp, a ruby red that gleams under the streetlamp's light. Grinning with unbridled bloodlust, Hani deftly flips them into the air before her fingers close once again around the noir handles.

Nowthe damn bitch has knives.

It has been a while since Hani has killed.

One hundred and four years, to be precise.

And while she's still stuffed to the brim…

Hani remembers the dark curiosity lurking underneath Somi's expression as she'd spoken about the art of killing. A slow smile spreads across her face.

She may not be able to eat any more livers, nor any more souls, but Somi…

Well. The young gumiho might be hungry for her first taste of human liver.