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Chapter Text

Ji Eun Tak, 

I am not writing this apology in an attempt to seek forgiveness. I know too well that I do not deserve such a thing. But I know that you are a curious sort and will hound the Goblin to tell you the truth as soon as you notice the signs. I’d like to spare him that pain. I don’t want to hurt you either, but I’ve already done that with my actions whether I come clean about them or not.

I will start by saying that I tried to do as you asked. This is not an excuse. Only that I want you to be comforted that for a while at least, before things went awry, I did keep a watchful eye on the Goblin and innocently guarded his health and safety whenever he neglected himself. Which was often at first. He grieves for you every day. I don’t think he will ever stop until you appear in his life again. He too has tried to keep his promises to you, but he doesn’t have the heart to smile with anything resembling joy. His laughs are laced with bitterness and he often stares off into space with a longing look that reminds me so sharply of the tug in my own chest that I must leave him before I get pulled into his melancholy. One of us must remain steady if we are to ever find our way back to the shore.

I thought that was enough. To linger silently beside him in his pain and keep us both moving forward one labored step at a time. But it didn’t make a difference. When I thought we were moving we were really standing still. We have been in stasis, a fragile truce between endurance and collapse that had to break eventually. 

I thought things would break suddenly. That he would tell me to leave. That I would lose my patience and drive him away. But the fracturing was slow and almost invisible at first, a hairline crack that turned into a spiderweb of fault lines, threatening to break long before it finally shattered. Even now I feel as if I am swallowing broken glass with every breath I take. I should have seen this coming. But I have never been good at thinking beyond what I think I see in front of me, even when I sense impending doom somewhere just out of sight. I am choosing now to see it all. And share it in detail so that my sins are clear.

The first night he came to me without making a sound. 

I don’t know when he arrived or if he tried to wake me before joining me on the bed. I didn’t even know he was there until I woke in the morning and attempted to throw back the duvet only to find it pinned on one side. Blinking into the lukewarm light, I gripped the cover more tightly to tug it free, but then I caught sight of him, spine curved beneath his soft sweater as he curled on his side, one hand tucked under his head to prop it up and falling limply against the duvet. He must have been cold, but he was sleeping soundly enough that he didn’t stir even when I slid off the bed and knocked over a stack of books in my haste to retreat. Wincing at the noise, I braced myself for an irritated Goblin to fling objects at my head but he did not even twitch in reaction. I wonder now how many sleepless nights he had endured alone in his room in order to sleep like that. 

This wasn’t the first time he had pestered me at night, but while you were around he usually interrupted my sleep to ask impossible questions, not to fall asleep silently beside me. I was baffled by his presence, and even more confused by the sudden heat rising to my cheeks as I watched him sleep. I don’t know how long I held my breath then but it was likely too long for a human.

I have never thought to betray you, Eun Tak. But the truth is that the Goblin is dear to me in ways that I can’t explain even to myself. I felt a twinge of this feeling at times before your death, but it was easily dismissed amongst the cacophony of emotions I felt for Sunny. My feelings are a tangled mess at the best of times, buried deep and so twisted by such regret that they are mostly unrecognizable to me when they emerge – a description that I suppose isn't necessary for you since you have always understood my emotions better than I have understood them myself.

Afraid of what I was feeling, I grabbed my clothes and fled the room before he woke, changing in the hallway and heading out into the city to guide the dead while trying to kill this new form of longing that felt like a lie. I avoided him the rest of the day and he didn’t appear on my bed when I woke the following morning. Or the next. I thought I had imagined the incident entirely until it happened again. The second time was just like the first, except that I fled more reluctantly.

We never discussed the nighttime visits and because we never acknowledged the tension growing between us things returned to a shaky stasis. I made my salads while he cooked his steak, standing side by side at the kitchen counter without speaking. We sat at opposite ends of the table and chewed without meeting each other’s eyes. We drank beers on the front steps in silence and watched the sun burn itself into darkness before returning to the warmth of the house. It was companionable but cold. And now that the longing had surfaced it was a constant irritant, distracting me when I reached past him for the pepper grinder and brushed against his arm, catching my breath when he let his fingers trace over mine as he handed me a beer. I avoided eye contact, certain that these traitorous feelings of mine were one-sided and dangerous. 

Then he had another dark day. 

The day itself dawned bright and shining with a buoyant warmth in the air that smelled like summer, but when a storm hit out of nowhere I returned to the house immediately, hurrying a ghost through the door to the afterlife before donning my hat and running into the rain. The house felt like a swamp when I opened the door and I could hardly make him out through the fog, a weary man slumped with his head in his hands. I stood over him for what felt like an eternity before he seemed to notice my presence. 

“Do you want a drink?” I asked, surprised by how desperate I sounded. 

He laughed, a dry grating sound that made my jaw clench. “Will a drink make her come back to me any faster?”

“Yes,” I lied.

When he looked up at me I was unprepared for the intensity of his gaze. His eyes were faded and damp and his attention didn’t waver as he forced himself to his feet with all the weariness of his years. I tried to back away as he moved closer, but he caught my sleeve and gripped it so hard that he pinched the skin underneath. 

“Tell me about the souls you met today.”

He asks me this frequently these days, as if hearing about the lives of humans he’s never met would help him feel any better about his own losses. I wonder if it’s simply a way of marking time. Counting the deaths between your death and your return like the way his sister counted passing strangers while waiting for me. But Sunny was only waiting for me to disappoint her. And you will never disappoint him. 

I would have thought nothing of this time either, except that the way he looked at me felt unbearably intimate, and the way his hand lingered was possessive. But still I managed to ignore the signs a little longer.

It was the middle of summer when he appeared in my room again. The night was sweltering and I would have been boiling in my layers of clothing if not for my ability to chill the air. We had argued all evening over everything from the dishes in the sink to the volume of the television. I blamed the heat, almost grateful when I heard the roll of thunder after I retired to my room and hoping that the storm would exhaust his temper for a while. He hadn’t acted like this since you removed the sword lodged in his chest, cranky as if he were in pain and had no way to express it except to transform it into venomous words. I knew he was angry at God. And as the closest thing he had to a connection with the deity, I didn’t want to be a conduit for his rage. 

I followed my nighttime rituals, slid beneath the covers and hid myself under the duvet as usual. But I found no solace in sleep. The house shook with every crack of thunder and the lightning flashed through my eyelids even with the fabric over my face. My thoughts spiraled and the static in the air made me uneasy, winding a thread of anticipation tighter and tighter in my chest that had no obvious source. 

Lying there in a pantomime of rest, I tried not to react when I felt the bed dip, when he yanked the duvet back to look at my face. An itch formed between my brows while he studied me but I fought to remain still, to maintain the illusion of sleep so that he would get bored and leave. I had no energy left to engage with him. I didn’t realize that I had been holding my breath until I heard him chuckle.

“You’re awake.”

“No, I’m not.”

The next part will be hard for you to hear, Eun Tak. Don’t feel as if you must read it if you find it difficult. But in order for my confession to be complete I don’t think I should leave anything out.

I flinched when I felt his hand against my cheek. Not out of disgust but surprise. And when his calloused fingertips dragged over my skin I bit my lip to hold back a whimper. 

“Wang Yeo.”

Squeezing my eyes shut, I attempted to roll away from him. “Go away.” 

He caught my head in the crook of his arm and pulled me back against him, bending down to breathe into my ear, “Just let me stay like this for a little while. Please.”

I shuddered, but I tried to relax into his embrace, allowing him to fold me into his arms and clutch at me as if he were trying to force us together until we fit. The truth is that I can’t deny him anything he asks. Not after the things I’ve done, the countless ways I’ve wronged him. He can ask me anything and I will say yes. That does not mean I’m abdicating responsibility. I know that what happened next was my own fault as much as his. Painful as it is to admit, I liked the way it felt. I liked the way I warmed in his arms, the way his breath tickled against my neck, the way he felt solid and alive against me. And I wanted more. When his lips brushed against the nape of my neck I made a tortured sound that startled him. 

Pulling away enough to see my face, he frowned at me. “Ask me to leave and I’ll go this time.”

The first time I tried to speak, no sound came out. If only I had been as lucky the second time. Instead, I said, “Stay.” Then I reached out to frame his face between my hands and I kissed him. He tasted like salt water. Like tears, or the ocean spray at the pier where he said his final goodbye to you. 

I won’t record everything that happened after that because I know it will only cause unnecessary suffering. And I don’t want to risk finding undeserved enjoyment in the recollection. I don’t have any illusions that he feels anything for me other than a kinship in our common suffering. While there is no way that you won’t feel betrayed by what we did, I hope that you will be more forgiving of his desperation than my weakness. And I hope that you will believe as I do that he never stopped thinking of you for even an instant. 

I am sorry, Eun Tak. Please do not blame him. I will not burden you with my presence or risk reminding you of this mistake. And now that you are reborn and no longer miscellaneously omitted you do not have to fear running into me too soon since I expect you to live a long happy life this time. 

With deepest regret,
Your Grim Reaper

Chapter Text

Kim Shin laughed bitterly as he finished reading Wang Yeo’s letter, glaring at the fine penmanship and wanting nothing more than to scrawl through it until it was unrecognizable.

Yeo had always been dramatic, but in his current form he was also so morose as to be blindingly stubborn when he felt he didn’t deserve something. He would twist things until he found a way to feel bad about them, prioritizing his own punishment above all else. Shin was no stranger to self-flagellation himself, and perhaps that was why he had so much trouble accepting such behavior in others. Or maybe it was simply that he felt guilty this time as well. 

He didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to him that Yeo would be worried about Eun Tak. As if they weren’t friends, as if Yeo weren’t honorable to a fault – even when his sense of honor was manipulated into something evil as happened with Park Joong-hun. Shin already felt conflicted enough about his motivations without Yeo so eloquently spelling out all the ways in which this affair could hurt Eun Tak. She was the true love of Shin’s life and the only woman he had ever been with, but he had lived his original life on the battlefield and been forced to find comfort where he could, often among the men he fought alongside, his most trusted friends and comrades. His attraction to the reaper had started in a similar way, but he should have known that nothing with Yeo could ever be so simple.

At first Shin had sought him out for the comfort of knowing he wasn’t alone. But the proximity only reminded him sharply of what he was missing. And if he was being honest, there had been a frisson of something between him and Yeo long before Eun Tak left him, even before he’d learned that the reaper’s true name was Wang Yeo. They argued and teased and tested each other relentlessly, like wolves trying to establish dominance, but the game was cast into stark relief once they learned about their shared past. Yeo, wracked by guilt that now had a name, became suddenly subservient to Shin, and Shin, torn between the kinship he felt with the reaper and the undying rage he felt for his former king, didn’t know how to behave around him anymore. And always, beneath it all, that something else between them continued to burn.

Even Eun Tak had commented on it once. It had been one of their happiest nights together. Her eyes had shone brightly, partly from her first taste of alcohol and partly from their first true kiss. He’d felt so warm in her presence that he thought he might burst into flame at any moment – a more literal flame than the ghostly ones that came along with his magic. Everything had been perfect until, pouring herself another shot of soju, she looked up at him self-consciously and asked, “Mister, can I tell you a secret?”

He’d grinned and nodded, expecting something good. But his smile faltered when she finally spoke.

“Sometimes the way you and the Grim Reaper look at each other makes me jealous.”

“What?” He laughed, incredulous.

“Sometimes I wonder…” She swallowed hard and finished in a slurred whisper, “If you might want to kiss him too.”

He avoided answering the question and blamed the topic on the soju, but the thought haunted him nonetheless. He caught his gaze lingering on the reaper’s lips from time to time, found himself leaning toward the man when they stood next to each other and looking for reasons to make contact, awkward though it often was. What was more, he noticed Yeo doing the same thing. Every time he tried to explain these oddities he fell short of making sense of them. His relationship with Yeo was beyond complicated, encompassing centuries and lifetimes and twisted by jealousy and love and tragedy. How could he ever hope to put his feelings for the man into mere words?

He’d given up trying until he lost Eun Tak. He wouldn’t have dared to try even then except for a conversation they’d had shortly before she died. She’d been speculating about their future, a topic that was always destined to bring them to a dangerous place. At first it was lovely, bright dreams about what they would do together and how happy they’d be. But inevitably they had to face the limitations of mortal life and the parting they would one day face when she grew old and had to leave him behind – if only they had been given that much time. He’d expected her to avoid the subject or deny that it would happen, but this older Eun Tak was too mature for that.

“I think about it sometimes,” she said wistfully, brushing fingertips over his cheek. “And I can’t stand the thought of you being lonely like you were when we first met.”

“I would be waiting for you,” he protested, eager to change the topic. “It isn’t the same.”

“But what if it takes a long time?” She sighed and hid her face against his collarbone. “I hate the idea of sharing you with anyone, but if it was the Grim Reaper I don’t think I would mind as much. You can lean on him if you need to.”

Stunned that she would say such a thing, he didn’t acknowledge her offer or allow himself to consider it until she was gone. And still he hesitated. Even when the loneliness tore at him with more viciousness than the blade that had once impaled him, even when he looked at Yeo and saw the same hollow loneliness echoed in his eyes. Part of him wanted to suffer in her absence, to dwell in that dark place until she returned to save him once again. But he knew that he was not abiding by her wishes. He knew that she would be angry at him for living in desolation instead of living diligently and finding happiness. 

But it wasn’t only his heartbreak that kept him from making a move. He worried over Yeo’s feelings and wondered if accepting Eun Tak’s offer would be unfair to him. Surely she wouldn’t have encouraged him to do something that was cruel, and if she had seen how Shin felt about Yeo then she must have sensed how Yeo felt as well. Still, he hadn’t been convinced the reaper’s feelings were anything like his own until Yeo kissed him.

Kissing Yeo was nothing like kissing Eun Tak, and that was a good thing. Yeo was all sharp edges and hunger where Eun Tak had been tenderness and joy, but Shin needed Yeo’s rough edges now. He needed a little friction to remind himself that he was still alive. They’d not done anything as scandalous as Yeo’s letter had implied, but it was obvious that what they had shared meant even more to Yeo than it had to Shin. Otherwise he wouldn’t be feeling so guilty about it. 

When he woke alone, Shin had thought that Yeo was embarrassed and that he’d get over it in time, but it had been a week now and Yeo had somehow managed to avoid him entirely even though they lived in the same house. Worried that Yeo was skipping meals since he’d not seen him in the kitchen for days, Shin had finally decided that this awkward impasse could not continue. With the excuse of a missing sock, he’d gathered the courage to confront Yeo, but he saw the reaper leaving for work before he could reach him, departing in such a rush that he left his bedroom door wide open. Unable to resist the open door, Shin had walked up to the threshold and peered inside in shock when he saw the usually pristine space in such disarray. The stack of papers scrawled with Yeo’s fine penmanship taunted him from across the room and he marched into the room without fully deciding to invade Yeo’s privacy. When he saw Eun Tak’s name there was no holding himself back.

Gaze sweeping now over the many crumpled pieces of paper tossed about, he realized that they were all previous attempts at this miserable missive that likely were even more disturbing than the one left pristine on the blotter just beside the jade ring his sister had worn in her previous life. Sun’s portrait scroll was nearby as well and he took comfort in their presence, knowing Yeo wouldn’t flee permanently without taking these precious items with him. Sighing deeply, he placed a palm on the letter and took another breath before clenching his fingers into a fist and crushing the letter into an unrecognizable mess. He tore at it for good measure and flung it aside, oblivious to the blue flames rising from his body as his fury burned even hotter. The paper had likely caught fire. Might have even been burning where it landed on the floor, but he didn’t care if it burned the whole house down. 

He needed to find Yeo.

Chapter Text

When the name card arrived before Yeo could crumple up the letter and try again, he took it as a sign. Hand shaking, he placed his pen on the blotter beside the letter and stared at it until his vision began to blur. He’d tried so many times to find the right words, to explain what happened in a way that would make him feel better, but in the end he had to accept that he should not feel better. He did not deserve to feel anything but regret. 

Leaving the letter behind, he changed quickly and donned his hat with even more heaviness than usual. He didn’t realize he left the door to his bedroom open when he left or that the Goblin had watched him go. 

He wrapped himself in cold, dropping his temperature as low as he could handle as he walked through the streets, ignoring the strange looks from passersby as frost climbed over every surface in proximity with seemingly no source. People seemed to avoid the cold spot subconsciously so he had no trouble navigating the crowd and he arrived at the hotel early. The police cars were just arriving as he walked through the lobby and up the stairs to the third floor. A young maid stood in the hallway sobbing, leaning on an older woman’s shoulder who patted her back absently while staring in dismay at whatever she saw inside the room. 

Slipping past them, he entered the room and nearly collided with the deceased, a beautiful young man standing half-nude in the bathroom doorway. He was confused as the deceased often are, instinctively covering himself when he noticed the onlookers staring exactly in his direction, not realizing that they were looking past him into the room beyond.

“Seok Byeong Ho?”

The ghost shifted his attention to Yeo as he recognized his name.

“Born on January 12, 1996, 26 years old. Seok Byeong Ho. Is that you?”

Tilting his head, the man nodded slowly. “How did you…”

There was a commotion in the hallway and the two women shouted at the people approaching. “He’s in there. Quickly!”

Byeong Ho blinked and turned suddenly, gasping when he saw his own body in the bathtub, his wrists slit and still dripping blood onto the tile. This was the first time in a long time that Yeo had attended a suicide, but they were were always terrible, the worst deaths a reaper could witness. He could never figure out why, but the sick pit of disgust they inspired would lodge in his stomach for days. Normally he felt empathy for the dead, but he always struggled when the ghost had taken their own life. 

“This way,” Yeo said, guiding the ghost out of the hotel and back to the tea house, listening to the ghost babble with only half his attention.

“I remember now,” Byeong Ho said finally in a faint voice. “I couldn’t live with it. I cheated on my girlfriend with her best friend, and when he left me there, I just couldn’t–” His voice broke in a sob and he wiped at his eyes. “I couldn’t live with what I had done to both of them.”

Yeo stopped walking, staring into space and seeing nothing but Eun Tak’s smiling face. And then another face appeared beside her, equally disapproving. Sunny. She may have rejected him, but she would still be disgusted to learn what he’d done with her brother. How had he not thought about her before now? Had he improved that much at keeping her out of his thoughts? Or was the idea of betraying her too simply more than he could bear? His hands clenched at his sides and the familiar pain of regret twisted its invisible knife into his chest again. Grimacing, he pressed a palm against his breastbone. 

“You’re disgusted by me,” Byeong Ho whispered suddenly, “aren’t you?”

Swallowing hard, Yeo gathered himself enough to continue walking. “It is not my place to judge.”

His hands trembled as he made the tea, but he picked an especially grim cup for the deceased and steeped the tea longer than he should have knowing it would make the brew bitter. The ghost drank it gratefully anyway and nodded at him in thanks before leaving. But the window in the door was blank when Byeong Ho exited, leading neither above or below. And for the first time, Yeo realized where he was going. He would end up in a place where he remembered nothing and would be given a black suit and a crass hat and be told that it was his duty to lead the dead to the afterlife. 

Choking on this realization, Yeo stumbled on his way to the sink, breaking the cup on the counter along the way. He stared at the shards a long time before finding the motivation to clean up the mess. Still, he cut himself on one of the sharp edges and let his finger bleed for a while before cleaning himself up as well. No other cards had arrived. He had no reason to linger. But he didn’t want to go back to that house. He didn’t think he could bring himself to face the Goblin again right now. Perhaps he would wander instead, stand somewhere in the sweltering sun until it burned him. 

Putting everything back in its place, Yeo stepped outside of the tea shop and froze on the threshold, shocked to see Kim Shin standing on the street outside. Normally he sensed the Goblin’s presence as soon as he appeared, but he had been so wrapped up in his own thoughts that he hadn’t been paying attention to anything beyond his own head. So much for avoiding him.

The weather was muggy today, downright oppressive in fact, and Yeo wondered if Shin had anything to do with it. He couldn’t read anything in the Goblin’s expression other than intensity so he could only speculate. Dressed in a pale pink button-down with navy fabric sewn into the collar, slim khakis and soft leather shoes with no socks, the Goblin was his visual opposite, looking natural and light in the summer heat, his hair tousled from the wind as he stood on the street corner as inscrutable as a statue. Yeo felt an ache in his chest as they looked at each other, his fingers twitching at his sides with the desire to bring Shin’s messy hair into order.

“I read your letter,” Shin said, his voice as impassive as his expression.

Yeo rarely noticed cold, but the chill that raced down his spine at that revelation was enough to make him shiver. “What were you doing in my room?” 

A faint smile ghosted across Shin’s lips. “I was looking for my sock. I must have left it there the other night.”

And now Yeo was feeling suddenly hot, his layers of black clothing feeling precisely as unseasonable as they ought to feel in this sort of weather. Looking away, he searched for something to focus on other than the Goblin’s arch gaze but came up empty, simply letting his vision blur while he tried to calm his racing heart. “That letter wasn’t addressed to you.” His voice sounded weak, as if he didn’t have enough air to push the words out of his throat.

In his peripheral vision, he saw Shin take a step closer but he stood his ground. “I hadn’t planned to read it, but when I saw her name I had to know. You’re wrong about her.”

Unsettled by the thought, Yeo inadvertently met Shin’s eyes again. 

Another step closer. “She told me I could lean on you.”

Yeo shook his head and backed away when Shin finally closed the distance between them. But the door had shut behind him and he felt it against his back blocking his escape.

“She said she was willing to share me as long as it was with you.”

“She would never…” Yeo whispered. 

“She did. She trusted you that much.” Shin gripped Yeo’s chin in his palm. “So stop acting like an idiot.”

Blinking at Shin past the liquid quickly gathering in his eyes, Yeo couldn’t see well enough through his blurred vision to react in time before Shin leaned forward and pressed their lips together. This time he tasted like something spicy and warm, like chai tea, and he gave Yeo no opportunity for escape. His hand slid firmly around Yeo’s neck to force his mouth into a better angle as he deepened the kiss, caging him against the door with his other hand. Absently, Yeo wondered if they were visible there or if they were far enough within the aura of the tea house to be hidden, but the thought floated away before he could decide if he cared. He wasn’t sure if he believed what Shin had said about Eun Tak, but it was hard to think with a Goblin’s tongue in your mouth, and this time there was no doubt about who had crossed the line. Surrendering to the inevitable, he reached out to grab a handful of Shin’s shirt to tug him closer and finally tangled eager fingers into silken hair.

He felt Shin smile against his lips when they came up for air and something about that made Yeo angry. Forcing him back a step, he twisted them until he could shove Shin back against the door in his place. “What about your sister?” he demanded.

Shin seemed honestly surprised for a moment, but then his features softened. “Sun decided to punish you in this life. She doesn’t get a say.”

Shoving against him again, Yeo shook his head in frustration. “But she’s your sister. Surely that means something to you…”

Mollified a bit by Yeo’s anger, Shin sighed and reached up to brush hair away from Yeo’s eyes. “I loved you before she did. Not the same way, obviously, but love is a strange thing. It changes with context. I only started to feel this particular way about you when we met again, before I knew your true identity.”

“And learning who I am didn’t change that?”

“It did for a while. It was difficult to reconcile the two.” Shin’s eyes were honest and open as he gripped Yeo’s arm fondly. “But you’re not the same person. You barely even resemble the spoiled boy king I followed unconditionally until he betrayed me. I can only think of him now with pity, but you… I know how hard you’ve fought with your demons. And I know how much you’ve done for me. So let me ease your burdens for once.”

Stunned, Yeo stood in silence, unable to meet Shin’s achingly tender gaze any longer. That was when he noticed the leaves falling from the tree, yellow, orange and red, they floated on the breeze and landed gracefully on the cobblestones. Looking up, he saw that a section of the tree above them had shifted from summer to fall, green leaves now brightly colored as if the branches were aflame. He heard a dry laugh before he realized it had come from him. When the Goblin showed Eun Tak his love the trees turned to spring and blossomed. When he kissed a Grim Reaper they began to die. 

“Spring is her season,” Shin said softly, reading his thoughts. “And autumn is yours. Without autumn, spring would never come.”

Yeo rolled his eyes. “Sappy Goblin.”

“You love it.” Shin grinned at him and shoved his arm. “You know you do.”

Swallowing thickly, Yeo shook his head. “I don’t think I can just ignore…”

“Then stop thinking. Thinking has never gotten you anywhere good. Let’s just take care of each other for a while. Okay?” Shin slid an arm around Yeo’s waist and leaned in close. There was something about the tilt of his head, the hitch in his smile, the way his eyes were half-lidded at this angle that Yeo found unbearably sexy in spite of all his misgivings. 

“Okay.” And when he smiled back at Shin he felt a weight lift from his chest.

“Hey mister, aren’t you going to kiss him again?”

They turned to see a pair of high school girls leering at them with their phones raised, ready to capture their intimate moment and make it something instagrammable. He’d heard about this kind of shallow behavior from Deok Hwa.

“OMG. Most beautiful couple ever,” one of the girls cooed to the other. “And look at that tree!”

“Come on! Kiss him!” the other shouted over her phone with her finger poised over the screen.

Pulling away from the Goblin and straightening his back with indignation, Yeo prepared to erase their memories and send them on their way, but Shin only laughed and caught his arm, pulling him back into his embrace. He didn’t see the Goblin use his powers to break their phones, but he had a feeling that was why he was smiling into the kiss.