Chapter 3

Don't say goodbye

Even in my dreams

When I think of you

It's not as lonely as it seems

Hwa Ryun listened to the night. Being a guide was always an incredibly lonely journey. What ghosts sidled up the wall now, reading her mind?

The only window in the aircraft was black and the walls creaked with the moving wind. The hem of the night pulled away darkness to reveal more darkness.

She glanced at her pocket. With the speed they were travelling at they would arrive at the floor of tests soon. They had time.

Shibisu's voice floated from the kitchen.

"Hey – would you like some tea?"

She thanked him as he slid a warm cup in front of her. The mug was glazed blue; the one that Khun usually used. It seemed that Shibisu was finally going to ask her the question tonight.

She takes a sip and notices an extra lump of sugar than the usual. Shibisu must have been distracted.

"You're on duty again?"

Shibisu's chest heaved as if he was carrying an enormous stone. "I wanted Bam to sleep a bit more…he's always overexerting himself. He's only just got used to – you know. Being without his lightbearer." He avoided saying a name that had now become taboo in the ship.

The red witch glanced down at the indigo cup, the tea a dirty color. "Khun was a suitable lightbearer," she agreed. Such a pity.

"Did you know that he would leave?"

She smiled. There came the question which he had held in for the last three months. The surface of the tea spiraled as she twisted the cup away. An inevitable vortex.

"Yes I did."

He closed his eyes and pressed his lips together firmly, almost as if he was angry with her. "You –"

He made a pained noise at the back of his throat, hardly containing his frustration. He held back an urge to strangle her. "You can at least tell us this," he starts slowly, and she already knows the question he is going to ask next.

"When will we see Khun again?"

She tucks her hand under her chin, slightly amused. "You are sure that we would see him again?"

He glowered and reconsidered the plan of strangling her. Beautiful woman or not, he would personally wring it out of her tonight.

"Are you going to tell me or not?"

An undefined sound comes from the corridor and they turn sharply. It takes four minutes of careful silence to satisfy them that there is no one. The hands of the clock slide across its face. Tick tock.

"So?" Shibisu prompts her. His fingers twitch. Strangling could start anytime now.

"You'll see him again."

Shibisu rolled his eyes. "I asked when, goddammit."

She stares out of the black window. "I've already told Khun the answer."

"What? When did you tell him?"

"Guides don't answer every question. You should already know that." The legs of the chair scratched the floor as she stood.

"You're Bam's lightbearer now, don't get distracted with other things. Leave the path to me."

He gives her a sideway glance. "I can fill the lightbearer position, but there are other things which I cannot replace." Shibisu knows that he is right even if she does not reply.

She pulls a curtain across the window, shutting out the midnight.

Twenty paces away, Bam listens from behind a door. For the thousandth time since Khun had left, his heart wrenches again.

In three months, Khun has ascended five stories; he has trained at least a thousand hours with Maschenny, he has been healed by the firefish for more than thirty dozen times, and he has slept for less than four hundred hours.

There is not a single day that passes where he does not think of Bam.

Existence became tolerable as Maschenny pushed him to his limits. In the moments where fire singes through his veins and ice frosts at his fingertips, the ache of not being beside Bam seems to be a thousand miles away.

"You can leave if you defeat me," she offers. "If not, you will climb the Tower as I say."

He gives her a brittle laugh. It's futile, but he tries anyway.

I just need to keep doing this till the seventy seventh floor.

He trusted Hwa Ryun's signal to him. He would have described his trust as a gut instinct rather than blind faith. Further, he rationalized that she had no reason to lie.

Maschenny pulls him like stretched sugar and he slowly comes to realize what she wants. He catches the way her eyes quiver when the fish closes his wounds faster and better. He feels how she wounds him that little bit more each time after he's made as good as new. He hears her rapture when she realizes that he is reinforced with his flames.

"You want the fish, don't you?"

She stabs him in the stomach, and he's almost used to the pain now.

"And so?" She extracts the yellow needle from his body, taking with her almost a liter of his blood.

He is ill disposed to respond till the fish makes its appearance. Two minutes and forty seconds to heal. He has improved by three seconds since two weeks ago.

"Well," Khun pants. "It's a shame, because I'm never going to give it to you."

She makes sure that he's on his feet properly before she strikes. He can't die yet after all. She gives him only moments before she slices open his abdomen again.

"Don't be mistaken, Aguero." She gives a smile as his skin wears itself together, relief palpable in his shoulders. The fish was definitely making him stronger than before.

"You will give it to me whether you like it or not."

In between the battles with her and his own mind he tries to empty himself. There's nothing in the room to anchor himself to, so he creates an ice flower and stares at it, as if he is holding infinity in the palm of his hand.

Bam, it's cold today.

The monotony of teetering between the brink of life and death is finally broken when Maschenny slides open the door on the sixth month after he leaves Bam.

"I've brought you a friend."

Khun doesn't know who to expect – he doesn't have many friends after all. Maybe just two. His lips part with visible surprise.

"Yihwa Yeon!"

She's tossed into the room and her dark hair splays across the floor like a delicate fan. Her red rimmed eyes meet his.

"Khun!" His name comes out as a gasp.

She gingerly takes the hand which he offers and gets to her feet. She's almost the same as when he last saw her – the familiar stubbornness in her hoisted chin and the Yeon pride which she wore like a badge on her chest.

"What are you doing here?" They speak in unison.

Khun says, "ladies first."

"I got captured by some of Jahad's men…I was imprisoned in another place for months. They suddenly moved me a few days ago in an aircraft, and here I am."

Khun's eyes narrowed. "Bam did mention to me that you were held hostage. What did your captors look like?"

"A white snake looking fellow. He used poison – such despicable moves!"

Khun made a connection. The white snake guy…he was in the aircraft with Bam. He was working with Maschenny from the start?

Yihwa's question remained. "What are you doing here?"

Khun scoots back a step, almost defensive. He contemplated whether he should hide the truth, but decided that at this point there wasn't very much he or she could do.

"Maschenny contacted me to make a deal even before we reached the Nest to save Jinsung –"

"Jinsung? The Nest? What happened?"

Khun realizes that she has been taken a prisoner for longer than he expected.

"Jinsung was captured by Maschenny and held prisoner at the Nest. She said she would guarantee Bam's life and return Jinsung if I came quietly with her."

She stared at him as if he had grew an extra head. "And you went with her, just like that?!" Her fingers clenched around the hem of her scarlet printed dress.

"What did you expect," he retorted, "for me to gamble with Bam's life?"

She quietened down but bristled. "I always thought that it would take more than some threats for you to leave Bam. Did you not believe he would win?"

Khun says nothing, but his heart creeps yet again to the edge of a precipice. Was I wrong? The quietness in the room becomes fretful.

"Is your pocket working?" She fiddles with hers.

"No, the communication function has been shut down with a spell. Yours must have been too."

She closes her eyes with a sigh. "At least it's a good coincidence that we're now here together," she murmurs, her eyes taking in the room's alcove, the low ceiling, and the light that created blue spokes in the space.

There is an eerie glow on Khun's face. "There are no coincidences. Let me show you."

Her face distorts as a flaming fish darts round her cheek. It leaves a clean trail of gold and her head turns as she follows the flick of its tail.

"How –? Khun, this is the Yeon flame!"

"It's a long story, but for us to stand a chance against Maschenny, you have to teach me everything you know about the Yeon flame."

Her pride offers some resistance but she reluctantly agrees to share what she can for a chance to escape. She tells him in whispers, as if someone else was listening: the sutra of the flame, the history of its existence, and the foundation of mastering it.

Burn your soul, and salvation will follow.

He allows himself to be engulfed by a force that he cannot control. To follow Bam again, he had to become stronger.

He barricades the voice that whispers in his head – Bam doesn't need you to follow him – he silences everything, including the convulsion in his gut when he remembers the soft edges of Bam's smile.

Three rooms away, Maschenny sits on an uncomfortable chair. The aircraft was stifling; she was bored. The Jahad princess flicked open a folding fan with her wrist and fluttered it against her cheek. The excitement of the Nest had worn off.

Maschenny tapped her feet impatiently. They were taking forever to get back to her. And as if she was heard, her pocket buzzed.

Her tone is almost accusing. "Finally."

The lady who responds is soft-spoken. The voice resembles freshly spun silk.

"Have you contacted Yuri?"

Maschenny snaps her fan close. The corner splinters. "No, she doesn't need to know yet."

The other voice demurs. "We wouldn't want her to forget the bet she made with you, do we?"

Maschenny imagines herself sailing into a room triumphantly and taking the Green April as her prize. She suddenly has an urge to stroke the golden egg in her lighthouse. Yuri would never have imagined that it was her beloved irregular who caused her to lose the bet.

"She won't forget once we successfully ignite both the Black March and Green April."

There is a short silence as both women lingered on their intentions.

"Anyway," the silky voice starts, "I've found out what you wanted to know."

There is a smile on Maschenny's lips. She feels alive again, holding the loom of chaos which has yet another thread in place. She rises from her chair with anticipation, a vision of poise and perfection, but through the bars, a wild animal looked out.

"Where is the blacksmith?"

The lady pauses just a heartbeat before she responds.

"He's on the seventy seventh floor."

Somewhere beyond the borders of the room, beyond the cool grey rim of the aircraft, in a place where Khun's flames cannot reach, Bam stands in a room stretching himself to the core, with Hwa Ryun murmuring in his ear that this is the path, a path which he very much wanted to believe would lead him to see Khun again.