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Kim Dokja stirs awake to the sunlight.
It takes him a moment to realize what’s strange: he keeps the curtains drawn, so he always wakes up to darkness. But the bed is comfortable, so he chalks this up to having forgotten to close the curtains last night and relaxes, intent on preserving the warmth for as long as possible…
Wait. The bed’s a little too comfortable. Kim Dokja opens his eyes and comes face-to-face with a stranger beside him.
Kim Dokja has but a split second to register what’s happening—or rather, what’s already happened—before the other man opens his eyes too. “Oh, hey,” he greets.
The man leaps out of bed, grabs a sword from out of nowhere, and levels the black blade beneath his chin. “Whoa!” Kim Dokja squawks, scrambling away; the blankets tangle around his legs, and he crashes back-first onto the floor. “Ow. Ouch. Hey, calm down—”
“Who,” the man asks, and okay, so his voice is the dark-chocolate kind of deep and rich, “are you?”
“That’s my line,” Kim Dokja manages, belatedly realizing he’s naked; so is the other man, though he doesn’t either notice or care. There’s a very simple explanation for this, no matter how much he prays it isn’t true. “Hold on, this has to be a misunderstanding—”
But in a blink the man’s already crossed to the other side of the bed, sword at the ready. Kim Dokja braces himself for—
“Ba-ba-baa-aht!”
…for some…small white thing…to fly out and smack into the man’s face.
Kim Dokja watches as the man stumbles back, likely more from shock than actual force. At first Kim Dokja thinks the small white thing is some kind of floating sheep, but then it turns around and zips towards him with a happy chirp. It looks like a baby bird, its downy feathers so thick it’s impossible to make out its neck.
With a jolt he realizes he can feel a thin thread of magic from it, connected to himself. It’s vaguely familiar, but he can’t quite put a name to it…
But that’s not important right now. “Let’s just talk this through,” Kim Dokja says, while the other man is still staring at the bird. “Obviously we must have made some really weird decisions last night, but now we’re here, so let’s be nice and try not to kill each other, okay? Let’s start with names. I’m Kim Dokja, potioneer. And you?”
The man looks disgruntled, but reluctantly lowers his sword. “You don’t need to know.”
“…You threaten me at swordpoint for an introduction, but you get to say no?”
“Who are you to me, and why are we here?”
Kim Dokja frowns. “Obviously because last…night…”
Wait. What exactly happened last night? He can recall bits and pieces, but they’re as fuzzy and distorted as watching through a scrying mirror. He certainly can’t remember how he ended up in bed with this stranger…although he can guess how it happened. But the specific events that led up to this morning are gone.
The last thing he does remember is—
“The tavern,” he and the man blurt out in unison. “Right. We met at the tavern, didn’t we?” Kim Dokja continues. “We were both there because of…”
The man’s expression turns murderous again. “Han Sooyoung.”
Yes. Kim Dokja remembers that much, at least.
Han Sooyoung: a wanted witch with a frightening list of crimes. Murder, arson, destruction of royal property, she’s done it all and more; the bounty on her head is probably about equal to the kingdom’s coffers. Normally Kim Dokja doesn’t chase criminals down—he has enough problems managing his apothecary, which isn’t entirely legal either—but Han Sooyoung, in addition to everything she already is, just has to be an expert potioneer as well.
Not only did she open a pop-up stall in the town Kim Dokja used to live in, but she sold plant-growth potions that worked twice as fast as the ones Kim Dokja regularly concocted for the townspeople. Kim Dokja bought one, analyzed its components, and realized it was efficient in the short-term but harmful to the soil in the long-term. Predictably, the townspeople threw rocks at him when he tried to say as much, nearly got him sued in court for slander, drove him to hiding in the woods, and accused him of trying to ruin Han Sooyoung’s reputation to get his sales back.
Which was true. But what other reason was he supposed to have? Actually caring about his customers beyond their gold?
In any case, Kim Dokja had used her plant-growth potion to mix a tracking potion, a highly useful mixture that, as its name implies, can track down a target by using a specific ingredient: a strand of their hair, a drop of their blood, or in this case, a part of a potion Han Sooyoung had mixed. After certifying her location, Kim Dokja had crafted an elaborate plan to catch and arrest her in order to both earn his lost sales back and get his revenge. And so he’d gone into the tavern…
And that’s where his memory shorts out. He’s not a heavy drinker, so this can’t be alcohol-induced memory loss, and yet…it would certainly explain his choice of one-night stand, among other things.
“She was my business rival,” Kim Dokja summarizes. “Her bounty will let me break even, at least. What about you?”
After a long moment of deliberation, the man grunts, “Yoo Joonghyuk. Mercenary.”
Finally, a name. “So the last thing we remember is that we were after Han Sooyoung in that tavern last night, and now we’re here. Without Han Sooyoung.”
But Yoo Joonghyuk’s already turning away, retrieving his rumpled clothes from the floor. Kim Dokja scowls and crouches down to do the same—his knives are still in his coat, but unfortunately the potions he brought along are all gone from his belt. Obviously something happened last night, but what? How did he end up in bed with this beautiful stranger and with a baby bird circling his head? Maybe his plan had gone wrong, or…
“…Hm?”
One leg of his pants is caught under something heavy under the bed. Three bulky cloth sacks have been shoved in there, and Kim Dokja almost says “Hey, maybe this is the body after all,” before he nudges one.
Coins clink and clatter over each other.
Quick as a flash, Yoo Joonghyuk vaults over the bed and would have kicked Kim Dokja’s arm out of its socket if Kim Dokja didn’t jolt back. “Hey! What are you, a horse?” And why didn’t you put a shirt on? Why does Yoo Joonghyuk have a bigger chest than most women Kim Dokja knows?
Yoo Joonghyuk pulls one of the bags out to open it. Coins wash out over their feet, glittering gold in the sunlight. Yoo Joonghyuk visibly swallows. “This is…”
“Don’t tell me these are yours,” Kim Dokja says.
“Maybe.”
“Great. Can you say if they were acquired legally, then?”
“Maybe,” Yoo Joonghyuk repeats.
“Great,” Kim Dokja repeats, too. “So now we’ve got stolen gold under the bed.”
“Ba-aht?”
“And this bird,” Kim Dokja adds, reaching up to pat the bird with his finger. It’s perched on his shoulder, so light he barely feels it. “Surely this isn’t incriminating evidence, and nothing of note happened last night. Seriously, don’t you remember anything?”
Yoo Joonghyuk ties the bag back up. “Nothing.” He tosses the blankets up onto the bed to drag the money sacks out quicker.
Kim Dokja stares at the pink lace lining and embroidered floral patterns on the blankets. “What are you getting those for?”
“To bring them.”
“With… you? Really? Is that smart?”
Yoo Joonghyuk glares at him. “Would you leave this much gold here?”
Before Kim Dokja can launch into the stories he’s heard about cursed gold, someone knocks on the door. “Good morning! Room service here!” a young woman’s cheery voice announces.
Kim Dokja and Yoo Joonghyuk exchange glances. “Put a shirt on already,” Kim Dokja says, before heading to the door. “Morning. Thanks.”
If the exhaustion on his face and the hangover on his breath bother the fresh-faced employee, she doesn’t show it. “We hope you enjoy your breakfast! And here’s a complimentary copy of today’s paper, hot off the presses! Do be careful, honored guests,” she warns, as Kim Dokja accepts the breakfast tray. The cream for the pancakes is shaped into several hearts. “There are some dangerous criminals on the loose!”
That gets Kim Dokja’s attention. “What? Really?” Could it be Han Sooyoung? He passes the breakfast to Yoo Joonghyuk, who has somehow wrestled on a shirt two sizes too small for him, and opens the newspaper.
His own face stares up at him. Beside it, Yoo Joonghyuk is glaring at him with an all too familiar expression. Beneath the charming little WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE caption is a series of zeroes Kim Dokja has only ever seen in his dreams.
Silence. Kim Dokja looks up at the employee, blinking at the paper. She opens her mouth—
Yoo Joonghyuk socks her in the face.
Kim Dokja winces as the poor girl falls to the floor with a thump. “We should get out of here,” he says, dragging the employee into their room before anyone can come out and ask what that noise had been. If he’d had any doubts that they had done some deeply stupid things last night, they’d be completely dispelled by now.
Apparently unconcerned about having a bounty on his head, Yoo Joonghyuk sets the breakfast down on the bedside dresser, giving the food a disdainful glance.
Kim Dokja looks at him, then plops down on the edge of the bed. “If you won’t eat it, I will.”
Luckily they make it out of their room, check out at the counter, and duck into an alleyway beside the building just as a small squad of city guards march up the inn doors. Kim Dokja peeks out from behind the brick wall; he’s too far to overhear the men’s words, but based on how they’re flapping a pair of wanted posters in the security personnel’s faces, he can guess what they’re asking.
He slumps against the wall with a sigh. “Alright. We left just in time, but…” Kim Dokja points at Yoo Joonghyuk beside him. “Why did you bring all the gold with you? Are you asking for someone to report us?”
Yoo Joonghyuk raises an eyebrow at him in turn. “Is that bird not more conspicuous?”
Kim Dokja winces, glancing at the little white bird happily flitting around his head. “Well, I can’t exactly tell her to stop following—”
“Her? How do you know?”
“What? Obviously, she’s…” Kim Dokja pauses. He had vaguely accepted that the bird is a she, because in between discovering her presence and standing in this alleyway a lot of things had happened, and he’d pushed this information to the back of his mind. But now that he tugs experimentally on the thin thread of magic stretching between the bird and himself…
The bird looks delighted. “Ba-baaht!”
“Ah.” He’s only ever read about this in textbooks, but this strange magic bond can’t be anything else: it’s one between master and familiar. Just what kind of alcohol was potent enough for him to sign a contract with a baby bird…?
He snaps out of his thoughts when he realizes Yoo Joonghyuk’s already halfway down the alley. “Hey, wait!” Kim Dokja calls, hurrying to catch up. Yoo Joonghyuk’s face grows even more forbidding, as if wondering why he hasn’t gotten lost yet. “Where are you going? Do you want to get caught…and implicate me with you?”
“I’ve wasted enough time. That criminal may not even be in the city anymore.”
“Ugh, right. Who knows where that sneaky woman is now…” Kim Dokja had skimmed the newspaper while eating the pancakes, and there had been no mention of Han Sooyoung getting up to trouble again, so she might still be somewhere in the city. Their best bet would be to retrace their steps, find out what happened last night, and see if they can recall anything about Han Sooyoung that would hint at where she is now.
Kim Dokja nods in satisfaction—then balks at the empty space beside him. “Will you stay still for one second,” he groans, jogging after Yoo Joonghyuk, already turning the corner at the end of the alleyway. “Do you think you can find Han Sooyoung if you just keep walking?”
Yoo Joonghyuk ignores him.
“Since we’re already acquainted, wouldn’t it be in your best interest to work with me for now? We’re both looking for Han Sooyoung. The bounty on her head is big enough that we can just split it in the end.”
And then I’ll find a way to snatch it off you, he mentally adds. This Yoo Joonghyuk guy seems to be all brawn and nothing else, so if Kim Dokja can convince him to team up then get him to do all the work, he could arrest Han Sooyoung with half the effort for the whole reward.
Yoo Joonghyuk goes on ignoring him.
Fine. Kim Dokja will just have to irritate him into a response. “Great. Glad we’re working together, then.”
They turn the corner of the alleyway together. At this rate they’ll end up in the shadier parts of the city, which is a likely place for Han Sooyoung to be, but that doesn’t mean Yoo Joonghyuk will find her if he just keeps walking like this! Unless his past targets have all just shown up begging for him to use his sword on them? “Don’t you think moving blindly around will be an even bigger waste of time, or—”
“You! There you are!”
Kim Dokja jolts, whirling around; Yoo Joonghyuk grips the hilt of his sword. Behind them is a small group of strangers, pushing at each other to fit in the cramped alley. “Thought you’d come back to rob us again, eh?” a burly man shouts, pointing his ax at Yoo Joonghyuk. “Give us our gold back, bastard!”
The rest of the men shout agreements, waving various weapons around: a mace, a sword, a brick. “So you must’ve stolen all that gold from them last night,” Kim Dokja says, surreptitiously positioning Yoo Joonghyuk between himself and the thugs. “No big deal, just return the gold and—”
“No.”
Kim Dokja stares up at him. “Let me repeat myself. Just return the gold and—”
Yoo Joonghyuk unsheathes his sword. “I said no.”
“Why do you have to make this so difficult?!”
Surprisingly, the men flinch at the sight of Yoo Joonghyuk’s sword. “W-Wait a sec,” the one holding the brick stammers, “it can’t be…the legendary demonic swordmaster who wields a black blade of deepest midnight…?!”
“Legendary demonic… Did I sleep with a crazy guy like that?” Kim Dokja mutters.
Yoo Joonghyuk furrows his brow, then looks down at his sword as if searching for the deepest midnight.
The men back away. “This is bad. We can’t take on a monster like that…”
“Never fear!” the first man bellows, raising his ax. “Backup is on the way! Even a monster can be overwhelmed by numbers!”
He must be the leader of the group, based on how he’s acting. Kim Dokja wonders if a gang of common thugs could really amass all the gold Yoo Joonghyuk’s lugging around right now. Surely the leader of such a rich group would be a little more subtle?
More footfalls—Kim Dokja turns to see men thundering down the alleyway, cornering them on both sides. He grimaces; Yoo Joonghyuk may be a demon of deepest midnight with a legendary…no, that doesn’t sound right… Anyway, even someone like him couldn’t possibly take on this many armed men.
Kim Dokja meets the leader’s eyes. “What happened anyway? Did this guy really rob you blind?” Maybe if he can stall long enough…
“Don’t pretend you don’t know. You two came crashing in our base,” the leader snarls, “asking around for some woman while making a mess of things! At first we thought you were just heartbroken drunks, but then you—” He points at Kim Dokja—“challenged us to a fight! If you won, we’d give you info!”
“…Did we win?”
“You volunteered him as your fighter.” The leader scowls at Yoo Joonghyuk. “He drained our gold dry by winning bets!”
Yoo Joonghyuk regards him. “Then I didn’t steal your gold. I earned it.”
“Will you stop making things worse,” Kim Dokja hisses, squinting at the leader. His intuition wasn’t wrong: there is something off about this guy, and it’s not just how he’s acting. If Kim Dokja focuses, he can make out a thin thread of magic connecting him to something, far off in the distance. This type of bond is similar to the one connecting Kim Dokja and his bird familiar, but different because…
Quick as a flash Kim Dokja pulls out one of his throwing knives and flicks it towards the man. It flies in a perfect line and sinks hilt-deep into his forehead.
There is a collective gasp. Even Yoo Joonghyuk looks a little stunned—though Kim Dokja can’t be sure. He’d need to measure how many millimeters his eyes widened. “Hm. So easily through bone,” he murmurs, sounding impressed.
…Impressed at the knife, not Kim Dokja. “That would be because there aren’t any bones in that body. Give it up, Han Sooyoung.”
Nobody moves. The thugs look like they can’t decide between killing Kim Dokja where he stands and moving to support their leader, who is still standing motionless with a knife in his head.
Then he lets out a low, dark snicker. “You’re a lot less dumb when you’re not drunk, huh?”
He reaches up and yanks the knife out of his face.
There is another collective gasp. Instead of blood, a muddy mix of leaves, grass, and soil spills from the wound, staining the man’s teeth brown when he bares them in a feral grin. “Congratulations! You found me!” he sneers. “Too bad a homunculus’ head isn’t worth shit!”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s face twists in a scowl. “I should have known.”
Han Sooyoung can cast all sorts of magic, but she’s best known for her homunculi, more authentic and life-like than anything else other witches have made; apparently she figured out a way to transfer a part of her consciousness into the bodies. It’s both annoying and admirable. Kim Dokja has tried stealing her grimoire, dissecting her homunculi, and sending various swamp creatures to follow her and discover her secrets, but the blasted woman is slippery as a snake.
“What’d you do to our real leader, you witch?!” one of the thugs demands, though it seems he can’t muster the courage to approach the homunculus.
Han Sooyoung shrugs. “Who knows? He’s not dead, so don’t worry about him. No, if you really wanna make your boss happy—” From his pockets he whips out a pair of familiar wanted posters. “Check it out! These guys are on the market! Arrest them and you’ll earn back double your losses from the arm-wrestling last night, yeah?”
“It was arm-wrestling?” Kim Dokja mumbles. Here he thought Yoo Joonghyuk had fended all these thugs off with nothing but his sword.
Unfortunately the thugs are simple enough to take one look at the bounty written on the wanted posters and immediately turn their weapons back on Kim Dokja and Yoo Joonghyuk. Han Sooyoung has already slipped past the thugs, hurrying deeper into the back-alleys. “Great,” Kim Dokja sighs. “In the end you still have to fight your way out of this.”
Yoo Joonghyuk stares at him as the thugs close in on them. “You? Not we?”
Kim Dokja holds his hands up. “Sorry, I have a strict no-killing policy. Can’t you take care of this much, Legendary Demonic Swordmaster-nim?”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s stare turns into a glare. “I hope they kill you.” Then he lifts his sword and meets the first thug’s brick.
All Kim Dokja does is duck under the occasional sword, lance, or metal pipe while Yoo Joonghyuk single-handedly barrels through everyone like a beast. By the time they make a break for the direction Han Sooyoung’s homunculus had escaped in, the only conscious thugs are the ones trying to run away.
“They weren’t kidding about you being a monster,” Kim Dokja whistles, making sure the baby bird is secure in his coat pocket. The homunculus had thankfully left behind a trail of dirt, so the winding labyrinth of trash bags, dripping pipes, and laundry lines don’t trip them up. “But seriously, you’re still carrying all that gold around? I didn’t peg you to be a money-grubber.”
He half-expects another death threat, but this time Yoo Joonghyuk just glares at him and says nothing. Kim Dokja is rapidly learning this is Yoo Joonghyuk’s way of being defensive. “Anyway, at least we’re sure Han Sooyoung is still somewhere in the city. Homunculi can’t function if they’re too far away from their maker,” Kim Dokja reasons. “She was waiting for us with those thugs, wasn’t she? If we keep following this homunculus, we might be able to find her real body.”
Yoo Joonghyuk frowns. “Now it’s we?”
“Don’t be so petty. You don’t want my help?”
“How exactly are you helping me?”
“You…” Kim Dokja sighs. Why couldn’t he have picked a more agreeable swordmaster to sleep with last night? Though speaking of, he still isn’t sure why he had drunk so much that he’d go crazy and volunteer a guy he just met to arm-wrestle all those thugs. Maybe the alcohol brought out some strange, latent desires within him… But Kim Dokja doesn’t even care about arm-wrestling. Then again, with someone like Yoo Joonghyuk, anything that makes use of his muscles would—
Kim Dokja runs smack into a wall.
He stumbles back, dazed. At first he thinks he was so lost in his thoughts of Yoo Joonghyuk and arm-wrestling that he somehow hadn’t noticed the brick wall before him, but no: he had run face-first into empty space. Yoo Joonghyuk slows to a stop and places a hand against the invisible wall before them. “Magic.”
“Of course,” Kim Dokja groans, rubbing his nose. Normally homunculi can’t do anything complicated, like mix potions or cast magic, but Han Sooyoung’s homunculi are anything but normal. The dirt trail has pretty much disappeared by now, too. “There goes our only lead.”
Yoo Joonghyuk looks at the invisible wall, then at him. “You can’t get rid of these?”
“Of course not. I’m a potioneer, not a witch.”
Yoo Joonghyuk is silent.
“Could it be you thought there was no difference?” Kim Dokja turns around and heads down a different path. “I can see and feel magic, but I can’t cast more than basic spells. That’s why Han Sooyoung monopolized my market in the first place,” he grumbles. “She can use magic to enhance her potions, while I have to rely entirely on ingredients.” In someone like Han Sooyoung’s hands, even regular substances can have absurd effects. Regular water can turn into a deadly poison…
Wait. Potions… Mixtures… The tavern last night….
“…That crazy woman?”
Yoo Joonghyuk looks at him. “What now?”
“She drugged us,” Kim Dokja exclaims, clutching his head. “It’s obvious. I don’t even like drinking, so why would I get drunk enough to go crazy with you last night? But if she spiked our drinks, even our water, then it makes sense.” So Han Sooyoung had known both he and Yoo Joonghyuk had been after her, even when Kim Dokja had drank a face-altering potion so she wouldn’t recognize him? If he prides himself on always being a step ahead of his enemies, then Han Sooyoung is miles away.
Still, she must consider them enough of a threat to use those thugs to get rid of them. Could she be waiting somewhere in the city, making sure anyone after her is dealt with before she moves on to her next crime?
In that case, Kim Dokja might still have a chance at getting the bounty on her head. And if he’s right and she really did drug them last night, that means all he has to do is analyze their blood, get some samples, and mix those into a tracking potion to search for Han Sooyoung!
“Really,” Yoo Joonghyuk says, deadpan. Kim Dokja startles—he hadn’t noticed he’d been talking aloud like some evil mastermind. “Don’t you need equipment for that?”
“Yes, but I have everything we need at my lab…” Kim Dokja pauses. “Which is in the middle of a swamp.” How did he forget about that? Traveling to the city had taken two days, and that was with a prized horse he stole from a noble who took the bait about a hidden treasure in the forest Kim Dokja lives in. (The potion he brewed to temporarily kill a person needed certain ingredients only a corpse could provide. And in the end, he has no idea what Han Sooyoung did to the concoction that took him an entire month to prepare…)
He sighs. “We’ll need to borrow someone else’s lab so I can analyze our blood. Good thing I know just the place!”
“Is this necessary?”
“Do you want to run around the city carrying those bags of gold? The guards wouldn’t even need to see your face to arrest you.”
Yoo Joonghyuk gives Kim Dokja another long-suffering glare. It says a lot that Kim Dokja’s already grown desensitized to those dirty looks when they’ve only known each other for two hours.
Breaking into—ahem, borrowing the potion-making lab in an apothecary would be the normal choice, but in this situation, Kim Dokja goes for the place even guards steer clear from. “It’s not a potioneers’ guild, but it’s got the equipment we need in their lab,” he explains, leading the way to a building at the end of one of the backstreets.
Yoo Joonghyuk frowns. “How do you know that?”
“I used to work here.”
“Then why must we sneak in if they know who you are?”
Kim Dokja pauses from where he’d been undoing the magical lock on the back door. “Don’t worry about it.” With a final pull, the spell falls away and the door swings open. Kim Dokja inhales, exhales, and steps inside Guild Minosoft.
He’d been bracing himself for a former coworker to pass by and strike up an awkward conversation—or worse, sound the alarm on a pair of extremely suspicious-looking intruders—and he has a hand ready on one of his knives the whole walk, but miraculously they make it all the way to the lab on the far end of the building without encountering a soul. It’s unnerving, considering the place was usually bustling with activity when Kim Dokja worked here, but perhaps this is the one good stroke of fortune the gods will allow them today.
Kim Dokja has Yoo Joonghyuk watch one side of the hall and the baby bird watch the other while he works the lock on the lab. “Finally,” he mutters as the door—
“Oh? Dokja-ssi, is that you?”
—opens. Kim Dokja whirls around and plasters a weak smile on his face. “Sangah-ssi, I didn’t see you there… Yoo Joonghyuk, put that away!”
Yoo Joonghyuk ignores him, keeping his sword raised and pointed at the woman behind them.
Yoo Sangah, Kim Dokja’s former coworker and current full-time guild member in Minosoft, thankfully doesn’t question either of them. “Nice to see you again,” she greets. The baby bird chirps in delight and rushes over to rub her body against Yoo Sangah’s cheek, and Yoo Sangah laughs before petting her head with one finger. “And you too, Biyoo!”
Kim Dokja relaxes; it doesn’t seem like she plans to report them. Then his brain catches up with his ears. “Wait, ‘Biyoo?’ Is that her name? And what do you mean, see us again…?”
“You don’t remember?” Yoo Sangah, Biyoo now comfortably nestled on her head, follows them into the lab, setting the trays of food and coffee she’d been carrying atop a table. “You dropped by last night together with this friend of yours. I’m Yoo Sangah, by the way,” she says, polite as ever. “What’s your name?”
Yoo Joonghyuk looks offended, probably at being called Kim Dokja’s friend, but mutters, “Yoo Joonghyuk.”
“Right, Yoo Joonghyuk-ssi! You were throwing up everywhere,” Yoo Sangah says cheerily. Yoo Joonghyuk freezes. “Dokja-ssi was pulling you in here and saying he knew just the sobering cure for you, then went on to mix some… interesting potions using the lab equipment. Um, I think the first one was a fluke, because when he fed it to you, it knocked you unconscious.”
Kim Dokja clears his throat. “Er, Sangah-ssi, I don’t think this is—”
“And?” Yoo Joonghyuk rumbles.
“Oh, don’t get mad at Dokja-ssi!” Yoo Sangah reassures, though judging by Yoo Joonghyuk’s expression it does the opposite of reassure him. “He fed you a waking-up potion afterwards. Then a refreshing potion, because you were still dizzy. Then a minty potion, because your breath smelled bad… Then… Well, I lost track at that point.”
Kim Dokja’s mouth is painfully dry. “How do you know all this…?”
“I happened to pass by and looked in after hearing all the noise. I honestly thought Yoo Joonghyuk-ssi would feel a little…ill…from potion poisoning,” Yoo Sangah delicately says, “but after a minute, he woke up completely fine. Except it seems he had to use the toilet right away.”
Kim Dokja is deathly aware of Yoo Joonghyuk staring daggers at him. This is the one detail he clearly remembers from last night, ironically enough, but he hadn’t brought it up since it seemed irrelevant to the situation. He didn’t realize someone had seen them… “W-Well, you’re alive and kicking, aren’t you, Yoo Joonghyuk?” he says, doing his utmost best to avoid eye contact with the beast standing beside him. “Sangah-ssi, what are you doing here? Or rather, where is everyone else?”
Yoo Sangah’s smile turns hollow. “Ah. Yes. They’re in a guild-wide meeting right now. I’m only here because they asked me to get them lunch and coffee…again.” Then she brightens. “Well, if Dokja-ssi and Yoo Joonghyuk-ssi would like some, here’s lunch and coffee! You’re going to mix potions again, aren’t you? Please feel free to use the mugs as petri dishes.”
The idea is familiar enough that Kim Dokja relaxes. “I’ll do that, then.” It helps that Yoo Joonghyuk turns to look at Yoo Sangah, his animosity shifting into unnerved confusion. Yoo Sangah’s mastery of illusion magic could give Han Sooyoung a run for her money; once, Kim Dokja had caught her disguising multicolored liquid in the mugs as coffee before serving it to the guild heads, who went on to clog the toilets later that day.
Kim Dokja ducks in the backroom to boot up the analysis machines. To his surprise Yoo Joonghyuk follows him in—to his further surprise, Yoo Joonghyuk helps him adjust the equipment. “Since when do you know how to use these?” Kim Dokja asks, taking a gulp from one of the coffee mugs then wincing. Way too bitter—definitely Yoo Sangah’s work. He takes a bite out of some sugared bread to mitigate the taste.
Yoo Joonghyuk keeps his gaze on the machine. “I used to help a potioneer.”
“A friend?”
A long pause. “Sure.”
“Okay, so not a friend,” Kim Dokja deduces. “Girlfriend?”
An even longer pause.
“Bad break-up?”
“Go back to work.”
Considering Yoo Joonghyuk is probably biding his time until he can take revenge on Kim Dokja for nearly killing him via potion overdose last night, Kim Dokja decides against telling the other man he hasn’t drawn anyone’s blood in years. Annoyingly enough, Yoo Joonghyuk does a stellar job at drawing Kim Dokja’s, which must mean his potioneer ex-girlfriend is a serious professional. “Let me see…” Kim Dokja mumbles, carefully easing Yoo Joonghyuk’s blood sample onto a glass slide. No matter how skilled the potioneer, any abnormal substances will show in the blood…
“…Never mind,” he mutters, switching the slides. Yoo Joonghyuk’s blood is useless: it’s still mixed up with all the different potions Kim Dokja force-fed him last night.
His own blood confirms his theory: there really are alien substances present. It seems to be a combination of several different potions condensed into one mixture, inducing intoxication, stimulation, hallucinations… It’s quite the work of art. And it makes sense for a criminal like Han Sooyoung to keep samples of these on her person: one drop could easily derail any guards, mercenaries, or would-be assassins on her tail.
One last substance sticks out to him. Kim Dokja squints, adjusting the scope before it clicks: it’s an aphrodisiac. An extremely concentrated one, at that.
Kim Dokja’s suddenly glad that Yoo Joonghyuk had stepped out after the blood-drawing. After the intoxication, stimulation, and hallucinations, the potion’s aphrodisiac effects would have come last before finally expiring. This explains this morning, and the soreness all along Kim Dokja’s lower body…
Anyway, now he has their lead. He isolates the substances, glad he studied this bit of complicated blood magic a while back, and contains it in a test tube. Now he needs to brew a tracking potion, search for Han Sooyoung, get Yoo Joonghyuk to do the dirty work, knock the guy out with a sleeping potion he’ll sneakily brew right now, and claim Han Sooyoung’s bounty for himself—
“Yoo Sangah-ssi! That’s a wanted man!”
Kim Dokja blinks, peering out at the commotion. A researcher is rambling over Yoo Sangah’s protests, jabbing a trembling finger in Yoo Joonghyuk’s direction. “What is he doing here?” he demands. “Is he holding you hostage? No, are you sheltering him? Are you two—?!”
He goes abruptly silent, staring at Kim Dokja.
“You… I-It can’t be,” the researcher gasps, his finger trembling even more now as he points it at Kim Dokja instead, “the legendary potioneer, the prodigy who mixed a deadly poison and killed his own father at age ten…?!”
Yoo Sangah blinks. “Oh, you didn’t know?”
Yoo Joonghyuk turns to face him. His expression seems to ask, Did I sleep with a crazy person like that?
Kim Dokja pulls a wan smile up. With how long he’s spent secluded in his swamp, he’s almost forgotten how most everyone in the potion-making field knows his face. “That’s me.”
Meek as a lamb, the researcher clasps his hands and bows at a perfect 90 degree angle. “P-Please go ahead and make use of our facilities, sir! Deepest apologies if they’re unsatisfactory!”
If he says any more, Kim Dokja doesn’t hear it; he returns to the backroom as soon as it looks like the researcher isn’t about to sound the alarm. When was the last time he thought about that? When he was younger he used to shudder every time he handled poisons, but in the past few years it hadn’t crossed his mind, so much so that he could tend to his patches of wolfsbane and foxglove without a grimace.
The door creaks open, closed. Kim Dokja takes a deep breath, then turns around to present the aphrodisiac sample to Yoo Joonghyuk. “I was right. She drugged us,” he says, as confidently as he can muster. “Now I can mix a tracking potion, and then hunting her down will be a cinch.”
Yoo Joonghyuk just looks at him. “Alright.”
The silence stretches on. Kim Dokja’s smile feels frozen on his face. “No effusive thanks?” he manages, turning back to set the test tube in place. “Why are you even here? Go talk to Sangah-ssi outside. Make friends. Do you know what those are?”
“What that man said. Is it true?”
Kim Dokja supposes he should have expected this. He closes his eyes and sighs. “Why would he lie?”
Yoo Joonghyuk is quiet, waiting.
In the past Kim Dokja might have changed the subject, but there would be no use now; the researcher had just about said it all. “My mother was…is also a potioneer,” he says, haltingly. The last time he spoke to someone about this…had it been to Yoo Sangah, when he was still a guild member here? “She taught me how to handle the more poisonous ingredients, just for safety. And my ten-year-old self was lucky enough to get the deadliest potion and throw it at my father when he was on another of his, er. Rampages.”
He leaves out how his mother had been lying on the floor, his small feet wet with her blood. Or how his father hadn’t died right away, had only blinked in momentary confusion before Kim Dokja made a desperate, last-ditch attempt at blood magic, injecting the spilled poison directly into his veins. Or how Kim Dokja himself had nearly died, too, the poison on his palms almost implicating him as the culprit until Lee Sookyung wove a story where his father had tried to use the potion to kill him rather than the other way around.
It had been that story that saved the ten-year-old Kim Dokja from the city prison. But when he began his own career as a potioneer, he needed a way to get his name out, and simply being the son of a poisoner wasn’t enough. So he spread rumors of himself, let a new story of a prodigal potioneer slither through the seedy underbelly of the city, and soon enough he had clients lining up for a figurative taste of the infamous rosary pea poison.
Of course, it didn’t last long. But Kim Dokja did get a few loyal clients out of the initial boom, and he swindled enough gold to get his own place.
“So it’s not true.”
Kim Dokja blinks. “I just said—”
“I meant,” Yoo Joonghyuk says, having the nerve to sound annoyed, “you were no prodigy. You didn’t brew a potion at ten years old.”
“…I tell you all that and you call me a liar.”
Yoo Joonghyuk scowls, but his face softens just slightly in the next second. Kim Dokja watches, fascinated by the change—he still looks severe, but the wistful look in his eyes is new. “I…was not always a mercenary either.”
It takes Kim Dokja a second to catch on. “You mean you weren’t always a legendary demonic swordmaster?”
Yoo Joonghyuk ignores him, so that must be a yes. “I helped a…friend run an orphanage in our hometown.” The way he says friend makes Kim Dokja wonder if he’s talking about his potioneer ex-girlfriend. “It needs funds to continue operating.”
“Oh,” Kim Dokja says, quietly. So that’s why Yoo Joonghyuk keeps lugging those bags of gold around, and why he’s so insistent on chasing after Han Sooyoung. “An orphanage, huh,” he muses. “The kids must love you there.”
He expects Yoo Joonghyuk to tell him to die again, but instead Yoo Joonghyuk just looks away, his gaze the softest Kim Dokja’s ever seen it. Like this he doesn’t look just handsome, but also…attractive.
…The kids really do love him. It almost makes Kim Dokja feel bad for planning to steal his half of the bounty later on. Almost.
The moment is broken by the door flying open. “Dokja-ssi, Yoo Joonghyuk-ssi!” Yoo Sangah calls. “Hurry, you have to go before the guild members get here and lynch you!”
Kim Dokja hits his knee on the table. “Before what?”
“Oh, right, you don’t remember,” Yoo Sangah sighs. “Biyoo here was actually the guild’s property; they stole her while raiding a noble’s estate. But after you left the lab last night, you passed by the room she was being kept in and felt so sorry for her, you asked for my help in setting her free.” She pats Biyoo as the bird flutters over from Yoo Sangah’s head to Kim Dokja’s. “You even ran into Officer Han, and he barely made it out alive. The meeting today was to discuss how best to kill you two, actually.”
A noble’s estate? Biyoo must be some kind of valuable, possibly endangered species, then. But no matter how Kim Dokja looks at her, she looks like a perfectly ordinary baby bird, if a bit on the downy side.
This sure does explains why they’re wanted men, though—stealing from common street thugs is one thing, but stealing from a guild like Minosoft is tantamount to public execution. “Right. Thank you for telling us, Sangah-ssi. Well, we’ll just be on our way…” Kim Dokja retrieves the aphrodisiac sample with a muttered curse—there’s not enough time to brew a tracking potion now. “Come on, Yoo Joonghyuk, they’ll probably lynch you too.”
Yoo Joonghyuk stares at him, then at Yoo Sangah, then at him again. “What…kind of guild is this?”
Kim Dokja blinks. “A thieves’ guild. I didn’t mention that?”
They barely make it out the building before the lynch mob spots them stepping out the back doors. “There he is! After him!” Han Myungoh, at the front of the crowd, orders. “And his little friend too!”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s hand drifts towards his sword.
“Don’t! Even if you could cut them all down, do you really want to deal with their affiliates? Just run!” Kim Dokja urges. Biyoo pecks at his hand until Yoo Joonghyuk relents and follows Kim Dokja down the alley.
Guild Minosoft is situated in a less reputable part of the city, which usually doesn’t come alive until evening. But Kim Dokja is sure of one establishment that always has patrons no matter the hour, and there’s one just close by. “Over here,” he says, skidding to a stop by the tavern’s swinging doors.
Yoo Joonghyuk stares up at the sign. At night the letters would be lit up with magical fires, but even unlit it seems clear what the ‘tavern’ is. “No.”
“Now’s not the time to be picky!”
“Absolutely not.”
“Then have fun being hunted down by every single thieves’ guild in the country,” Kim Dokja hisses, ducking past the doors.
He counts four seconds until Yoo Joonghyuk stalks in, narrowly avoiding hitting his head on the curving tail of the Demon Realm sign’s second m.
The bar is already packed, most of the plush couches occupied and dancers already performing on the main stage, with employees hurrying back and forth serving drinks and finger-foods…but best of all, it’s dark but for a few spotlights here and there, the windows covered and blocking the sunlight. “Perfect,” Kim Dokja says.
“What part of this is perfect to you,” Yoo Joonghyuk bites out.
“Quit complaining. If you were on your own, you’d be in jail by now.”
“If it weren’t for you…”
There’s a free couch in the corner, with only one other person sitting at the end. “Come here,” Kim Dokja says, dragging Yoo Joonghyuk along by the wrist when the man seems to be frozen in place. Well, this guy’s probably never stepped foot in a tavern like this before, so Kim Dokja can’t blame him.
On the other hand, Biyoo is circling Kim Dokja’s head, making curious “baaht” noises every now and then. Isn’t she a baby bird? Maybe he shouldn’t have brought her here…
They sit down just as the doors swing open and a handful of Minosoft’s guild members stroll in. Half of them are immediately drawn to the performers on the main stage; the other half scatter throughout the tavern, a few already heading towards them. Kim Dokja internally groans. The servers are too far to wave over for a drink, the tables are too low and small to duck beneath, no pillars to angle behind… Kim Dokja glances aside and spots a couple entwined with each other atop a different couch.
…Well, it’s not like they haven’t already done that and more. He just can’t remember it. “Yoo Joonghyuk.”
Yoo Joonghyuk follows Kim Dokja’s gaze. Kim Dokja fully expects him to go “absolutely not” again, but to his shock Yoo Joonghyuk looks…contemplative.
“W-Wow, you’re actually listening,” Kim Dokja stammers, backing up against the couch so Yoo Joonghyuk can crowd him against the backrest. Biyoo lets out an appalled squawk and disappears into one of Kim Dokja’s pockets. “Well, uh, you better do a good job at it, alright? Make it real convincing, because—”
“Stop talking,” Yoo Joonghyuk orders, and leans in.
Kim Dokja doesn’t have any previous experience to compare this to, so he has no idea if Yoo Joonghyuk is doing a good job at kissing him, but either way it definitely feels—good. Really good. So good, in fact, that for a moment Kim Dokja forgets why this is happening and can only ask himself how he ended up making out with a guy who could be a model for a love potion. Although his personality totally sucks.
That thought ignites a competitive spark in Kim Dokja. He can’t lose to Yoo Joonghyuk like this. He tilts his head to deepen the kiss, reaching up to wrap his arms around Yoo Joonghyuk’s neck, and grips a fistful of wavy black hair when Joonghyuk growls and bites down on Dokja’s lower lip. It should hurt, but instead it only sends a shudder racing down his spine, makes him tighten his hold on Joonghyuk’s hair and pull harder—Joonghyuk pushes a knee between Dokja’s legs—
“No way,” a voice drawls, obnoxiously loud. “Aren’t you two, like, the guys on the wanted posters?”
Yoo Joonghyuk pulls back so quickly, he knees Kim Dokja right in the unmentionables. Kim Dokja makes a similarly unmentionable sound and keels over in agony.
The man who’d been sitting on the edge of the couch sneers at them, and Kim Dokja only needs a glance to know that smirk, somehow recognizable even on a different body. “You—”
“Hey, over here!” Han Sooyoung’s homunculus yells, waving his arms. The guild members whirl around and meet their stunned expressions. “These the guys you’re looking for? Right here! Yeah, these two!”
In one fluid motion Yoo Joonghyuk unsheathes his sword and slices clean through Han Sooyoung’s neck.
The other tavern-goers scream and run. Just as with her previous homunculus, only leaves and soil spill from the hole in his neck; Han Sooyoung’s disembodied head rolls on the floor, grinning up at them, until Kim Dokja kicks him away. “I understand you were alarmed,” he groans, “but did you need to hit me in the—”
Ignoring him, Yoo Joonghyuk swings his sword and blocks the first jab of a knife from a Minosoft member.
Kim Dokja seriously wants to give this guy one good punch to the face. Or keep kissing him. He’ll decide which later. He fumbles a basic fire spell and casts it towards a bottle of alcohol on the table beside them, which promptly bursts into flames right before the guild members. “Come on!” he snaps, hurrying towards the back of the tavern. No self-respecting illegal establishment doesn’t have a back exit, after all.
They burst out onto an alleyway, to Kim Dokja’s relief; with their headstart, they should be able to lose the members through the backstreets. He takes off down the path, turns a corner—
—and runs smack-dab into a vaguely familiar person. “Gah!” Kim Dokja—and the man — yelp in unison. At first Kim Dokja thinks it’s yet another of Han Sooyoung’s homunculi, but then he registers the brick in his hand.
“You!” the thug shouts, not at Kim Dokja but at Yoo Joonghyuk behind him. “Our gold! They’re here, men!”
Kim Dokja stumbles back, but doesn’t make it far before several scorched Minosoft members crowd the alleyway. “Here you are, Dokja-ssi,” the man in front—ugh, Officer Yoon—pants. “Nowhere to run now, eh? We’ll make you pay for stealing from us…”
“H-Heh.” Kim Dokja steps away, his back hitting Yoo Joonghyuk’s. The man’s got his sword up, but for once he looks more wary than annoyed. Looks like even the legendary demonic swordmaster knows his limits. “Why don’t we talk this out? I’m sure this has all been a misunderstanding…”
“Misunderstanding, my foot!” a voice shrieks from the back of the Minosoft group. Kim Dokja can just make out the top of Han Myungoh’s head as he pushes through the crowd. “You nearly killed me last night, Kim Dokja! And—” He groans and doubles over, clutching his stomach. “And I b-bet…you spiked…our coffee too…!”
“…Sure I did,” Kim Dokja says.
He slips a hand inside his coat, trying to find his best dagger, but his fingers brush against something soft instead. Biyoo flies out with a chirp. “No, no, not you,” Kim Dokja hisses, not unkindly. The last thing he wants is her getting injured in the skirmish, or for any of the Minosoft members to recapture her. “Back in the pocket. Hey, don’t—!”
But Biyoo has already floated out, cold gaze fixed on the Minosoft crowd. “Ba-aht,” she says, uncharacteristically darkly.
Then, with a brilliant flash of light—and the distinct, ear-ringing feeling of a magical spell shattering—Biyoo disappears. In her place stands a pure white griffin, magnificent wings unfurled and easily over twice Kim Dokja’s size.
The griffin rumbles, “Baht!”
“…Ah.” Now Kim Dokja remembers why he’d needed Yoo Sangah’s help last night: so she could cast an illusion spell over Biyoo and make her less conspicuous.
Of all the creatures Minosoft could have stolen from that noble—and of all the creatures Kim Dokja could have drunkenly made a familiar’s contract with—it had to be one of the most endangered animals in the world?
But now’s hardly the time to complain! “Get on!” Kim Dokja says, scrambling up Biyoo’s side and pulling a much heavier Yoo Joonghyuk up with him. Biyoo gives Yoo Joonghyuk a deep frown, as if she hadn’t approved of this extra passenger but will kindly tolerate him for Kim Dokja’s sake, and with a flap of her wings they’re airborne, leaving the two wide-eyed, slack-jawed groups of Minosoft members and street thugs behind, the city streets shrinking rapidly beneath them.
“Biyoo… What on Earth…” Kim Dokja tentatively pats her head, where long silver feathers form a crest. Biyoo trills happily.
Yoo Joonghyuk wraps one arm around Kim Dokja’s stomach, which has his heart doing all sorts of nauseating flips until Yoo Joonghyuk says, “Griffins have a predator’s sense of smell.”
“Ungrateful and demanding as ever,” Kim Dokja mutters, but from his pocket he retrieves Han Sooyoung’s potion sample, holding it out to Biyoo. “Here! Can you track this down?”
Biyoo angles her head to sniff at the potion, then veers suddenly left. “Baaaht!”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s grip on him tightens, fingers digging into his hipbone. Kim Dokja does his utmost best to think about literally anything else and fails.
It becomes instantly clear where Biyoo is taking them once the ships’ sails come into view. “The harbor,” Kim Dokja groans, squinting through the wind and sea spray in his eyes.
“Trying to flee by ship,” Yoo Joonghyuk mutters darkly, gripping his sword with his free hand. “Figures. She did what she came here to do.”
When Kim Dokja just stares at him, Yoo Joonghyuk rolls his eyes and explains, in a tone that makes it clear he’s never met anyone more stupid in his life, “Use the city’s superior printing press to mass-produce her original magic tomes. I thought you would have known.”
Kim Dokja gasps. “Wait. Original? As in, spells she made herself? Hold on, Biyoo, turn around. The nearest bookshop here should be—”
“Stop that.” Yoo Joonghyuk’s expression grows more solemn. “It won’t be easy to catch her, even now. That woman always slips away.”
Biyoo’s already angling down, wings pulled closer to herself as they descend. “Oh, I know,” Kim Dokja says, clinging to Biyoo’s neck. “Good thing I have just the plan…”
In another few seconds Biyoo has landed in front of a woman hurrying towards one of the ships. “Gah! You two!” Han Sooyoung yelps, the hood over her head falling as she stumbles away. “Seriously? Don’t you know when to give up?”
Yoo Joonghyuk leaps gracefully off Biyoo’s back. “I could say the same to you,” Kim Dokja says, hopping down. “Now you can come with us to the city jail quietly, because my friend here—” He gestures at Yoo Joonghyuk, who’s already drawn his sword and pointed it at Han Sooyoung’s neck—“isn’t in a good mood. Cooperate with us, and no one has to get hurt.”
Han Sooyoung scowls, taking a step back; Yoo Joonghyuk takes a threatening step forward in turn. “Hey, you want gold? I’ve got gold!” she offers. “More gold than the kingdom itself could give you! Or a favor? Spare my life today, I’ll spare yours tomorrow…or I’ll kill someone else for you! Don’t you know how much better that is than—”
“One more word,” Yoo Joonghyuk snarls, “and I will settle for your corpse’s bounty.”
Han Sooyoung pales. Kim Dokja sighs, shaking his head. “Joonghyuk-ah—”
“Don’t call me that.”
“—let’s think this through. She’s making some sense, isn’t she?” He gives Han Sooyoung a considering look. “Say, those tomes of yours… How about giving me a complete version? One with all the spells you’ve created?”
Han Sooyoung brightens. “That’s it? You could’ve just said so!”
“Alright, Yoo Joonghyuk, your turn. Ask for your weight in gold or something.”
Yoo Joonghyuk stares at him. “Fine. I might as well kill both of you.”
“Haha, funny joke—whoa!” Kim Dokja shouts, narrowly dodging Yoo Joonghyuk’s blade. “You idiot! How gold-hungry can you get?”
“How shameless can you be?” Yoo Joonghyuk keeps swinging, driving him further towards the docks. Biyoo squawks in alarm, wings flapping; people are starting to stare, forming a loose crowd around them. And Han Sooyoung…
“I don’t want to hear that from you.” Kim Dokja grins. “Besides, why are you trying to kill me first? The better target—”
He darts out of the way of another swing, landing right in Han Sooyoung’s path and cutting off her mad dash towards one of the ships.
“—is right here!”
Yoo Joonghyuk sinks his blade through Han Sooyoung’s stomach.
For a moment, all goes still. The people around them scream and disperse, but everything else is white noise to Kim Dokja as he concentrates on the hardest bit of blood magic he’s had to do in a while: keeping blood from spilling out of a serious but non-fatal wound. While he focuses, Yoo Joonghyuk will lug Han Sooyoung onto Biyoo’s back, and the three of them will fly back to the city and throw her in jail before she recovers from the pain. Then they’ll split the bounty and go their separate ways.
Even Kim Dokja’s surprised the plan had worked so well, for something they cooked up in under five minutes while soaring through the sky. Because they figured Han Sooyoung wouldn’t let them catch her so easily, it would be easier to fool her into trying to escape if she thought they were arguing. Their teamwork sure has improved since they met this morning!
It’ll be a shame when Kim Dokja snatches up Yoo Joonghyuk’s half of the bounty and flees to his swamp, but that’s a problem for later. Right now, he has to make sure the blood stays…
…There’s no blood.
There’s no blood to manipulate. Kim Dokja thinks, far too late: fuck.
Han Sooyoung throws her head back in laughter. “Holy shit! You should’ve seen the looks on your faces!”
Yoo Joonghyuk stares numbly down at her, then pulls out his sword. For the third time that day, they watch leaves and soil spill out from the gaping hole in her stomach.
“I’m almost sorry for you suckers. You were so close! If you hadn’t gotten distracted by my other homunculi, you might have caught up with me…but my ship’s already set sail. Nice try!” To Kim Dokja, she adds, “I’ll sign a book for you next time. Just a normal one, though. You think I’d let anyone have my originals?”
Yoo Joonghyuk lifts his sword and decapitates her.
“What, d’you want a signed copy too?” the head rolling on the ground asks, just before both it and the body dissolve into mud.
For a long moment all they do is stand there, staring at the dirt. Kim Dokja, his hands surprisingly steady, lifts the potion sample up for Biyoo to sniff again, but she only shakes her head and points at the mud with her beak.
…Normal homunculi can’t do anything complicated, like mix potions or cast magic. But this is Han Sooyoung they’re talking about.
She predicted they’d track her down, so she made her homunculus mix a complex potion to slow them down. It’s so ridiculous that Kim Dokja can only let out a hollow laugh. “Yoo Joonghyuk? How’d you know she was here to publish her books?”
Yoo Joonghyuk is quiet for a moment before speaking. “My friend… The one who runs the orphanage…wanted a copy.”
“And does this friend know where Han Sooyoung might be going next?”
“…Probably not.”
They spend several more minutes staring at the ocean. Seagulls squawk. Ships arrive and embark. People return and leave home.
Kim Dokja sighs. “Well, we tried.” He’s less disappointed than he thought. Perhaps a part of him had known someone like Han Sooyoung wouldn’t have been caught so easily.
Yoo Joonghyuk only nods.
“I should get going.” Kim Dokja pats Biyoo’s neck.. “Got to…figure out what to do with my new griffin.”
Yoo Joonghyuk nods again, then turns to leave. They walk down the harbor together, Biyoo trotting along behind them, in strangely companionable silence.
…Silence broken by someone shouting, “Special discount for newlyweds! Anyone looking for the perfect honeymoon? Doesn’t a starry night out on the sea sound like heaven?”
Kim Dokja pauses. He doesn’t expect Yoo Joonghyuk to do the same, nor to wear a considering expression on his face. They share a wordless glance before approaching the man, standing by a kiosk enchanted to cycle between similar advertisements. “What’s that about a discount?” Kim Dokja asks.
The man lights up. “We’re holding a special promo for newlyweds! Have two tickets for the price of one and get to sail on the cruise ship the king and queen themselves were on after the royal wedding! You’re just in time; the promo period ends tonight, because the ship sets sail tomorrow.” He chortles. “If you’re interested, we’ll just need your papers to see if you’re eligible. How’s that sound?”
Kim Dokja looks up at Yoo Joonghyuk just as Yoo Joonghyuk looks down at him. They’ll be setting off a day later than Han Sooyoung, but the advertisement reveals the ship will be visiting all the ports in the kingdom…which means plenty of chances to gather information and track Han Sooyoung down, slowly but surely.
“Well,” Kim Dokja says, “it…doesn’t sound bad.”
“Wouldn’t hurt,” Yoo Joonghyuk grunts.
If Yoo Joonghyuk is being so agreeable about this, then there’s no thinking twice. Kim Dokja clasps his hands and smiles. “You know what? That sounds perfect for our honeymoon. Would you mind waiting while we wrap up our errands and get our, ah, papers in order?”
The man beams. “Of course! But about your…pet there—”
But they’re already speed-walking away, Kim Dokja’s mind making calculations at warp speed. Marriage documents? No problem. Wedding rings? Even easier. Renewing the illusion spell on Biyoo? Nothing Yoo Sangah can’t handle. He resolves to get her a copy of Han Sooyoung’s book too, as thanks.
“I have to find my courier,” Yoo Joonghyuk says. “To get this gold back home. And you’ll take care of—”
“Everything else, yes,” Kim Dokja finishes. “Let’s meet back up at the harbor by…six.” If only he had time to return home and pack properly. How nice would it be to have ingredients for poisons on hand? He could have brought along what he likes to call his miniature laboratory too. Han Sooyoung wouldn’t stand a chance then.
Yet at the same time, there’s a certain thrill to moving quickly like this, especially because—for the first time in a very long time—he’s not alone.
Yoo Joonghyuk blinks down at him. “What?”
Had he been staring? Kim Dokja smiles. “Just reminding you: don’t send back all the gold. You still have to pay for our ticket.”
“…You—”
“See you at six,” Kim Dokja repeats, hurrying down the street.
When Yoo Joonghyuk’s out of sight, he pulls out the sleeping potion he’d brewed at Minosoft earlier, examining its contents before pocketing it once more. Maybe another day.