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Chaeryeong doesn’t know when it starts to happen. All she knows is that one day she is bustling down a gilded corridor of the palace, her arms straining under a huge bundle of wet roses fresh from the washhouse, when she catches a glimpse of her passing reflection in a mirror and notices with a startle that her finger is missing.

She gasps and drops the laundry. It lands with a wet splat on the moss carpet. It is a testament to her shock that she doesn’t immediately pick it back up again as all good maids’ instincts command; instead, she leaves it there on the floor, goes right up to the mirror, and inspects her hand. Oh, dear , she thinks, a vague sense of curiosity and dread filling her stomach the way water bloats bread. Uncomfortably, unstoppably. Oh, dear, my finger is gone .

It is indeed gone. Her left pinky finger is missing. There isn’t even a stub. She passes her hand through the empty space where it would have been, and meets no resistance, not even a phantom pain. It is just . . . gone.

In the mirror, she meets her own eyes, their amber light framed by her auburn bangs and her half-up hairstyle that’s been smudged out of its traditional maid’s bun after so many hours preparing for the late-autumn moon festival. 

For a second, Chaeryeong has no idea what to feel. But she knows what this is. She is sure of it. She knows what this means.

But it is just a finger, after all. She has nine more. And she still has her toes. And her laundry is still sitting on the floor, and the soap is going to stain the royal palace’s delicate moss, and now she’s going to have to scrub that too. So she puts the dilemma out of her mind, goes back to her heap of sopping flowers, gathers them up in her arms again, and trods off in the direction of the greenhouse, where she will hang the petals up to dry.

The great thing about the palace’s immense size is that it is very easy to avoid the fairies you do not want to see. Chaeryeong is avoiding a very specific person who is hard to get ahold of even when in tight quarters, to say nothing of the sprawling palace grounds like this one, so Chaeryeong really has nothing to worry about. She should not be worried about bumping into Yeji. It was a miracle for them to see each other even when they had wanted to. And now, since neither of them want to, it is very likely neither of them will. 

( But Chaeryeong wants to see her, she wants to see her so badly, she wants to hold her and tell her she loves her and she will always stay by her side —)

But the truth is, she is not by Yeji’s side. 

Not anymore.

Things go on like that and Chaeryeong almost forgets she is missing a whole finger. It really isn’t a big deal. It was not like she is even left-handed, anyway. A left pinky finger means very little to her. She has things to do: laundry to wash, gowns to mend, and her cat’s litter box to change. She doesn’t have time to worry about a missing joint. 

It is not smart of her to have done that, in retrospect. She doesn’t know what she was thinking. Was she just expecting the finger to show up again? Pop back into place like nothing happened? Of course not. But Chaeryeong is a master of ignoration. And she is also busy. She has two apprenticeships, for crying out loud. And a full-time job. And she is involved in so many guilds she couldn’t count them all on two hands, even if she had that last tenth finger. 

She is packing up her items at the dress shop when suddenly someone stopped her. “Hey, Chaeryeong,” they say, shifting awkwardly, their hands clasped behind their back as they wait to catch her attention. “Master and I want to say we’re really sorry.”

“Hmm?” She is trying to lace the bodice of this velvet gown, and it is not going very well. The laces are too flimsy, and the velvet too delicate. She might need to soak the strings in wax for them to pass easily through the holes. Her fingers ache from the labor.

“We wanted to say we’re sorry about what’s going on,” says the sunbae again. Yeonjun, if Chaeryeong remembers right. Chaeryeong puts down the laces. Her sunbae is standing in front of her and they are looking distressed, but for what reason Chaeryeong does not know. Chaeryeong’s gaze slid a little to the right to see the rest of the sunbaes, all gathered around a nearby table as they listen to the interaction with poorly disguised concern.

“Are you kicking me out of the guild?” Chaeryeong asks. Straight to the point.

“What? Of course not,” Yeonjun says. “Not over something like this, anyway. You’re the best we’ve got!”

“Oh. Thanks,” Chaeryeong says. She casts another unsure look at the spectating crowd just over Yeonjun’s shoulder. 

Yeonjun looks pained. “Just . . . uh . . . I mean, I get it if you don’t want to talk about it. Just, let us know if you ever need someone to lean on, okay? We’re here for you.”

“Thanks,” Chaeryeong says again.

Yeonjun flashes her a smile, then turns and jogs away. It is only hours later, when Chaeryeong is laying on her tickbed with the moonlight streaming through her small window as she listens to the crickets chirp outside in the closest palace garden, that she realizes with a start what Yeonjun had been talking about. Her hand . It’s been exposed this whole time; they must have seen that she is missing a finger. Everyone in the seamstress shop saw it. They know she is disappearing. Everyone knew what it meant.

How could she have been so stupid? What if word got around, and Yeji finds out? Chaeryeong feels cold all over. No. That could not happen. 

She slides out of bed and reaches for her thimble gloves on her desk. With trembling hands, she pulls them on. Her cat wanders up to her side and meows for attention, so she crouches down beside him and tries to distract herself by petting his spine the way he likes.

This is fine. She will just have to wear gloves from now on.

She hasn’t caught sight of Yeji in two weeks.

Not that she’s been keeping count, or whatever. It’s just the way things are. They don’t really run in the same circles. No matter how busy Chaeryeong is, Yeji is always busier. No matter how many dresses Chaeryeong has to mend, patterns to stitch, or pieces of laundry to scrub, her workload is always a fraction of a fraction of Yeji’s, and this is the reason they were never going to work out.

It’s better this way, she thinks grimly. This way, Yeji can focus on her studies. And Chaeryeong . . . Chaeryeong can focus on herself, too.

It’s not like she spends every day wondering if she’ll catch a glimpse of those peach-and-cream wings. 

It’s not like she thinks about her.

“Chaeryeong? Er, Chaeryeong?”

Chaeryeong snaps out of her reverie. Her ward is standing in front of her, a lanky fairy with long brown hair and apron. She looks uncertain. They are currently both elbow-deep in the porcelain washbasin of the laundry houses, and Chaeryeong notices with a start that she was subconsciously scrubbing the fabric between her hands so roughly that it was starting to wear thin in spots. Chaeryeong grimaces, lifts the wet garment out of the basin, and hangs it on a nearby oak branch to dry as she recollects her thoughts.

Yuna is still looking at her in both parts wariness and concern. “Do you want to take a break?” she eventually asks gently, and it’s mortifying that Chaeryeong’s junior is the one checking in on her like this. She was the one assigned to mentor Yuna, not the other way around. “It’s been a few hours so far. I’m sure we’re both very tired.”

Chaeryeong shakes her head. She selects another piece of laundry—a brocaded waistcoat, probably belonging to one of the younger princes—from the waiting stash and dunks it into the basin. “If we postpone any longer, the rose water will go stale,” she points out. 

“It’s okay!” says Yuna, pulling a small vial out of her apron pocket. “Remember what you taught me last week? If you add some sesame essence of liquor, it’ll keep the rose water fresh for twice as long! So I went to the market and got a few bottles. I know the vendor. He gave me a discount because he knows I’m a palace staff.” She smiles at Chaeryeong and uncaps the vial to show her.

Chaeryeong stops her with a sigh. “Prince Jeongin is allergic to sesame,” she says. “This is his waistcoat we’re washing. You want to poison the prince?”

Yuna looks crestfallen. “Oh. Right.”

Chaeryeong takes the bottle and cap from her, and quietly puts the cap back on. “Thank you for the thought, though.” She reaches over and tucks the vial back into Yuna’s pocket with a pat. “I’m glad you remember what I taught you, at least. But be sure to remember all of it, okay? The second part of the sesame liquor lesson is to only use it when you know it’s safe for the client.”

“I don’t know how I’ll ever be as good as you,” Yuna says wistfully. “Just how long did it take you to learn all their likes and dislikes, anyway? There are so many royals. It must have been decades.”

Chaeryeong cracks a smile. “Are you calling me old?”

“Maybe,” Yuna teases, sticking out her tongue.

“The secret is to get to know them,” Chaeryeong says, nudging her playfully with her shoulder. Yuna giggles and splashes some water at her. “Once you’re better acquainted with the royals, you won’t make so many mistakes. You’re hoping to find work in our neighboring kingdom, right?” 

“Yeah, Kwangya Kingdom.” Yuna brightens. “You remembered!”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“I don’t know. I feel like you’ve always got so much on your mind,” Yuna says. “You’re always either spacing out or working your ass off. No in between. But I think, recently, you’ve been more . . . awake, somehow? Like, I think you’re more alert than you used to be. Like you’ve just woken up. It’s so nice. It feels like, waa, my senpai finally noticed me! You know?” Yuna giggles lightly. 

In contrast to Yuna’s cheer, Chaeryeong feels like a stone has just settled in her stomach. Has it really been so long since she actively showed interest in the lives of others around her? How long as she been neglecting her interpersonal relationships like this? It could be years. Decades, even. If not for the curse, would she have ever even noticed Yuna to begin with?

“Sorry,” she says softly.

“Hey, it’s okay!” says Yuna with a surprised laugh. “We have plenty of time to become close now.”

“Right,” says Chaeryeong. Her missing finger suddenly aches. She clears her throat and goes back to treating the waistcoat in her hands. “Right.”

Yuna beams, then picks up a garment and begins to scrub as well. They work like that in companionable silence for the rest of the day, the hours turning the sun amber as it glides across the windows of the laundry room and eventually peters out into a peachy sunset glow. By the time they are done draining the basin, setting it upside-down in the corner to dry, and folding the finished laundry, all the light has faded from the sky, and the stars are starting to come out.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” says Yuna.

“I’ll teach you,” Chaeryeong says in return, which seems unexpected for the both of them. “I mean . . . you want to know how to become better, right? I’ll teach you. How to be the best.”

Yuna gasps. “Really?”

Chaeryeong nods with a small smile. Yuna cheers, and jumps up and down, and claps her hands. Chaeryeong watches her fondly, and knows now that she could never tell Yuna that she is dying — it would crush the both of them.

Much better to do it this way. If no one knew, no one would be hurt. 

Chaeryeong’s job is a little different than just a laundress or a seamstress. She’s both, and she’s neither. She’s the only one she trusts to wash the clothes that she designs. Not all of them, of course—only the important ones, the clothes made for royalty to be worn at summits and dinners and coronations and political balls. She weaves those clothes with spells so delicate and expensive that they’ll unravel themselves if they are washed in the wrong treatment, and because she’s the only one who knows the exact makeup of her work, she’s the only one who knows how to treat them.

So when it comes to the royal family’s most important wardrobe, she’s the one who is responsible for designing them as well as cleaning them after every use. It wouldn’t be such hard work if there weren’t so many damn royals in this district. Other districts usually just have a half dozen. Nyne has fifteen. Yeji, and all the princes and duchesses. It’s really way too many. But Chaeryeong can’t complain. She has good income, this way. The royals favor her. 

It’s a wonder they still do. She has been tiptoeing around them for the past few weeks, wondering when one of them will lash out and blame her for the breakup between her and Yeji, but instead all of them seem blissfully unaware.

“Duchess Haewon. Duchess Lily,” she says, curstying as the two fairies glide by in their nightgowns. 

They stop to share a look. “Hey, Chaeryeong,” says Duchess Haewon. “How are you?”

“I’m well, your highnesses. Thank you.”

“We’ve missed you,” says Duchess Lily. “We’re on our way to cards night! Want to join us?”

“I’m all right,” says Chaeryeong.

“How’s Sir Fur? Doing well?” Duchess Haewon asks.

Chaeryeong thinks about Sir Fur and how he is probably snuggled up asleep in his mushroom-shaped cat tree right now. She smiles automatically, probably for the first time all day. “Yeah, he’s okay. He’s a sweetie. Yesterday, he slept by my side the whole night! He’s become cuddly now that the weather is getting colder.”

The duchesses beam. “You take such good care of him,” Duchess Lily coos. “No one could do it better.”

Chaeryeong smiles and nods, demurely glancing down at her own clasped hands, and catches sight of her missing joint, and that’s when it hits her that when the rest of her body follows suit and disappears too, no one will be there to take care of Sir Fur.

Sir Fur . Her poor cat. What is she going to do?

He will be all alone.

“Chaeryeong? You okay?” asks Duchess Lily. “You suddenly got all still.”

“I need to go,” Chaeryeong manages to say as she hurriedly picks up her skirts in her bunched fists and flies down the hall, back to her quarters. She enters her bedroom in a whirlwind of veils and skirts and makes a beeline for Sir Fur, who, true to her prediction, is curled up like a croissant in the second level of the mushroom tree. Upon her noisy entrance, he pokes his head up in alarm, then meows in protest as she urgently scoops him up into her arms, fiercely buries her face in his fur, and bursts into tears.

Even when Sir Fur gets up and wanders away, presumably to find a non-crying and less messy perch to sit on, Chaeryeong cries. She doesn’t stop until she’s all out of tears, and even then, she can’t help but waste the evening away by sitting there forlornly, hiccuping wetly and staring down at her hands.

She knew this was going to happen. This was all part of the process.

The fading has been happening in stages. First, her skin starts to thin. It thins in increments when Chaeryeong is not looking: it will lose color, develop a shimmering quality as if made of an opaque crystal, and then quietly it will reduce itself to translucence. At this point it appears ghostly, wispy, as if both there and not there at the same time, and if she looks at it for too long then the ever-shifting illusion of a gently existing limb will give her a headache. So she tends not to look. She spares herself the trouble.

The problem is not the invisibility. She just wears gloves to cover the invisibility, and it doesn’t impede her function at all. The real problem, the one that she only recalls right now, sitting in the darkness of her bedroom a few paces away from a Sir Fur who is licking his fur obliviously, is that the stage after the invisibility is the disappearing . If she doesn’t do something soon, she will end up with no hands, and just stubs for wrists. And it will extend to her arms and her shoulders and then her torso and then everything else. And who will pet Sir Fur the way he likes it on the base of his tail, if not her? Who will teach Yuna to scrub the velvet cloaks the right way, along the grain? Who will do all the work? 

She staggers to her feet and bundles up, throwing on her winter coat and dress and boots, and as she flies out the window and trips down the road she checks to make sure no one is watching her. She hurries over to Ryujin’s cottage on the outskirts of town. 

She knocks sharply on the door with her one remaining hand, and hugs herself with her arms while she waits.

When the witch answers the door, she takes one look at Chaeryeong and her whole face puckers up in a great big pitying sigh. 

“Oh, darling,” says Ryujin. “Come in. Come in.”

That is how Chaeryeong ends up sniffling on the herb-scented couch in Ryujin’s living room, surrounded by her three pet cats and a variety of recently gathered wildflowers. She explains through hiccups what’s going on: she’s in love with someone who cannot love her back, and now she’s fallen ill, and not only is she turning invisible, but she’s disappearing too.

“Why did it take you so long to come find me?” Ryujin asks bewildered as she takes Chaeryeong’s remaining gloved hand in hers. 

“I don’t know,” Chaeryeong says. “Can you—can you bring it back?”

Ryujin gently grasps the stub of her wrist and examines it. She passes her hand through where the limb should have been, then clicks her tongue and moves away to rummage in a nearby drawer. She comes back with a can of what looks like pink salt, and she shakes some of it over the missing area.

Chaeryeong watches in dismay as the salt, predictably, passes right through the empty air to land on the carpet.

Ryujin switches to Chaeryeong’s other hand, the one that is still tangible. She slowly slips off the glove, and this time, the salt lands on the back of her palm and stays there, still.

“I can save this one. If you take lobellia and mustardseed every morning with rose water in a copper cup, stirred twice counterclockwise, it will stave off the disappearing. I can’t reverse the invisibility, but I can make it so that you still have full use of your hand. If you keep your glove on, no one will even know you’re afflicted.”

“You can’t turn it back to normal?” Chaeryeong says.

“I can’t,” Ryujin says. “Like I said, I can only stave off the symptoms.”

“And my other hand?”

“Can’t do anything for that one,” Ryujin says, about the hand that the salt passed through. “It’s too late for that one.”

Chaeryeong nods emptily. Ryujin goes to the cupboard and rummages around for supplies, and when she returns she presses an envelope full of sweet-and-sour smelling herbs into Chaeryeong’s remaining palm.

“Mix this with your morning tea,” she says. “And hold it in your mouth for ten seconds before you swallow. Do not heed the bitterness. If you swallow early or spit it out, it will not work.”

“This will help me so I’ll stop disappearing?” Chaeryeong says.

Ryujin hesitates. “You’ll stop disappearing,” she hedges, “as in, you’ll stop becoming intangible. But the invisibility will still spread. The only thing the tincture will do is keep you tangible. And even then, I am not sure how long it will last. The disease is known to worsen exponentially.”

Chaeryeong bites her lip. “You can’t cure me?”

“No, honey, I can’t do that. I can’t do anything about that.”

“Is there anything that can?”

“If they love you back, the curse will break,” Ryujin says. She searches her face. “Do you think there is a chance they will love you back, Chaeryeong?”

Chaeryeong meets her eyes. She shakes her head, just once. And Ryujin nods.

“Then there is nothing I can do for you.”

Chaeryeong goes to the town hall the next day and looks up registries for nearby cemeteries. Then she changes her mind and decides she’d rather be cremated, so she searches up crematoriums nearby and books herself a little appointment there so that she can explain the situation to a staff member and they could help set up all her affairs. Surely it couldn’t be too hard. Many others probably put their own affairs in order just as she is doing now. It would be easy. She just needs some money.

“Hey, unnie,” she asks one day at the farmer’s market. Jisu is drinking apple cider, taking a break from hawking her wares. “Can you lend me some money?”

“What for?” asks Jisu. She scoops some spiced froth off the top of her cup and licked it off her finger. “You need formal clothes again? I told you you can just borrow mine.”

“It’s not that,” Chaeryeong assures her. She doesn’t think she will need to go to any more interviews, anyway. No need for the fine tunics, the shined loafers. It is all moot. What is important is being here with Jisu. “But if you wanted to give me your clothes for free I’d like that too.”

By the end of Jisu’s breaktime, she does consider Chaeryeong’s request to give her the money.

“When would I be expecting it back?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” Chaeryeong says honestly. She feels kind of bad about this, actually, the more that she thinks about it. She’s basically taking her friend’s money, using it on herself, and then disappearing. Literally. Jisu wouldn’t even have anyone to report to the sheriff, because Chaeryeong would have disappeared. Literally. “It’s okay, actually, if you don’t want to do it. I’ll figure it out.”

“No, I’ll help,” says Jisu. “I’ll give it to you. I trust you. You’re not gonna buy drugs with it, right?”

“I won’t,” says Chaeryeong ardently. “Thank you, unnie. Thank you. I don’t know how to thank you.”

“Will I ever find out what the money is for?” Jisu wheedles.

Chaeryeong tries to smile. “I think so. Just . . . be patient.”

“All right.”

“By the way, do you like cats?”

Jisu tilts her head. “I suppose so. I would say I’m generally a dog person, though. Why do you ask?”

“No reason.”

When Chaeryeong goes home that day she resolves to arrange for flowers to be sent to Jisu. She’ll include a card. It’ll be nice. Jisu will like it.

She falls asleep at her table, trying to plan the perfect bouquet.

The next day she jolts awake. Face burning in embarrassment, she quickly gathers her skirts, hurries across town, and wakes up Jisu from her sleepy stupor to press the money back into Jisu’s hand. She mumbles something about not needing it anymore, and hurries away as fast as she came, leaving a dumbfounded Jisu behind her.

She doesn’t need the coins. The consultation at the crematorium is useless. She won’t need to be cremated, or buried.

She’ll be gone. There will not even be a body left to look at.

She goes home and goes back to sleep.

Every night she checks to see how much more of her is missing. She takes the appropriate dose of Ryujin’s tincture. True to the witch’s word, she no longer loses any limbs: she just becomes invisible. 

Chaeryeong has been hiding her invisible limbs underneath coats and long pants and socks. For her missing hair she just puts on a hat, and when people ask if she’s got a haircut she just laughs and tells them she has. Sure, it is a little strange to see a laundry maid constantly wearing gloves, even when they get drenched due to all the scrubbing she has to do in the river, but she tells the other maids that it’s because her skin is sensitive these days and she wants to protect it from the suds. They take the excuse easily enough. 

Not Yuna though. Yuna just looks at her her narrowed blue eyes, and mentions pointedly one day on their lunch break that she doesn’t understand why Chaeryeong doesn’t just take off the gloves once they’re done scrubbing and are ready to start folding the laundry.

“It’s because of my cat,” Chaeryeong blurts out. “He doesn’t like the . . . smell of the laundry water on my hands. So, I wear the gloves. I take them off at home when I’m with him.”

This seems like a good enough explanation for Yuna, or maybe Yuna is just soft on cats, because her stern expression melts into a smile. “Aww, you have a cat? What’s his name?”

“Sir Fur.”

“That’s so cute . . . .”

“He is very cute.” Chaeryeong purses her lips. “Say, Yuna, do you like cats?”

“I love cats,” Yuna says, looking mildly offended that Chaeryeong would even ask the question. “I don’t have any, but I really wish I did. They’re so soft and warm, and when they purr . . . .” She sighs dreamily.

“You should meet Sir Fur,” Chaeryeong suggests. “You’d like him.”

“If I met him, I’d probably never want to let him go!” Yuna laughs. “I’d steal him and keep him forever.”

Chaeryeong hums and faces her. “Hey, by the way, I was thinking,” she says.

“Yes?”

“Don’t go to Kwangya.”

“What?” Yuna says.

“Don’t go to Kwangya. Stay here, in Nyne. This district could use someone like you. You have an eye for fashion, and I think the palace wardrobe would be in good hands with you.”

Yuna looks at her shyly. “Do you really think so?”

“Have I ever lied to you?” Chaeryeong retorts. “I know you can take good care of the royals here in Nyne. So, it’s only logical that you should stay here.”

“I can’t be head seamstress here though,” Yuna points out. When Chaeryeong shoots her a quizzical look, Yuna sets down her cucumber sandwich and adds, “There’s never been two head seamstresses at once before.”

Ah. Chaeryeong clears her throat and averts her gaze. “Is that so?”

Yuna’s fingers close around her forearm. “Unnie, is there anything you want to tell me?”

“No,” Chaeryeong says. She starts to stand up, but Yuna’s surprisingly strong and holds her back. Chaeryeong releases a sigh, feigning exasperation when really all she can feel is panic. “I ask again. Have I ever lied to you?”

“You haven’t,” says Yuna, doubtfully.

Chaeryeong pulls away. “Then believe me when I’m telling you you’re being an idiot. Come on, let’s go. There’s more work to do. If you’re good, I might even take you after work to meet my cat, hmm?”

“Oh, I’d like that!”

Like that, the conversation ends.

Everything is going well until she has to hand-deliver a garment to Yeji’s doorstep. It’s a cashmere scarf, carefully packaged into a brown parcel that’s sealed with a bit of tape and string. Chaeryeong tries her best to get another maid to deliver it in her stead, but no one seems to understand why she so desperately wants to avoid Yeji, and thus they don’t take her request seriously enough to actually indulge her. That’s how Chaeryeong ends up with the parcel tucked under her arm as she  trudges up the palace staircase on her way to the crown princess’s personal bedroom.

She could fly the way there. It would be faster. But instead, Chaeryeong walks up the stairs, her heels clicking one by one against the cool marble floor. She counts each step and tries her best to forget all the times in the past when she climbed this staircase.

So many nights after work, all bright-eyed and eager and happy, she would rush up these stairs. No matter how many hundreds of time she visited her, she would be endlessly excited each time. The simple pleasure of seeing her girlfriend and getting to cuddle together in bed after a long day of work was undescribable. Sometimes, Chaeryeong would steal the saffron pear muffins from the palace kitchens, stuff them all in her skirt, and fly them up here to share with Yeji by the fireplace. Sometimes she would bring her needlework and work on it while Yeji curled up next to her and read a book. And they would tell each other about their days, about Yeji’s royal foibles and Chaeryeong’s seamstress endeavors, and sometimes Chaeryeong would ask her to model for her new clothing designs, and and they would kiss and hold hands, and it was so perfect.

Those days are gone now.

Now, Chaeryeong walks the staircase with leaden feet and wings flat against her back.

She kneels by the little mailbox slit near the bottom of Yeji’s door and lifts up the bronze mail latch. She pushes the edge of the parcel a tiny bit in, just to see sure it won’t get stuck, and is about to keep on slowly feeding it through the opening when she hears wingbeats coming up the staircase behind her. 

In a surge of wild panic she shoves the whole thing through and lurches to get away. Her forehead smashes up against the doorknob and she clutches her hands to her face, hunching over with a groan.

“Chaeryeong?”

Slowly, she turns around. It’s Yeji, hovering in the threshold of the staircase. A basket of flowers on each elbow. A tiny frown on her face. 

“Parcel,” says Chaeryeong in a choked voice, gesturing at the door where the tip of the package can still be seen poking through the mail slot. “They delivered it to my place.” With that, she shoots off to shuffle past her down the staircase.

Yeji moves to block her path, her wide peach-colored wings flaring and taking up the walkway. “Wait.”

“Gotta go,” Chaeryeong says quickly, breaking into a hurry toward the other end of the hall where the other escape route awaits her.

“Wait!”

Chaeryeong wants to stop. She really does. But she knows that if she so much as hesitates for even a moment, she’ll never leave, and then Yeji will be stuck with her for the rest of her life, which isn’t even looking that long anymore to begin with, and she can’t do that, she can’t saddle Yeji with her clinginess and sadness and anger, to say nothing about her illness and inevitable death—she owes the other girl that much. 

So she does not look back. Her eyes blur with unshed tears as she flies down the corridor, come on, come on , she can make it, she’s almost clear—

“No!” That’s Yeji, flying after her. Oh, God, no. Chaeryeong wishes for a second that she would just give up. “Chaeryeong,” the princess gasps, “please, wait—Chaeryeong please—”

On her last syllable she grabs hold of Chaeryeong’s hand and pulls, hard. Chaeryeong stumbles with a yelp and then Yeji is grasping at nothing at all except for Chaeryeong’s empty glove.

Chaeryeong slows to a stop. 

Yeji casts only a cursory look at the glove in her hand. Then, she does a double take, and her face contorts in confusion before going slack. And she looks again at Chaeryeong, her hand that’s just missing after the wrist. And her wings stop fluttering and she sinks to the ground and just . . . stands there, holding the stupid glove in her hand, staring at Chaeryeong’s empty sleeve.

No .

She makes a desperate lunge for her glove. Yeji, as if on auto pilot, holds it out of her reach, still staring at the empty space where Chaeryeong’s hand should be, and says uncertainly, “Chaeryeong?”

A gurgling noise chokes Chaeryeong’s throat and she shakes her head, shields her arm behind her back. Her voice comes out blotty. “I—I don’t want to talk about it.”

Yeji looks distraught between the glove and Chaeryeong’s arm. Chaeryeong backs up, but her heart’s not in it anymore and she’s tired and Yeji’s right there and she already saw it and there’s nothing she can do and she just wants to sit here and fucking cry .

So she does. It’s not that she sits down, more that she kind of just crumples in the middle of the corridor, buries her face in her hand, and begins to cry. Real, chest-wracking sobs, that shake her whole body and make it so she can’t see straight. All she can feel is sadness, and sadness, and sadness. And, at the bottom of it, a dark and grim despair. This is it. This is her life. It’s not going to get any better. It’s never going to get better.

She thinks Yeji sinks down to touch her shoulder but she’s crying too loud, so she just shakes her head some more and cries and cries and cries.

“I don’t want this anymore,” she manages between sobs. “I can’t do it anymore, I can’t.”

Yeji begins gingerly rubbing her shoulder. It aches because it’s so familiar and yet not at all like how it used to be. She used to touch Chaeryeong like she wanted to touch her, like she needed to touch her. Now, her hand is uncertain, as if she’s not sure what she wants to do anymore, as if she’s not sure Chaeryeong is really here beneath her fingers. And it’s not the same. It never will be the same.

She’s not sure when she stops crying, only that eventually, they go into Yeji’s bedroom. It’s silent and dark inside. Yeji turns on a lamp, illuminating the gilded palace room with its crystal-flower statues made of ice that never melts. She gestures for Chaeryeong to wait on the couch. Chaeryeong weakly obeys, scrubbing at her tearstained face.

There’s the clinking of some cups and silverware from the kitchenette table. Chaeryeong stares at a patch on the carpet and listens dully to the familiar noise of Yeji making tea.

Yeji comes back out, carrying two cups with her. They’re ornate white porcelain, nothing at all like the colorful lumpy mismatched mugs that they used to use back then. Chaeryeong takes the miserable-looking cup and looks into the tea’s warm amber depths with its dried daisies floating at the surface. She hasn’t had tea since . . . . since . . . .

Her missing hand suddenly feels cold. A phantom longing rises for the warmth of the way she used to cup the mug between her palms to warm her hands as she drank. She can’t do that anymore. 

Yeji takes a seat on the couch next to her. They sit there in silence. 

Unsurprisingly, it’s Yeji who speaks first.

“How long?”

That’s a vague question. How long has the disappearing been going on, or how long until Chaeryeong fucks off for good? Chaeryeong shrugs, and looks at her tea.

Yeji sounds impatient. “Answer me. How long?”

“Long enough,” Chaeryeong says shortly. 

“What does that mean?”

“It means whatever you want it to mean.”

Yeji turns to fully face her. Chaeryeong doesn’t look at her. “When were you going to tell me?” Yeji says.

No answer. 

Yeji tries again. “Weren’t you planning on telling me?”

Chaeryeong mutters something incoherent, and Yeji understands, of course she does, and the princess promptly explodes out of her seat, wings trembling with fury. “You weren't going to tell me ?”

Chaeryeong glares up at her. “I thought you wanted me to leave you alone,” she snaps. 

“I did! I do!” Yeji shouts back. “Just, just, not—”

“Not what? Huh? Not what?”

“Not when your literal life is in danger!”

Chaeryeong stands up too. “I would rather die than be looked at with pity,” she says sharply, “the way you are looking at me now. I cannot stand it, Yeji!”

“Pity? You think this is pity?” Yeji says, voice rising. “No, Chaeryeong. This is anger . Why wouldn’t you have told me? Have you even told anyone? I bet you haven’t even asked anyone for help, I bet you were just going to—to die on your own, weren’t you? Weren’t you? ”

“You said you didn’t even want to be friends anymore,” Chaeryeong reminds her hotly. “How should I have known you’d want to know anything about my life? It’s not like you still— care .”

Yeji falters. “Well, but—as, as princess, if people in my kingdom are suffering, it is my duty to—”

The worst part is, that’s exactly what Yeji would do. Concern herself in the matters of Chaeryeong, poor, sniveling little Chaeryeong, out of nothing but misplaced obligation. And it makes Chaeryeong feel so small, suddenly, so, so small, and before she knows it she hisses, “I get it, Your Highness, now shut up.”

And Chaeryeong has never once called Yeji by her title in her whole life, so it’s no surprise that this shocks Yeji into shutting up. Chaeryeong slumps back down on the couch and rubs her hand tiredly across her face, wishing she were anywhere but here right now.

Maybe this is all just a very bad dream. It feels like one.

“Who is it?” Yeji finally asks in a quiet voice.

Chaeryeong blinks. She looks at her. “What?”

“Who’s the person?” Yeji asks. “The one who . . . .” She gestures vaguely to her hand. “You know.”

Chaeryeong stares at her for a long time, feeling as if the universe is laughing at her, the skies are falling, the economies are collapsing, this is so wrong and so funny and so ironic and she cannot believe what she is hearing. Yeji clears her throat and diverts her gaze, awkwardly looking at somewhere just beyond Chaeryeong’s head. 

“I. . . ” Chaeryeong shakes her head. “ What? ”

“You don’t want to tell me?” 

Yeji doesn’t know. Yeji doesn’t know .

“Yeah, no, I don’t want to tell you,” Chaeryeong chokes out in a high-pitched voice. “I don’t want to tell you at all.”

Yeji flinches, but to her credit, takes it well. “Okay. I just—I could try to help. We could find the person, and, well, tell them what’s going on, and maybe—”

“You think I haven’t tried that?” Chaeryeong scoffs, trying to sound as convincing as she can. The worst part is that it’s a lie. She hasn’t tried it. She hasn’t tried talking to Yeji about this, unless this ironic disaster conversation right now counts.

“Right,” Yeji says, bravely soldiering on. “Well, doctors. We could go to doctors. They can help. They’ll know what to do. It doesn’t have to be this way. You can get help.”

“What if I don’t want help?”

Yeji seems to go completely still. “What does that mean?”

“I’m tired, unnie,” says Chaeryeong, and she means it. “I don’t want to fight anymore. I just want to enjoy the time I have left. Okay? That’s all I want.”

Yeji looks baffled. Chaeryeong looks at her for a little while, wondering if the despair and sadness coming off of her is enough to communicate to Yeji that she really, really does not want to try more doctors, or more solutions, or anything. She’s tired. She’s so tired.

“I’m sleepy,” she whispers. She is. She can feel it tugging at her mind, the warm darkness of a good rest. It’s been a long day. She wants to go home, cuddle up in her bed, put her head on her pillow, and rest. But instead she’s here, with the one person she simultaneously wants more than anything in the world and also doesn’t want to spend a second more time with.

“Okay,” Yeji says quietly. “I’ll take the guest room.”

If Chaeryeong wasn’t so tired, her head would shoot up in surprise. Instead now she just nods. It makes sense that Yeji would give her her bed. Sweet, strong Yeji, always looking out for her, even after everything Chaeryeong has put her through, after everything she’s still putting her through. This is why Chaeryeong loves her, Chaeryeong thinks brokenly. This is why.

It’s in the way Yeji makes sure to take her teacup from her and wash it in the sink. It’s in the way she hands her an extra blanket from the cupboard for her to sleep with tonight. It’s in the way she closes the door gently behind her as she leaves the room, Yeji’s room, her very own room, after surrendering it to her lowly sniveling ex who doesn’t deserve an ounce of this attention or care.

Chaeryeong buries her face in the pillow Yeji gave her. She knows the walls are thin, and Yeji can hear her—she knows this, and still she cannot stop her eyes from welling with tears at the smell of Yeji’s perfume, the scent that used to be theirs.

Yeji does not come in to comfort her or to tell her to be quiet. So, Chaeryeong hunches into a ball on the bed, and cries herself to sleep.

###

The next morning, the only reason why Chaeryeong has the courage to get out of bed is because she knows Yeji is gone by then. The princess has duties to take care of. Royal summits, government stuff. Meeting with important people. Chaeryeong rolls out of bed and exits the sleeping chamber to go over to the front door, wondering if she can creep out discreetly enough that no one in the hall notices that she’s been in the princess’s quarters, when suddenly she hears someone clear their throat.

She turns around, still half-asleep and rubbing one eye. Then she stops in her tracks. It’s Yeji, standing there by the bedroom door that Chaeryeong had passed through. She looks like she was about to knock: there is a tray of tea and cakes in her hand.

“Yeji?” says Chaeryeong, so bleary from sleep she doesn’t know what she’s looking at. “What are you doing here?”

“I live here,” says Yeji pointedly. “Where are you going?”

“I was just . . . leaving,” says Chaeryeong, gesturing toward the door uncertainly and trying not to eye the tray in Yeji’s arms. It bears steaming lavender tea, plus almond mooncakes, cut into triangles the way Chaeryeong likes it.

“What? You don’t eat breakfast anymore? Come here,” says Yeji, with that stupid royal imperiousness in her voice that Chaeryeong is so dumbly attracted to. Chaeryeong obediently shuffles over.

She picks up one of the cakes between two fingers and holds it for a few seconds hesitantly before Yeji says, “It’s made to be eaten, Chaeryeong.”

Chaeryeong avoids eye contact as she bites into it. She nods awkwardly as she chews.

Yeji waits until she’s done chewing, then offers her another one. Chaeryeong takes that one too. After she gets Chaeryeong to drink some tea, Yeji says, quite abruptly, “Tell me what I can do.”

“What?” mumbles Chaeryeong, still thrown off by all this unexpectedness.

“I want to know what I can do,” says Yeji again, sounding every bit as determined as she always does whenever she puts her mind to anything. “You said you want to enjoy your time. How can I help you do that?”

Oh, dear. They’re having this conversation, right now , with her standing barefoot in Yeji’s royal room with a bedhead and yesterday’s rumpled gown that she slept in all night. Oh, she’s not prepared for this. “You don’t have to,” she begins.

“I know I don’t have to. But I want to, okay? I want to. So tell me how I can help.”

Chaeryeong bites her bottom lip. She really, really does not want to talk about this, and she’s tempted to let her temper flare up like last night—she’s not a charity case, goddammit—but Yeji’s almost desperate tone makes her reassess. 

She stares down at the crumbs still on her fingertips from the almond cakes and thinks about how Yeji probably just feels bad. Now that Yeji knows that Chaeryeong is destined to disappear soon, Chaeryeong doesn’t really need to hide it from her anymore. And she doesn’t want Yeji to live out the rest of her immortal life feeling regretful, it might just kill her. If indulging her right now is what she needs, then Chaeryeong can give it to her.

Chaeryeong coughs. “Uh . . . Well . . . Could I ask you to just act like nothing has happened?” she ventures to ask. 

“No,” is the immediate answer. “Definitely not.”

“It would put me at ease,” Chaeryeong tries again, but Yeji shakes her head, and there’s a hard look in her eye.

“I said no, Chaeryeong. There must be something else.”

Chaeryeong shrugs helplessly and casts about for something else to tell her. “I don’t think there is anything else. Like I said, all I really want is to be happy. That’s all.”

“What does happiness look like for you?” Yeji asks.

The urge to respond with It looks like you floors Chaeryeong so entirely that it takes her a few moments to recover herself and try to think of a suitable answer. “Happiness,” she begins slowly, hesitantly, “it would be something that saturates me. Something in my every day and my every act, so that everything I do is positively drenched in it.” Like rose water, like lily jelly. “Only then, I think, will the world become beautiful to me in a way that for so long it has not been. That would be my dream.”

Yeji takes this with a thoughtful look. “Okay. I see. I’ll write up a list. It’s the holiday season so there’s lots of options, there’s the bath house and the theater house, you always wanted to see a shadow show, didn’t you? We could do that, and explore the riverbanks, and visit the libraries. And, and, there’s always more in the city we haven’t found yet, even I know I haven’t seen it all. Would that be nice? We could do that. What do you think?”

Chaeryeong blinks at the sudden mumbling spiel. “Uh . . . sure,” she says. “That’s . . . All right.”

“I have time tomorrow morning,” says Yeji, already consulting her schedule book that she’d seemingly pulled out of nowhere. “I’ll pick you up. We’ll go somewhere. Okay?”

There’s a knock on the door, and they both flinch a little bit at the sudden noise.

“Your Highness, it’s time for your 11 o’clock!” calls a servant through the door. “Your Highness, are you in there?”

“I have to go,” says Yeji, shooting Chaeryeong almost an apologetic look. “I’ll see you tomorrow, though. Okay?”

“I have work tomorrow,” Chaeryeong says.

“Then I’ll see you afterward,” Yeji says without missing a beat.

“My work doesn’t end till evening.”

“That’s fine.”

“Your Highness!” the insistent voice of the servant.

Yeji grabs her purse and pulls out Chaeryeong’s glove from yesterday. “Here. It’s cold outside, you might want this back. I’ll see you tomorrow. Finish the rest of that tray, okay? I’ll see you. Okay?”

“Bye,” Chaeryeong says uncertainly, but by then, the door has already shut.

It’s like Chaeryeong can’t get a hold of Jisu fast enough. By the time she flags down the merchant fairy she’s near bursting at the seams with all the things she wants to tell her friend.

“My ex wants to be friends again,” she blurts.

Jisu is at the tavern with some of her other friends who look stunned at Chaeryeong’s sudden appearance. She reckons she looks like a little bit of a mess, all windswept and wearing nothing but her night clothes poorly hidden underneath a winter coat. And she’s got her gloves on, of course.

“One second, guys,” Jisu says, and excuses herself from the table. She pulls Chaeryeong aside and asks, “What the hell? Since when do you have an ex?”

Chaeryeong winces. She’d forgotten how religiously she’d kept her relationship with Yeji a secret. Not even her closest friends had known. But she needs to talk about this with someone, and so long as she doesn’t mention Yeji by name, everything should be fine, right? She barrels on.

“My ex—she, she has this idea that I’m not taking good care of myself, and so she wants to hang out again, and take care of me, I don’t know, I think?” Chaeryeong babbles.

To her credit, Jisu recovers from the initial shock in time to process this. “What the hell?” she repeats. “How is that healthy? For either of you?”

“I don’t know. She’s, just, she’s stupid like that. She has this hero complex or something. She won’t give it up.”

Jisu squints. “Who is this person? You literally have never mentioned them before.”

Chaeryeong sits down on one of the tavern stools. “We broke up not that long ago,” she says, which is about the most explanation she’s willing to give. “It was a secret from the beginning.”

“Okay,” says Jisu, dragging the word out in doubt. “And, may I ask, why was it a secret?”

“The person is—” Chaeryeong pauses. “High profile? They didn’t want news getting out.”

Jisu’s nose wrinkles. “That sounds like a good reason to break up.”

“Yeah,” says Chaeryeong, unnerved by how fast her friend made it to the core of the issue. “That’s . . . that’s why we broke up. Or, rather. She dumped me.”

“And now she’s trying to get you back.”

“Not really. I don’t think she’s playing with me or anything. I think she just feels bad.”

“What?” Jisu says. “How can she feel bad for the consequences of her own actions?”

“I don’t know!”

They talk more about it, and Chaeryeong tries her best to fill her in without revealing all of the details: namely, her disease, and also Yeji’s identity. Jisu looks increasingly concerned as Chaeryeong keeps talking, until the point where one of her friends steps in to ask if everything’s okay. Jisu waves them away with a “yeah, Somi, it’s all right,” but the concerned frown does not leave her face until well after Chaeryeong is done explaining.

“Are you going along with this because you miss her too?” Jisu asks. “Because I think you are. And I think it’s a bad idea.”

Chaeryeong slumps. “I know.”

“Next time she comes to you, don’t respond. You don’t owe her anything,” Jisu says emphatically. “Okay? Be smart. Do what’s best for yourself. That’s what I have to tell you.”

But when the royal pegasus comes by her quarters the next day, all of Jisu’s advice flies right out of Chaeryeong’s head. She’s stunned at the sight of the royal carriage, never having expected to see it again in this context after the breakup.

The cream-colored pegasus floats by her curtains, whinnying to announce its arrival, and the spherical prism carriage itself floats in its wake in all its opaque effervescent glory. It’s in its incognito form, without the tassels and banners and gilded flag poles that adorn the carriage when it’s out in public, but Chaeryeong would recognize it anywhere. And she takes one look and kind of wants to hide and pretend she’s not home. It’s all too much. It’s crazy.

But then Yeji calls her name, and Chaeryeong knows she’s a goner.

When she climbs up onto her windowsill and pulls open the door to the carriage, there sits Yeji in fashionable breeches and a blouse. The ensemble shouldn’t match, but somehow Yeji pulls it off.

“Theaters or waterfalls? Your choice,” says the princess, not missing a beat.

She sounds so sure of herself, like she knows Chaeryeong will say yes and come along, and it sparks a little bit of fire in Chaeryeong’s heart. The same fire that had lit her up so long ago, when she’d first met Yeji, and quarrelled with her in this way, not knowing she was a princess, the two of them just two fairies meeting for the first time and just like back then Chaeryeong feels the urge to challenge her. “I want to go to the evergreen meadow,” she says. “Can we?”

To her credit, Yeji doesn’t falter. “Okay. Let’s go.”

So Chaeryeong gets in. And off they go, eastward. They touch down in a field of purple winter heath blossoms, and momentarily Chaeryeong is so excited that she forgets all about why she’s here in the first place. She gets out of the carriage and immediately starts taking notes in her scrapbook about future designs. The tiny bell-shaped flowers are so petite that if she wanted to thread them together to accentuate bodices she’d need her thinnest whalebone needle and spider silk string. She jots down notes, and flutters off to another bush.

It’s been so long since she found inspiration like this out in the field. She’s missed it.

She’s bent down inspecting a bush of small white flowers when she hears Yeji’s wingbeats flutter up to her. Those wingbeats are always so large and distinct, with those giant cream-colored wings befitting of a royal like her.

“What plant is that?”

Chaeryeong straightens up, feeling oddly self conscious. “Snowdrops,” she says curtly. “They’re winter flowers.”

“I see,” says Yeji. It’s gratifying to hear that the princess is also sounding a little unsure, as if she doesn’t quite know where this conversation attempt will take her. “Are they well?”

“Why wouldn’t they be?”

“They just seem, droopy, I suppose.”

“They’re meant to look like that,” Chaeryeong replies. “That’s how they look.”

“I see.”

This pattern continues: Chaeryeong walks around, finding new frosted flowers to look at, and Yeji follows. After what feels like the tenth time Yeji says “I see”, Chaeryeong snaps and says, “What exactly do you see, Yeji?”

“The flowers,” says Yeji, not sounding surprised that Chaeryeong is getting mad at her. “I see that they’re . . . icy.”

“Yes, well, it’s eleventhmonth. Of course they’re icy,” Chaeryeong says, exasperated. 

Why are they here? What are they doing?

“You know this won’t fix anything, right?” Chaeryeong says suddenly. 

Yeji purses her lips. “Don’t the flowers make you happy?”

“They do. But happiness won’t stop the disease. You can try all you want, but in the end you won’t be able to save me.” Chaeryeong looks at her hardly, waiting to see a drop in Yeji’s composure, but all she gets back is a steady gaze. 

After all, this is how fairies grieve.

It’s not unheard of for a fairy to grow ill. It happens, but rarely. When it happens, the fairy usually becomes aware in advance, and they plan out the rest of their days to include all the happy activities they want their loved ones to treasure most and keep in their hearts once they pass. It’s a hard thing, as an immortal, to lose someone. It’s almost unfathomable to most fairies. They never think it’ll happen to them, or to those that they love. It’s always someone else’s sad story and never their own.

But it’s Chaeryeong’s now.

And when she looks into Yeji’s eyes, she can tell she knows this too.

Chaeryeong softens. “You don’t have to do this,” she tells her, quieter than before. “Really, Yeji.”

“Have you told anyone else?” asks Yeji. 

“I told the witch, Ryujin.”

They both know Ryujin doesn’t count. “Anyone else?”

Chaeryeong shakes her head. “I can’t,” she says softly, thinking of Yuna and Jisu and how sad they’d be. “I can’t do it.”

There’s a heavy silence. “Then it’s up to me,” says Yeji. “Someone needs to be around.”

And it’s true. Fairies aren’t supposed to die, but they’re especially not supposed to die alone. If a fairy wants to be reborn in another life, they must follow ritual customs and make sure that their current life ends happily, surrounded by people and things that they love so that their soul may depart this realm and enter the next without regret.

But Chaeryeong already knows she won’t be reborn in another life. She is tied to this realm, because her heart is tied to Yeji.

She will die here, and never live again.

“I don’t want you to do this because of some misplaced obligation,” Chaeryeong starts. Yeji holds up a hand but she keeps going. “No, I’m serious. I know it’s not healthy for either of us to be around each other like this. It will make you uncomfortable.”

“But it won’t,” says Yeji, and she’s so honest it hurts. “It doesn’t make me uncomfortable.”

Chaeryeong searches her face for any sign of hesitation. She finds none.

And she finds herself nodding.

“Okay,” she says. She’ll let her do this. “If this is what you want.”

“It is,” says Yeji fiercely, and Chaeryeong can’t argue with her.

After all, she doesn’t want Yeji to feel regret for anything. If this is what it takes, she will let Yeji do this for her.

And if she reaps the benefit of spending her last days with the person she loves most, then, well, Chaeryeong never claimed to be selfless.

True to her word, the next day, Yeji comes back again.

And the next.

And the next.

One time, they go and visit the canyon. Another, they go to the royal stables. Yet another, Yeji takes her to the sea, and they linger at the shore watching the waves crash against the cliffs while the spray of the ocean nips at their noses.

In the beginning, it’s mainly quiet, the two of them not having much to say that hasn’t been said already. In fact, for the visits following the first, the most words they trade is when Yeji drops her off back at her window at the end of the night and asks the same question each time: “did you have fun?” Chaeryeong always tells the truth, which is, namely, yes, and otherwise they don’t talk.

It’s so odd. Chaeryeong doesn’t have it in her to put an end to it, though. 

These stolen moments . . . she’ll take whatever she can get.

But there’s a day that it changes. 

On the way to the theater it’s silent. They enter through the VIP door, and Chaeryeong suddenly wishes she were wearing something nicer, because everyone in the audience is decked out in opera gloves and floor-length suits, whereas she’s still in her sewing smock. It was a long day at work today, and her hands are aching, and she’s starting to become translucent at the skin around her ribcage. It’s one of those days when she can’t get her fate out of her head, and on these days it’s almost like she disappears faster.

Exhausted, she stands just beyond the VIP entrance threshold. Yeji is already flying ahead of her, making her way through open air and over to the box seating where there are two open chairs, best in the house, right there and waiting. Because Yeji always gets her the nicest things.  

Her heart sings and hurts at once. She feels another wave of dejectedness come over her. She’s still so fucking in love with her, it hurts. What’s the point? It doesn’t matter in the end anyway. So what’s the point?

Yeji turns back when she notices Chaeryeong isn’t following her. Her brow furrows and she glides back down to where Chaeryeong is still awkwardly standing there alone.

“What’s wrong?”

Chaeryeong swallows her feelings and it’s as easy as swallowing sand. She watches Yeji assess her the way she does so often lately, checking in to see Chaeryeong’s condition.

“We can leave if you want,” Yeji offers.

But Chaeryeong doesn’t want to leave. It would feel like giving up. And besides, she likes this play. It’s one about ballerinas and nutcrackers. She’s always wanted to see it live.

“I just don’t think I can make it up to our seats,” she admits. “My wings . . . .” Come to think of it, she’s been doing a lot more walking than flying these days, just because it’s easier. The only time she’s ever really airborne is when she’s in the carriage with Yeji. Otherwise she walks everywhere. She knows Yuna has noticed, but she hasn’t said anything.

She’s too wrapped up in her own thoughts that she doesn’t even notice Yeji nearing her until she feels Yeji’s cool fingers come to rest on her shoulder.

“I’ve got you,” she says. “Hold on, okay?”

Before Chaeryeong can protest, Yeji is slipping an arm around her waist, holding her tight against her body, and then with those strong and powerful peach-colored wings she lifts them both into the air. Chaeryeong gasps and grips onto Yeji’s shoulders, unused to the feeling of relying on someone else’s wings instead of her own, and Yeji just holds her tighter and flies them up toward their seats.

This theater is big, so the ceiling is high. The trip up feels long, and still, cradled in Yeji’s arms for the first time in what feels like forever, Chaeryeong wishes it wouldn’t end. 

If she ever thought she could stop loving Yeji, she knows now that she has no doubt: it is not possible.

She will love her till she dies. 

Even after they are seated, Yeji holds her hand throughout the theater performance. And Chaeryeong doesn’t pull away.

“I see you.”

Those were the first words she ever said to her. Chaeryeong was crouched by a lilac bush in the palace gardens, one palm full of plucked purple petals as she delicately searched for the perfect picks for her collection. When she heard the voice, she looked up and saw a fairy standing near with their hands on their hips and their wings held high.

“I see you too,” she said, a little mystified by the accusatory tone in the stranger’s voice and not making any move to move out of her crouch on the ground. Then, gesturing with her hand full of flower petals, “Do you want some?”

The fairy’s brow wrinkled. “What are you doing?”

“Harvesting.” Chaeryeong grinned, despite herself. The knees of her gown were soily with earth, and there were probably leaves in her hair. She must have looked like a wild sprite. 

The fairy just looked suspicious. “This is a royal garden,” they said. “And I caught you pilfering. Do you have a license?”

“No. But Ryujin does, and she sent me here to get these for her potions,” Chaeryeong said.

“Oh, is that so?”

“Yeah, it is so,” Chaeryeong mimicked, feeling the inexplicable urge to challenge this person with the haughty look on their face. She playfully flicked a bit of soil at the fairy and watched with glee as it landed on their slipper. “Hey, you sure you don’t want any of these? They’re tasty. Melt in your mouth.” To demonstrate she placed one of the petals on her tongue and smiled at the sugary flavor.

The fairy, almost reluctantly, crouched down and accepted a petal. As soon as it touched their lips their eyes went wide and they looked quickly at Chaeryeong.

“It tastes like candy,” they whispered in awe.

“Have you never tried eating raw petals before?” Chaeryeong asked, a little amused. “Here, have some more.”

The fairy (her name was Yeji, she introduced herself) quickly forgot about her apparent mission to report Chaeryeong to authorities. That day, they went around and sampled all the flowers in the garden, from peonies to honeysuckle to lilies. It was only at the end of the day that Chaeryeong found out why her new friend had never eaten any of these common kid’s treats before: she was the princess. 

She’d only ever eaten professional grade plum tarts and cakes, she explained. The food of the commoners wasn’t on the palace menu.

Chaeryeong told her it was a shame. Yeji had smiled bashfully.

They met the next day to go eating more flowers, and then they met again the day after. They kept meeting, day after day, and they became fast friends. 

“Can I kiss you?”

It was a while before Chaeryeong asked the question. They were sitting where they met, in the lilac gardens, by now Yeji’s wings had blossomed into huge peach-colored panels rimmed with cream, whereas Chaeryeong’s wings had mellowed into what would be their permanent lavender-hazy texture.

“I’m the princess,” Yeji said.

“Okay, princess,” said Chaeryeong. “Can I kiss you?”

And Yeji stared at her for a second, then broke out into the widest smile Chaeryeong had ever seen from her. And she’d promptly leaned forward and planted her lips on Chaeryeong’s, right there in the gardens, the two of them young and together and surrounded by fragrance.

Sometimes—not often—Chaeryeong thinks about those times. Usually when she’s trying to fall asleep, all tangled up in her dark blue blankets in bed. She thinks about their first kiss, their first date. The way, from the beginning, Yeji had wanted to keep their relationship a secret. The way Chaeryeong had gone with it easily. The way she would have let it go on forever, without hesitation. She would not have needed the world to know she was dating Princess Hwang Yeji. She would not have needed it at all.

In bed now, alone, Chaeryeong lifts one of her arms into the fall of a moonbeam. She gazes idly at the way the light flows fluidly through her skin, the way she can only make out the faint glitter of her bone past the ravage that the disease has done to her.

The sight is familiar by now. She pulls the blankets up over her and rolls over to the other side of the bed. The bed feels so big, just her by herself.

She closes her eyes and tries to sleep against the feeling of crushing sadness that settles over her like an old lover.

Yeji takes her to the riverbank. They walk there through the tall grass, side by side, Chaeryeong quietly plucking pink irises off their stems and nibbling on them as they go. Yeji seems deep in thought today, not even asking to share a bite.

“If you tell me who it is that you’re pining for like this,” Yeji says, “I can talk to them for you.”

This the first time Yeji has brought this up since she found out about the curse. Chaeryeong is caught off guard, and also hopelessly amused. A smile plays at her lips. “What would you tell them?” she asks out of curiosity. “To love me back?” 

Yeji sounds absolutely serious. “I can be very convincing.”

Chaeryeong trails her hand against the soft tips of the grass by her side as she walks. “How would you convince someone to do something no one’s managed to do before?” she murmurs, slightly to herself. 

Yeji slows down. Only after a few paces does Chaeryeong realize she’s not keeping up.

Yeji’s hands are fists by her sides. “Why do you talk like that?” says Yeji, and it almost sounds like she’s choking. 

Chaeryeong turns to face her. “Talk like what?”

“Like you can’t be loved.”

“You’re the one who broke up with me, Yeji,” Chaeryeong says simply. “You tell me.”

“Bullshit,” rises Yeji, with unexpected fire in her voice. “I am absolutely certain I never once told you that you were unlovable.”

Chaeryeong puts her hands up. “I never said you said that.”

“Then what are you saying, huh?”

“I don’t know,” retorts Chaeryeong. “Never mind any of it. It’s not important now.”

They walk a little longer, before Yeji speaks up to say, “If it were me, I would love you back so you wouldn’t have to disappear.”

But unfortunately, Chaeryeong knows better than anyone that is nothing but a lie.

“He’s so cute,” coos Yuna as she plays with Sir Fur on the carpet in Chaeryeong’s rooms. “Aren’t you the cutest little bug? A fluffy little blueberry? Yeah, you want the toy? Come and get it! Go!”

Chaeryeong snorts as she watches an entirely too excited Yuna practically vibrating as she toys with the fat cat in front of her. “Blueberry?” she repeats. “He’s not even blue.”

“Yes he is!”

“He’s gray, Yuna.”

Yuna scoops up the cat and holds him like a plushie. She turns to Chaeryeong triumphantly. “Gray cats are called blue,” she says. “Didn’t you know? Oh, you’re just a horrible cat owner, Chaeryeong. Sir Fur likes me so much, doesn’t he? Yuna-noona is here, she will take care of you forever, okay, baby? Yes, oh, so cute, you are so cute today. Do you wanna stay with noona forever? Hmm? Hmm?” She rubs Sir Fur’s belly and he purrs and wriggles to stretch in her arms. “I’m sorry Chaeryeong, but I think your cat likes me better than you.”

Chaeryeong grins despite herself. “You wish.”

The rest of the day, Yuna happily plays and pets Sir Fur, while Chaeryeong watches from the side and thinks, Yes, this will do .

She visits Ryujin just one more time before Yule, and is not surprised to find the witch busy concocting holiday potions and lotions for her holiday sale. The fairies in town go crazy for Ryujin’s sweet-smelling tinctures marketed to bring you happiness and joy, and they’re the biggest profits of Ryujin’s year. All the same, when Ryujin sees Chaeryeong at the door, she makes room at her couch and lets her sit down and even gives her a cookie. 

“Have you considered just telling Yeji you still love her?”

Chaeryeong should be more surprised that Ryujin knows it’s Yeji, but at the same time, Ryujin always somehow knows things she shouldn’t. So she just shrugs.

“The curse only breaks if she loves me back,” she says. “Do I have enough time left to make her love me back?”

Ryujin examines her, the way Chaeryeong’s teeth are starting to become translucent and she’s almost entirely invisible if she’s not wearing clothes. She’s taken to wearing veils around her neck and mouth to give off the illusion that she’s still all there.

“You probably don’t,” Ryujin says.

Through the window, Chaeryeong can see the season’s first snow falling gently down onto the pine trees. As she watches, she momentarily forgets herself, so entranced by the snowflakes as they drift to the ground. She can almost forget that it’s the last time she’ll ever see the first snows. 

Ryujin kisses her cheek. She doesn’t send her on her way; she goes back to work, and lets Chaeryeong sit there as long as she wants on the couch, gazing out the window until it's dark and she needs to go home.

“I can’t come tomorrow,” says Yeji.

Today’s activities together were short. Chaeryeong was too tired to do much more than walk a few paces, so all they did was find a spot in the palace gardens and rest there for a while before Yeji took her back up to her quarters.

Now, hugging a blanket around her shoulders, Chaeryeong smiles wanly at where Yeji hovers aloft in front of the windowsill.

“Okay,” she says. 

“There’s a banquet,” says Yeji. “It’s a summit with the neighboring kingdoms, four of them. It’ll last till Saturday dawn.”

Chaeryeong nods. It’s not like Yeji has never had to step away from their daily excursions to sometimes tend to royal activities. It happened every once in a while, over the past month and a half that they’d been spending time together, and she could tell Yeji was apologetic about it because she always warned her ahead of time so that she wouldn’t feel stood up. She had the suspicion Yeji had been pulling strings behind the scenes in order to postpone her duties and spend more time with Chaeryeong. Otherwise, there’s no way she’d be so free.

But this time, Yeji peers at her worriedly, and Chaeryeong senses what she must see—or rather, not see. She’s very weak and her skin is thinner than rice paper now. She even excused herself from work under grounds of being sick, and she’s not even well enough to take care of Sir Fur so he’s staying at Yuna’s place. When Chaeryeong had let him go, she’d given him one last long hug, and kissed his forehead between his ears the way he liked.

She hoped that even though their time together was up, he wouldn’t forget her.

“It’s okay, Yeji,” she says to the princess. “Don’t worry about me.”

“Will you be all right?” asks Yeji.

Then Chaeryeong does something she hasn’t done before. She opens her arms. Yeji looks stunned for a moment, then comes forth, through the window that she hasn’t yet dared to breach, and wraps herself up in Chaeryeong’s embrace, the way she used to back when she loved her. For a moment it feels like they’re in the past, hugging in Chaeryeong’s room at the end of a day. 

“It’s okay,” Chaeryeong repeats, almost a whisper into Yeji’s hair. She takes a deep breath of her scent, like pears and honey. “Go, okay?”

Yeji draws back, over to the waiting carriage. “I’ll see you the day after tomorrow. We can go to the lakes. And make snow angels. And snowmen.”

Chaeryeong forces herself to smile. “Sounds good.”

“I’ll see you then, okay?”

“Yeah.” She waves. “Get back safe, all right?”

Yeji’s smile is so pretty. She ducks back into the carriage.

Chaeryeong watches her go, until the pegasus is nothing more than a spot in the distance. She stands there long after she should have gone to bed, just watching the gray sky and thinking about Yeji’s smile, Yeji’s embrace. 

The next day is the Yuletide festival, and it’s only by sundown that Chaeryeong gathers enough energy to get out of bed. 

Slowly, she dresses her tired body and goes out to the main square, footstep after footstep, because her wings will probably snap if she tries to fly with them. The air is crisp and cold and lovely. It smells of roasted apples. She stops by a vendor and holds out two coins wordlessly—the vendor takes the money and hands her one of the treats without really looking at her face, which she’s glad for, because she thinks if anyone looked at her right now they would immediately know something was wrong. 

This is okay, she thinks to herself as she takes a ginger bite of the crispy apple on her way across the cobblestones. This is meant to happen.

She has nothing to be sorry about.

She reaches the main square and weaves her way through the happy, oblivious crowd who are all sitting and waiting for the orchestra to play. There are lots of couples and families enjoying their holiday treats up in the airborne seating, where deceptively delicate-looking lily pads hover midair for fairies unlike Chaeryeong who can make their way up that high.

She tries not to look, but almost against her will she notices a pair of fairies giggling to each other and holding hands up there at one of the booths. A pang goes through her whole body. She remembers that day Yeji took her by the waist and flew them both up to sit in the upper booths at the theater house. She wants to do that again. If she had more time . . . .

No. If Chaeryeong had been healthy, none of this would have happened. It’s only because she’s dying that she was able to experience it in the first place.

What a paradox. Chaeryeong wants to laugh.

She gently tucks her skirts underneath her as she sits herself down at an empty, wrought-iron table for two. She bites into her apple again, but it’s too crunchy now and she has no strength to chew, so she all she can do is suck on the bitten piece like it’s a bit of candy. 

She loses track of time. She listens to the bustle of people around her, and she waits for the orchestra to begin.

When the music starts, it’s like a spell has been cast. The delicate stringed instruments, forged from polished oakwood and honeycomb, play songs like Chaeryeong has never heard before. The fairies on stage look vibrantly happy, dressed in the realm’s current trends of flowing gowns and tunics with all sorts of intricately embroidered periwinkle-blue designs. Chaeryeong remembers being a young fairy and attending these festivals just to look at the garments and imagine designing some of her own.

The violinists play songs of the winter solstice, and the evening lanterns flicker overhead.

It happens sometime during the performance. A soft sigh goes through Chaeryeong’s whole body and she sets her apple down on the table, pulls her fleece coat around herself a little tighter, and lets the feeling of the end wash over her like a tide tumbling over a stone worth smooth from time. 

It has only been two months since she began disappearing, but it feels like it was a lifetime ago.

We can go to the lakes. And make snow angels.

Sorry Yeji, she thinks. There will not be any snow angels.

The waning moon is bright and white overhead, the fireflies are gleaming, and the orchestra is still playing music. Chaeryeong cannot hear it anymore. She hums inside her nonexistent head. Everything is becoming soft and white.

She doesn’t regret loving Yeji. She regrets not telling her about it. But it’s too late. If this is what is happening, it must be what is meant to happen.

Chaeryeong fades.

Yeji finds her just in time.

“Chaeryeong! Lee Chaeryeong! ”

It's hard to open her eyes. Has the music show stopped yet? She makes out the blurry shape of someone rapidly approaching her, knocking over a table as they go, their enormous wings beating so hard that it stirs the frosty air into flurries of wayward snowflakes. 

Peaches and cream . . . .

Chaeryeong knows those wings.

“Oh my god. Oh my god,” Yeji says, hurtling closer, hands out and shaking, except they can’t touch her because Chaeryeong doesn’t have a proper body anymore. “Can you hear me? Chaeryeong— Ch-chaeryeong —”

Chaeryeong tilts her head up ever so slightly in confusion. 

Why is she here?

How did she find her?

There’s a crowd beginning to form around them, all sorts of fairies interested in the drama of the crown princess, still decked out in her ball gown with its delicate silverleaf lacing and its high muslin collar with its absolutely ridiculously enormous skirts. Chaeryeong recognizes the dress as one she made for Yeji a while back—has it been a year ago already? Time passes so quickly.

Yeji sinks down in front of Chaeryeong’s chair. She reaches up with one shaking hand and gently, carefully, cups Chaeryeong’s fading cheek in her cold palm. Her eyes are full of tears—and she looks so pretty, even when crying. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she sobs. “I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault.”

“Unnie,” Chaeryeong whispers, so softly she might not have even said it aloud at all. Yeji sobs harder, while Chaeryeong leans into her touch and closes her eyes in a moment of quiet bliss. She wishes Yeji didn’t have to see her like this, but at the same time, she’s glad she’s here. 

“Unnie’s here, I’m here, don’t go ,” Yeji begs, her tears like jewels on her face. “Fuck, what is it that Ryujin said? That I have to—have to say—”

It’s hard for Chaeryeong to hear anything anymore, and Yeji’s babbles are fading to nothingness same as the scene around her. Everything is softening, whitening, and she feels like she’s slipping away.

Then—

Three words, whispered by her ear. Three words, and they bring her back.

“ I see you ,” Yeji whispers, and kisses her.

Chaeryeong registers the words: they were her first words to her. She thinks about that summer afternoon in the gardens with the lilac bushes, the fragrance and the sun and the taste of petals on her tongue, and her heart sudden warms with the strength of a crackling bonfire in a barren tundra. With an impossible sudden surge of energy, she kisses Yeji back, those lips that she loves, the fairy she would die for.

The flavor of Yeji’s tears on her tongue, so sweet and salty. The warmth of her hand still cradling her face, the weight of her wings, the chill of the winter air, the taste of apples.

Chaeryeong feels it all.

She pulls away with a gasp, and Yeji pulls back too. “Yeji,” she gasps, hands coming up to grasp the other fairy’s elbows for stability. “Oh, Yeji, I think—how did you—?” Not wanting to get ahead of herself, she yanks off one of her gloves, raring to see what will be underneath—

Her hand is back .

Chaeryeong bursts into tears, burying her face against Yeji’s shoulder. And Yeji is crying hard again too now, holding her tight, so tight.

“You idiot, you idiot,” Yeji hiccups through her tears. “I almost lost you, I almost lost you .”

“But y-you don’t love me, how did you bring me back, I thought the curse could only be broken if you loved me b-back—”

“I do love you back!” Yeji all but shouts, grabbing Chaeryeong’s shoulders and shaking her hard. “I love you more than anything in the entire fucking world !”

“Then why did you break up with me?” Chaeryeong cries, smearing tears off her own face.

“Because I wanted to set you free from me,” Yeji says. “Because you would never be happy, married to a queen who could never put you first.” Then, before Chaeryeong can even process this, can even think about how Yeji used the m-word in regards to them, Yeji barrels forth: “Why didn’t you say anything to me? Why didn’t you tell me it was me? Why did I have to figure it out from the witch who can’t mind her own business—”

“You dumbass,” Chaeryeong whimpers, “I thought I was setting you free.”

“By dying ?”

“Yes, by dying!” 

“You are an idiot!”

“Without me, you could focus on being a royal, you could live your life out to the fullest—”

“My life would never be complete without you,” Yeji says with such conviction that even Chaeryeong is stunned to hear it. “Fucking Lee Chaeryeong, so help me god, if you ever try this shit ever again , I swear I will fucking kill you —”

Chaeryeong kisses her fiercely to shut her up.

Honestly, she almost forgot about the town square that was eagerly watching this exchange, the way they all ooh and ahh at the kiss, the way they watched wide-eyed as their studious crystalline crown princess spoke some of the foulest words known to fairykind. But now, as she reaches her hands up to tangle in Yeji’s hair, and feels the princess kiss her harder, she can’t help but feel a spark of joy—yes, Yeji is hers , and this is most dramatic profession of love she could have ever asked for, and the best part is that she’s kissing Yeji, and Yeji is kissing her back.

Yeji loves her back.

She loves her back.

“Don’t push me away anymore. Please, not anymore.”

And she smiles through her tears, and kisses her again.

“I won’t. On my life, I won’t.”

There will be business to take care of, of course. The townspeople will want to know what the hubbub is all about, and Chaeryeong will have to pick up Sir Fur again from Yuna’s place. And Chaeryeong will move back into Yeji’s room, and Yeji will properly propose to her, and Chaeryeong will say yes, and they will plan their wedding, and then they will rule side by side.

But all of that will happen later. They have all the time in the world.

And right now, Chaeryeong wants to spend this moment kissing Hwang Yeji—so she does.