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    Summary

    The boy emerged, tousled hair and bright blue eyes alight with the kind of purity untouched by the entropy of adult logic.

    “Papa!” he chirped, voice ringing with incontrovertible conviction.

    Jin-woo, momentarily arrested by the force of that single word, found his throat clench against speech. He places the pastries he had bought on the counter. From the other side of the shop, behind a ladder and half-shadowed shelves, came a disaffected drawl.

    “Good,” Starling intoned, as he slotted a volume of esoteric botany into its place, “you know the stakes. No baked sacrifices, no entry past the threshold. The rites must be observed.”

    The child, still clinging to Jin-woo’s side like an affectionate barnacle, turned towards the hidden figure. “Don’t be mean to Papa, Mama.”

    Starling froze mid-reach, one foot still on the second rung of the ladder.

    “Why am I the mother?!”

    Language:
    English
    Words:
    9,552
    Chapters:
    3/?
    Comments:
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    Kudos:
    39
    Bookmarks:
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