Chapter Text
Kang Gilyoung and Choi Yoon sit gazing out across the water, on a wooden bench beneath the spreading branches of an ancient black pine.
The East Sea laps at the beach in slow waves. Without hurry, as it had for centuries.
One thing is certain: Yoon Hwapyung is gone. He had sealed Park Il Do into his flesh and dragged him — it — back into the deep where the demon had lurked since the beginning of time.
“He no longer seemed human.” Choi Yoon murmurs, as if in a trance.
“What?”
“From Isaiah. He was pierced for our transgressions,” Yoon continues quietly. “He made his grave with the wicked.”
Gilyoung clamps her lips together, still tasting salt and blood from the struggle of the night before. “He didn’t have to go down alone. We could have saved him.” Her voice cracks. “We could have —”
“We couldn't have saved ourselves,” Yoon interrupts, his tone gentle, the kind Gilyoung knows he uses for the people he counsels, and she detests it.
“No. You were bleeding from everywhere and Hwapyung had told me to keep you alive. Still —” She’s suddenly so, so tired. “I wish I had gone back for him.”
Yoon is silent for a long while. When he speaks again, he carefully picks through his words. “When I found him outside his grandfather's house on the hill, he had already set his mind on dying. No one could've stopped him.” He meets her eyes. “Not even you, Detective Kang.”
“Well.” Gilyoung fiddles with the bandages on her hand. “Idiot,” she mumbles to no one, something she can't quite name yet clawing its way up her throat. “I don't know what to do now with the clothes he asked me to pack for him.”
Yoon reaches out to still her hand, careful to not put pressure on her wounded palm. “Bring them to the parish.”
***
It’s sweltering hot in the parish office as Gilyoung and Choi Yoon lug in the few boxes of clothes and personal items Gilyoung had promised to drop off for a month now but had kept taped shut in the trunk of her car.
Yoon, to his credit, had not pressed her to bring them. Not when he would come by every other day at the station to bring her jajangmyeon or fried chicken to make sure she was eating. Not when he would call in the middle of the night when she’s wrapped in her blanket, sweating but frozen in place, unable to get up. Not when she showed up at the doorway of the rectory with his forgotten umbrella.
She had decided it was time after Detective Goh made a joke about how it sounded like she had a body in her trunk as they went over a speed bump on patrol.
Yoon had picked up after one ring, as if he were waiting. “I’m sorting donations at the St. Anthony Hall tomorrow at ten,” he had said.
Gilyoung sneezes. Choi Yoon (Father Mateo, Gilyoung corrects herself) puts down a box and digs out a white handkerchief from his pocket.
“No, thank you,” Gilyoung sniffs, wiping her nose on the sleeve of her corduroy overshirt and shucking herself out of it. “Some crying parishioner might need a clean one later.”
Yoon chuckles and cracks open a few windows before picking up his box again. “Sorry about the dust, no one’s vacuumed here for a while.”
They set down the boxes on a table with baskets of clothing lined up: t-shirts, jeans, dresses, sweaters, socks, baby clothes. Yoon opens the first box and pulls out a dull green jacket, smooths it over and folds the sleeves in efficient, practiced movements, left, then right, then hem up, collar down, and it’s in the jackets basket.
Gilyoung doesn’t realize she is holding her breath until it comes out in a sob.
Yoon turns to her, holding a crumpled pair of black jeans, which he drops back into the box before folding her into his arms, and she buries her face into his chest and weeps with an intensity that horrifies her, as if she were one possessed, exorcised, heaving up the endless sea.
When she calms down enough to feel Yoon’s hands around her shoulders, the low rumble of his prayer against her ear, she finds her legs have given way beneath her. Yoon is crouched half-kneeling before her, and her arms are wound around his back, her hands clenched tight around the fabric of his black shirt, now damp with sweat.
Gilyoung loosens her grip. Yoon lets her untangle herself and offers her his handkerchief once more. This time she takes it, at once embarrassed and grateful. She blows her nose and re-ties her bun.
“Thank you, Father.”
Yoon pauses in smoothing out the creases on his shirt for half a second, then recovers as if he heard nothing out of the ordinary. He stands and gives her his solemn little half-nod, which Gilyoung has always found both grating and comical, then goes back to folding and sorting clothes.
Gilyoung follows his lead, and by noon all that's left of Hwapyung’s possessions are neatly folded and divided among the baskets.
***
Choi Yoon calls again later that night just as Gilyoung is finally drifting off to sleep.
“Kang —” Yoon begins, then as if course-correcting: “Gilyoung-ssi.” His voice is soft but not sleepy at all. Gilyoung sits up on autopilot, as she had always done when Hwapyung or Yoon called her at odd hours. The fear and urgency is absent, though, and it makes her feel unmoored.
“Yes, Father?”
“I've been meaning to ask, why are you speaking formally with me now?”
“You didn’t call to just ask me that.” Gilyoung rolls her eyes even if she knows he can't see it. “Come out for a drink.”