Karina was not reading the file of Anton Lee.

She was supposed to be. She was holding it and she read the words Statement of Anton Lee regarding again and again and again, but for the life of Karina could not stop thinking about bedsheets. Specifically, her bedsheets.

They smelled like her.

Not like Winter, that was the issue. No, Karina’s bedsheets smelled like Karina: like cheap detergent and printer paper and coffee grounds. And that was fine. That’s what they usually smelled like, what, by all rights, they should smell like. But no, that wasn’t right. They shouldn’t smell like that, not anymore. Karina was used to them smelling like...

Working. She was working.

Statement of Anton Lee regarding…

See, the thing was, Karina’s flat was huge. It shouldn’t be. It was a single-person flat in central Seoul, it cost an arm and a leg. Karina would walk to her kitchen from her bedroom or her bathroom from her couch and she would be struck by the sheer enormity of it. 

Though enormity may have been the wrong word. Karina’s flat was normal-sized; there was just a hole in it. A person-shaped hole that seemed to distort everything around it until Karina was walking an endless expanse to get from here to there in a flat that even she could barely manage to fit all of her things in.

There was a hole inside Karina too, just as enormous. A chasm where someone should be, a someone with a soft smile and soft voice who promised to keep her safe and whom she promised to keep safe in turn, who fought and was fought for, who felt like her other half who—

Statement of Anton Lee regarding...

It wasn’t always like this. Or no, it was, but it was normal then. Karina was fine. She walked around her tiny flat and she slept on bedsheets that smelled like herself and only saw Winter at work and did her job with being into an unproductive hole in her head and she was fine. It was normal. This was normal. So why was she not perfectly content with it now? Was she dying? Was this what dying felt like? Like a great void in yourself where you’re slowly away and you can’t read what the the statement of Anton Lee is regarding?

Karina was being overdramatic. But it wasn’t like anyone else was in The Pigeon to notice or care. Karina lay the paper she’d been slowly crumpling flat on the desk and took a deep breath. And then another, as a treat. She closed her eyes and willed herself to focus.

Statement of Anton Lee regarding—

“‘Scuse me—” interrupted a cartoonishly cockney voice from suddenly in front of her.

“—we’re looking for The Manager.” Karina looked up from the statement to see two tall, strong men with aggressively nondescript faces Karina couldn't make herself focus on. 

Karina righted her glasses from where they had slid down her nose while she’d been—well, not brooding, but close enough. “She’s uh...she’s in China, I believe. Or America. Can I help you?”

“We’ve got a package—”

“—Sign here, please.” The shorter one (was he shorter, or was Karina just projecting? It didn’t really matter, they were still both far, far taller than Karina) placed a clipboard in front of Karina and tapped it twice with a pudgy, calloused finger.

It was then when it clicked. “You’re them!”

The taller one, Kwangsoo, shifted his weight uncomfortably. “I’m afraid we—”

“—don’t know what you mean,” finished Sooman with the undeniable air of someone who very much did, in fact, know what he meant.

“The delivery men,” explained Karina. “The couriers.”

“Yeah—”

“—what of it?”

“Nothing,” Karina said. “It’s just a bit surreal, I suppose. I’ve been researching you for the past few weeks. Usually, we don’t get such...direct follow-up with the involved parties.”

“Does that mean you’ll be wanting a—”

“—statement then?” The pair wore twin expressions of disgust at the prospect.

“If you’re willing.”

Kwangsoo and Sooman paused and seemed to have a silent conversation that involved a lot of nodding and glancing towards Karina followed by either pitying, annoyed, or resigned expressions. Finally, Kwangsoo shook her head and rolled her eyes. “What about?”

“I—uh, anything. It is your case,” stammered Karina, genuinely surprised.

“Alright.”

“We’ll give you your statement.”

“Alright!” Karina’s face lit up. She hadn’t been lying before, such direct follow-up with the involved parties, especially on the more monstrous end, was frustratingly rare. Karina peered around the table for a tape recorder. “Let me just...oh. There one is. Case of Kwangsoo and Sooman regarding…?”

“Our partnership,” said Sooman, crossing his arms.

Kwangsoo just nodded. “Not much else to talk about, really, when it comes to us.”

“Regarding their partnership. Statement taken direct from subjects by Karina Yoo, acting Manager of the Kwangya Institute, Seoul. Statement begins.”

“It’s always been the two of us,” Sooman began, the words tumbling from his lips and falling into the recorder like lead. “Since before everything—”

“—before the Plague even, when we really became.” 

“Always us.”

“Just him and me, and me and him.”

Sooman paused and inclined his head towards Kwangsoo questioningly. “Do you remember that man?”

“The little one with the sunken eyes who had the gall to see us for what we truly were,” nodded Kwangsoo, giving Karina a pointed look.

“He was afraid of us, I think. The first one to be properly afraid.”

“He made us afraid too.” Kwangsoo clenched his jaw with poorly concealed rage and disgust. “But not for our lives, but for each other.”

“The thought of him seeing you, hurting you, taking you away from me and me from you…” Sooman shuddered, and Karina froze. Partners. Like her and Winter, and the dynamic was certainly similar too if the two delivery men were to be believed. Karina really hadn’t gone into this day thinking she’d be relating to some evil immortal delivery men, but she supposed she had been a little preoccupied with other things.

A nasty, pleased look came over Kwangsoo’s face, and a chill went down Karina’s spine. “Well. It wasn’t just his eyes that were sunken in when we were done with him.”

Sooman let out a curt little laugh that sounded like sandpaper and chalk and he nodded along as though they were sharing some great joke and not discussing a murder. Karina was very glad when he stopped laughing to continue. “And things changed.”

Kwangsoo smiled, a small thing, terrifying and soft and terrifying in its softness. “We got our cart and made people scream, and he made me laugh—”

Sooman matched her expression.“—and he made me want to make him laugh.”

“He’s our humor, our levity—”

“—and he’s our strength, my rock.”

They paused, only for a moment. “And then we didn’t have a cart anymore, we had the boat—”

“—then the train and the car—”

“—then the Circus where we were more whole than we’d ever been—”

“—and the damned lorry where we were less than we had ever been,” finished Sooman darkly.

A shadow passed over Kwangsoo’s face, making it, for a moment, almost memorable. “He didn’t laugh with the lorry like he did before—”

“—and he crumbled just a little.”

“But we were together, and that was what mattered.” Karina’s breath hitched at that. Karina remembered Winter waking her up from a nightmare during Park Sori’s siege and just holding her until she could sleep again, remembered her own feeble attempts to do the same in return as the threat of her continued to loom. It was dreadful, the worms and the constant fear of death, but with Winter with her, it was probably one of the happiest times in Karina's life, worms notwithstanding.

“Because even silent and sad—”

“—and even eroding and weakening—”

“—we were still a we. Still together.” Karina nodded at that, just a bit. She understood. It was odd; combing through statements for a mention of them and compiling decades of terror from their partnership and she hadn’t even considered that these monsters (if there was one other thing to be taken from this conversation it was that’s what Kwangsoo and Sooman undeniably were) might be, well, slightly human.

“And then we got the van from another little man who was so very afraid of us, and things were better,” Kwangsoo continued.

“We rebuilt ourselves, our joy and strength and levity. It was easy, with him by my side—”

“—and him by mine. Love is a strong foundation—” No, that was when Karina’s breath hitched. Love. Kwangsoo had said love.

“—and we have plenty. The van, the names, this flavor of terror—” Love. These two, these monsters, these partners, these inseparable people who couldn’t stand to be apart and who fought for each other, whom she saw herself and Winter were in—

“—they’re just what we are now. We’ve always delivered, and we always will, side by side.” —Love.

“So sign here please.”

“R—right.” Karina signed the paper on the clipboard without looking, hand shaking ever so slightly. “Yes, um, statement ends. Thank you.” Love.

“We don’t like giving statements.”

“It’s against who we are.” Love.

One of them, who even cared anymore there was hardly a difference, snorted. “You're lucky we didn't break you for that.”

“Thank you for not breaking me.” Karina smiled at them, a small, strained thing. Love.

“Your loss, really.” They started to make their way towards the exit.

“We're quite good at it."

“Do you know your way out?” Love.

“We’ll find it,” one of them called for the door. 

When they were out of sight Karina crumpled into her chair like a paper ball. 

Love. 

Was she…? No. No, of course not. She was Karina and Karina wasn’t like that, not really, she was just a misanthropic disaster who didn’t get to—

Was breathing always this difficult? Surely not or she would have suffocated a long time ago. Then why was she like this, on the verge of death, wheezing like her lungs were trying to make an escape through ? Because she talked to some supernatural creatures who she projected far too hard on and so now she thought she was in—

No. No, no, no. Karina was fine. She was always fine, even when she wasn’t, she was an adult and she was fine. She was going to breathe like a normal person and she was going to get some work done and she wasn’t going to think about—

This shouldn’t be so hard. Moving on. Working. Breathing. She shouldn’t be on the floor. She shouldn’t be doing any of this, she was a professional, she was Karina, she was fine, and she wasn’t in—

She—

She needed to call Ryujin.

When Karina’s breathing was once again normal and her lungs were once again where they were supposed to be and working like lungs, Karina set to pacing. That, at least, was something she could control. She was good at it. 

She reached Ryujin after the fourth ring.

“Karina, can this wait? I’m sort of in the middle of— ”

“Ryujin, I need your help, I think I’m in love with Winter.” The words just sort of exploded out of her like a flashbang. She stopped her pacing with a lurch, and almost pitched forward, but she didn’t care. The words were out, and Ryujin could make it better, just like she always did.

“Hm. Well, it can wait then. ” There was the sound of shifting fabric against leather from the other side. “You think?”

“There were these evil immortal delivery men and they were—are, I suppose partners, and they came in and they made a report and they’re in love and they’re—”

“Karina,” Ryujin interrupted, and Karina could practically see her holding up a halting hand. “You’re going to have to slow down because I’m fairly certain you just said ‘evil immortal delivery men’ and I sort of out for a minute there processing.”

“That’s not the point, Ryujin!”

“I guess not. So you’re in love with Winter?”

“I...I think so. I mean...” Karina closed her eyes and held them shut for a moment. “Yes, I—I am.”

“Well it’s about ing time!” whooped Ryujin from the other side.

Karina blinked. “What?”

“That you realized?” Ryujin clarified. “Christ, the idiot tension has been killing me since the heist!”

A strangled sound escaped Karina’s throat. “ What? ‘Idiot tension?’”

“Karina, I love you, but you’re one of the stupidest people I know.” Ryujin hesitated a moment, considering. “Well, maybe not, you’re very intelligent, but you’re also very dumb.”

“High intelligence, low wisdom,” chimed in another voice through what sounded like a mouth full of popcorn.

“That’s exactly it, babe.”

Karina shifted her hand from one hand to the other and chewed her lip. “Yeji’s with you?”

“I should hope so, she’s sitting on my lap. We were watching TV.”

“Oh, I—I’m sorry, I’ll—”

“It’s alright, ” Yeji interrupted, clearly having swallowed the popcorn as her voice was more audibly hers, albeit a little tinny. “This is loads more interesting. I heard something about evil immortal delivery men?”

“That’s not important right now,” Karina said, sighing. “Wait, did you know too?”

“It’s hard not to. I mean, you were mooning over each other from the very beginning. Remember the look on her face when she was talking about Winter?” asked Yeji, clearly to Ryujin.

“Oh yeah, that sort of— ” There was a pause where Karina guessed Ryujin was doing a mildly insulting imitation of her to her girlfriend.

“Yeah, that’s it!” laughed Yeji. “Ugh, you two are adorable. Obnoxious, but adorable.”

Karina grumbled to herself a bit, taking a moment to remind herself why she was even calling. “Just...what am I supposed to do, Ryujin? And Yeji too, I guess.”

“Just tell her!” shouted Ryujin, exasperated, like it was the simplest thing in the world. “You’re practically dating already.”

“Didn’t you live together?” added Yeji, a touch confused.

“Because there was a worm monster after us,” Karina explained.

“And you’re always on dates, ” pointed Ryujin.

“That’s for work.”

“You go on dates for work?”  exclaimed an incredulous Yeji.

“They’re not—they’re not dates.”

Yeji snorted. “If you say so.”

“Just tell her how you feel Karina, it’s not hard.”

“It’s just…” Karina ran a hand through her hair. “I can’t ruin this.”

“Who says you will?”

“Who says she doesn’t feel the same way?”

Karina laughed bitterly. “Please. She’s...Winter’s not like me. She’s nice and kind, and she cares about other people so much for no reason and—and she shows it so well. And she’s smart and funny and she’s—she wouldn’t. Not for me.”

There was a pause while Ryujin and Yeji audibly shared a look. “ You could always take a chance,” said Ryujin slowly, like Karina was a flighty wild animal who would bolt at the slightest provocation. “I mean, what’s the worst that could happen? ”

“You don’t understand—”

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