As Karina paced, she glared at the door leading out of their room with fear and anger at the coming forced activities. “Are you sure we have to do this?”

“Yes, unnie,” sighed Winter from the bathroom. She was changing. Something about looking presentable. Karina felt it was unnecessary. One, because Winter looked presentable regardless of what she wore, and two because they were on a cruise. For Karina, she’d at least put on a nice smart-looking attire, an ivory linen trouser with the same color of blazer and a black bodysuit, at Winter’s insistence. “We need to meet our contact and, well, we can’t just spend two weeks trapped in our room. People are going missing, we need to talk to passengers about what they’ve heard, crew about what they know—”

“Alright, alright,” sighed Karina, not wanting to hear the whole explanation again. "I just...an orientation?”

“Unnie. You’ll be fine.”

“There’s just going to be a lot of people,” Karina explained, ramping up her pacing. “And you know we’re going to be the only gay couple here, I mean it’s a cruise, usually we’re smarter as people and we don’t trap ourselves on boats. Oh, Christ, we’re going to be the youngest people here too—” Karina’s panic spiral was cut off by Winter exiting the bathroom and holding Karina’s hands to still her. She smiled down at her, corners of her lips twitching with amusement, and with that small panic out of the way, it was time for another, because as she was no longer pacing and Winter was no longer out of the bathroom, Karina could finally see what Winter was wearing, a black little cocktail dress, revealing too much of her neck and collarbone that was making Karina’s lungs stop working and her heart go into overdrive.

“You’ll be fine unnie. Trust me.” Karina, by way of response to Winter's kind words and kind smile, wheezed. “Ready?” Karina managed to make herself nod. “Right. Into the fold, then.” Not releasing her hand, Winter dragged Karina out of the safety of their room and through to the ballroom.

Why did the ship have a ballroom? Was it specifically to torture Karina? Because really, for how massive the ballroom appeared to be it was filled shoulder to shoulder with people. Wretched, noisy people who smelled like roses, sea salt, and liquor. Karina felt herself press into Winter’s side, and Winter squeezed her hand reassuringly. And then they descended into the crowd.

The next who-knows-how-long was a blur of idle chatter, small talk, and a special kind of personalized hell that felt tailor-made to make Karina physically ill. Through the course of conversations with people who Karina immediately forget, Karina learned that she and Winter were not the only gay couple aboard, which was a relief, nor were they the youngest couple there, though they did skew on the younger side of the ship’s passengers.

For as nightmarish as Karina found the whole ordeal, Winter, for her part, was crushing it. Karina managed to get a few acerbic words out here and there, but the Passenger's Orientation Meet N’ Greet, as the signs entitled the affair, very rapidly became the Winter show. She was incredible. Karina would never understand how she could be so good with people, could put up with their boring stories and rambling anecdotes and inability to just get to the point. But Winter did. She did and she managed to get the other cruise-goers to tell her everything they knew about Park Guwon, the boat, and even the vaguely-alluded-to disappearances that had brought the pair of them here in the first place, all without anyone ever guessing Winter’s true motives. It was all just small talk to them.

Even still, Winter finally pulled Karina over to the far less densely populated bar for a breather that Karina sorely needed. She sagged into the barstool Winter had led her to like she’d been on her feet for a lifetime, and happily accepted the drink the bartender had slid to her.

“It’s a bit of a madhouse out there.” A voice, cheery and low, cut through Karina’s stillness like a knife through butter. Karina forced herself not to glare at the person the voice belonged to a pale man with an easy smile and what looked like intentionally tousled hair.

Winter, however, seemed unperturbed by the man’s intrusion. “Agreed. I’m Winter Kim.” Winter held out a hand, and the stranger shook it. “This is my girlfriend, Karina.” Karina waved awkwardly up at the man, not trusting herself to speak after the pure burst of serotonin that had shot through her veins at Winter calling her her girlfriend. 

“Park Guwon,” said the man. He gestured to a willowy woman that looked about as uncomfortable as Karina if her placement on her own barstool was any indication. “And this is my wife Dohee.” A dopey, lovestruck smile crossed Guwon’s face at the word wife, an expression Dohee shared, albeit far more shyly. 

“Park?” asked Karina, pushing her drink aside. “Like the Captain?”

“That’s my uncle, Park Siwon,” Guwon explained somewhat contemptuously. “He let us ride for free for our Honeymoon.”

“And he was just so so delighted about it,” sighed Dohee as the sarcasm echoed. Karina snorted, and she shot a flicker of a grin at her.

Guwon chuckled nervously. “Uncle is a bit...uh…”

“Against the concept of love, Guwon.” Dohee said.

Guwon shrugged and nodded, apparently unable to dispute that. “Yeah.”

“Why does he run a couple’s cruise then?” asked Winter, leaning into Karina’s side easily and effortlessly, intertwining their fingers like it was the most natural thing in the world. 

“To break up those couples.”

Winter blinked, then let out a laugh. “He sounds lovely.”

Dohee grumbled into her drink. “But a free cruise is a free cruise I suppose.”

“So why are you two here?” Guwon asked.

“We have terrible friends,” said Karina dryly, which got a snicker out of Winter.

“We do,” Winter agreed, “but I’m not going to turn down time off of work or the opportunity to spend more time with this one—” Winter squeezed Karina’s hand and smiled gently at her, making Karina’s insides feel like jelly. “So it’s not all bad.”

Dohee coughed. “So what do you two do?”

Karina and Winter shared another far less tender and far more panicked look. “We work at a research institute,” Karina said carefully. 

Guwon leaned into the bar with a hum. “What do you research?”

They were really on a hot streak of shared looks, it would seem. Karina floundered for the right words. “We, um—”

“The Supernatural,” interrupted Winter with far more boldness than Karina would have said it with. 

“Winter!” Karina stared at Winter, stricken. She certainly wasn’t ashamed of her job, but she did find that it tended to make people stop talking and back away slowly, looking at her like she was going to start rambling about aliens and cryptids.

“What?” Winter shrugged. “There’s no use being coy about it.”

“Really?” Guwon didn’t back away slowly though. If anything, he took a step forward, eyes alight with childlike glee. “Like, X-Files type stuff?”

“It’s not exactly the FBI,” stammered Winter, clearly more than a little taken aback by the reaction. “But pretty much.”

“That’s fascinating!” Guwon was bouncing on the balls of his feet, looking like his birthday had come early. “Have you seen any like, werewolves or anything?”

And it was that excitement that made Karina go it, and tweak her blazer to reveal the thin scar on her neck from Taeyeon’s claws. “That’s where I got this.” 

“Holy ,” whispered Guwon reverently, a hand ghosting over his open mouth, eyes like dinner plates.

Karina balked under his gaze and fixed her blazer, clearing . “So, uh, what do you do?”

“Nothing as cool as that,” said Guwon dismissively, eyes still in awe, clearly wondering what other terrors in the night the two had survived. “We’re just biochemists.”

“Like in medicine?” asked Winter.

“Guwon’s in medicine, I’m in nutrition.” Dohee shifted nervously in her seat. 

“What are you researching?” Karina asked. “Like specifically?”

“You don’t want to know. It’s...it’s boring.” The way she said it implied that Dohee herself didn’t think so, but years of previous conversations had made it clear that other people didn’t share her opinion.

That impression was strengthened by Guwon’s encouraging nudge with his elbow. “Your work is fascinating, Dohee, don’t discount that.”

At Karina’s urging, Dohee delved into a lecture about her research like that was the most interesting thing she’d heard in weeks. Karina let the din around them fade into the background, let Winter and Guwon fade into the background. She even started taking notes at some point, though when she wasn’t sure. Eventually, though, Guwon casually checked the time on his phone and then did a double-take, hurriedly dragging Dohee off with hastily apologies tumbling out of him as he went. Which left Winter and Karina to go mingling again, much to Karina’s chagrin.

About an hour into the return to Karina’s personal hell, a woman approached them. She was tall and lean, but far more terror rested in her eyes than Karina would have expected for someone who looked so thoroughly that they would handle themselves. The woman worked on the crew, as denoted by her uniform, though those fearful eyes of hers kept darting suspiciously to the other crew members like at any minute they’d attack her. Or disappear.

“You’re the ones from the Institute, right?” the woman asked, voice low in an attempt to be inconspicuous. “I’m Lim Yoona. I called about the disappearances?”

Winter furrowed her brow and pulled Karina closer to her protectively. “I—yes? How did you—”

“Your manager gave me descriptions of you,” Yoona explained. “Karina and Winter, right?”

“Yeah.” Karina gave her a suspicious one over. “Yes. You said you had more information? Things you didn’t tell Giselle.”

Yoona nodded and glanced around the room again. “I did. I said there was something supernatural going on, and there is. There’s this...fog.”

“Fog.”

“It sounds dumb, I know.” Yoona let out a harried little laugh. “I mean, we’re on the water, there’s bound to be bouts of fog rolling in every once and a while, and I know that I really do. I’ve been working on boats for over a decade. But this is different. It’s in the ship. And people vanish in it.”

“What do you mean?” Winter asked, and Karina clutched her hand tighter. As wretched as the whole fake dating business was, it did, at least, give Karina an excuse to stay close to Winter, probably far closer than was strictly necessary, but she wasn’t about to let Winter just vanish into a mysterious fog.

“It’ll fill rooms,” Yoona continued. “Every once and a while I’ll be going to clean up a room and when I open the door the room is filled with cold, white fog, and the occupant is never seen again.”

“Well that certainly doesn’t sound natural,” Karina mused, and Yoona nodded emphatically.

“It isn’t. And...and well, the fog is off. Not just in its location, because it really shouldn’t be on the boat, but it feels…” Yoona hesitated and looked searchingly at Karina and Winter’s faces. “You’re going to think I’m insane.”

“We won’t,” said Winter softly. “Go on.”

“It feels deserted and sad. The fog, I mean. When I open the doors and the fog hits me I feel utterly alone, like I’m the only person on the ship. I hear crashing waves like I’m on a beach and I can smell sand and I—I feel like I’ll never warm up again and that no one will ever find me,” Yoona put a hand to to muffle a sob. “And I’m used to feeling sad, I mean working a couple’s cruise single isn’t exactly the greatest emotionally, but nothing like that.”

“Right.” Karina made an attempt at Winter’s dulcet, soothing voice that she used on people who acted like this. “We’ll look into it, Ms. Yoona.”

Yoona made a move to leave, but paused and turned back to them. “Be careful. I’m serious, that fog swallows people up. I’ve—I’ve even seen it in the breakroom a couple of times. I had a friend, this new guy Wooyoung. He was young, scared all the time, wide, watery eyes that he blinked way too much. And then one night I walked into the breakroom and he was gone and the room was filled with fog. There have been others too, I know, but I never learned their names.”

Winter nodded. “Thank you. We will.”

As Yoona disappeared into the crowd, Karina let out a sigh. “Well, that was...certainly something.”

“Don’t tell me you believe her just like that,” said Winter, visibly excited.

Karina scowled at her. “Please. You don’t grow up by the seaside without knowing how deeply cursed the ocean is.”

“Are you telling me you think the ocean is haunted?” Winter asked with barely contained glee.

“I’m not...not saying that,” mumbled Karina, refusing to meet her eyes.

“Really?” Karina didn’t even have to look at Winter to see the self-satisfied look on her face.

“You don’t have to be so surprised every time I believe something, Winter,” snapped Karina, more than a little irritable.

“I know, I know,” Winter laughed, “I’ve just got this mental image of an old-timey fisherman warning a little Karina that ‘the sea is a cruel mistress.’”

Karina scoffed at that. “My hometown is hardly a fishing village.”

“And yet here you are acting like...I don’t know, if you don’t knock on wood when you get on a ship it’ll sink.”

“I’m not a—a pirate or anything, Winter, just...worse things happen at sea. It’s a phrase for a reason.” Winter let out another laugh. “What? Do you not believe her?”

“I do! I just hadn’t realized you were so superstitious.”

“Just because you’ve never been properly on the ocean before—you know what? I’m not doing this.” 

A teasing grin danced on Winter’s face that Karina would have been really annoyed at if it wasn’t so cute. “You definitely knocked on wood when we got on board.”

“Shut up, Winter.”

“That’s not a no...”

“I didn’t knock on wood when we got on board!” Karina groaned rolling her eyes. “This isn’t Treasure Island or wherever else you got that idea from.”

“Sure,” said Winter, unconvinced. She let it drop, but only so they could mingle some more, something Karina would have been more averse to if not for Winter’s steady hand on her shoulder and the occasional trill of her laugh.

Karina should have been ecstatic or at least prepared for this possibility.

It was what she’d wanted, right? What she’d missed so acutely: the ability to sleep once again with Winter next to her, arm thrown over Karina with all the reassurance of a weighted blanket and all the heat of a furnace.

But now that she was here actually in bed, Karina was becoming acutely aware of the curl of the monkey’s paw. 

It shouldn’t have been different, it really shouldn’t have been. They had done this before for months and they had been fine. It had been routine. Going to bed meant curling up next to Winter, feeling the heat radiate off her in waves, breathing in the smell of cinnamon, and to a far lesser degree the spearmint toothpaste Winter always used a little too much of. 

But it was different. Things had changed. Karina had changed, and if that wasn’t bad enough the circumstances had changed. This wasn’t Karina’s bed that they were hiding from monsters in, this was their bed in their room in a couple’s cruise ship. With a shudder, Karina remembered the tired look from the housekeeping staff. This bed had expectations.

As if sensing Karina’s distress, Winter shifted over in the bed to face her. She was blurry from the darkness and blurrier still from Karina’s lack of glasses, but her silhouette was clear as day. “Are you okay unnie?” she whispered, voice dripping with concern.

“I'm fine,” Karina reassured her, rubbing her tired eyes and shifting to face Winter too. “Just...that was a lot of people. And we interacted with basically all of them. It was very—”

“Exhausting,” finished Winter, nodding.

“Yeah. You seemed fine out there though.”

“I’m...very good at acting. Or, lying rather.” Karina could practically see Winter’s blush despite the lack of light and glasses.

“I’ve noticed.”

“I had to fake my way into the institute somehow,” shrugged Winter. “Though if I knew all the monsters people were checking out on books were real and kept trying to kill us, I might not have bothered.”

“I’m glad you did,” said Karina, voice suddenly soft. “Bother, I mean. I’m glad that you’re here. There’s, uh...there’s no one I’d rather fake date for work.”

“Not even Ningning?” Winter asked. “We’ve talked about the method acting but we’ve seen her abs. And she’d probably let—”

“No one, Winter,” said Karina, interrupting her and resting a halting hand on one of Winter's. “I’m glad it’s you.”

Winter let out a shuddering breath at the touch. “I’m glad it’s you too, unnie.”

Karina removed her hand hesitantly. “We should get some sleep. There are more people to interact with tomorrow, and we should be well-rested for that.”

“Right,” Winter breathed. She blinked hard. “Right, and I think there’s an open mic night tomorrow.”

Karina groaned. “Good Lord.”

“There’s an open bar too if that helps, because we’re definitely going to that.”

“Ugh, I take it back,” grumbled Karina, turning away and hoisting the slightly scratchy provided blankets nearly over her head as she did so. “Ningning wouldn’t drag me to an open mic night.”

Winter snorted. “She definitely would.”

“She definitely would,” Karina sighed, burrowing further into her blanket cocoon.

Karina felt the blankets shift behind her, but not