TW: blood, murder

 

 

 

 

Jin took one look at the shuddering light at the base of the cemetery and started racing toward it. He hurtled down past the broken headstones, leaving Ken and Mr. Bogum far behind. He didn’t care that the sharp, twisting limbs of the live oak trees scratched his arms and face as he ran, or that clumps of thick-rooted weeds tripped up his feet.

 

He had to get down there.

 

The waning sliver of moon offered little light, but there was another source—coming from the bottom of the cemetery. His destination. It looked like a monstrous, cloud-ridden lightning storm. Only it was happening on the ground.

 

The shadows had been warning him, he realized, for days. Now their dark show had turned into something even Ken could see. And the other students who’d run ahead must have noticed it, too. Jin didn’t know what it could possibly mean. Only that if Taehyung was down there with that sinister flickering … it was all his fault.

 

His lungs burned, but he was driven forward by the image of him standing under the peach trees. He wouldn’t stop until he found him—because he’d been coming to find him anyway, to shove the book under his nose and cry out that he believed him, that part of him had believed him all along, but he’d been too scared to accept their unfathomable history. He would tell him that he wasn’t going to let fear drive him away, not this time, not anymore. Because he knew something, understood something that had taken him far too long to piece together. Something wild and strange that made their past experiences together both more and less believable. He knew who—no, what Taehyung was. Part of him had come to this realization on his own—that he might have lived before and loved him before. Only, he hadn’t understood what it meant, what it all added up to—the pull he felt toward him, his dreams—until now.

 

But none of that mattered if he couldn’t get down there in time to find some way to fend off the shadows. None of it mattered if they got to Taehyung before he could. He tore down the steep tiers of graves, but the basin at the center of the cemetery was still so far away.

 

Behind him, a thumping of footsteps. Then a shrill voice.

 

“Lee Jae-hwan!” It was Mr. Bogum. He was gaining on Jin, calling back over his shoulder, where Jin could see Ken carefully working his way over a fallen tombstone. “You’re slower than Christmas coming!”

 

“No!” Jin yelled. “Ken, Mr. Bogum, don’t come down here!” He wouldn’t be responsible for putting anyone else in the shadows’ path.

 

Me. Bogum froze on a toppled white tombstone and stared up at the sky like he hadn’t heard Jin at all. He raised his thin arms up in the air, as if to shield himself. Jin squinted into the night and in his breath. Something was moving toward them, blowing in with the chill wind.

 

At first he thought it was the shadows, but this was something different and scarier, like a jagged, irregular veil full of dark pockets, letting flecks of sky filter through. This shadow was made of a million tiny black pieces. A rioting, fluttering storm of darkness stretching out in all directions.

 

“Locusts?” Ken cried.

 

Jin shuddered. The thick swarm was still at a distance, but its deep percussion grew louder with every passing second. Like the beating of a thousand birds’ wings. Like a hostile sweeping darkness scouring the earth. It was coming. It was going to lash out at him, maybe at all of them, tonight.

 

“This is not good!” Mr. Bogum ranted at the sky. “There’s supposed to be an order to things!”

 

Ken came to a panting stop next to Jin and the two of them exchanged a bewildered look. Sweat beaded Ken’s upper lip, and his purple glasses kept slipping down in the moist heat.

 

“He’s losing it,” Ken whispered, jerking his thumb at Mr. Bogum.

 

“No.” Jin shook his head. “He knows things. And if Mr. Bogum’s scared, you shouldn’t be here, Ken.”

 

“Me?” Ken asked, bewildered, probably because ever since the first day of school, he had been the one guiding Jin. “I don’t think either of us should be here.”

 

Jin's chest stung with a pain similar to what he’d felt when he had to say goodbye to Sandeul. He looked away from Ken. There was a split between them now, a deep division cutting them apart, because of Jin's past. He hated to own up to it, to call Ken’s attention to it, too, but he knew it would be better, safer, if they parted ways.

 

“I have to stay,” he said, taking a deep breath. “I have to find Taehyung. You should go back to the dorm, Ken. Please.”

 

“But you and me,” Ken said hoarsely. “We were the only ones—”

 

Before Jin could hear the end of the sentence, he took off toward the cemetery’s center. Toward the mausoleum where he’d seen Taehyung brooding on the evening of Parents’ Day. He bounded over the last of the tombstones, then skidded down a slope of dank, rotting mulch until the ground finally evened out. He came to a stop in front of the giant oak in the basin at the cemetery’s center.

 

Hot and frustrated and terrified all at once, he leaned against the tree trunk.

 

Then, through the branches of the tree, he saw him.

 

Taehyung.

 

He let out all the air in his lungs and felt weak in the knees. One look at his distant, dark profile, so beautiful and majestic, told him that everything Taehyung had hinted at—even the one big thing he’d figured out on his own—everything was true.

 

He was standing atop the mausoleum, arms crossed, looking up where the roiling cloud of locusts had just passed overhead. The thin moonlight threw his shadow in a crescent of darkness that dipped off the crypt’s wide, flat roof. Jin ran towards him, weaving through the dangling Spanish moss and the tilted old statues.

 

“Jin!” He spied him as he neared the base of the mausoleum. “What are you doing here?” His voice showed no happiness to see him—more like shock and horror.

 

It’s my fault, he wanted to cry as he approached the base of the mausoleum. And I believe it, I believe our story. Forgive me for ever leaving you, I never will again. There was one more thing he wanted to tell him. But he was far above him, and the shadows’ horrible din was too loud, and the air was too soupy to try to make him hear him from where he stood below him.

 

The tomb was solid marble. But there was a big chip in one of the bas-relief sculptures of a peacock, and Jin used it as a toehold. The usually cool stone was warm to the touch. His sweaty palms slipped a few times as he strained to reach the top. To reach Taehyung, who had to forgive him.

 

He’d only scaled a few feet of the wall when someone tapped his shoulder. He spun around and gasped when he saw that it was Taehyung, and lost his grip. He caught him, his arms circling Jin's waist, before he could slide to the ground. But he’d just been a full story overhead a second earlier.

 

Jin buried his face in his shoulder. And while the truth still scared him, being in his arms made him feel like the sea finding its shore, like a traveler returning after a long, hard, distant trip—finally returning home.

 

“You picked a fine time to come back,” he said. He smiled, but his smile was weighed down with worry. His eyes kept looking beyond Jin, into the sky.

 

“You see it, too?” Jin asked.

 

Taehyung just looked at him, unable to respond. His lip quivered.

 

“Of course you do,” Jin whispered, because everything was coming together. The shadows, his story, their past. A choking cry welled up inside him. “How can you love me?” Jin sobbed. “How can you even stand me?”

 

Taehyung took his face in his hand. “What are you talking about? How can you say that?”

 

Jin's heart burned from racing so fast.

 

“Because …” Jin swallowed. “You’re an angel.”

 

His arms went slack. “What did you say?”

 

“You’re an angel, Taehyung, I know it,” he said, feeling floodgates open within him, wider and wider until it all just tumbled out. “Don’t tell me I’m crazy. I have dreams about you, dreams that are too real to forget, dreams that made me love you before you ever said one nice thing to me.” Taehyung's eyes didn’t change at all. “Dreams where you have wings and you hold me high up in a sky I don’t recognize, and yet I know I’ve been there, just like that, in your arms a thousand times before.” Jin touched his forehead to his. “It explains so much—how graceful you are when you move, and the book your ancestor wrote. Why no one came to visit you on Parents’ Day. The way your body seems to float when you swim. And why, when you kiss me, I feel like I’ve gone to Heaven.” He stopped to catch his breath. “And why you can live forever. The only thing it doesn’t explain is what on earth you’re doing with me. Because I’m just … me.” Jin looked up at the sky again, feeling the black spell of the shadows. “And I’m guilty of so much.”

 

The color was gone from his face. And Jin could draw only one conclusion. “You don’t understand why, either,” he said.

 

“I don’t understand what you’re still doing here.”

 

Jin blinked and nodded miserably, then began to turn away.

 

“No!” Taehyung pulled him back. “Don’t leave. It’s just that you’ve never—we’ve never … gotten this far.” He closed his eyes. “Will you say it again?” he asked, almost shyly. “Will you tell me … what I am?”

 

“You’re an angel,” Jin repeated slowly, surprised to see Taehyung close his eyes and moan in pleasure, almost as if they were kissing. “I’m in love with an angel.” Now he was the one who wanted to close his eyes and moan. Jin tilted his head. “But in my dreams, your wings—”

 

A hot, howling wind swept sideways over them, practically swatting Jin out of Taehyung's arms. He shielded Jin's body with his. The cloud of shadow-locusts had settled in the canopy of a tree beyond the cemetery and had been making sizzling noises in the branches. Now they rose up in one great mass.

 

“Oh God,” Jin whispered. “I have to do something. I have to stop it—”

 

“Jin.” Taehyung his cheek. “Look at me. You have done nothing wrong. And there’s nothing you can do about”—he pointed—“that.” He shook his head. “Why would you ever think you were guilty?”

 

“Because,” Jin said, “my whole life, I’ve been seeing these shadows—”

 

“I should have done something when I realized that, last week at the lake. It’s the first lifetime when you’ve seen them—and it scared me.”

 

“How can you know it’s not my fault?” Jin asked, thinking of Jung hwan and of Yi jung. The shadows always came to him just before something awful happened.

 

Taehyung kissed his hair. “The shadows you see are called Announcers. They look bad, but they can’t hurt you. All they do is scope out a situation and report back to someone else. Gossips. The demonic version of a clique of high school girls.”

 

“But what about those?” Jin pointed at the trees that lined the perimeter of the cemetery. Their branches were waving, weighed down by the thick, oozing blackness.

 

Taehyung looked out with a calm stare. “Those are the shadows the Announcers have summoned. To battle.”

 

Jin's arms and legs went cold with fear. “What … um … what kind of battle is that?”

 

“The big one,” he said simply, raising his chin. “But they’re just showing off right now. We still have time.”

 

Behind them a tiny cough made Jin jump. Taehyung bowed in greeting to Mr. Bogum, who was standing in the shadow of the mausoleum. His hair looked wild and unruly, like his eyes. Then someone else stepped forward from behind Mr. Bogum. Ken. His hands were stuffed into the pockets of his jacket. His face was still red, and his hairline was damp with sweat. He shrugged at Jin as if to say I don’t know what the heck is going on, but I couldn’t just abandon you. Despite himself, Jin smiled.

 

Mr. Bogum stepped forward and raised the book. “Our Seokjin has been doing his research.”

 

Taehyung rubbed his jaw. “You’ve been reading that old thing? Never should have written it.” He sounded almost bashful—but Jin slid one more piece of their puzzle into place.

 

“You wrote that,” Jin said. “And sketched in the margins. And pasted in that photograph of us.”

 

“You found the photograph,” Taehyung said, smiling, holding him closer as if the mention of the picture brought back a rush of memories. “Of course.”

 

“It took me a while to understand, but when I saw how happy we were, something opened up inside me. And I knew.”

 

Jin wrapped a hand around his neck and pulled his face to his, not even caring that Mr. Bogum and Ken were right there. When Taehyung's lips touched his, the whole dark, horrid cemetery disappeared—the worn graves, too, and the pockets of shadows rooting around in the trees; even the moon and the stars above.

 

The first time he’d seen the Helston picture, it had scared him. The idea of all those past versions of himself existing—it was just too much to take in. But now, in Taehyung's arms, he could feel all of them somehow working together, a vast consortium of Jins who’d loved the same Taehyung over and over and over again. So much love—it spilled out of his heart and his soul, pouring off his body and filling the space between them.

 

And he at last heard what Taehyung had said when they were looking at the shadows: that Jin had done nothing wrong. That there was no reason to feel guilty. Could it be true? Was he innocent of Yi jung's death, of Jung hwan’s, as he’d always believed? The moment he asked himself, he knew that Taehyung had told him the truth. And he felt like he was waking from a long bad dream. He no longer felt like the guy with the shorn hair and the baggy black clothes, no longer the eternal screw-up, afraid of the putrid cemetery, and stuck in reform school for good reason.

 

“Taehyung,” he said, gently pushing his shoulders back so he could look at him. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner that you were an angel? Why all that talk about being damned?”

 

Taehyung eyed him nervously.

 

“I’m not mad.” Jin reassured him. “Only wondering.”

 

“I couldn’t tell you,” he said. “It’s all wrapped up together. Until now, I didn’t even know that you could discover it on your own. If I told you too quickly or at the wrong time, you’d be gone again and I would have to wait. I’ve already had to wait so long.”

 

“How long?” Jin asked.

 

“Not so long that I’ve forgotten that you’re worth everything. Every sacrifice. Every pain.” Taehyung closed his eyes for a moment. Then he looked over at Ken and Mr. Bogum. 

 

Ken was seated with his back against a mossy black tombstone. His knees were curled up to his chin and he was chewing avidly on his fingernails. Mr. Bogum had his hands on his hips. He looked like he had something to say.

 

Taehyung stepped back, and Jin felt a rush of cool air waft between them. “I’m still afraid that any minute you could—”

 

“Taehyung—” Mr. Bogum called reprovingly.

 

He waved him off. “Our being together, it’s not as simple as you’re going to want it to be.”

 

“Of course not,” Jin said. “I mean, you’re an angel, but now that I know it—”

 

“Kim Seokjin.” This time it was Jin who was the object of Mr. Bogum’s anger. “What he has to tell you, you do not want to know,” he warned. “And Taehyung, you have no right. It will kill him—”

 

Jin shook his head, confused by Mr. Bogum’s request. “I think I could survive a little truth.”

 

“It is not a little truth,” Mr. Bogum said, stepping forward to position himself between them. “And you will not survive it. As you have not survived it in the thousands of years since the Fall.”

 

“Taehyung, what is he talking about?” Jin reached around Mr. Bogum for his wrist, but the librarian fended his off. “I can handle it,” Jin said, feeling a dry pit of nerves in his stomach. “I don’t want any more secrets. I love him.”

 

It was the first time he had ever said the words aloud to anyone. His only regret was that he’d directed the most important three words he knew at Mr. Bogum instead of at Taehyung. He turned to him. His eyes were shining. “I do,” Jin said. “I love you.”

 

Clap.

 

Clap. Clap.

 

Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap.

 

Slow, loud applause sounded from behind them in the trees. Taehyung broke away and turned toward the woods, his posture stiffening, as Jin felt the old fear flood in, felt himself rooted by terror about what he was seeing in the shadows, frightened of what he saw before he did.

 

“Oh, bravo. Bravo! Really, I am touched to my very soul—and not much touches me there these days, sad to say.”

 

Jungkook stepped into the clearing. His eyes were rimmed with a thick, shimmering gold shadow, and it shone on his face in the moonlight, making him look like a wildcat.

 

“That is so incredibly sweet,” he said. “And he just loves you, too—don’t you, lover boy? Don’t you, Taehyung?”

 

“Jungkook,” Taehyung warned. “Do not do this.”

 

“Do what?” Jungkook asked, raising his left arm in the air. He snapped his fingers once and a small flame, the size of a lit match, ignited in the air over his hand. “You mean that?”

 

The echo of his finger snap seemed to linger, to reflect off the tombs in the cemetery, to grow louder and multiply as it bounced back and forth. At first Jin thought the sound was more applause, as if a demonic auditorium full of darkness were clapping derisively at Jin and Taehyung's love, the way Jungkook had done. But then he remembered the thundering wingbeats he’d heard earlier. Jin held his breath as the sound took the form of those thousand bits of flitting darkness. The swarm of locust-shaped shadows that had vanished into the forest reared up overhead once again.

 

Their drumming was so loud, Jin had to cover his ears. On the ground, Ken was crouched with his head between his knees. But Taehyung and Mr. Bogum stoically watched the sky as the cacophony grew and changed. It began to sound more like very loud sprinklers going off … or like the hiss of a thousand snakes.

 

“Or this?” Jungkook asked, shrugging as the hideous, formless darkness settled around him.

 

The insects each began to grow and unfold, becoming larger than any insect could ever be, dripping like glue and growing into black segmented bodies. Then, as if they were learning how to use their shadow limbs as they formed, they slowly hoisted themselves onto their numerous legs and came forward, like mantises grown to human height.

 

Jungkook welcomed them as they swarmed around him. Soon they had formed a massive army of embodied night behind Jungkook.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said, smacking his forehead with his palm. “Did you tell me not to do that?”

 

“Taehyung,” Jin whispered. “What’s happening?”

 

“Why did you call an end to the truce?” he called to Jungkook.

 

“Oh. Well. You know what they say about desperate times.” Jungkook sneered. “And watching you plaster Jin's body with those perfectly angelic kisses of yours … it made me feel so desperate.”

 

“Shut up, Jungkook!” Jin shouted, hating that he’d ever let him touch him. 

 

“In good time.” Jungkook's eyes rolled over to him. “Oh yes, we’re going to brawl, baby. Over you. Again.” He his chin and narrowed his dark brown eyes. “Bigger this time, I think. A few more casualties. Deal with it.”

 

Taehyung gathered Jin in his arms. “Tell me why, Jungkook. You owe me that much.”

 

“You know why,” Jungkook boomed, pointing at Jin. “He’s still here. Won’t be for long, though.”

 

He put his hands on his hips, and a series of dense black shadows, now shaped like endless fat serpents, slithered up along his body, encircling his arms like bracelets. He petted the largest one’s head dotingly.

 

“And this time, when your love blows into that tragic little puff of ash, it’s going to be for good. See, everything’s different this time.” Jungkook beamed, and Jin thought he felt Taehyung quake for just a second.

 

“Oh, except one thing is the same—and I do have a soft spot for your predictability, Kim Taehyung.” Jungkook took a step forward. His shadow-legions inched up accordingly, making Jin and Taehyung, and Ken and Mr. Bogum, inch back. “You’re afraid,” he said, pointing dramatically at Taehyung. “And I’m not.”

 

“That’s because you have nothing to lose,” Taehyung spat. “I would never trade places with you.”

 

“Hmmm,” Jungkook said, tapping his chin. “We’ll see about that.” He looked around, grinning. “Must I spell it out for you? Yes. I hear you may have something bigger to lose this time. Something that’s going to make annihilating him so much more enjoyable.”

 

“What are you talking about?” Taehyung asked.

 

To Jin’s left, Mr. Bogum opened his mouth and let out a howling string of feral noises. He waved his hands wildly over his head in a jerking dancelike motion, his eyes almost transparent, as if he were in some sort of trance. His lips twitched, and Jin realized with a shock that he was speaking in tongues.

 

Taehyung took Mr. Bogum’s arm and shook him. “No, you are absolutely right: It doesn’t make sense,” he whispered, and Jin realized he could understand Mr. Bogum’s strange language.

 

“You know what he’s saying?” Jin asked.

 

“Allow us to translate,” a familiar voice shouted from the roof of the mausoleum. Jimin. Next to him was Hoseok. Both seemed to be lit from behind and were enshrouded in a strange silver glow. They hopped down from the crypt, landing next to Jin without a sound.

 

“Jungkook's right, Taehyung,” Hoseok said quickly. “Something’s different this time … something about Jin. The cycle could be broken—and not the way we want it to. I mean … it could end.”

 

“Someone tell me what you’re talking about,” Jin said, butting in. “What’s different? Broken how? What’s at stake with this whole battle, anyway?”

 

Taehyung, Jimin, and Hoseok all stared at him for a moment as if trying to place him, as if they knew him from somewhere but he’d changed so completely in an instant that they no longer recognized his face.

 

Finally Jimin spoke up. “At stake?” He rubbed at the scar on his neck. “If they win—it’s Hell on earth. The end of the world as anyone knows it.”

 

The black shapes screeched around Jungkook, wrestling with and chewing on each other, in some sort of sick, devilish warm-up.

 

“And if we win?” Jin struggled to get out the words.

 

Hoseok swallowed, then said gravely, “We don’t know yet.”

 

Suddenly Taehyung stumbled back, away from Jin, and pointed at him. “H-he hasn’t been …,” he stammered, covering his mouth. “The kiss,” he said finally, stepping forward to grip Jin's arm. “The book. That’s why you can—”

 

“Get to part B, Taehyung,” Jimin prompted. “Think fast. Patience is a virtue, and you know how Jungkook feels about those.”

 

Taehyung squeezed Jin's hand. “You have to go. You have to get out of here.”

 

“What? Why?”

 

He looked at Jimin and Hoseok for help, then shrank away from them as a host of silver twinkles began to flow over the roof of the mausoleum. Like an endless stream of fireflies released from an enormous mason jar. They rained down on Jimin and Hoseok, making their eyes shine. It reminded Jin of fireworks—and of one Fourth of July, when the light had been just right and he’d looked into his mother’s irises and seen the fireworks’ reflection, a booming silvery flash of light, as if his mother’s eyes were a mirror.

 

Only, these twinkles didn’t peter into smoke like fireworks. When they hit the cemetery grass, they bloomed into graceful, shimmery iridescent beings. They weren’t exactly human shapes, but they were vaguely recognizable. Gorgeous, glowing rays of light. Creatures so ravishing that Jin knew instantly they were an army of angelic power, equal in size and number to the great black force behind Jungkook. This was what true beauty and goodness looked like—a spectral, luminescent gathering of beings so pure it hurt to look directly at them, like the most glorious eclipse, or maybe Heaven itself. He should have felt comforted, standing on the side that had to prevail in this fight. But he was starting to feel sick.

 

Taehyung pressed the back of his hand to his cheek. “He’s feverish.”

 

Hoseok patted Jin on the arm and beamed. “It’s okay, sugar,” he said, guiding Taehyung's hand away. His drawl was somehow reassuring. “We’ll take it from here. But you have to go.” Hoseok glanced over his shoulder at the horde of blackness behind Jungkook. “Now.”

 

Taehyung pulled Jin to him for one last embrace.

 

“I’ll take him,” Mr. Bogum called loudly. The book was still tucked under his arm. “I know a safe place.”

 

“Go,” Taehyung said. “I’ll find you as soon as I can. Just promise me you’ll run from here, and that you won’t look back.”

 

Jin had so many questions. “I don’t want to leave you.”

 

Jimin stepped between them and gave Jin a final, rough shove toward the gates. “Sorry, Jin,” he said. “Time to leave this fight to us. We’re kind of professionals.”

 

Jin felt Ken’s hand slide into his, and soon they were running. Pounding up toward the gates of the cemetery as quickly as he’d bounded down on his way to find Taehyung. Back up the slippery mulch slide. Back through the jagged live oak branches and the ramshackle stacks of broken headstones. They hurdled the stones and jogged up the slope, making for the distant ironwork arch of the gates. Hot wind blew his hair, and the swampy air still lay thick in his lungs. He couldn’t find the moon to guide them, and the light in the cemetery’s center was gone now. He didn’t understand what was happening. At all. And he didn’t like it at all that everyone else did.

 

A bolt of blackness struck the ground in front of , cracking the earth and opening up a jagged gorge. Jin and Ken skidded to a halt just in time. The gash was as wide as Jin was tall, as deep as … well, he couldn’t see down to the dark bottom. The edges of it sizzled and foamed.

 

Ken gasped. “Jin. I’m scared.”

 

“Follow me, boys,” Mr. Bogum called.

 

He led them to the right, winding among the dark graves while blast after blast rang out behind them. “Just the sounds of battle,” he huffed, like some sort of strange tour guide. “That will go on for some while, I fear.”

 

Jin winced at every crash, but he kept pushing forward until his calves were burning, until behind him, Ken let out a wail. Jin turned and saw his friend stumble, his eyes rolling back in his head.

 

“Ken!” Jin screamed, reaching out to catch him just before he fell. Tenderly, Jin lowered him to the ground and rolled him over. He almost wished he hadn’t. Ken’s shoulder had been sliced through by something black and jagged. It had bit into his skin, leaving a charred line of flesh that smelled like burning meat.

 

“Is it bad?” Ken whispered hoarsely. He blinked rapidly, clearly frustrated at being unable to lift his head up to see for himself.

 

“No,” Jin lied, shaking his head. “Just a cut.” He gulped, trying to swallow the nausea rising in him as he tugged Ken’s frayed black sleeve together. “Am I hurting you?”

 

“I don’t know,” Ken wheezed. “I can’t feel anything.”

 

“Boys, what is the holdup?” Mr. Bogum had doubled back.

 

Jin looked up at Mr. Bogum, willing him not to say how bad Ken’s injury looked.

 

He didn’t. He gave Jin a swift nod, then stretched his arms beneath Ken and lifted him up like a parent carrying a child to bed. “I’ve got you,” he said. “It won’t be long now.”

 

“Hey.” Jin followed Mr. Bogum, who carried Ken’s weight like he was a bag of feathers. “How did you—”

 

“No questions, not until we’re far away from all of this,” Mr. Bogum said.

 

Far away. Jin wanted nothing less than to be far away from Taehyung. And then, after they’d crossed the threshold of the cemetery and were standing on the flat ground of the school commons, he couldn’t help himself. He looked back. And instantly understood why Taehyung had told him not to.

 

A twisting silver-gold pillar of fire burst forth from the dark center of the cemetery. It was as wide as the cemetery itself, a braid of light rising hundreds of feet up into the air and boiling away the clouds. The black shadows picked at the light, occasionally tearing tendrils free and carrying them off, shrieking, into the night. As the coiling strands shifted, now more silver, now more gold, a single chord of sound began to fill the air, full and unending, loud as a mighty waterfall. Low notes thundered in the night. High notes chimed to fill the space around them. It was the grandest, most perfectly balanced celestial harmony ever heard on earth. It was beautiful, and horrifying, and everything stank of sulfur.

 

Everyone for miles around must have believed the world was ending. Jin didn’t know what to think. His heart seized up.

 

Taehyung had told him not to look back because he knew the sight of it would make him want to go to him.

 

“Oh, no you don’t,” Mr. Bogum said, grabbing Jin by the scruff of the neck and dragging him across campus. When they reached the gymnasium, Jin realized that Mr. Bogum had been carrying Ken the whole time, using only one arm.

 

“What are you?” Jin asked as Mr. Bogum pushed him through the double doors.

 

The librarian pulled a long key from the pocket of his beaded red cardigan and slipped it into a part of the brick wall at the front of the foyer that didn’t even look like a door. An entrance to a long stairway opened silently, and Mr. Bogum gestured for Jin to precede him up the stairs.

 

Ken’s eyes were closed. He was either unconscious or in too much pain to keep them open. Either way, he was staying remarkably quiet.

 

“Where are we going?” Jin asked. “We need to get out of here. Where’s your car?” He didn’t want to scare Ken, but they needed to get to a doctor. Fast.

 

“Quiet, if you know what’s good for you.” Mr. Bogum glanced at Ken’s wound and sighed. “We’re going to the only chamber in this place that hasn’t been desecrated with athletic equipment. Where we can be alone.”

 

By then, Ken had begun groaning in Mr. Bogum’s arms. The blood from his wound was a thick, dark stream on the marble floor.

 

Jin eyed the steep staircase. He couldn’t even see its end. “I think for Ken’s sake we should stay down here. We’re going to need to get help pretty soon.”

 

Mr. Bogum sighed and laid Ken down on the stone, quickly popping back up to lock the front door they’d just come through. Jin fell to his knees in front of Ken. His friend looked so small and fragile. In the dim light coming from the delicate wrought iron chandelier overhead, Jin could at last see how badly he’d been injured.

 

Ken was the only friend Jin had at Sword & Cross he could really relate to, the only one he wasn’t intimidated by. After Jin had seen what Jimin and Hoseok and Jungkook were capable of, few things made sense. But one did: Ken was the only kid at Sword & Cross like him.

 

Except Ken was stronger than Jin. Smarter and happier and more easygoing. He was the reason Jin had made it through these first few weeks of reform school at all. Without Ken, who knew where Jin would be?

 

“Oh, Ken.” Jin sighed. “You’re going to be okay. We’re going to get you all fixed up.”

 

Ken murmured something incomprehensible, which made Jin nervous. Jin turned back to Mr. Bogum, who was closing all the windows in the foyer one by one.

 

“He’s fading fast,” Jin said. “We need to call a doctor.”

 

“Yes, yes,” Mr. Bogum said, but something in his tone sounded preoccupied. He seemed consumed with closing up the building, as if the shadows from the cemetery were on their way here right now.

 

“Jin?” Ken whispered. “I’m scared.”

 

“Don’t be.” Jin squeezed his hand. “You’re so brave. This whole time you’ve been such a pillar of strength.”

 

“Give me a break,” Mr. Bogum said from behind him, in a rough voice Jin had never heard him use. “He’s a pillar of salt.”

 

“What?” Jin asked, confused. “What does that mean?”

 

Mr. Bogum ’s beady eyes had narrowed into thin black slits. His face pinched into wrinkles and he bitterly shook his head. Then, very slowly, from the sleeve of his cardigan, he produced a long silver dagger. “The guy is only slowing us down.”

 

Jin’s eyes widened as he watched Mr. Bogum raise the dagger over his head. Dazed, Ken didn’t register what was happening, but Jin certainly did.

 

“No!” he screamed, reaching up to stop Mr. Bogum’s arm, to turn away the dagger. But Mr. Bogum knew what he was doing and deftly blocked Jin’s arm, pushing him aside with his free hand while he dragged the blade across Ken’s throat.

 

Ken grunted and coughed, his breath turning ragged. His eyes rolled backward in their sockets the way they did when he was thinking. Except he wasn’t thinking, he was dying. At last his eyes met Jin’s. Then they slowly dulled and Ken’s breathing quieted.

 

“Messy but necessary,” Mr. Bogum said, wiping the blade clean on Ken’s black sweater.

 

Jin stumbled backward, covering his mouth, unable to scream and unable to look away from his dying friend, unable to look at the man who he’d thought was on their side. Suddenly, he realized why Mr. Bogum had bolted all the doors and windows in the foyer. It wasn’t to keep anyone out. It was to keep him in.