Quit Your Waning (Over the Moon #3)

JIHAE

“Hold the door please!”

I dashed into the pharmacy just as the pharmacist was about to lock the doors, taking painful gasps of chilly air as I braced my palms on my knees, a mist of evening rain trailing in after my soaked tennis shoes. She jumped back, locking the door after me.

“Omona!” she tsked with surprise, patting my back as I worked on slowing down my breath. “Are you alright, miss?”

I bobbed my shoulders rather than nodding as I stared down at the wobbly tiles. I’d definitely pushed my body too far by running down the street. “Yes,” I squeaked unevenly. “I’m so sorry for coming late. I was caught up in work.”

“Work?” she asked in a disapproving tone. Her eyes flicked to the collodion glue covering a two-inch incision between my collarbones at the base of my neck. “You should be recovering, not working.”

What could I do other than bow again in apology? I had to eat, and I lived alone in Seoul. That by itself was a rarity. “I’m sorry for the inconvenience. I should have a prescription… For Jeong Jihae?”

“Let’s have you sit here, Miss Jeong, and I’ll look you up, alright?” she cooed, shuffling me back until I was sitting on a grey vinyl bench beside a display of gloves and hand warmers. Collapsing onto the seat with gratitude, I leaned my shoulders back against the wall and cleared my throat with a careful wince.

Four days after my thyroid lobectomy, I still sounded like a mouse boy in puberty. The doctor had told me my voice would return, but I still felt a pang of worry. Even if I didn’t really use my voice all that much.

I was a freelance packaging designer who worked out of my own apartment. All of my communications were email and KakaoTalk, since most of my clients were international. I hardly talked to anyone at all except my mother in Sokcho, her jindo dog, Shikbang, and the random blind dates she sent me on now that I was in my thirties and had no marriage prospects on the horizon.

But I had this sinking suspicion that maybe my voice would never be the same. The chances of complications were so low it felt silly to worry about, but I couldn’t help myself. If there was a problem… Well, I’d just have to accept that, wouldn’t I? It was worth it to save my fingers from the tremors and stay on top of daily life. Hyperthyroidism had wrecked me. I was an exhausted, moody, shaky mess, and like a bad hangover, I hadn’t been able to shake the feeling since my early thirties. I needed my hands to pay my bills. I needed to stay awake to make my deadlines.

Like it had many times in the last month, my new scary version of “normal” washed over me as I rubbed at the tingle in my fingertips, sighing at the ceiling. You’d think the incision at the base of my neck would be the thing that bothered me most.

“Miss Jeong?” the pharmacist called. I jumped to my feet, breath hitching as the move pulled on my stitches, then gingerly met her at the counter. She smiled, her aging lips painted with a thin line of pink, and tapped on the patient screen. Delicate black bows dangled from her ears… I cataloged it in my mind as a good idea for the seasonal cranberry soju label I was currently designing. “Please confirm your date of birth. Your prescription was through Seoul National University Hospital, correct?”

I tapped the confirmation button. “Yes, that’s correct.”

Two minutes later, she opened the front door for me and I stepped out onto the wet street with a bow and a wave, stuffing my calcium supplement into my jacket pocket to keep the rain from making the box mushy.

It was barely dinnertime and already the streets of Seoul were dark, a sheen of rain reflecting off the stone sidewalks. College couples walked down the center of the black asphalt roads, using their umbrellas as an excuse to huddle close while delivery autobikes weaved through the porous crowds. I lived close to Seoul’s famous University Row, and soon there would be a crush of people eating out, going to bars, watching buskers that were determined enough to brave the rain, pushing their friends into singing rooms… Naksan Park was just around the corner though, so the neighborhood smelled fresh with petrichor and fall foliage rather than street food frying oil and road grit.

The cacophony of a Seoul evening was usually thrilling for a girl from the rural east coast, but it was grating on my ears just then. Too many flashing neon signs, too many outbursts of laughter. I passed through a halo of K-pop outside of a bright pink Etude House trying to entice the fall crowd with dark purple and red lip stains advertised on femme fatale banners around the entrance. It was working like a charm, the narrow paths between displays clogged with uniformed high schoolers.

Halloween had become big for students, and as a horror movie fan, I enjoyed how the holiday peppered bakeries, schools, and coffee shops now. My current design project with its trendy autumnal prompt came to my mind again as I analysed the store’s new line of packaging. I put my hands over my ears to drown out the tinny speakers while I absorbed the dark pomegranates and purple roses. Gothic mystique vibes…

Eventually, I sauntered away, deep in thought. Perhaps I should suggest a complimentary palette with dark reds and pinks. The demographic for the soju was college-aged women, and those sorts of makeup trends would look great in advertisements. But if I went in the same direction, I’d have to illustrate some, and my fingers were still—

I stumbled straight into a display of key charms and cell phone cases, knocking dozens of them to the ground with a yelp.

“Aya! I’m so sorry!” I gasped as the vendor caught the display, saving most of his merchandise. He looked up at me sharply, but noticed something—maybe my exhaustion, maybe my neck—and waved it off.

“It’s okay,” he grumbled, muttering about drunk students under his breath. I knelt down to help him pick up the pieces that had fallen to the stones, wiping them off on my knee. He paused, staring at the tremble in my fingers. “You okay, miss?”

I gave him a tired smile. “I’ll be fine.”

The crease in his brow softened. We lapsed into awkward silence, setting the charms on his chair. I brushed my fingers over the fluff balls and cute trinkets, admiring the glow-in-the-dark jelly ghosts and pumpkins, the neon purple hearts, and pointed witch hats. I brushed off a squishy black cat charm with dangling furballs and bells with a smile.

So cute. Maybe cute would be better than gothic romanticism…

“Keep it,” the vendor said, shooing me away.

I blinked at him in surprise. “I couldn’t–”

“No, no, keep it. I can’t sell it. Go on. Go.” He waved goodbye with a gentle if belabored huff.

Clutching the black cat charm to my chest, I bowed at the waist and promised to pay closer attention. But the vendor obviously didn’t want me to stay, so I retreated to an awning at an intersection further down the street, ducking under the rivulets of water spilling off the gutters.

The charm’s loop was stretchy, so I slipped it around my phone’s pop grip. The middle schooler deep in my soul was ecstatic about the weight in my hand and the tinkle of the little bells. I quickly took a note on my phone: holographic, cute, maybe silver foil, glistening, shining… Can we do a bell on the bottleneck?

Even though I knew I should be resting, I felt inspired, and my deadlines were creeping in. There was no rest for workers in Korea, especially not freelancers. As the saying went, I’ll sleep when I’m—

“Help, please! Help!”

I nearly jumped out of my skin, twisting my head to look up at the building behind me with a sharp twinge of electric pain zapping up and down my throat. With the noises competing with the street, I couldn’t be sure… But that sounded like someone yelling for help in English.

I glanced at other people milling about across the street and into the nearby cafe, but no one looked up.

“Aysh. Time to stop watching horror movies,” I told myself, smacking my cheeks with a cold palm. Enough with working; I should call Mom, have her walk home with me. Even if that meant agreeing to another blind date.

“Please!”

I spun around, heart pounding in my ears, convinced I heard it that time. A female voice, and so distressed it made the hair on my arms stand up. Before me was a typical stone-grey stairwell with polished white marble walls, the glass door left ajar. Business signs on the rise of each step claimed there was a chicken restaurant, a soju bar, and two administrative offices on the upper levels. Echoes of music and conversation battered the stone and glass, making it difficult to hear anything concrete.

Which made the voice I’d heard even more chilling.

“Hello?” I called up in a hoarse, pitiful attempt, careful not to stretch my stitches yet again as I looked up between the railings. I cleared my throat, thankful for the years of English classes I’d endured. “Do you need help?”

A pale hand I hadn’t noticed before slipped off the rails on the third landing. Feet shuffled. A gasp.

I stepped into the stairwell with trembling knees, running up the first flight to the chicken restaurant. It was bustling inside, but not rowdy. I called for someone, but my voice wasn’t strong enough to project over the din.

“Please!”

That voice again. There was no time. And if I left the stairwell to grab someone, I had a horrible feeling that she’d disappear.

I jogged up the stairs again towards the bar and the shared bathroom sign as a door slammed shut on the third landing, opening my phone with shaking fingers.

“Please, please, please,” I mumbled, my thumb sliding over the biometric login. I stumbled over a stair and it sent me flying into the wall, right next to the bathroom’s metal door.

“Hello?!” I squeaked, pushing through the raw pain in my throat. “Hello! Where are you?!”

That gasp again, this time from the bathroom. The door shuddered as if someone was trying to open it, and just as I got my phone open to call 1-1-9, I dropped it.

My anger burst into a thousand pieces, summoning the temper of my most drunken, brazen ancestors. “Get out here, you mangy sonuvabitch! I’m going to kick your ass if you touch her, you hear me?!” I squeaked and coughed and banged on the door. “I’m calling the police!”

But there was silence in response. No cries for help, no asshole throwing back insults. No one was coming down the stairs from the bar or up from the chicken place, and my skin prickled with unease. Unsettled—concerned that perhaps I was hallucinating—I swiped my phone from the floor, the little bells on my new charm tinkling in the eerie quiet.

The door opened, bumping against my ankle. As I pitched forward, a hand grabbed the waistband of my jeans. Another gripped my arm. My hair? My mouth? I tried to scream, but something slithered around my neck and crushed the air from my throat in white hot pain.

Then I was yanked back into the darkness and watched my phone plummet down the stairs.