The last fallen moon vol.., p.6
The Last Fallen Moon (Volume 2), page 6
I study their faces from my hiding spot, wondering what kinds of lives all these people had on Earth. I think of Jennie’s halmeoni and Emmett’s mom, and realize they must have taken this same train and gotten off at this exact platform. No one is trying to fight the migration, and it comforts me to see that they all look at peace.
“Ooh, that stick looks extra chewy!” Yeowu exclaims, looking longingly at a portly man in a full tuxedo, waltzing toward the escalators with a conductor’s baton in his hand. He must have passed away while performing. Eek.
“And aww, those two are so cute! They’re matching!” she continues.
I follow Yeowu’s gaze to find a harabeoji who is dressed in fluffy fleece pj’s with the words HIS on the chest, scuffing a pair of well-worn moccasins. A halmeoni wearing a matching pj set that says HERS follows him. Does that mean the couple both passed over together while asleep? I feel a pang in my heart.
Behind the halmeoni, I see the back of a girl my age with long dark hair tied up, wearing a white summer dress covered with red polka dots. I smile. It looks just like Hattie’s favorite dress. The one she was wearing for my surprise party earlier toda—
The blood drains from my face. “Hattie?!”
Surely it can’t be her. Did she find out about my plan and follow me down here somehow? Or worse, did she…die? I shake my head. Then shake it even harder. No! This is not happening again.
Before I know it, I am climbing out of the pool of dog goodies and making for the open door.
“Riley, Riley, Riley! Where are you going? This is Jiok, not Cheondang!”
I look over my shoulder at my new friend. “Yeowu, I’m so sorry, but my sister is out there. She shouldn’t be here. I came down so she wouldn’t have to.”
Yeowu whimpers. “Oh, that is not good news. Yes, you must go find her! Go, go, go!”
I quickly run back to give the puppy a kiss on the head. “Thank you for letting me hide in the trailer with you. Maybe I’ll get to see you again in Cheondang?”
She wags her tail in response. “Oh, that would be delightful, my wonderful new awesome friend!”
I turn to leave, and something falls with a squeak and a thud at my feet.
“A parting gift from me!”
I pick up a rubber chicken and Yeowu’s beloved Korean fir tree stick. They’re both covered in puppy slobber.
“You said I’m good luck,” she explains. “So maybe these will bring you some more?”
“Thank you,” I say honestly. “I need all the luck I can get.”
The doors start to beep, and I barely manage to squeeze out in time before they close shut. Clutching my squeaky chew toy and my drenched piece of wood, I wade through the sea of people following the MAIN CONCOURSE THIS WAY signs, while trying to find my sister in the crowd.
“Hattie?” I call out as the countless bobbing heads start to blur together. “Hat, where did you go?!”
The crowd begins to merge, funneling into the escalators that are heading up an impressively steep incline. I’m pushed into the one farthest to the right, and I grip the railing as we proceed up and up and up higher still. It makes me wonder if there’s a hell of never-ending escalators that I’ve never heard about. I try to focus on the faces around me, searching desperately for my sister’s familiar features.
Eventually (and thankfully), the moving stairs come to an end, and we all pile out into a cavernous open hall with gigantic arched windows. Despite the globe-shaped chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, light is pouring in through the windows, making the marble walls almost blinding. So there is sunlight in the Spiritrealm, after all.
“Newly arrived souls, welcome to Jiok!” an amplified voice announces from what looks to be an information booth at the center of the hall. It’s made of marble and shaped like a pagoda, topped with a four-faced brass clock. Something about the terminal feels familiar, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.
The voice continues. “You are here at Grand Central Terminal, the main transport hub of the Spiritrealm, which you’ll be pleased to know provides round-the-clock public transit to Cheondang’s heavenly neighborhoods. And it’s a lovely sunny day here in the hellish borough, so it must be your lucky day! Although you did just die, so make of that what you will.” The voice laughs, and someone whispers sharply near the microphone, “Stick to the new script.”
The speaker clears his throat. “Moving on. Now, I know you’re all eager to get out of here and explore what the realm has to offer, but there are a lot of you today. So be patient with us while we pair you all up with a lawye—I mean, a tour guide. And please have your papers ready for processing. Hope you have a wonderful stay in the underworld.” The microphone clicks off.
Sparks of confusion fly through me. First, it was retreats and CFOs instead of courts and judges. And now we get a tour guide instead of a lawyer? I chew my lip anxiously. Was the Spiritrealm book wrong about everything?
The speaker switches on again with a staticky ding. “Oh, almost forgot! Please remember to pick up your welcome packs on the way out. There are some great goodies in there from our sponsors. And those tote bags are fantastic for carrying groceries. Say no to plastic! Welcome again to the Spiritrealm!”
Unlike the dreamy stillness and quiet of the immigration queues, the terminal is teeming with activity. The crowd buzzes with energy as people wearing polo shirts with the message WELCOME TO THE SPIRITREALM: THE PLACE YOU’RE DYING TO STAY! start approaching individual souls and guiding them out of the terminal. I scan the hall. I need to find Hattie before her tour guide gets to her.
A white dress with red dots catches my eye. A girl with long hair is walking up the left staircase to the northern balcony. Relief pumps through me.
“Hattie!” I call out.
A small man sporting the Spiritrealm polo stands at the top of the marble steps, waving for her to join him.
“Hattie!” I scream again. “Don’t go with him!”
I run toward her, pumping my arms like a sprinter, the rubber chicken in one hand, the stick in the other. A group of people are chatting at the bottom of the left staircase, blocking the way, so I race up the one on the right instead, taking the steps two at a time.
“Hattie, please, stop!”
The man—presumably her tour guide—looks over his shoulder and sees me charging toward him. His eyebrows hike up his face. “What the—”
I bowl into him, tackling him to the floor like a football player, before he can finish his expletive. I pin him down and look up, relieved, at my sister.
“Man, am I glad I fou—”
The girl’s eyes are too far apart. There are too many spots on her face. There’s no gap between her front teeth.
“You’re not Hattie,” I breathe.
The tour guide untangles himself from me. He straightens his top, and then with a pitiful glance at me, he pulls the girl away. “Come along, Christina. Let’s go.” And then: “No, no, no need to be alarmed—some souls don’t take the transition well. You won’t ever have to see her again.”
I wring my hands. I had a guaranteed ride to Cheondang, and I left it for…Christina?! How could I have been so stupid? Of course Hattie isn’t here. I feel like banging my head on the marble floors.
Then I remember the man’s voice over the speakers. He’d said that the terminal provided “round-the-clock public transit to Cheondang’s heavenly neighborhoods.”
The thought gives me a second wind. All I need to do is sneak onto the next train, and then I’ll be able to look under every stone in Cheondang until I find Saint Heo Jun. If he’s famous enough to make it into the books in the Mortalrealm, surely people will know where he lives.
With a hopeful skip in my step, I run to the departure boards on the south end of the hall. At this rate, I’ll only arrive a little later than Yeowu. Maybe I’ll get to see her again!
I scan the boards excitedly, expecting to see a list of train times. Instead, all I see are blurry rectangles, as if someone’s added privacy filters to all the screens. The only words I can read are superimposed on top, blinking in red neon lights: Boarding trains to Cheondang is prohibited until all rewards have been exhausted in the hellish borough.
I cry out in despair. This is all too much. Looking around at the handful of souls left in the Main Concourse, there don’t seem to be many guides left to go around. Even if there were more, no one’s going to help an undocumented soul. After all, I ran away from immigration and don’t have my papers.
Resting my back on the closest wall, I slide down until my butt hits the cold, hard floor. I pull my legs up to my chest and try not to hyperventilate. What am I going to do now? Do I sit here and wait until the love potion wears off? My plan to help my parents has epically failed before it even got started. And boy, does failure taste bitter. I might as well be chewing on this fir tree stick.
Something wet and squishy taps my shoe. I let out a loud hiccup. Anxiously, I peek up over my kneecaps to see a tall, skinny guy dressed in a janitor’s uniform with a mop and bucket. “Wh-what do you want?” I stammer.
The man pokes me again with his mop, and this time I glance up at his face. Oh wait, he’s just a kid. He looks about my age, and whoa. I’ve never seen an Asian boy with hair the color of pearls before. He has a lot of it, too, and it’s meticulously combed back, except for a great swath at the front that’s been curled forward like an elephant’s trunk. Honestly, he must have spent at least an hour to make it look like that. Not to mention the gazillion pots of pomade he must have used.
“You dropped this.” He passes me a familiar-looking object. Small and black and hard.
I quickly grab my onyx teardrop stone and shove it in my back pocket. It must have fallen out when I was tackling Hat—I mean, Christina’s tour guide. “Thanks,” I mumble.
He flashes me a curious smile and glides his palm carefully down the side of his hair as if to make sure it’s still in place. Buddy, an earthquake isn’t going to move that mane.
“Wait, don’t tell me—you’re not ready to be dead and you’re trying to figure out a way to return to the living,” the janitor boy guesses.
I shake my head.
“An overstayer, then?”
I shake my head again.
He rests his chin on the tip of the mop’s handle thoughtfully. “Ah, you must be undocumented, in that case.”
I look down at my feet.
“Interesting,” he muses. “Very interesting, indeed.”
When I don’t say anything, he carries on. “Don’t be too embarrassed, kid. We’ve all got our stories.”
“Uh, did you just call me kid?” I raise my eyebrow at him. “What are you, like, thirteen going on ninety-five?”
Although…this is the Spiritrealm. I guess he could look young, but actually have been dead for centuries. That would technically still make him my elder by a long shot.
Embarrassed, I quickly change the subject. “Well, what’s your story, then? Why are you here?”
“Why are we here, cleaning the floors of hell, you mean?” He flips his mop so the “hairy” part is standing tall like a person’s head, and he puts his arm around where its shoulders would be. “Moppy, you want to tell the young lady, or shall I?”
Normally, I’d think that was a really weird thing to do—talking to your mop like it’s your friend. But the boy does it with such conviction and ease that it seems totally normal. Dare I say it—cool, even.
“Fine, fine, you’re shy, Moppy, I know. I’ll do the spiel.” He grins at me. “I’m what you call a Cheondang native. Born and raised here in the Spiritrealm. And the cleaning gig is a means to an end, if you know what I mean. I’m destined for much greater things. And when I’m old enough to get my tour-guide license, it’ll be my key outta here. Like a-wop ba-ba lu-bop a-wop bam boom!”
“Like a-wop ba-ba what?” I want to ask what language he just spoke, because it sounds oddly familiar. But a different question comes to mind first. “Wait, how can you be born into the world of the dead? Does that mean you were never alive? So you’re not a gifted witch? What about your parents?”
He takes a comb out of his pocket and slides it across his perfect hair in a well-practiced motion. He doesn’t seem flustered by my million questions. “Not gifted, nope. And I don’t have parents. I was raised in a Home for Heavenborns. Up there, you’d call it an orphanage, I think.”
I feel a pang of guilt for probing into his personal life like that. I might have a secret heritage that was kept hidden for all of my life, but I always had loving parents. I can’t imagine what it must be like not to have any.
“I can’t believe you were born in heaven,” I say instead, still trying to wrap my head around the concept. “So, you’re like an angel or something?”
He laughs heartily, as if I’ve cracked the biggest joke. “That’s hilarious! Everyone knows angels aren’t real.” Then he looks at me with genuinely curious eyes, all shiny and bright. “What about you? Why are you risking your life entering this realm undocumented? Gutsy move.”
Maybe it’s because he offered me a piece of his vulnerability first. Or maybe it’s because my mission has already failed and I don’t have anything to lose. But I find myself opening up to him.
“I came down here to find someone in Cheondang,” I admit. “If I can find him and convince him to help me, I’ll be able to put things right for my family.” I hiccup. “But I failed, because everything I touch falls apart. To be honest, I don’t even know why I bother trying. I’m a walking bad-luck charm.” I reach over and squeeze the rubber chicken Yeowu gave me to complete the moment with a nice farting sound.
The boy taps his mop against the marble floor as if considering his next move. Then he passes it to me. “Hold this. I’ll be back.”
Before I can ask how long he’ll be gone, he’s off. When he returns a few minutes later, he’s changed out of his janitor uniform. He’s now dressed in black loafers, white socks, dark jeans, a tucked-in white T-shirt, and a shiny black leather jacket with the words KEY BIRDS embroidered on the back. His entire outfit is reminding me of something, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.
He pops the collar on his jacket and amps up the swagger in his walk. “Had to put my own clothes on so I could think better. That uniform really stifles my style.”
That’s when it hits me. “Oh my Mago, you’re trying to be Danny Zuko!”
A few Halloweens ago, Appa and Eomma dressed up as the main characters from that really old movie Grease. It’s basically High School Musical for old people. They got so excited they made me and Hattie watch the entire movie with them, and I’ll admit—it wasn’t bad for a movie about the 1950s. Looking at the janitor boy now, it all makes sense. The big hair, the slick-bordering-on-cocky demeanor, the popped collar on his leather jacket. Even calling me “kid.” He’s a total stan.
He grins excitedly. “Are you a Danny Zuko fan, too? Isn’t Grease the best?!”
I shrug. “I mean, sure, if you’re living seventy years in the past.”
He holds his hands up in protest. “Look, it takes a while for pop culture to filter down here, all right? Don’t be judgy.” He smooths out the sides of his hair with both his palms. “But look at me. I’m still rocking it. I make it look timeless! Right?”
I let out a giggle. “Sure. Yeah, whatever. You do you, man.” I point at the back of his jacket. “Although, just for the record, it’s T-Birds, not Key Birds.”
Instead of responding, he grabs one of the welcome tote bags from a nearby orientation table and throws it at me.
Inside, there’s a random assortment of branded products, like a Swiss army knife that says JAGGED KNIVES COMPANY on the side, and a bitingly cold ice pack that claims to be perpetually frozen for all your ice pack needs made by Infinite Ice, Inc. There are some stickers advertising the other retreats (which, as a sticker fiend, I’ll admit are kind of cool), and there’s even one of those polos that says WELCOME TO THE SPIRITREALM: THE PLACE YOU’RE DYING TO STAY! which I hope I’ll never need to wear. Stickers aside, though, I’ve definitely seen better welcome packs.
“Get your butt off the cold floor, kid,” the boy says. “Let’s go.”
I look at him suspiciously. “Go where exactly?”
“I think I can help.”
“With…?”
“You remember your reward schedule? The one that got printed out at soulport immigration?”
“The piece of paper from the scanner machine?”
He nods.
“Yeah…There were three retreats on there. Shattering Speed Funpark, Boiling Oil Restaurant, and Hungry Beasts Petting Zoo and Café.” I pause. “Why?”
“Because I’ll bet my Moppy that I can get you to Cheondang so you can do whatever it is you gotta do for your fam.”
I slowly pick myself up off the floor. “No offense, genuinely, but you’re a janitor, not a lawye—I mean, a tour guide, or whatever it is they’re called. How would you be able to help me?”
“None taken—genuinely!” he says smoothly. “But trust me, I’m resourceful. I know my way around this realm like the back of my hand. And to date, there hasn’t been a situation I haven’t been able to smart my way out of. Act it until you exact it is essentially my personal mantra.”
“Act it until you exact it?” I echo. “So basically, fake it till you make it?”
“More in the vein of practice makes perfect,” he responds. “But yeah, that’s the general idea.”
I stare at him, thinking how much he reminds me of Hattie. They’re both so confident, so unapologetic about who they are. So much of everything I could never be.
“Trust me,” he repeats. “I can get you there.”
“But I don’t have much time,” I explain. “I only have two days. Max.”
His eyes sparkle. “Ooh, a ticking clock. Even better! I’m always up for some adrenaline.”
I put my chicken and stick into the tote bag, and hang it tentatively over my shoulder. “Why would you help me? You don’t even know me.” It suddenly strikes me that he might. “Wait, do you know me?”
“Not from a bar of soap.”
