Present Day, London

When I stepped on a plane and left the only country I’d ever known behind, my destination was quite literally anywhere else. I had no idea where I would end up, how long I would stay or what I would do when I got there. All I knew was that I needed to be somewhere that wasn’t where I had always been. 

I was running away, obviously. 

I still didn’t know what I was running toward, but I hoped to find something at some point in my journey to help me forget the emptiness I felt inside. I’d expected that traveling would make me feel free, but I was learning that freedom is partially a state of mind. Escaping a prison of my own creation didn’t mean I knew how to live beyond the bars. Free was just another word for untethered, unattached, unsecured, and possibly lost.

Whatever I was looking for, my next stop was London, and it began, as most things involving travel do, with a long line – or queue, as the locals called it. I didn’t mind the wait since I was still trying to decide what I would say when the customs officer asked why I was there. Technically, I could pretend to be anyone. I’d tried on a few different personas at previous stops: a tourist, a researcher, a migrant worker. Unfortunately, I wasn’t very good at any of these roles, and pretending to be something I’m not had only invited more questions. I’d always imagined that becoming someone else for a while would be easy, but I must not be skilled enough at acting. 

The line moved forward and I rolled my suitcase along beside me as I followed, smiling at a fussy baby blowing a raspberry at me over her father’s shoulder. When she saw me smiling at her, she made a dissatisfied sound and hid her face against his shoulder. Sighing, I looked away, my gaze bouncing off of a dozen other weary travelers, none of whom were interested in making eye contact with anyone.

“Next!”

The baby and her parents moved to the open desk and I took another step forward.

“Over there,” the officer directing traffic said gruffly to me, pointing at a spot further down the row of desks. “Number thirteen.” 

I followed her direction and waited in the appropriate spot, trying once again to think of a way to explain myself and my aimless travels. Nothing came to mind before I was called forward so I decided to be honest.

The man on the other side of the plexiglass very clearly hated his job. He gazed at me with loathing from beneath furrowed brows and held out an impatient hand for my passport. I handed it over and watched him scowl at his computer while scanning the document, tapping impatiently at the desk as he waited for my personal details to appear on the screen. He gave me a piercing look. “Ri Sang Kyu?” 

“That’s me.”

“You’ve been traveling quite a bit, haven’t you? Singapore, India, Australia, Zambia… Checking off all the countries of the commonwealth, are you?” His voice was monotone and so dry that I couldn’t tell if he was being serious or sarcastic.

“Trying to check off more than that,” I replied. “Every country. The whole world.”

His eyes narrowed. “To what end?”

“I suppose you could say I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”

His bushy eyebrows quivered. “Mm. Just like Bono. How long do you plan to stay in England, then? Until you find this thing that you don’t know you’re looking for?”

“How long can I stay on a visitor’s visa?” I countered.

The man rolled his eyes. “You are one of those, then.”

“Those?” I repeated.

“An artist.” The word was spoken with impeccable diction and obvious distaste. He slapped a stamp against a blank page in my passport before handing it back to me. “Hopping from place to place in search of inspiration or meaning or whatever-you-call-it.” His voice dripped with disgust. “You want my advice? Wake up and get a real job.”

Taking my passport with a forced smile, I nodded crisply. “Thanks for the advice.” As if I hadn’t tried that already.

The airport terminal was full of people who knew where they were going. Some of them had people waiting for them already, others were on their way to meet them and those who didn’t have anyone at least had somewhere to go and something to do. I never felt lonelier than when I was walking through an airport because I didn’t have any of those things and I wasn’t sure if I ever would again.

My steps slowed when I saw a homeless man sitting at the side of the terminal holding out a cardboard box and I shook myself a little, remembering that not everyone had somewhere to go or someone waiting for them. I still had more than most even if I was lonely. Fishing a few crisp notes out of my wallet, I tossed them into the man’s box and kept walking, ignoring his gasp of surprise when he saw the denomination of the bills.

Taking a deep breath and deciding to stop feeling sorry for myself, I started paying attention to signs and following directions to the Underground. The Piccadilly line would take me into the city, which was where I wanted to go even if I hadn’t decided on anything more specific than that. The train was full and reminded me a little of Seoul as I crammed myself into a corner with my luggage and tried not to make contact, visual or otherwise, with anyone as the train swayed and ratcheted along the tracks. A couple of excited tourists smiled at me from their seats on the other side of the train, the only friendly faces in the car. I nodded back at them, forcing a smile before looking away.

An ad flashed over the screen at one end of the train car and my gaze darted toward it before I could stop myself, the video showing happy people lifting their phones to view the same app. They exchanged gossip and shared secrets with strangers, each more scandalous than the last. The interlocking circles of Requite’s logo rippled across the screen to reveal the platform’s tagline. Your Secret’s Out. No matter where I went, Liminal’s ubiquitous app followed, opening doorways to my past that I would rather keep shut. I looked away before the screen could transition to a face I knew all too well.

The train emptied and filled again a few times before I finally picked a destination. Covent Garden, the station tile read in crisp black serif against white brick. I hadn’t done my research on London before buying a ticket to fly there so I knew almost nothing about the city, but I had spent the last several months withering in Zambia’s dry season and the idea of a lush garden sounded appealing.

Unfortunately, the place I found myself was about as far from a greenspace as one could get. Judging by the age of the brickwork, the square had been paved over for at least a century and was entirely bereft of nature unless you counted the planters hanging on either side of the market entrance. It was an excellent place for people-watching, however, so I decided to find a cafe and plant myself there for a while until I figured out where I wanted to go next.

Taking a seat at a table outside a corner shop called A Proper Cuppa, I ordered black coffee, earning a scowl and a roll of the eyes from the owner which likely meant I’d been dismissed as a lousy foreigner. Feeling the need to regain her trust for no reason I could explain, I asked what she would recommend to eat.

Her eyebrows twitched and she shook her head. “For you? Not sure I could recommend a thing.”

“How about a scone?”

She harrumphed and scribbled on her notepad. “Jam and clotted cream?”

“Sure,” I agreed, thinking that a two-pronged attack of sugar and caffeine would help me fight off the malaise of jet lag.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“Coming right up,” she said with absolutely no pleasure.

I realized as she turned away that my decision to order coffee was probably where I had gone wrong. Tea was the local custom, I recalled, thinking of how India had been similar and feeling the familiar urge to blend in. I resisted it as best I could, reminding myself that it wasn’t my job to blend in anymore. 

The taste of the coffee made me reconsider my decision to flaunt custom, the flavor burnt and bitter enough to make me think that the owner simply didn’t know how to make a proper cup of anything but tea. The scone, on the other hand, was delicious even if it was nothing like what I’d expected, less of a pastry and more of a biscuit with a buttery spread and thick, red jam on top. I considered ordering a second one, but decided not to give the prickly owner any more of my money.

A cool breeze made me shiver and I hugged my arms to my sides, thinking about pulling a jacket out of my backpack but deciding to simply soak in the chill. The dreariness of London fall was about as far from Zambia’s arid heat as I could find, but that wasn’t why I’d chosen it. The truth was that I chose the cheapest flight I could find for the day and managed to find an open spot in a flight to London that was almost full. My free visitor’s visa to Zambia was close to running out so I’d needed a new place to land for the next step in my journey. 

The paved plaza – actually referred to as a piazza according to a nearby sign although there didn’t appear to be much Italian about it – held all manner of people with such diversity of physicality and cultural heritage that just watching them all pass by my table made me feel like I was traveling around the world while sitting still. Or maybe that was just the combination of jet lag and clotted cream making me whimsical. This was my favorite part of travel, settling into a new place and learning its particular rhythms and flavor. Every new destination brought with it a new palette of flavors and scents and sights to discover while I tried to figure out how I fit within the whole. 

Watching a group of children dart in and out around the shoppers, playing tag and using the crowd as an obstacle course to make the game more fun, I felt the uneasy sensation of being watched in return. That was when I noticed a massive black dog seated on its haunches nearby, so big and still that it reminded me of a guardian lion at a temple, but it seemed to be guarding the children more than the entrance to the arcade. And it was staring directly at me.

I recognized immediately that the creature was no normal canine. Even from across the square, I could smell its otherworldly aura. I had learned how to recognize the signs, and even though the last thing I wanted was more evidence of how I didn’t truly belong in the world as it was, I kept stumbling upon reminders everywhere I went. Breaking eye contact with the dog, I looked down into my cup and took another bitter sip, deliberately doing my best to ignore the weight of red eyes.

My father’s journals contained multiple entries about ghostly black dogs, but I didn’t need to do any research to know that no matter its particular identity, it was a bad omen. While such dogs might protect children or women walking alone at night, most of its appearances were associated with death, a warning that you or someone close to you would die within the year. Shaking my head, I finished the dregs of my horrible coffee and returned the empty cup to its saucer with no regard for the grounds left at the bottom or whatever ominous messages they might also be sending me. I’d seen too much death already for such omens to scare me.

Then my phone buzzed and I flinched so badly that I nearly flung the coffee cup over the side of the table. Delicately releasing the handle, I took a deep breath before retrieving my phone from my pocket. I wasn’t used to getting messages these days. Everyone who had ever called or texted me had been left behind along with the life I’d abandoned in Korea. I hadn’t gotten to know anyone in my travels well enough to keep in touch after I moved on, and even though I’d expected to stay in touch with some of the other connections I’d made over the years, as the time and distance between us grew, the thought of starting a conversation after such a gap seemed too daunting to attempt. 

The only person who messaged me much at all these days was my younger brother, mostly in the form of photos rather than text. His messages were proof of life more than true connection, snapshots of him on campus studying in a particularly picturesque spot or selfies with friends at a restaurant. He’d started hiking recently, so I got a lot of images of sunsets from the top of a mountain with his lean frame silhouetted against the golden sky. Sometimes he was there with someone else although I could never make out enough details to identify the other person.

This time the notification wasn’t from anyone I knew. It was a news alert I’d set up while I worked for Yun Seo. I thought I’d deactivated all of my alerts but apparently something had gotten reset in a recent update. Staring at the headline, I tried to decide if I wanted to click on the story and learn more.

Ye Kwang resigns amid fraud accusations.

The story started loading before I realized I’d tapped on it. 

Second generation chaebol and prominent philanthropist Ye Kwang has resigned his position at Kwang Pharmaceuticals after accusations of fraud broke on Requite. The anonymous post makes detailed accusations of backdoor business deals between Ye Kwang and other prominent business figures, the details of which have been removed from the site while the claims are being investigated. 

Liminal CEO, Jang Yun Seo, has issued a statement in response to this measure. “We are cooperating with law enforcement under protest and have temporarily removed the post, but we feel strongly that hiding this information from the public is against the very spirit of our platform. Requite was designed to cut through the divides between classes and ensure that every voice gets heard with equal weight, especially those without traditional means or power.”

I looked up from the phone, staring unseeing across the square as I tried to calm my suddenly racing heart. Ye Kwang had always been the finale of Yun Seo’s revenge plot, the last person he would target once every other enemy had fallen. When I stopped working for him, Yun Seo still had copious amounts of work to do before he would be ready to bring Ye Kwang to justice, but now that I was doing the math I realized that nearly eight months had passed since I left, plenty of time to finish that work and then some. Regardless, his endgame was obviously in motion.

None of this news had anything to do with me anymore, and yet I had been so deeply involved in all of it for so long that I felt more alone than ever learning how far Yun Seo’s plans had progressed without me. I’d always suspected that Yun Seo hadn’t really needed me, but it was still jarring to know how little my involvement had mattered. What was worse was that it was obvious that in order to defeat Ye Kwang, Yun Seo had used intel from a source I’d wanted to protect. My absence may not have made a difference to Yun Seo, but it certainly made a difference to Dae Hak Kun and his wife. I could only hope they would survive the fallout. 

“Mind if I join you?”

I was so buried so deep within my own thoughts that I didn’t realize the woman was speaking to me until I heard her pull the chair across from me out from beneath the table, the metal feet clattering against the bricks along the way. Blinking at her, I looked around to confirm that the rest of the tables were still empty and tried to figure out why she was asking to sit with me.

Then I noticed the exotic scent wafting from her, familiar and yet strange. Another Unseen. And another omen of death if I was judging correctly, dressed all in white with long, red waves of hair that fell nearly to her waist. She was skeletally thin, her pale bony hands clasping atop the table as she perched on the edge of the chair, sunken, bloodshot eyes peering out at me from within bruises of exhaustion. Her age was impossible to judge, the vivid red of her hair giving her a youthful look while her parchment-thin skin made her seem ancient.

Thin lips curved as she nodded at me. “You know what I am, don’t you?” Her words lilted with a musical accent. I wasn’t adept enough at English to identify it, but there was a sobbing note to her voice that verified my suspicion.

“You’re a banshee,” I replied. 

A chuckle like dry leaves on cobblestones made me squirm with discomfort.

“I suppose you’re here to warn me that someone I love is about to die. You’re too late. I’ve already lost all the people I care about.” That wasn’t strictly true, but it was close enough to the truth for me to hope the lie wouldn’t matter.

“Everyone has something to lose,” she insisted, reaching out to pet the shuck’s head as the dog padded up to her and sat silently down on its haunches at her side. “Even someone as lonely as you.”

I sighed, sitting back in my chair. “Fine. Give me your warning so I can get on with my day.”

Her smile was terrifying, her teeth sharp and white behind pale lips. “Death is a transition, the end of one sort of existence and the beginning of another. Your steps are overshadowed by death, but I’m not here to give you warnings you’ll refuse to heed. I am simply curious. So few recognize us anymore.”

“My father studied people like you,” I said, keeping my explanation brief. 

“He taught you how to recognize us?”

I shook my head. “He wasn’t the one who taught me.”

Tilting her head as if listening to something I couldn’t hear, she closed her eyes. “The one who taught you… He’s running out of time.”

A chill washed over me from head to toe and suddenly I wished the sun was shining. “I thought you weren’t here to give me warnings.”

Giving me another horrifying grin, she cackled through another sob. “I can’t help what I am.”

“I don’t care what happens to him,” I said, and this time even I could tell that my lie was obvious.

The sympathy was obvious in her expression as she replied, “You will cry when he dies.”

And that was enough for me. Tucking payment with an undeserved tip beneath the saucer, I stood up and shrugged my backpack over a shoulder. “Next time, ask if someone wants a prophecy before sharing.”

“That’s not how it works!”

Ignoring her protest, I turned my back on her and her predictions and lost myself in the crowd, trying to go back to pretending that I didn’t care.