Archive of Our Own ^beta

The second day; at a unknown place in the desert.

Ki Ka-young was starting to lose her bearings and with it her sight. One sand dune after another. At first, she’d had hope. That one of those hills would reveal him, spit him out from the sand he liked so very much, or Iblis would appear like magic, like she was used to coming across him. But it was just sand. She could stump it down kick it, kick him. Ka-young imagined she was kicking him. She’d kill him! But it was sand as far as the eye could see with only the sun overhead.

She wasn’t scared of dying here. The last few days had made her terrified and this was nothing. Maybe it was even better if she died here. Familiar certainly. Not fair to Min-ji, and her friend deserved more than that.

“Iblis,” she screamed, “Come out now!”

Ka-young waited. Again. Sick of waiting! But what did she had left? Then, late as always, that Satan, he showed his face.

“Where have you been?” She pushed him, and he had the gall to stumble. “I’ve been looking for you.” Ka-young repeated the action. “You should have answered me. You didn’t come when I called you.”

And Iblis for all his power stood there looking miserable. Beneath that expectant.

She turned: “You’re a genie. You still need to grant my final wish.” She began walking. “I will-”
“Don’t do it,” he pushed.

“I’ll make an incredibly selfish wish,” she said, “Just for me.”

He shook his head: “Ki Ka-young, please.”

She began walking to him. “I want to understand my grandma’s pain, raising a stone as if it were a jewel.” Ka-young continued her approach. “I want to know the fear my neighbours felt raising me, even as they judged me.” She stopped, pondering. “I want to understand Min-ji’s selfless friendship. I want to know the depth of the words you wrote all over your lamp.” A tear slipped from his eyes. And that was his grief. “Allow me to have my humanity.”

Ka-young took a moment. It was too much of an ask, so she made it easier for him. “For a day. Just for a day, give me what they call feelings in their normal, purest form.”

It didn’t help. He just started crying. She couldn’t retreat now.

“When that day passes, I’ll go back to being a negative one. Someone who is condemned by all. A bothersome stone. That’s how I’ll die.” She watched him for a moment longer than finished. “This…is my final wish.”

In something, she couldn’t exactly see his face at that moment, and she could no longer focus on figuring him out by what she knew of him, Iblis fell to his knees in front of her.

“You really think…” he said, looking up, back to that…true sadness, “that I’m capable of killing you.”

It was the sensible thing. He’d get his revenge. He told her how much he wanted.

Iblis was a liar.

“Get up,” she said because he should not bow to her, but he just shook his head. Her fists curling, and her heart set on fire, she returned to the previous. “Get up!”

His answer came soft: “No.”

What was she to do? She was his master, and he refused him. Ka-young half jumped him, half fell. The last in her strength had gone into those pushes, and now…she crushed her fists and pushed them in his back as if stabbing him, but it was nowhere near it, and Iblis didn’t even raise his hands. Until he did.

One hand went to her back and began patting. “Girl, my dear Ki Ka-young is warm.” She’d said it so long ago. “My darling lump of clay is warm.” He took a moment as if to gather himself while Ka-young’s hand slipped down. “My sweet psychopath is warm.”

What was this? Tears slipping from her eyelids, Ki Ka-young knew what sadness was. But she wasn’t losing him, she wouldn’t remember him. And Iblis…she was going this for him. It would be better for him.

“If you allow me but one thing,” he said, quietly, but it did not seem so quiet from so close by, “Master, if from you I can ask but one thing, allow yourself to live. I’ve known you for the longest possible time or at least I believe I am your oldest living friend-”

“More,” she insisted.

She felt the shortness of his smile more than heard it. “I am your oldest living more than friend, so let me think I know you at least a bit.” Something exceedingly hot flooded her. Stabbed her in the heart really. “You are the purest soul I’ve come across. Whatever the universe thinks about it, you shall not suffer faith given to you.”

Fear rushed her and she pulled away from him. “Iblis!” But when their eyes met, he wasn’t scared like she was.

Now Ka-young understood what he was doing. What he was giving up. Call her the purest soul, he wasn’t a Devil. This…she punched his chest once, twice, so many times. But it wasn’t in her to refuse him. And she’d made the wish; and now she did feel it.

“I love you more than I need to you to stay beside me,” he said, and this was a goodbye. Then Iblis leaned close and for the last time or at least the last time she’d remembered, he kissed her. How does it feel to be kissed by a genie, Satan? Ki ka-young couldn’t say. But Iblis kissed her with care, and she knew she shared those feelings. Then it ended. “But I will remember. That much…”

She couldn’t hear him anymore. He was but sand. They’d run out of time. The sun was high in the sky, yet she was cold.

Ki Ka-young had so much to feel in those last moments. When she died in that desert. But then it was loud and bright, in that coldness she didn’t recognize, she recognized being lifted up in a helicopter and taken to the hospital by someone. She longer knew the name, but Ka-young was thankful. Then the morning came.

About 5 years later.

Min-ji had gifted her then hourglass a month ago and still didn’t know what to think of it. It had been her birthday, and the only explanation she gave for why this had been Min-ji’s choice of gift was that it felt right. Phew!

It was a terrible gift. And old. The not quite infinity sign caged in by four carved golden beams. She’d sell it if it were real gold, but the tag her friend had not taken off had been less than 50$ which make it not worth the hassle. Only that did not resolve Ki Ka-young’s current problem – what was she do to with the timekeeper which she’d never even turned around. Maybe that was it. Ki Ka-young turned it around.

Nothing would come of it. She knew that. Yet she’d expected it which left her eating her food in a worse for wear mood.

The person who slipped in the seat opposite her had the widest, most childish smile. If there wasn’t a table holding him down and a chair glued to his butt, he might had jumped out of the seat itself.

“What?” she said.

“You’re wearing all red and it’s a Friday,” he answered in a factual manner than she couldn’t grow to appreciate because he didn’t sound very matter-a-fact, more over smug, “I was told that I’d find my one true love on a day like this.”

Ki Ka-young’s eyes narrowed. Fool.

She stood. “I am no one’s flower. Or some fortune told.” He didn’t cease his smiling. “Who are you?”

“To you” He joined her in standing. “I am Iblis.”

Which did not sound like a name she’d know and like some toy she’d lost in her childhood. Ki Ka-young pressed her lips together. “Which” How to call it? “crazed guru did you visit?”

Iblis rounded the table. Kept his hands behind his back as well, but that seemed more like his state of being than a forethought. They came truly face to face and close. Ka-young had to look up to look him in the eyes, but he had a nice enough face, so she could hold off on dealing with someone like him like he would otherwise deserve to be dealt with.

He quirked his head ever so slightly. “Would you like to see?”

It was not the smartest thing to go with a name she did not know. Ka-young made a sound of indifference then passed him. Not moments later he was chasing her heals.

“Hey, wait!” he said, “You haven’t even given me a chance.”

She reached the door prepared to push it open only for him to rush to hold it for her. Nearly knocked her over then and there. Ki Ka-young gave him a look, but who was she to stop him from doing excess work for her? She passed through the door.

“What chance?” she said.

He was in front of her again. “You know a chance for.” Iblis gesture from her to him a bit frantically might she say. Ka-young raised a brow only for his gesturing to intensify. “You know for!”

It was for men to be cowards she supposed.

Ki Ka-young turned never to place her eyes on him another time.

She made but a few step before he shouted: “In the firework show later today, you’d like to be high up.” Ki Ka-young looked back. “I think. And” She might have only managed a blink before his voice came right in her ear. “I think I could…” When she turned to face him, their faces came so exceedingly close that she could see his eyes flicker down. “We could go.”

“Hm,” she gave it a moment of consideration, “Ok.”

When surprised washed over him, she huffed. What was she to say? He wasn’t disgusting, and he’d asked. That being said, if it was just at the touch of nightfall, they did not exactly have much time.

She took one step away then looped her hand around his elbow which he made sure to straighten out then she was pulling: “Let’s go then.”

He did not try to protest.

With the evening coming, the hill they were taking became exceedingly irritating to manoeuvre. To add to it she didn’t have the right shoes for it, and to add to even than they’d miss the show. She knew it, by the way he was looking around he knew it as well.

“I might have misjudged the distance,” he finally admitted.

She kept walking, followed by increasingly harsher footsteps. Then he grabbed her wrist. “Wait, just…” Her eyes went down to their not quite interconnected hands, so he pulled it back. “I can get us there in time just…close your eyes.”

He’d done something before. She knew he’d done something before that she couldn’t simply explain away, and yet it didn’t feel dangerous. Or maybe she was just out of it, still she followed through. Soft nibs crashed against her cheeks. Like waking from a lengthy dream she wasn’t quite ready to leave. Then brightness pressed through her lashes and she could no longer hold back her curiosity. They really were there. Just in time.

Her mouth having fallen slightly open she watched the bursts of light overhead. It was beautiful from up so high.

“I knew you would like it,” and there he was.

“How is today special?” Ki Ka-young asked only for him not to get it, “When I woke up this morning, there were no fireworks scheduled.”

A smile pulling at the edge of his lip, he offered: “Luck’s on our side?”

“Our side?”

They shared a moment of silence.

“You bring me here after I have agreed on a whim and you refer to whatever moments that had been as our,” she said, “One would think we share history.”

He might have swallowed harder then excepted even in a situation that called for his shame.
She looked the opposite way of him. “But I might share that memory.”

“Ki Ka-young I know you can’t,” he said.

Her shoulders fell. That she could not understand, so she watched the tail-end of the fireworks and when, eventually, they ended, the blackness of the horizon. Had always preferred that and maybe this Iblis knew that as well. Maybe that was the reason why they sat on the extended ledge of the church’s tower where she didn’t think a single living soul had been for decades.

With a sigh she let her head fall on his shoulder and he startled. “You still haven’t told me why today of all days.”

His usually level voice trembled now: “You started it only today.”

Ka-young startled up. “The hourglass.”

He was back to his smiling. “Maybe the sand in there is” Iblis waved his fingers and in between them or maybe in between the particles of air, golden sand shinned not much different from the one trapped behind the glass. “a bit special.”

Her lips twitched upwards without her permission. “Thank you, Iblis.”

And finally, finally she knew the name on the person she’d been thanking all those years ago. And finally, something felt alive.