Eventually, Momo’s mana regenerated, and she was back in her own skin again. After she got reaccustomed to walking like a person in their twenties, she and Daehyun spent the next few days together exploring the city and revisiting old, precious memories—memories like the drug dealer’s apartment next to their childhood home.

  “What was his name again?” Momo asked, fanning herself. The sun was bearing down extra hot on San Francisco that day, lighting the pavement like a match. She had half a mind to transform herself into a new sort of human who didn’t produce sweat, but she had learned her lesson by now. No more wasting mana. Not when she might need it later.

  “Christopher Smith,” Daehyun replied, kicking a rock on the street with his foot.

  “No way. That’s not what I remember,” Momo said, looking up at the two story home. The condition of it had only deteriorated even more since she last saw it. Half the windows were shattered, graffiti smeared across the stairway. “I swear it was something way stupider.”

  “Oh.” Daehyun chuckled lowly. “You mean Chrizzo Schmizzo.”

  “That was it,” Momo groaned. She could feel herself traveling through time just hearing it. “God. Mom’s face every time you told her you were going down the block to see Schmizzo. It was like you had told her you were going to go buy a tattoo gun and come home a nazi. She’d yell at Dad to call the police, then Dad would get all heated, pretend to call them…”

  “...And end up calling his friend from work instead,” Daehyun finished, a knowing grin on his face. “The one he always does karaoke with. How did it take Mom so long to realize that Dad wasn’t exactly ‘reporting a crime’? Like, why would he be singing Bon Jovi to 911?”

  Momo giggled and stepped onto the stairs, her hand gliding along the chipped wooden railing. She could see them here, both of them—seven, eight, nine years old. Back then, Mom hadn’t hated Chris so much. Before she discovered the miniature weed plantation growing in his backyard, Chris had actually been their babysitter for a short time when both her parents were working. Momo had fond memories of his apartment—it always smelled sweet, probably chemically sweet, looking back. And he had a really cool girlfriend.

  “Remember Annie?” Momo said, looking down at him from the stoop.

  Daehyun snorted. “Schmizzo’s ex that you were totally in love with?”

  Momo flushed. She didn’t deny it, though. Annie was undoubtedly her first love. She could recall her vividly even now—six feet and two inches of heavily tattooed gorgeousness. Practically an amazonian angel. And okay, upon reflection, she was one hundred percent both a junkie and a professional shoplifter, regularly taking Momo to the mall, her smudged red-lipstick smile gleaming as she urged Momo to grab whatever she wanted—lollipops, toy cars, action figures, one hundred dollar gift cards.

  “We’ll pay the shop back later,” she’d say. “Send them a check in the mail, or whatever.”

  The emphasis had clearly been on the whatever, but that had not concerned a nine year old. Why would it? Annie had gotten her everything she wanted, and never yelled at her once. That was about as rare a person as Momo could find. She’d even help Momo with her English homework sometimes, helping her write her daily journal about “life at home.”

  Looking back, those daily journals—consisting of their thinly veiled shoplifting adventures and escapades to Chris’s “customer’s” houses—were probably what landed Momo’s poor parents in so many meetings with the school counselor, but whatever.

  It had been clearly worth it to spend more time with the angel that just so happened to take shape as the drug dealer’s live-in girlfriend.

  “I wanted to date her so bad,” Momo confessed.

  “Fortunately the feelings weren’t mutual.”

  Momo rolled her eyes.

  “So Mom and Dad don’t live here anymore?”

  That was the question of the hour. The one they had so far been dancing around. Momo had told Daehyun she wanted to see their parents, she just had no idea what to say. He had told her to get in the car and stop being so anxious. It was a tale as old as time.

  “No, not anymore,” he said. He seemed nervous when he said it, though, so Momo narrowed her eyes at him, descending from the staircase. “They live… over there.”

  Stolen story; please report.

  His finger gently lifted right across the street.

  Momo’s eyes followed it.

  Oh my god.

  “You’re not serious,” she whispered.

  Daehyun shrugged, but a small, shy smile crept on his face.

  The house across the street wasn’t just any house. It was the nicest one in the neighborhood, with a large white gate and tall trees shielding it from the road. This was the house—their family’s dream house. Mom loved it for the garden, Dad for the ridiculous Roman statue out front, and Momo and Daehyun? They loved it because kids just love stuff like that. It was a fantasy. It was the house they swore they’d live in when they were rich and famous.

  Of course, that was never supposed to actually happen.

  Momo began to tremble. Daehyun put a firm, comforting hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him, and for the first time in her life, she didn’t feel like the older one anymore.

  “It’s going to be okay,” he said, then cracked a smile. “Their daughter isn’t actually dead, she’s just a goddess who got me a TV gig. It’s good news, remember?”

  ***

  The interior of the house was nothing like Momo expected. She stepped through the door and found herself standing in what could only be described as a compact palace. The ceiling was far higher than it had any right to be for an apartment, with ornate moldings that stretched across the corners like the remnants of an old cathedral. Sunlight filtered through floor-to-ceiling windows, casting a golden hue on the polished floors.

  But for all the grandeur, the house still felt deeply familiar. The scent of Mom's cooking clung to the air—an unmistakable mix of soy sauce, garlic, and sesame oil that could never be masked, even by the old wood and high ceilings. Family photos cluttered the walls—crooked frames with pictures of their awkward teenage years, their parents’ wedding, and Momo and Daehyun as toddlers, splashing around in a kiddy pool in the backyard.

  They still remember me.

  It was a stupid thought. But it still made her chest swell uncomfortably.

  Their parents had truly made this place their home. An oversized calendar with hand-written notes in Korean hung in the hallway, and a collection of cheap plastic slippers waited by the entrance. Momo instinctively removed her own shoes, feeling that familiar pang of shame as she checked to see if she had brought any dirt in.

  She felt Daehyun squeeze her shoulder again. Anxiety was clearly written all over her trembling body. But how was she supposed to be chill about this? This wasn’t just an apartment, it was a strange mix of surreal and familiar—a life they had only ever imagined as children, now somehow real, only she had been dead for twelve years of that fantasy.

  From the kitchen, the low hum of the television buzzed in the background, mixed with the sound of water running in the sink. Her pulse quickened. She felt suddenly as if she was in a horror movie, but instead of being the unsuspecting victim, she was the villain waiting with a knife at the door. She felt a helplessness she hadn’t felt in a very long time.

  “Daehyun-ah! Is that you?” came the sharp call of their mother from further inside the house. Tears immediately threatened to fall out of Momo’s eyes just hearing her voice. She felt pathetic. This wasn’t her fault, she reminded herself, but it didn’t help. Everything felt like her fault. Twelve years. Twelve years! Maybe if she’d just found a way to ascend a little sooner. But would she even have visited? Would she even be here right now if it wasn’t for Richard Smith and his impending visit by the Reaper?

  Everything was closing in, her vision narrowing from a wide field to a small cone. She faintly heard her mom speaking in the background, jumping into one of her usual monologues.

  “Daehyun-ah, have you seen that picture on the TV? The girl turning into the old man? Auntie tells me it was taken nearby here. And your appa swears the demon girl looks like your sister. Same hair. I think he is losing his head. Come look at this.”

  “Do not lie to our son. I am not losing my head,” came the gruff reply of their father. “Losing my hair, yes. But my head knows Momo-yah when I see her.”

  Her name, said so softly, so tenderly, in her father’s aged voice, nearly struck her like a dagger through the heart. Momo barely had time to react before she heard footsteps shuffling toward them. She wasn’t ready. She couldn’t do this. She gave a frenzied look around the hallway. There was a broom closet there, slightly ajar.

  Before she could think of how stupid it was, how it was only delaying the inevitable, she opened the door to the closet, and shoved herself in amongst the endless coats. Some of them were so dusty Momo questioned if they had come on the plane with them from Korea, but it didn’t matter. She plugged her nose and gave Daehyun a desperate look—one that very clearly said, “I don’t know what I’m doing, but you better not make it worse”—before quietly shutting the door.

  A younger Daehyun would have dragged her out of there by her hair, but this one didn’t. This one was too patient for his own good. He just heaved out an exasperated sigh, and greeted their mother. The sound of slippers scuffing against the polished floor made Momo’s heart race even faster, like a drumbeat that wouldn’t stop.

  “Daehyun-ah. You look different. What did you do to your hair? Oh. And don’t use that closet for your coat. That closet is for old things we want to throw out.” Jiwoo’s voice was so close Momo could practically feel her breath against the door. She visualized the woman on the other side, an older, grayer version of the mom she remembered. “Wait. Daehyun-ah. Whose shoes are those? Those are girl shoes. Not your size.”

  A silent beat passed through the room.

  “Daehyun-ah, what is this? A surprise? Is someone in that closet?”

  “No, no, wait—”

  A hand wrapped around the doorknob. Momo tried to keep it closed, clawed around in the dark searching for a solution, but found that there was nothing to hold onto. There was nothing separating them anymore except a panel of oak and four hundred particles of dust.

  There was no god to pray to. And what use would that be anyway?

  She was god, and she had divined herself right into this broom closet.

  Slowly, the door opened.

  And everything she had been running from stood right in front of her.

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