And there, in the middle of the room, was him.
The boy who had pushed me. The one who had called me a piglet. The one whose name I had immediately discarded because small imbeciles did not deserve to occupy space in my celestial memory.
He was sitting in the fifth row from the front, his bag on the seat beside him, his handphone in his hand, his thumb scrolling through something with the lazy disinterest of someone who had done this a thousand times and expected to do it a thousand more.
He looked up as I entered.
His eyes found me immediately. Of course they did. I was, after all, the most impressive being in this room, even if they didn't know it.
He smiled.
It was the same smile from the gate. The one that made his eyes crinkle. The one that made me want to throw something at his head.
I looked away.
I walked down the aisle with the bearing of a queen surveying her domain. My steps were measured. My chin was raised. My eyes fixed on a point at the front of the room that was definitely not anywhere near where he was sitting.
I glanced passed his row without looking at him. I felt his gaze on my back—felt it like a physical weight, warm and irritating and entirely unwelcome—and I ignored it with the full force of my celestial will.
I chose a seat three rows ahead of him. Far enough that I wouldn't have to see his face. Close enough that he could see mine, which was arranged in an expression of such cold disdain that it had, in previous centuries, caused lesser demons to rethink their life choices.
I sat.
I placed my bag on the floor beside me with the careful precision of someone who had been taught how to use a bag approximately twelve hours ago and was still not entirely sure she was doing it correctly. I folded my hands on the desk in front of me. I stared at the blank screen at the front of the room.
Behind me, I heard him shift in his seat.
I did not turn around.
I did not think about him.
I did not wonder what his name was, because his name was irrelevant. He was a mortal. A small, insignificant mortal who had pushed a celestial being and called her a piglet and then had the audacity to smile about it. He was beneath my notice. Beneath my consideration. Beneath—
The door at the front of the room opened, and a man walked in.
I blinked.
Then I blinked again.
Because the man who walked in—grey at the temples, rectangular glasses, the kind of dark blue suit that suggested he had many suits and they were all this exact colour—was the spitting image of Doctor Kim from the hospital.
Not exactly the same. This man was taller. His glasses were slightly thicker. His expression was less "calm who has seen everything" and more "calm who has seen everything and is slightly bored by it." But the resemblance was uncanny. They could have been from the same womb. They could have been the same person in a different lighting.
For a moment, I wondered if all human in positions of authority simply looked like this. Perhaps there was a factory somewhere that produced them. Perhaps when humans reached a certain level of respectable employment, their faces simply settled into this configuration—greying hair, rectangular glasses, the faint expression of a man who had long ago given up on being surprised by anything.
I stared at him.
He stared back at me, because apparently my staring had been noticed.
"Sera," he said, and his voice was warm in a way that Doctor Kim's had been warm, and I was beginning to suspect that all human with authority were required to take a course in How to Sound Warm While Delivering Information That May Be Unpleasant. "You're back."
The room turned to look at me.
I did not flinch. I had not flinched when the door slammed open on my first day in this world, and I would not flinch now. I was Seraphyne. I had faced tribunals. I had faced demons. I had faced the void between worlds.
I could face a room full of economics students and a higher level scholar who looked like he moonlighted at the hospital.
"I am," I said.
Professor Kang—for that was his name, according to the syllabus that Mina had printed for me and that I had definitely not spent an hour trying to decipher—nodded slowly. He didn't ask how I was feeling. He didn't mention the hospital or the explosion or the fact that I had recently tried to recruit a man in the waiting room as my personal courier to the Celestial Tribunal.
He simply said, "Welcome back."
And then he opened his bag. And pulled out a book. And said, "Let's continue from Chapter Seven, page two hundred and fourteen. The elasticity of demand in monopolistic markets."
I opened my bag.
I pulled out the book that Mina had insisted was the correct one, even though it was heavy and smelled like old paper and had more words in it than I had ever seen in one place before. I found page two hundred and fourteen.
And then I realized, with a creeping sense of horror, that I had no idea what any of the words meant.
Professor Kang began to speak.
His voice was calm. Measured. The voice of a man who had explained the same concepts to thousands of students over the years and had developed a rhythm to it, a cadence that was almost musical if you didn't think too hard about the content.
The content was incomprehensible.
He spoke of curves. Demand curves. Supply curves. Curves that shifted and curved and did things that curves had no business doing. He spoke of equilibrium, which was apparently a point where two lines met and everyone was happy, which was the opposite of what equilibrium meant in any other context. He spoke of marginal utility and diminishing returns and something called "price elasticity" that seemed to involve a lot of math that I did not know and did not want to know.
I stared at the page.
The words swam. The diagrams made no sense. The numbers—numbers, I had never had to think about numbers before, numbers were for mortals who needed to count their days and their possessions and their small, insignificant achievements—arranged themselves on the page like an army preparing for battle, and I was losing.
I tried to follow. I really did. I traced the lines on the graph with my finger, trying to understand which one was supply and which was demand and why they were crossing like swords instead of just staying in their own lanes like civilized concepts.
Professor Kang said something about "shifts in consumer preference."
I shifted in my seat.
Professor Kang said something about "market equilibrium."
I was no longer equilibrated. I was, in fact, deeply dis-equilibrated. My mortal brain—already struggling with the sheer volume of new information it had been forced to process over the past several days—was now attempting to understand concepts that the human Sera had apparently mastered years ago.
You got an A in calculus, Mina had said.
You got a scholarship, Dad had said.
You're the smart one, Jiyoung had said.
I was none of those things. I was a celestial being who had fallen from the heavens and landed in the body of someone who understood things that I did not, and now I was sitting in a lecture hall full of mortals who were nodding along to concepts that might as well have been written in a language I had never learned.
I gave up.
It was a conscious decision. A strategic retreat. There was no shame in admitting that a battle was unwinnable, and this battle—this battle of curves and numbers and things called "marginal costs"—was not one I could win. Not today. Not with this brain. Not with this body that remembered things I did not and did not remember things I needed.
I sat back in my seat.
I folded my hands on the desk.
And I stared.
It was a good stare. A strong stare. The kind of stare that had, in previous centuries, convinced entire courts that I was contemplating something profound when I was actually thinking about what I was going to eat later. The human Sera's face was not as intimidating as my celestial face had been—there was something about mortal features that made it difficult to convey the full weight of cosmic indifference—but I did my best.
I stared at the front of the room. I stared through the front of the room. I stared at the wall behind the front of the room, which was beige and unremarkable and did not require me to understand anything about price elasticity.
For approximately thirty seconds, it worked.
Professor Kang paused.
The room fell silent. The scratching of pens stopped. The quiet hum of whispered questions faded. Everyone was looking at me, which was not unusual—everyone had been looking at me since I walked in—but this was different. This was the kind of attention that came from a professor who had noticed something and was trying to decide what to do about it.
"Sera," Professor Kang said. "Do you need help?"
I looked at him.
He looked like Doctor Kim. He sounded like Doctor Kim. For all I knew, he was Doctor Kim, and the hospital visit had been an elaborate ruse designed to test my celestial patience.
I considered my options.
I could tell the truth. I could say I don't understand anything, I don't remember any of this, I am a celestial being who has been banished to this mortal form and I have no idea what you're talking about. This would have the advantage of being honest, but the disadvantage of being insane.
I could lie. I could say I'm fine, I understand perfectly, please continue. This would have the advantage of maintaining my dignity, but the disadvantage of being obviously false.
Or I could do something else.
"A being like me," I said, and my voice carried across the lecture hall with the clarity of a bell ringing in an empty cathedral, "does not ask for help."
The silence deepened.
Professor Kang's eyebrows rose slightly. I watched them rise. They rose in the exact same way Doctor Kim's eyebrows had risen when I told him I was a celestial being. I was beginning to suspect that all human professionals attended the same Eyebrow School.
I continued, because once I had started, there was no stopping. "Help, when it is required, must be given. It must be recognized as necessary by those who possess the wisdom to perceive need where it exists. To ask is to admit weakness. To give, when giving is appropriate, is to demonstrate understanding. Therefore—" I paused, letting my gaze sweep across the room, "—I do not ask. But I do not refuse."
The lecture hall was silent.
You could have heard a pin drop. You could have heard a feather land on a pin drop. You could have heard the concept of marginal utility pack its bags and leave the room.
Professor Kang removed his glasses. He polished them slowly. He put them back on.
This was also exactly what Doctor Kim had done.
I was becoming increasingly concerned that I was trapped in some kind of simulation.
"Minjae," Professor Kang said.
My blood went cold.
Minjae.
A note from B.R.LEE
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