Kiya’s brows, as he stared into the pitch-black window, arched upward. He’d clutched the phone the whole call with a bloodless face; then, at some point, the corners of his mouth stretched long. Dropping a laugh like a lump of raw blood now and then, he slanted a vicious side-glance at Natalia, whose hands and feet were bound.

Still tied up with dried blood matted in her hair, she’d been given nothing but water for days and looked gaunt. He hadn’t even let her use the bathroom; she’d long since wet herself. Chains were doubled around her arms and legs.

At first she had tried everything—rage, threats, seduction. She had even spread her legs to lure him in, but escape was hopeless. No trick worked on a man who only stooped to gather Sonya’s fallen hair from the floor.

Being locked up with Kiya, who compulsively sank into prayer in a stink-soaked shack reeking of urine, was torture in itself. Sapped of strength, Natalia was already half resigned.

Several times a day, Kiya called the woman who had stolen her face, then hurled the phone; one day he wrecked the kitchen sink entirely. She had to curl up against the flying shards.

Maybe something went wrong. Then Natalia gave a dry, cutting laugh. Useless. Whatever that woman does—stealing my face and my op—there’s no way it ends well. Know your place and hurry back, you crazy bitch. Grinding her teeth, Natalia hid her malice. In that moment, a call came in.

“Yes.”

Natalia watched closely as Kiya answered with a curt yes. The smile on his face suggested news he’d been waiting for, yet it was unreadable. When the call ended, Natalia swallowed.

He straightened the collar of his cassock and walked to the kitchen. Bent at the waist, Kiya stuck out a bright red tongue and gulped at the water ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) rushing from the tap.

Water ran messily over his face, but he didn’t mind. He simply wiped the dripping and quietly dragged a chair over.

“...Who was that call from?”

Natalia asked, feigning nonchalance. Sitting across from her, Kiya caught her chin in one hand and turned her head left and right without a shred of care. The touch was mineral-cold.

“Nngh...! I asked you who called. Was it that woman?”

“Our Sonya seems far superior to you.”

“What?”

“She succeeded.”

“......!”

“They say the two of them have already been stuck together for more than five days.”

T—that can’t be... Her eyes widened.

“Solzhenitsyn the great is keeping ‘Natalia’ tucked away in the bedroom and won’t let her set a foot outside. Your face wouldn’t be any use to her now. That son of a bitch must have sniffed her out somehow.”

Shoving her jaw away, Kiya smiled like a hook.

“Think she got pregnant?”

The way his frozen face slowly warped was chilling. Watching his instability, Natalia pressed her lips together.

Among the many agencies that branched from the KGB, there was likely no one who didn’t know Father Kiya. Since long ago, the Sakhalin monastery had functioned as a secret KGB cell; even now, missions were passed, information traded, weapons dealt there. The cult leader’s seat was vacant, but Kiya was in truth the power in the monastery.

“Then what am I?”

Sonya wouldn’t abandon me... She told me to wait quietly....

The way he muttered that was odd. He’d always been impish and debauched, yet she’d heard he’d been devout since childhood under the monastery’s teaching.

What he followed was Russia; what he believed was God. What was that woman to him? The sight of him, head tilted in a daze, looked uncharacteristically hollow. Sensing a sudden crack, Natalia started working her mind.

“Were you lovers with her?”

Dragged in and attacked out of the blue, she didn’t know their relationship well. But you can feel things. This was the chance. She had to push harder while Kiya was shaken.

“Lovers?”

Repeating the word, the priest licked his smooth teeth with his tongue and smiled.

“That’s far too thin.”

“......”

“We were something even death couldn’t part.”

His glare was savage. Without blinking, Kiya began rattling off Scripture.

Romans 8:38—neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything in creation, can separate us. Under the odd pressure, Natalia swallowed.

“K—Kiya. If Solzhenitsyn’s really let his guard down, I can get back in. I can take the hurdles she broke through and keep going. You—go anywhere with that woman! Lock her up like you did me and have your fill together!”

“Tried it. For half a year.”

“What?”

With a dead face, Kiya hauled up the clanking chains.

“But it wasn’t like before.”

He had stayed pressed to Sonya all day, but the old sense of being one never came. Bringing Sonya at last, alone, he had thought he’d gained everything; the more time passed, the lonelier and emptier he felt. The longing he thought would be filled perfectly by her only faded, the hole deepening.

Plainly changed, Sonya, floundering in gloom, always looked up at the sun. Half a year was short, yes. But would ten years be any different?

“Do you... want to be happy with that woman?”

Licking parched lips, Natalia probed. The blank page of his face crumpled. As if hearing something absurd, Kiya bent down to meet her eyes.

“No. It has to be forever.”

His inky pupils took on a slow gleam. I don’t need happiness. I only need forever—only Sonya, forever. No more partings, no more longing. Let there be no one in this world but the two of us.

Killing those who get in the way is easy. For Kiya, raised a boogeyman, it had always been the easiest, neatest option. But as he’d learned these last six months, Sonya could not be had that way.

If he exposed that the missing Yuri Solzhenitsyn had in fact been an NIS operative in secret for over a decade—would Sonya come to me? Kiya twisted the chains tight in his grip and squeezed his eyes shut.

No—Sonya would gouge my eyes out on the spot. Lee Wooshin would be removed, yes, but he would lose Sonya too. A defeated laugh leaked out.

Kiya, one day someone will appear to pull you out of that place from back then. Someone to haul you up from the pit.

No. That pit is our precious home. Our origin. But if you’ve found a world overflowing with light—

Then I’ll take you down, farther than now, down and down, and hide. I’ll flee deeper underground, away from that clinging sunlight. I’ll hold you tight and fall, rather, into the bottomless pit.

If it’s a place where only the two of us can exist.

Even if that place is... hell.

Kiya slowly removed the cross necklace that had felt like a second skin.

“Get a grip. There’s no ‘forever’ in this world. Is that bitch your god? Ack—!”

Kiya jammed the cross into Natalia’s mouth as she sneered.

“Ahh. Maybe so—maybe that girl was my cross.”

“Ugh—ngh...!” 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

“And that’s why, from the beginning, I’ve wanted to tear agents like you to pieces.”

When he pressed the tip of the cross, a blade sprang from inside. Her mucosa split; blood seeped.

Gak—gak—! Red drops speckled Kiya’s pale face. Even thrashing, Natalia stared wide. Her words mangled to slurry, she still wouldn’t yield.

“B—but God’s the one you meet by dying. Ptoo—!”

Clang—the cross hit the floor. Kiya paused a beat, pupils sliding slow, then suddenly brightened and rose to his feet.

“Where are you going—you’re letting me out first, you son of a bitch!”

Natalia shouted with a frayed voice, but he didn’t so much as hear her; he only fixed his disheveled attire.

“I’m going to fetch her.”

For real, this time.

To a place no one can find.

Leaving Lee Wooshin alone in this world—that was his new move.

***

In the night when all the servants slept, Wooshin—preparing for anything—pulled a shapka of fur down over her head, fitted a thick winter mask to cover her face, and, practically embracing her, led her to the lakeside. He dropped to one knee and laced skates onto Seoryeong’s feet.

“What if I fall in again?”

“It’s frozen harder now than then. You’ll be fine.”

“I’ve never skated.”

“Our Han Seoryeong learns anything in no time.”

“That’s true, but...”

Even as she hesitated, she agreed, and Wooshin snorted a laugh.

“Still, let’s not get cocky. You’ve lost a lot of muscle since I last saw you. Do you know how hard I had to bite my tongue to stomach that shitty feeling while training you? I raised you into that healthy body with ointment on my mangled tongue every night, and now it’s all soft, soft.”

“That much is...”

“Training or no, this time I’m really taking my hands off.”

“......”

“Stay out of the defense industry altogether.”

He took Seoryeong’s hands and stepped onto the lake. At once—shhk, shhk—he skimmed smoothly over the ice; Seoryeong, by contrast, wobbled for balance. But keeping balance might be what she did best, and she soon grew used to the knife-edge thrill.

She let her body follow his lead. With their hands gripped tight, even Russia’s winter wind felt fresh and bright.

“Ah...!”

Then the skate’s toe caught—tack—on a rough patch of ice grain. “Up we go,” Wooshin grunted, cinching her waist and spinning them round and round. Teetering on the brink of a spill, Seoryeong clutched his forearm and just managed to right herself.

She tugged down the stifling mask and poured out a white breath. Pressed close, looking only at each other, it felt oddly like they were the only two people left in the world.