Sana was ninety-nine point nine percent sure she was dreaming.
The reasons she was so certain were, first, because she was standing in a bright shaft of sunlight—the kind of blinding clear sun that never shone on her drizzly new hometown in Dobong-gu, South Korea—and second, she was looking at her Halmeoni. Halmeoni had been dead for six years now, so that was solid evidence toward the dream theory.
Halmeoni hadn’t changed much; her face looked just the same as Sana remembered it. The skin was soft and withered, bent into a thousand tiny creases that clung gently to the bone underneath. Like a dried apricot, but with a puff of thick white hair standing out in a cloud around it.
Their mouths—Halmeoni’s a wizened pucker—spread into the same surprised half-smile at exactly the same time. Apparently, Halmeoni hadn’t been expecting to see her, either.
Sana was about to ask her a question; she had so many—What was Halmeoni doing here in her dream? What had she been up to in the past six years? Was Hal-abeoji okay, and had they found each other, wherever they were?—but Halmeoni opened her mouth when Sana did, so she stopped to let her go first. Halmeoni paused, too, and then they both smiled at the little awkwardness.
"Sana?"
It wasn’t Halmeoni who called her name, and they both turned to see the addition to their small reunion. Sana didn’t have to look to know who it was; this was a voice she would know anywhere—know, and respond to, whether she was awake or asleep… or even dead, she’d bet.
The voice Sana would walk through fire for—or, less dramatically, slosh every day through the cold and endless rain for.
Tzuyu.
Even though Sana was always thrilled to see her—conscious or otherwise—and even though she was almost positive that she was dreaming, she panicked as Tzuyu walked toward them through the glaring sunlight.
She panicked because Halmeoni didn’t know that Sana was in love with a vampire—nobody knew that—so how was she supposed to explain the fact that the brilliant sunbeams were shattering off Tzuyu’s skin into a thousand rainbow shards like she was made of crystal or diamond?
Well, Halmeoni, you might have noticed that my girlfriend glitters. It’s just something she does in the sun. Don’t worry about it…
What was Tzuyu doing? The whole reason she lived in Dobong-gu, the rainiest place in the world, was so she could be outside in the daytime without exposing her family’s secret. Yet here she was, strolling gracefully toward Sana—with the most beautiful smile on her angel’s face—as if Sana were the only one here.
In that second, Sana wished she was not the one exception to Tzuyu’s mysterious talent; she usually felt grateful that she was the only person whose thoughts Tzuyu couldn’t hear just as clearly as if they were spoken aloud. But now, she wished Tzuyu could hear her, too, so that she could hear the warning Sana was screaming in her head.
Sana shot a panicked glance back at Halmeoni and saw that it was too late. Halmeoni was just turning to stare back at her, her eyes as alarmed as Sana’s.
Tzuyu—still smiling so beautifully that Sana’s heart felt like it was going to swell up and burst through her chest—put her arm around Sana’s shoulder and turned to face her grandmother.
Halmeoni’s expression surprised Sana. Instead of looking horrified, she was staring at her sheepishly, as if waiting for a scolding. And she was standing in such a strange position—one arm held awkwardly away from her body, stretched out and then curled around the air. Like she had her arm around someone Sana couldn’t see, someone invisible…
