Chap 16 : The Gate I Refused to Cross
The school was a fortress.
I stood before its gates, my assigned burden—a “school bag,” as Mina had called it—hanging from one shoulder. It was an unnecessarily complicated contraption of straps and compartments, designed to carry objects of questionable importance such as books, notebooks, and a device called a calculator, which I had been assured I “definitely knew how to use” because I had previously achieved something called an "A" in calculus.
I did not remember this.
I suspected deception.
My feet remained planted on the ground as though I were preparing for a siege.
The gates before me were large. Polished. Constructed from some hardened material that reflected light in a way that suggested both durability and unnecessary pride. They were ornate—not excessively so, but enough to imply that someone, at some point, had attempted to make a statement about knowledge, discipline, or prestige.
Instead, they resembled the entrance to a minor celestial court.
A disappointing one.
Beyond them, structures rose toward the sky—rectangular, functional, built from a combination of aged stone and newer reflective surfaces. There was no elegance to them. No power. No sense of reverence.
Just purpose.
And noise.
Groups of young humans—students, Mina had called them—moved in clusters across the open grounds. They laughed. They shouted. They spoke over one another with alarming enthusiasm, producing a chaotic symphony of sound that crashed into my ears with far more force than I felt was necessary.
I stood there, unmoving.
Observing.
Assessing.
This was not a place of quiet learning.
This was a battlefield. This was Korea University.
This was where the human Sera had earned her scholarship. Where she had studied and laughed and made friends and, presumably, learned things that were considered important by people who considered things important.
This was where I was supposed to be.
Mum and Dad had driven me here that morning, their faces a careful mixture of hope and anxiety that I was beginning to recognize as their default expression around me. They had offered to walk me in. To show me where to go. To stand beside me while I navigated the strange territory of a place I had supposedly known for years.
“No,” I had said, perhaps too quickly. “I am a celestial being. I can handle walking into a school. Humans should not follow me.”
Mum and Dad had exchanged that look. The one that said our daughter is having another weird tantrum but we’ve learned to pick our battles.
“If you’re sure,” Mum had said.
“I am sure.”
“Call us if you need anything,” Dad had added. “Mina taught you how to use the phone, right?”
“She demonstrated its functions for five hours yesterday. Its function has been implanted in my celestial mind effectively.”
“So you know how to call?”
“I know that pressing certain combinations of buttons will produce your voices. Whether this is intentional or merely a fortunate accident remains to be seen.”
Dad had opened his mouth and seem to want to explain the function of the handphone. Mum had grabbed his arm and pulled him back toward the car.
“Call us,” she had said firmly. “We’ll pick you up at four. Don’t talk to strangers. Well—” She had glanced at the school, at the students streaming through the gates. “Don’t talk to strangers who aren’t your friends. And if anyone gives you trouble, you tell them your mother will come down there and—”
“Mum,” I had said.
“Yes?”
“You are doing the thing where you say too many words.”
She had blinked. Then, slowly, she had smiled. “That’s something you used to say to me. When you were little. I’d walk you to school and I’d keep talking and you’d say ‘Mum, you’re doing the thing again.’”
“I do not remember that.”
“I know.” Her smile had wobbled, but held. “But you said it anyway.”
And then they had driven away, leaving me alone at the gates of an institution I did not remember, holding a bag I did not know how to use, wearing clothes that Mina had picked out for me that morning with the comment “just wear this, it’s what you always wear, don’t make this weird.”
I had stood there at the gate for approximately five minutes, watching the students stream past me. Some glanced in my direction. Most did not. I was, apparently, not remarkable. Just another girl with a bag and a face that was trying very hard to look like she knew where she was going.
I did not know where I was going.
I did not know where anything was.
I did not know how to be a student or a friend or a daughter or any of the things that this body had been before I fell into it.
All I knew was that there was a gate, and beyond that gate was a place where the human Sera had belonged, and I—
I was trying to put one foot over the line where the gate began.
Just one foot.
Just to see what would happen.
But the foot would not move. I was an ancient, celestial being who remembered what it was to be feared and powerful and above—had decided that stepping through that gate was a kind of surrender. An admission that I was no longer Seraphyne, daughter of heaven and hell, but Sera, college student, friend to Jiyoung and Haejin, debtor of yogurt.
I was still standing there, one foot hovering, when something slammed into my back.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”
I stumbled forward, my foot finally crossing the threshold, my arms windmilling as I fought to keep my balance. I whirled around, my hands raised, my face arranged into the expression that had sent demons scattering across seven realms—
And found myself staring at a boy.
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