Banished Divinity: Learning to be Human

One week.

One week of sitting in hard chairs and staring at incomprehensible symbols. One week of Professor Kang—who I was now convinced was either Doctor Kim’s clone or the same person leading a double life—droning on about curves that refused to curve in ways that made sense.

One week of Introduction to Sociology, which was apparently the study of how humans formed groups and then immediately began arguing about those groups, which was the least surprising thing I had learned since arriving in this world.

One week of this torture.

I sat in the cafeteria, my chin propped on my hand, my eyes fixed on the middle distance, my mind a vast and empty wasteland where thoughts went to die. Jiyoung and Haejin sat across from me, their voices rising and falling in the familiar rhythm of their conversation, their words washing over me like water over a stone that had long since given up on being worn smooth.

“—and then he said that the assignment was dueThursday, not Friday, and I almost—”

“Sera? Sera, are you listening?”

I was not listening.

I was contemplating the sheer, incomprehensiblestupidityof the human education system. Why did the human Sera want to put herself through this? Why had she spent years of her brief, flickering existence memorizing things that did not matter? Economics. Sociology. Something called “Cultural Anthropology” that appeared to be about why humans in different places did different things, which seemed obvious to anyone who had spent more than five minutes observing humans.

She had done thisvoluntarily.

She hadwantedthis.

She had climbed out windows and risked explosions to go to concerts, but she had also sat in these chairs and stared at these books and absorbed these words like a sponge absorbing water, and she hadlikedit.

I did not like it.

I hated it.

I hated the numbers that refused to arrange themselves in orderly rows. I hated the concepts that shifted and changed depending on which professor was explaining them. I hated the feeling of being small and stupid andlessthan I had been, trapped in a body that remembered things I did not and did not remember things I needed.

But I had to pass.

Mina had explained it to me on the third day, her voice unusually serious, her face unusually grave.

“If you fail,” she had said, “you lose the scholarship. If you lose the scholarship, you can’t afford tuition. If you can’t afford tuition, you have to drop out. If you drop out, Mum and Dad will be supportive but secretly devastated. And also—” She had paused, considering. “—your life is over.”

“My life is over,” I had repeated.

“Academically speaking. Socially speaking. Existentially speaking.” She had waved a hand vaguely. “It’s a whole thing. Just don’t fail, okay? Pretend you remember. Nod along. Smile sometimes. That’s what everyone else does.”

Nod along. Smile sometimes. Pretend.

This was the strategy I had adopted. When Professor Kang asked if I understood the concept of price elasticity, I nodded. When the sociology professor—a tiny woman with enormous glasses and a voice that could shatter glass—asked if I had completed the reading, I smiled. When anyone asked me anything about anything that required actual knowledge, I pretended.

It was exhausting.

But I was a celestial being. Failure was not an option. I would not fail for the human Sera, in case she came back one day. I would not fail for Mum and Dad, who looked at me with hope in their eyes every morning when I left for school. I would not fail for—

What if she never comes back?

The thought slid into my mind like a knife between ribs.

I sat up straighter.

What if the human Sera is gone? What if she fell from that window and hit her head and the explosion did something and she’s never coming back? What if I’m stuck here? What if this is permanent? What if I have to be Sera forever? What if I have to keep going to school forever? What if I have to take economics FOREVER?

My breathing quickened. My hands clenched on the table. The numbers swam before my eyes, even though there were no numbers in front of me. The curves curved. The concepts shifted. The world tilted.

What if I’m stuck here? What if I never get back? What if I have to be mortal for the rest of my existence? What if—

“Sera?”

Jiyoung’s voice cut through the spiral. She was leaning across the table, her round face creased with concern, her hand hovering near my arm like she wasn’t sure if touching me would help or make things worse.

“Sera, are you okay?”

I opened my mouth to say yes. To say I was fine. To say that I was a celestial being and celestial beings did not panic about hypothetical existential crises in the middle of cafeterias.

What came out instead was: “What if I’m stuck here forever and I never learn economics and I fail everything and I lose the scholarship and Mum and Dad are secretly devastated and my life is over and I have to be Sera forever and I never get back to the High Heavens and the Tribunal was right about me and I’m just—just a—a failure—”

Jiyoung and Haejin exchanged a look.

It was a look I had come to recognize over the past week. The Sera is being weird again look. The just let her work through it look. The this is her new normal and we’re going to pretend it’s fine look.

They had been remarkably adaptable, these two. When I had informed them on the second day that I was a celestial being banished from the High Heavens, they had nodded seriously and said “That makes sense” and then never mentioned it again. When I had stared at glowing food cabinet which I know now as a vending machine, for ten minutes trying to understand how it worked, they had stood beside me in patient silence until I figured out that you had to put round metal sliver things called coins in the slot and press the button. When I had called the cafeteria lady a “purveyor of acceptable sustenance” and bowed formally, they had simply pulled me into line and pretended nothing had happened.

They were, I was beginning to understand, very good friends.

“She’s doing the thing again,” Haejin murmured, her sharp eyes tracking my face.

“The spiral thing?” Jiyoung whispered back.

“The spiral thing.”

“Should we do something?”

“Just let her spiral. She always comes back.”

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