Banished Divinity: Learning to be Human

The next morning, I came downstairs with the weight of approximately four hours of sleep pressing down on my shoulders. Moo Moo had left sometime before dawn, his small green form slipping out the window like a thought dissolving into daylight. I had lain in bed for another hour, staring at the ceiling, replaying the events of the night—the ghost, the revelation, the impossible fact that the human Sera was still here, watching, waiting, needing my help.

I needed that dark, inky liquid—looked exactly like the liquid droppings of some deep-sea cryptid, which I know now is coffee. I refused to drink it at first, until Tangled Menace tricked me by claiming she’d scored it from a holy relic called the “coffee maker.” I nearly wept with joy. A divine being on the premises? Making coffee?

Or tea, she also said—apparently brewed from the sacred springs of the Divine Kettle and the Holy Bag of Leaves. Or whatever the heck humans chug to make their brains resemble functioning organs before noon. Tangled Menace also mentioned that mostly holy relic called the Caffeine is “the only thing keeping existence from being a complete nightmare,” and for the first time, I felt that in my soul—right alongside my sudden, desperate need to worship a kitchen appliance.

-

The house was quiet as I turned toward the kitchen. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that made my newly mortal instincts prickle with awareness. No Mum clattering pots. No Dad humming off-key. No Mina's pencil scratching against paper.

Just silence.

And then—

"Good morning!"

I jumped.

My hand flew to my chest. My heart—that traitorous mortal organ—slammed against my ribs like a caged animal. The cup I had been reaching for slipped from my fingers and clattered into the sink with a sound that echoed through the empty house.

Human Sera was sitting at the kitchen table.

She was more solid today. Less translucent. The morning light coming through the window passed through her, yes, but there was colour in her cheeks now, definition in her features. She wore the same concert t-shirt and ripped jeans, her hair in the same messy ponytail, and she was grinning at me with the expression of someone who had been waiting for this exact reaction.

"What the seven realms of hell?" I demanded.

"Well, good morning to you too." She propped her chin on her hand, her elbow going right through the table before she yanked it back with a wince. "Still working on the solid thing. But yes! Good news. We don't need Moo Moo for me to be visible to you anymore. He kind of... zapped me into full form? Or semi-full form? Form-adjacent? I'm not sure. The point is, you can see me. All the time. Without him here to broadcast. Which is convenient, don't you think?"

I stared at her.

I had not had caffeine yet. I had not had tea. I had not had anything that would make my mortal brain capable of processing the fact that there was a ghost sitting at my kitchen table, talking to me about her form-adjacent state, as if this were a normal thing that happened to normal mortals in their normal mortal houses.

"I came down this morning," she continued, apparently unbothered by my silence, "when Mum and Dad and Mina were up. None of them saw me. Which is weird! I waved my hands in front of Mum's face. I sat on Mina's drawing. I stood behind Dad while he was making coffee and narrated everything he was doing. Nothing. They didn't see me at all. I'm invisible to everyone except you."

I turned away from her. I walked to the counter. I picked up the cup that had fallen into the sink, rinsed it, dried it, poured myself a glass of water from the pitcher in the refrigerator. My hands were steady. My breathing was controlled.

I was a celestial being, and celestial beings did not let ghosts in their kitchens disturb their equilibrium.

I sat at the dining table.

Human Sera followed me. Of course she followed me. She reached for the chair across from me—her hand passed through it once, then twice, then three times. Her face scrunched in concentration. Her fingers wiggled. The chair remained stubbornly unhooked.

On the fourth attempt, I sighed.

I reached across the table. I hooked my foot under the chair leg and pulled it out with a scrape that echoed through the empty kitchen. The chair slid into place, facing me, waiting.

Human Sera blinked at me. Then, slowly, a smile spread across her face—a real smile, warm and surprised and just a little bit sheepish.

"Thanks," she said, then plonked herself down like a sack of sarcasm preparing for a very long, emotionally draining conversation. But apparently, her butt had other plans—because she immediately slipped right through the chair like a greased eel in a loose-fitting suit. Deciding that furniture was clearly overrated, she gave up and just floated instead, hovering there with the casual smugness of someone who has abandoned physics and regrets nothing.

"Anyway," she said, "Mum and Dad said to let you sleep in. Since you're on a day of rest from Doctor Kim. They left early for the restaurant. Mina went to her studio. So, it's just us. Which is perfect, because we have so much to talk about. First of all, we need to figure out a study schedule. I was thinking we could start with economics since that's your weakest subject—no offense—and then move to sociology, and then—"

She kept talking.

I drank my water. Obviously, nothing went in my celestial brain.

She talked about supply and demand curves. She talked about the elasticity of something called "consumer confidence." She talked about the difference between microeconomics and macroeconomics, which apparently were two different things that both made no sense. She talked about the sociology of family structures and the anthropology of ritual and the history of something called "the Korean economic miracle" which sounded like it should have involved actual miracles but apparently did not.

I counted the seconds.

Sixty. One hundred twenty. One hundred eighty.

She was still talking.

Two hundred forty. Two humdred forty- one.Three hundred. Three hundred sixty.

Her voice was a river, and I was a stone at the bottom, letting it flow over me without absorbing a single drop.

Four hundred twenty. Four hundred eighty. Five hundred forty.

"—and then Professor Kang said that the midterm would cover chapters seven through twelve, which means we need to focus on the elasticity section because that's where most people lose points, but honestly the real challenge is going to be the—"

Five hundred sixty. Five hundred eighty. Six hundred.

"—so if we start with the basics and then build up to the more complicated concepts, I think you'll be fine. I mean, you're a celestial being. You've mastered concepts that would shatter mortal minds. How hard can economics be, right? Right? Sera? Sera, are you listening?"

I shook my head. "Not a single word."

She stared at me.

Her mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. "I've been talking for thirty minutes."

"Yes."

"Thirty minutes about economics."

"Yes."

"And you didn't hear anything I said."

"Correct."

She slumped onto the floor. Her form flickered slightly, like a candle guttering in a draft. "That's... that's a lot of information to process. That I just gave. For thirty minutes. That you didn't hear."

"I need to get out," I said.

Her head snapped up. "What?"

"I need to leave this house. I need to go somewhere that is not here. I need to do something that is not listening to you talk about economics."

She brightened. Immediately. Her whole form seemed to glow with the force of her enthusiasm. "Great! I can join you!"

I stared at her. "What?"

"Yup! Seems Moo Moo's zapping gift was better than we thought. I can fly anywhere I want. Anywhere. I went to Mum and Dad's restaurant this morning, just to see them. I floated through the walls. It was amazing. I've never been able to float through walls before. I mean, I've never been dead before, so there's a lot of firsts happening, but this one is definitely in the top five."

I stood. I walked to the front door. I put on my shoes. I grabbed my bag. I did all of this while Human Sera floated beside me, narrating every movement with the enthusiasm of a sports commentator describing a particularly exciting play.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

I paused. My hand was on the doorknob. My shoes were on. My bag was on my shoulder. I had a day of rest from school, a ghost attached to my consciousness, and a sudden, unexpected thought.

"I've never seen the restaurant," I said.

Human Sera went very still. "What?"

"Mum and Dad's restaurant. I've never been there. I've heard them talk about it. I know they work there. But I've never seen it. I don't know what it looks like. I don't know what they do there. I don't know—" I stopped. "—I don't know that part of them."

She was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice was different. Softer. "You want to see it."

"Yes."

"You want to see where they work. Where they've worked since I was little. Where they built everything from nothing."

"Yes."

She looked at me. Really looked. And something in her face shifted—something that might have been surprise, might have been recognition, might have been the first stirrings of something I didn't have a word for.

"Let's go," she said. "I'll show you."