Banished Divinity: Learning to be Human

The Director's office had been surprisingly anticlimactic.

After nearly an hour of Yuna's parents shouting, Yuna crying on cue, and five bruised girls giving conflicting testimonies—one of them claiming I had "used witchcraft" and another insisting I had "multiplied into three Seras during the fight"—the Director had made his ruling.

No fault found. Self-defence. Case closed.

Yuna's mother looked like she had swallowed a lemon. Her father's face had turned the colour of a bruised eggplant. The Director had then informed them that Yuna would be transferred to her aunt's care for the remainder of the semester.

"Effective immediately," he had added, and the satisfaction in his voice was barely concealed.

Now, the cold night air hit my face as Mum, Dad, and I walked across the dark campus toward the parking lot. The sky was heavy with clouds. The streetlights cast small islands of yellow light on the pavement.

"Well," Mum said, wrapping her coat tighter around herself, "that was certainly an evening. Your dad almost punched that man."

"I did not almost punch anyone," Dad exclaimed.

"You clenched your fist, dear. Three times."

"Three times is not 'almost.'"

"It is when your vein was visible from across the room."

I walked between them, saying nothing. My mind was still spinning. I had expected punishment. Expulsion, perhaps. Divine intervention, like the earth splitting open and swallowing Yuna and her friends down into a sea of fire and thick liquid rocks. And I, the Celestial Being standing over the edge laughing at them with satisfaction as they burn in the thick liquid rocks. But, Instead, I had walked out with a formal apology from the school and a recommendation letter for "outstanding moral courage."

Celestial beings did not get recommendation letters.

"Wait," Human Sera said, appearing beside me. She looked different. Brighter. Like someone had turned up her contrast. "That's it? No dramatic expulsion? No final battle in the parking lot? I was promised drama."

"You were promised nothing," I whispered.

"Who are you talking to?" Mum asked.

"The wind," I said. "I was talking to the wind."

Mum and Dad exchanged a look—the same look they had always been exchanging for months now, the one that said our daughter has become strange again and again but we love her anyway.

We reached the car. Dad unlocked the doors. I was about to get in when a voice called out from across the parking lot.

"Sera!"

I turned.

Jaehyun was jogging toward us, a gym bag slung over his shoulder, his hair damp like he had just showered. He was wearing a dark tracksuit with the university's judo club logo on the chest.

"Oh," Human Sera breathed. Her hands flew to her cheeks. "Oh. Oh no. He's in his workout clothes. He's all sweaty and handsome. This is not fair. This is actively unfair. Sera, look at his arms. LOOK AT THEM."

"I am not looking at his arms."

"YOU ARE LOOKING AT HIS ARMS."

“No! its unnecessary.” But I look anyway, out of research purposes.

Mum's eyes lit up. Dad's eyes narrowed into slits so thin they almost disappeared.

"A friend?" Mum asked, her voice suddenly very interested.

"Yes," I said. "He's a friend."

"A friend," Dad repeated. The word came out like a threat.

Jaehyun reached us, slightly out of breath. He stopped a few feet away and bowed politely to my parents. "Good evening, ma'am, sir. I'm Jaehyun. A friend of Sera's. I study at the same university as Sera."

Dad grunted. It was not a friendly grunt. It was the kind of grunt a cave lion makes when someone approaches its den.

Mum smiled warmly. "Nice to meet you, Jaehyun. We were just leaving."

"I won't keep her long," Jaehyun said. He turned to me, and his face softened. "Sera. Do you have a minute?"

I nodded and stepped a few metres away from the car—exactly far enough that I could still see Dad trying to listen to us.

"Don't go too far," Dad shouted. Mum pulled him back into the car from the passenger seat.

"I've been trying to reach you," Jaehyun said. "You haven't replied to any of my messages."

"I have been busy," I said.

"Busy staying away from me, apparently."

"Among other things."

Human Sera floated beside Jaehyun, circling him like a very enthusiastic ghost vulture. I had come to know mortal animal terms thanks to Tangled Menace and her drawings.

"Oh, how I wish I was in my body right now," she said, pressing her ghostly hands together. "I would tell you how much I really like you. You are such a great guy! I would marry you, but some idiot over there—" She pointed at me. "—said she would not say the words for me. I am so sad. I can't even say anything to you. Do you know how frustrating this is? Do you?!"

I ignored her. I had become very good at ignoring her.

"So," Jaehyun said, shoving his free hand into his pocket, "what are you doing here so late? With your parents?"

I opened my mouth to answer, but before I could, the doors of the main building burst open.

Yuna and her five friends stumbled out, followed by Yuna's parents. The five girls looked terrible. Bruises. Limps. One of them was holding an ice pack to her jaw. Another was walking with a slight hobble; her ankle wrapped in a tensor bandage.

Yuna herself was crying. Her mascara had run down her cheeks in black rivers. Her perfect hair was a mess. She looked nothing like the girl who had walked into the lecture hall that morning with her chin held high and her army behind her.

Jaehyun's eyes went wide. He stared at the battered girls. Then at me. Then back at the girls.

"What the hell happened to them?" he whispered.

"Karma," I said.

"Karma has fists?"

"Karma has very good footwork."

Human Sera stopped circling. Her face went pale? Can a ghost face be paler when they are pale already? Interesting. I shall put it in my Ghost/Human spirit observation list #359 or was it #459, ok whatever.

"Oh no. Oh no no no. Yuna is looking this way. She's looking at Jaehyun. She's—"

Yuna spotted Jaehyun.

Her crying intensified. She broke into a run—a surprisingly fast run for someone wearing heeled boots—and launched herself at him.

"JAEHYUN!"

She wrapped her arms around his neck and sobbed into his chest.

Human Sera's form flickered like a light bulb about to explode. "TAKE YOUR HANDS OFF MY MAN!!" she shrieked. "OFF! NOW! I WILL HAUNT YOUR FAMILY FOR THREE GENERATIONS!"

Jaehyun stood frozen, his arms raised awkwardly at his sides, his gym bag dangling from his hand like a confused pendulum. He looked like a man who had been attacked by an emotional octopus.

I heard Mum and Dad gasped in shocked loudly even when they are in the car, watching, with the doors closed. While I stood there, one eyebrow raised, watching the scene with the detached curiosity of a naturalist observing a particularly dramatic wildlife documentary.

"Sera, coming back to the car?" Dad called from the car. His voice was low. Dangerous.

Mum pulled him back again.

"A complicated question," I shouted back. "I will answer it later.”

"Sera." Mum's voice was softer but no less pointed. "Take your time. Is that his girlfriend?"

"Not by my observation."

Yuna finally pulled back, still gripping Jaehyun's arms. "Jaehyun! I'm so glad you're here!" She hiccupped. "Sera—Sera hit all of us! And because of her, I'm being taken out of the school! I have to live with my aunt! She is the cause of all of this!"

She pointed a shaking finger at me. Her tears continued to flow. It was an impressive performance. Almost award-worthy.

"I am standing right here," I said. "I can hear you."

"Good! You should hear how much I hate you!"

"Noted."

Jaehyun looked at Yuna. Then at me. Then back at Yuna. His expression had changed. The softness was gone. In its place was something cold. Something sharp.

I recognized that look. It was the look mortals got when they realized they had been played. It was the same look I had seen on the faces of demons right before I banished them to the void.

A mouse realizing the cheese was a trap, I thought. A fish seeing the hook too late. A student opening their exam and discovering the questions are not from the textbook they studied.

I added that last one as one of my many celestial observations.

"I think I should go—" I said slowly.

"No," Jaehyun said. He pulled his arms free from Yuna's grip and grabbed my hands. "No, wait. I need to ask you something."

"OMG!! He is holding my hand," Human Sera screamed. "I mean, it's yours, but it's my body, so I'm declaring it's mine!! Don't you dare wash that hand for the next few days. Remember how it feels? I'm so gonna interrogate you later at home."

Ouch! My ears.

Yuna blinked. "Ask her? What could you possibly need to ask her?"

Jaehyun turned to face Yuna fully. His voice, when he spoke, was the temperature of outer space. "Minjae told me what happened today."

Yuna's face went pale.

"He told me everything," Jaehyun continued. "How you and your friends have been targeting Sera for months. How you cornered her in the lecture hall and places with no witnesses. How she fought back because she had no other choice." He looked Yuna up and down, and there was nothing but disgust in his eyes. "I told you to stay away from her the last time. And you didn't. Now you got beaten, and you should be ashamed of yourself."

Yuna's lips trembled. "Jaehyun, I—I didn't—"

"You did." He glanced up and saw Yuna's parents watching from a few feet away, her father's face reddening, her mother's mouth a tight line of disapproval. He looked back down at Yuna. "I am not interested in you. You have this illusion that I liked you. I don't. I never did. Now, fuck off."

The word landed like a stone dropped into still water.

Yuna stared at him. Her mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. No sound came out.

Human Sera was clutching her ghostly chest. "I think I'm in love with him even more now. Did you hear that? He said 'fuck off' to her. For me. Well, for you. But really for me because I'm you but also not you. This is complicated."

Jaehyun stepped back, creating distance. He didn't push Yuna. He didn't need to. She was already crumbling.

Yuna's face cycled through emotions—shock, anger, humiliation, more anger, and finally, a cold, burning hatred that she turned toward me.

"This is not over yet," she said, her voice low and venomous. "You will pay. By blood."

"By blood?" I repeated. "That is very dramatic. Do you have a specific timeline for this payment? I have exams next week."

Yuna's eye twitched. She turned on her heel and marched toward her family's car—an obscenely expensive vehicle that probably cost more than my parents' house.

The engine roared. The tires screeched. The car sped out of the parking lot without a single backward glance.

When the taillights disappeared around the corner, the silence returned.

Jaehyun let out a long breath. He ran a hand through his damp hair. "Well," he said, "that's the last of her. I hope."