Banished Divinity: Learning to be Human

After three days of staying at home and contemplating whether I should actually go—and by "contemplating," I mean I thought so hard my head hurt and then I went back to sleep. When i finally felt functional, I had finally made a decision.

I would go.

Not because I wanted to sleep on the ground. Not because I wanted to experience the horror of a hole-bathroom. Not because I wanted to be eaten alive by bugs that had probably been waiting for me since the dawn of time.

But because I had promised.

And celestial beings do not break promises.

Except for that one time in the seventh dimension when I promised to spare a demon's life and then didn't. But that demon had been very annoying. And it had bad breath. So it didn't count.

Human Sera had been surprisingly quiet during those three days.

Well, actually, she had spoken. Just not to my face.

Mostly, I heard her from the living room, cackling at Mina's drawings—" Why does this character have such a long neck, Mina? is he a giraffe? is this a giraffe romance?"—and laughing at Dad doing something silly, like crying as he recounted the tragic tale of his baby girl holding hands with a boy.

Which, in my defense, I did not do. My hand had simply experienced a sudden physical connection with Minjae's hand, and the connection happened to be... hand-shaped. It was not intentional. It was not romantic. It was... gravitational. Or something.

"HOLDING HANDS?!" Human Sera had shrieked from the living room. "Dad, we did not hold hands! it was a mortal coincidence! a fluke of fate! "

Then she had laughed so hard she fell through the floor.

I could also hear her laughing at Mum smacking Dad with her slipper—the famous slipper, the weapon of mass domestic correction—and at Mina when Mina tried to give "killing vibes" to Minjae and Jaehyun, who had come by a day later to not only pass me the tents but also to "check on me."

"Check on sera?!" Mina had yelled from the front door. " You two dicks just want to steal my sister's 'V' again!!"

Human Sera had screamed so loud at that accusation that I felt my ears bleed. " I am a virgin! I am pure! I am the purest ghost alive! well, dead! well, undead! I am—"

Dad had started growling—a sound I had never heard him make before and hoped never to hear again. "MINA, go get my newly bought knives!"

"The kitchen ones or the hunting ones?"

"BOTH!"

Then—smack, smack, smack—the slipper of justice had spoken.

I heard Minjae and Jaehyun both gulp in what I assumed was mortal terror.

"Ignore these two imbeciles," Mum had said sweetly, probably smiling her eye-disappearing smile. "I will deal with them later. Sera is resting and has been for two days, so this is not a good time. But I will pass the tents to her."

---

In the end, the tents were never passed over.

Because Minjae and Jaehyun—both from very well-to-do families that probably had gold toilets and bathrooms named after people—had decided to buy a huge tent. A tent so large that all six of us could fit inside.

All six of us, including Human Sera, who was now twirling around inside the tent like a very excited firefly.

"OH MY GOD!!" she shrieked, her translucent form bouncing off the canvas walls. "This tent is huge! It looks like a mini apartment! Look at the bed! The bed is so fluffy! I want to sleep on it! I can't sleep! I'm dead! But I want to try!"

She zoomed over to the corner. "Oh my god, there is a movie system?! Who brings a movie system camping?! Rich people, that's who! OMG! OMG! There is actually a toilet! A real toilet! With flushing and everything! And—" She gasped so loudly I thought she might inhale her own ghost. "—A SHOWER! They can actually take showers! This is not camping! This is a hotel! A hotel in the woods! I am moving in! I am never leaving!"

Jiyoung and Haejin stood beside me like mother hens protecting their most precious chick. Both of them were eyeing the boys with deep suspicion.

"They just want fresh meat," Jiyoung whispered to me.

"Fresh meat?" I whispered back.

"You. You are the fresh meat. They are wolves. We are your shepherds."

"I am a celestial being. I do not need shepherds. I need a better toothbrush."

"You need protection," Haejin whispered on my other side.

"I need to not be treated like a baby."

"Too late. You fainted. You are officially a baby until further notice," Jiyoung announced.

Haejin nodded solemnly. "Baby status. It's in the friend code. We don't make the rules."

I sighed.

But I also noticed that both of them had sent me over forty messages each after I fainted. Forty. With lots of emojis. And exclamation marks. And threats to Minjae's life if he had caused it.

They were annoying.

But they meant well.

Maybe this is what friends are, I thought. People who treat you like a baby when you don't need it and then send you forty messages when you do.

---

After the tent was set up—which took approximately three hours because Minjae and Jaehyun kept arguing about which pole went where, and Jiyoung kept calling them both idiots, and Haejin kept taking pictures for evidence—the lecturers and faculty personnel decided to gather everyone around a campfire.

It was... nice.

The fire crackled. The stars came out. Someone brought marshmallows, which I learned were not, in fact, small pillows for marsh spirits, but rather delicious puffs of sugar that melted in your mouth and made you forget all your problems.

I laughed.

Actually laughed.

Not a celestial chuckle. Not a polite "I am observing mortal humor" exhale. A real laugh. The kind that made my stomach hurt and my eyes water and my face do weird things that were probably not dignified.

Everyone was enjoying themselves.

But I could also feel eyes on me.

Jealous eyes.

Because our tent—the tent of the rich boys, the tent that cost more than most people's rent, the tent that had a toilet—was visible from the campfire. It loomed in the background like a monument to inequality.

The other students were sleeping in normal tents. Small tents. Tents that required sleeping on the ground and digging holes for bathrooms.

They looked at our tent. Then at their tents. Then back at our tent.

I could feel their judgment.

I am a celestial being, I thought. I have been judged by the Tribunal itself. I can handle the judgment of mortals who are jealous of our toilet.

Still, I thought, it is a very nice toilet.

---

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