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Of course, he was never found. When Subin found herself waking up with a new fire in her belly the first thing she did was find him. That wasn't hard, everyone knew that the sailor Jeong was prone to one specific whorehouse more often than not. What came next was a travesty, one quickly taken away from any records of history because, well, no king wanted to speak about the whores and those who died in the chaos of some fire and animal attack. Beacuse that was all they could assume when Subin was done, tearing people to shreads before herself, letting candles fall and fires rage as she walked unharmed through it all. When finally it settled in her, crying against a tree as her arm wrapped around her stomach and she wondered what this was now, what any of this was, she found herself overwhelmed. Death was everywhere. It was there since the beginning and it would be the last thing to go. She knew that, suddenly, in terms she didn't fully understand; she knew that the first turn of the world had brought the first need for death and she understood that if she played her cards just right she'd be there on the very last turn like some home owner tidying up the place once everyone had gone. Then she felt a warm hand on her shoulder that turned cold as she twisted to stare eyes at the man. A foreigner, someone, she learned, from the Bay of Bengal who came to her in simple clothes with a walking stick he looked much too young for. He spoke to her in her tongue and she replied, confused, before she heard the sounds they spoke aloud; they were in two different worlds with language but understood one another. And that, that was the first lesson.
Life under Bayram's guidance was kind. The stories he told were old, too old for Subin to understand beyond the limits of her peeling life. The first of them, the first to touch the end of life and kiss the start of every new one after, came with the first death. It seemed beyond, too old and long ago to be real, but Subin felt it resonate in her heart. They were there for as long as it was necessary and that, that meant as long as there was life. Because what was anything without its rules, its laws? So, he taught her, as lessons had been taught to him ages ago, since before the parents' of Subin's own parents had been born. Taught her that the great time was nothing more than a moment; that people had to never fear them but trust them in their guidance, as they had to learn to trust themselves in their lives. Taught her, too, that they were nothing more than an ever changing illusion of life and death: constantly changing and therefore, in presence of a static world and finite life, definitely unreal. They had to respect that which was real, which was true, which was fact; they had to act not as the sole sage of all but the protector, the wise and just sun in an ever moving sky. It was underneath Bayram that Subin learned her control of her gifts best, being able to subsume herself into a form more fitting for the people she had to visit, to a shape and gift they better understood. For the better part of two decades they traveled together with these learnings. He taught her to shift her tongue to match the hearts of those around him. He also taught her to change her guise; her face was kinder to those who needed it, her body less of a force. It was an odd life, traveling with one another, taking on odd jobs and learning the course of death itself. There were so few of them, he told her, but the balance was clear. They were there to make sure things happened as they needed to. Reading the lines became a gift he had to give her slowly, an understanding that every possibility laid out before them if they focused right enough and sometimes, people took the possibility that stole more time than it should have. This was their most dire moments, Bayram tried to teach Subin. Because an excess of time upset the even weight of the world, of this and the next. The balance could be changed now and again, shifted and altered, but in the end there would always have to be scales that could almost weigh the same. Close enough that a feather or a heart could set it straight, he'd always said. It's a law Subin abides by even now. What he taught her, he did well. Subin could master her gift, pass a soul through to the next world as anything: their mother, their first love, their greatest fear. The body she had was absolute, sure, but she was transient, a spirit changing in constant motion to live and breathe the power of all that laid beneath. It was her right and her duty. A necessity that she could not take a day off from, could not call in sick towards. And that was what it became: work. An endless job she had to toil away at forever. But the balance, she reminded herself, was necessary. It was what eventually had Bayram letting her go.
Living was good and easy. A gypsy, a baker, a nurse, a whore, a bard, a waitress, a maid, a witch once in the outskirts of Shirakawa: Subin held a hundred little lives over the decades that came and went. Every time she was immersed in life, worked her way through crowds and people and things, and every time she eventually faded without much worry at all. Bayram had taught her well and she learned to hoard away her life. Money grew and things were simple that way; a quiet investor here, a silent backer there. She passed her hand over enough of the world that she always had a place to be, a person to see. Whether to kiss them on to the next world or to let them wander around this, angry and lost, until they finally came to terms with it. But there were a few, over the decades, that struck through her heart like strong choirs of humanity that would not go ignored.
The first came in a pair, a set of lovers Subin met while working as a laundress in Saint Petersburg — Because even those touched by death are only serving a duty, for a short while. They are ageless, stuck in a static fold of living, until they meet their end as an aspect of Subin's own gifts. Then, they can have back the weight of the life she tried to give them, wholly mortal and free to live the rest of their time out in peace. Since them, Subin tries rarely to let people come back touched by her gifts. Only when the situation seems most out of line, like time is still so full in their hearts and chances for change exist in their spirits does Subin even try to take them back from the reach of the nether. A boy in Chicago who died in a fire while trying to get his sister out: sacrifice, for six years. A mother who survived her children in a cyclone only to take her own life afterwards: madness, for twenty years. A military brat who passed before the world could teach him what it had to: emptiness for the past xx years. There came only one selfish shift, a lover Subin took named Jihan who was stabbed in a bar fight at the bar Subin was tending at; he was there only for her and the moment he came in she felt the change coming. Faulted, feeling at fault for his death, Subin thoughtlessly brought him back without a second guess.
So, when a new death was born in Asia when a boy was tortured and killed for looking and acting too much like a girl in the wrong place at the wrong time, Subin packed her stuff up and came to Seoul to situate; she brought Minki home with her and began to teach him, as best as she could. Ji lives nearby as a tattoo artist and travels down to Busan to work as a dancer —Subin's sure he does more than that there but never asks what she does not need to know— and it is kind of like having a little bit of a family. With her little nihilist never too far off, too, Subin almost feels like a mother again, writing her obituaries to honor the nature of proper death in silence while Ren begins his work as a reaper and training with her and in Pyeongchang, Subin's life has settled into something ordinary for the time being.
★ loves windowsill garden boxes. ★ addicted to little diy projects. ★ both of her nipples are pierced. ★ one lotus tattoo on her neck. ★ has held a dozen specialized careers. ★ still likes handwritten sentiments. ★ lives alone but keeps rei nextdoor. ★ penchant for eastern europe. ★ neutral colors or reds, please. ★ prefers flats and combat boots. ★ but her heel collection is top class. ★ keeps storage facilities for things. ★ fascinated by unique flavors. ★ styx is immortal and bound to her. ★ can find her pure spirit, always. ★ known as a spiritual witch in haven. ★ reapers are listed as enchanters.
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