Whoever it was, they didn't reveal themself. Jae slipped his hand into his pocket and grabbed onto his knife. "Let me out of the alleyway without bothering me and there'll be no trouble."
A shadow moved slowly. The figure of a young woman stepped out from behind a pile of crates. Jae squinted. She had to be a Geuman person in her early twenties, like him. Her face was strangely expressionless. She bowed her head to him slightly.
"I'm sorry. I'm supposed to protect you. Something bad is going to happen any moment now."
Jae stared at her. "Who are you?"
Across from him, the young woman tilted her head. "That's unrelated."
Jae narrowed his eyes, jaw tightening. He raised his knife. It glinted in the reflective moonlight. "Are you after the chest, too? I'm not afraid to kill for it."
The woman across from him raised her eyebrows. "Chest?"
Suddenly, Jae's neck prickled. He looked up.
There was a speck in the sky—getting closer. A falling clay tile. His nerves were shot from the strange encounter he'd had earlier, and he froze. It was too late for him to move properly. Jae's stomach dropped—after all this, a clay tile was going to end his night? Jae raised his arm above his head—what more could he do but hope the injury wouldn't be bad? Only, a completely different impact hit him—the woman's body slammed into his with the force of a moving cart, tackling him violently onto the ground. The clay tile smashed to bits on the alleyway cobblestones Jae had just standing on. There was a cracking sound as something broke against the ground. Was that bone? Or—
"Fuck!" Jae pushed the woman off, scrambling to look around. He fumbled in the darkness, heart pounding in his ears so loudly he thought it might have clawed its way on his throat. His chest ached. His hands met shattered wood. He caught sight of splinters of delicate silver in the moonlight. A jade stone gleaming green, split in half. "No, no, no, no, no. No. Fuck. Fuck!" Like someone trying to piece together a lover's urn that had broken and scattered its ash, Jae shakily swept the remnants together, his breath coming in short wheezes.
Meanwhile, the woman had gotten up to crouch next to him, seeming unphased by either the falling tile or Jae harshly pushing her. "Was it precious?"
Jae ignored her. His eyes were welling with stinging tears that he frantically wiped from his face as they spilled over. "I can't…no…this…no!" After another moment of brushing the splinters and metallic bits into a pitiful pile, Jae suddenly sat back, slumping against the wall and closing his eyes. His face sagged with exhaustion and horror.
The woman scooted closer to him, holding her knees. Her voice was soft when she spoke, but still rather emotionless. "I'm sorry. I had to respect the spirit. It instructed me to save you."
Upon hearing that, all the blood in Jae's body began to boil furiously. His eyes flew open to shoot a piercing glare at her. "The spirit."
"Yes." The woman tilted her head. "Do you not believe in them?"
"Of course I believe in them," Jae snapped. His voice was acidic. "But you ruined my entire life because a spirit told you to?" He clenched his fists, wiping harshly at his teary face as though trying to scrape the evidence of crying away. "What, you value something a spirit told you over a living human being? Fuck off."
The woman frowned. "I saved your life. You should be grateful."
Jae's eyes flashed. His fists clenched impossibly tight, fingernails digging through the palms of his leather gloves and into his skin. He spat out a bitter laugh. "Saved my life? I'd be better off dead. They're gonna kill me for breaking this shit. Saved my life, my ass. Fuck you. Fuck you and your spirit." He raised a middle finger in the air, aiming it around at whatever spirit might be hanging around nearby. "Fuck this shit."