My plane touched down in Incheon International Airport the next day, and with only 30K won to my name, I walked for twelve hours to the suburbs where my grandfather lived. On the way, I got the phone call from the police about my grandfather’s possessions: his house had been completely paid off, and though his bank account had been drained completely dry after his death, the property and all his belongings were now mine. I made a pit stop at their offices to pick up the key and sign all the necessary paperwork; their immediate response was hostility, believing I was a scammer attempting to steal his property. Luckily, I had brought all my legal documents with me, including my birth certificate and transmogrification documents, and so they begrudgingly gave me what I was owed. While I was there, I asked around for answers on an Inspector Yoon working the area. They weren’t able to tell me anything, save for the fact that he worked today if I wished to speak with him, which was enough for me.

  I arrived at the home where I spent my adolescence, its lights off and its aura dormant. No longer would I be able to see him shuffling from room to room from the entryway. I didn’t believe in God, but I know he and my Mom did, and so I did a small prayer for them before entering the house. As I did, I felt a tension in the air snap, and a heavy breath escaped my lungs. What just happened? The house felt… More like it did when I was a kid again. Had someone ensorcelled it? My guard went up as I entered the home, scoping it out for any more potential threats; I found nothing, sensing as hard as I could.

  I sent a message to Silaqui, asking her what I might’ve set off with my little prayer, staying on the defensive. But the answer I got just made me feel even worse: she told me that sometimes places can become desecrated from negative energy persisting there for too long, and that a powerful mage can disperse the desecration with a prayer. I felt like throwing up… I had desecrated the home of the person I loved. I messaged back if there were any negative effects to that; she responded that mental and physical health could worsen, similar to air pollution, but in more than the lungs, but that it takes a lot of negativity to make it that bad. Fuck. I could’ve been making him sick this whole time, because I brought my depression and angst to his home.

  I sat in his home, now mine, cleansed of the desecration I had made my grandfather stew in for years. It had been emptied of most of its valuables; his killers must have rolled it after they got to him. I checked the local internal camera feed to see if they were caught at all, but it had been destroyed; unfortunately, things would not be that easy. Untouched, however, was his movie collection, and…

  I went to the family picture, showing my grandfather, my mother, and her long deceased sister, happily standing together, smiling. I took it off of the wall, and cracked open the drywall behind it, revealing the safe hiding inside. I pulled it out, and spun in the combination, my grandmother’s birthday. My grandfather always told us about his panic safe; he built this house himself, and put the safe there for an occasion where they needed to flee the country, or where things were dire and they needed an out. Inside were some bonds for Doosan Engineering and Construction, about 50 million won, and an old revolver with large-caliber ammo. I pocketed the gun and ammo, 12 shots for a six-shooter, though I had no intention of using it, as well as the 500K won. I walked to a nearby Hana Bank, and made an account with them, using the bonds as my deposit. When they checked the appreciated value, I ended up with 120 million won. The clerks looked at me with astonishment; to be honest, I was astonished as well, as I didn’t know my grandfather had a lot of money. He had always lived an honest and simple life, always cherishing a grocery sale and going out of his way to help others.

  I went online and ordered a large television to replace the one that had been stolen, a Blu-Ray player, a VHS player, a sound system, and the comfiest chair I could find. I decided I would not only discover the truth behind my grandfather’s death, but that I would finally finish the movies he told me to watch. I walked to the store, and ordered a futon, a pillow, and a weighted blanket, and went back to my grandfather’s home, setting up a nest for myself to lay comfortably for a moment. I had been running around since I got here, and now was the time to stop and reflect…

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  I had lost the last member of my family. Not only that, I was potentially making him sick this whole time. He never spoke much, so he may have been suffering that whole time, and I didn’t know. I wanted to be a good grandchild to him; I wanted to come back to him one day with a degree in hand, and for him to be proud that I had finished the journey he helped me stay on all this time. Fuck, I never got to tell him I was trans. That I had never been a boy. That this new body I had was so much more like me than the old one, and that I was happy with my reflection for the first time in my life. I will never get to share that happiness with him. I’ll never know if he’d accept me, arms open, or if he’d simply shut me out of his life. I took a deep breath, and made a resolute decision: he would’ve accepted me, because he was a good man. Just like my mother was a good woman, and my father was a good man.

  He never hit me once. Aera hit me. Even my altruistic mother hit me. But he simply accepted me as I was, and tried to give me space to make mistakes, and try to figure it out for myself. I failed at my task, but that wasn’t his fault, that was mine… Right? My grandfather was a man without fault, a truly honorable person… My mind hovered to times where I would come home, bruises on my neck from Aera choking me. He might casually ask where they were from, and I would shakily answer that they were from Tae Kwon Do, even though we didn’t do chokeholds there. Then he would leave me to my fate. He would leave me all alone, to make my own mistakes, and suffer the consequences. Was inaction a sin? Was his blind eye a courtesy or a tragedy?

  I could think about it for the rest of my life, and I would never have the answer.

  I exited my blankets, and went to the police booth, spying the only man wearing an Inspector’s badge. I approached the booth, a false smile on my face.

  “Hello, may I speak to Inspector Yoon please? It’s about the Park case.” I put on my most pleasant face to diffuse the violent nature of my elven form.

  “Oh, um… Yeah, sure, I’ll get him now.” Moments later, I was approached out on the sidewalk by a somewhat tall man with a goatee and a round face, his burly stature imposing compared to my petite form.

  I extended my naked hand, to form a handshake. “Hi, I’m Avery, we spoke on the phone the other day. I flew from America to talk to you about my grandfather.”

  He did not meet my handshake. “Well, Avery, I don’t talk about cases with people who obviously aren’t related to it, so if you could kindly stop wasting my time–”

  I grabbed his hand in mine, and I felt the Vanta enter my body, falling into that inner dimension where the liquid black pools revealed devilry after devilry. I drank each one, growing more aggressive and powerful with each sip; bribery, brutality, adultery, and…

  There it was. I watched as he spoke with a large figure in a cloak, with a hood drawn to drench their face in shadow. He gave the figure the evidence for the case of my grandfather, and was given money in return. I imbibed deep of this memory, searching it for every clue, until I saw a tattoo on the figure’s wrist: a half moon. I let go of the Inspector’s hand, and my blood boiled, a seething rage threatening to consume me entirely. He looked confused and sorrowful, as if he had just come out of a drug haze. I grabbed his coat, and pulled him off to an alley, where I slammed him to the wall.

  “You will arrange a meeting with the figure with the half moon on their wrist, and tell them about me. Tonight. If you don’t, I will kill you and everyone in the booth. Are we clear?” I couldn’t tell if my threat was serious or not, but I didn’t care at this point; I simply wanted results.

  As he quivered and whimpered, he managed to nod his head.