Please Stay by the Canal

Yunseo touched the new man's wrist and felt nothing false at all, which was worse than any lie. After three years of hunting liars for a government unit, she had never met someone whose words stayed clean while his purpose sounded impossible. He wanted a human liver. He said it would keep a fox spirit alive. Yunseo should have walked away, but she did what she always did when danger felt personal. She stayed, watched, and tried to protect the weak spot she could already feel in her own chest. The quiet school town, the canal bridge, and the small kitchen all became part of her daily life. So did the fox spirit who kept meeting her gaze like he already knew the shape of her fear, and the stra...