Chapter 8: Bad Save

"Drawn from the pool," Woo-seok said. "What does that mean?"

"The pool is every registered lantern in Seoul," Ha-yeon said. "They draw twenty names."

"Who draws them?"

"On paper, a computer."

She switched off the tablet and put it away.

"Off paper, the Lamp Guild gets whatever names it asks for."

On Saturday morning the crew went to Mangwon market to buy a birthday.

Chil-seong's granddaughter turned seven on Sunday, and she wanted a cake shaped like a piano.

The twins argued about strawberry against chestnut for the whole length of the covered alley.

The knitter bought rice cakes for everyone and made them eat one at every stall.

Gyeol carried the bags and pretended he wasn't having fun.

At 10:00 the roof of the market went dark.

The covered alley in front of them stretched, and kept stretching, until its far end was out of sight.

The stalls along it doubled, and doubled again.

The market had become a gate, with two hundred Saturday shoppers inside it.

People ran past the crew toward the street.

Others were too deep in to get out.

Woo-seok looked at the gate alarm on his phone.

The nearest Association team was twenty minutes away, and he was the highest rank on the street.

"Gyeol, Chil-seong, keep the mouth open," he said. "Get everyone out who comes this way."

"And you?" Gyeol asked.

"I'm going to find the master."

He went in with his axe.

The things in this gate were shaped like shoppers.

They had coats and bags and no faces, and they moved through the alleys together.

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