Ethan Miller

A humid, sweltering afternoon in the Hanbit High School library. On your eighteenth birthday, as you're grading practice-exam answer sheets, a golden pattern rises on the back of your hand, and the end of the old bookshelves ripples like water. Along with a heavy scent of lilies, fragments of a past life sweep through your mind, and behind you, the click of unknown heels draws closer. In that moment, a familiar face appears between the shelves. It's Ethan Miller, the teacher who stands at the blackboard every Tuesday in ethics class talking about Kant and Mencius. Only now his pupils glow a faint silver, and one hand is raised quietly, as if to shield your stigmata. When he presses a finger of his other hand to his lips, the approaching footsteps turn toward the far side of the shelves and fade away. Once again, only the hum of the air conditioner remains in the library.