“Oh my god,” Momo groaned in euphoria.

  The interior of Fred’s Fried Specialties had completely disappeared around her—her senses diminished to only the heavenly taste of the Quadruple Pounder Chili Cheese Fry Bun Special. It was exactly how she remembered it. Six pieces of bacon. A deep-fried slab of meat. A few minimum wage laborer tears. A pound of mystery cheese sauce.

  It was hypnotic. She could feel her blood sugar peaking to an unholy level, but it didn’t matter. She was dead already. This was the true value of immortality, she realized. She could enjoy this bugger every day for the rest of forever, and she could just replace her heart and arteries whenever they complained. God, magic was amazing.

  “Momo, you are so gross.”

  “Sorry,” Momo said, bacon sticking out between her teeth. She did not feel an ounce of guilt. “What were we talking about?”

  “Oh, nothing. Just the fact that you disappeared on me and the family for twelve years. Nothing of importance. Please, just focus on your burger.”

  Okay, now she felt an ounce of guilt. Maybe two ounces.

  She set down her burger, her fingers a mess of sticky red sauce.

  “I hate this sensation,” she grimaced.

  “Being… sticky?” he said.

  “It’s the worst thing in the world.”

  “I have a bright idea. Have you thought about not eating burgers like a starving animal?”

  “No,” Momo said, glaring. “Just give me your napkins.”

  “No,” he repeated, bunching his unused napkins into a ball in his hand. “They’re mine.”

  “You’re not even using them!”

  “Because I eat like a civilized person!”

  “Oh, now you do,” she groaned. “I remember when Appa was looking into the price of getting you into a class for kids with underdeveloped manners.”

  Daehyun laughed loudly. “The one he was going to send both of us to!”

  Momo squinted at him. “Just give me the napkins.”

  He stared at her with a shit-eating grin for a few mortifying seconds before he finally, slowly, petulantly dumped the napkins onto her plate. She grumbled as she cleaned her fingers.

  “Thank you,” she said quietly.

  “Anything for my dead sister.”

  She opened her mouth to correct him, but she found that she couldn’t.

  “Daehyun…” She sighed. “I’m not sure how to begin.”

  He crossed his arms. “Try… twelve years ago. That should do it.”

  She pursed her lips and stared beyond her brother, looking at the enormous, wooden “farm-to-table” sign hanging on the wall. It paired well with the “Closed Sunday for Another Health Inspection” poster hanging directly next to it.

  Inhaling, she focused back on her brother’s face. She knew she couldn’t put this off any longer. She had to face the music. She had to own up to everything that had happened, even if she didn’t mean it to happen that way. It wasn’t like she chose to get whisked away to Alois, but in all honesty, Albany had just been step one in her escape plan.

  “You’re not going to believe me,” she prefaced it with. When he frowned, looking to interrupt, she cut him off. “But you’re going to have to hear me out. Start to finish.”

  He zipped his lips.

  “Okay, so… Don’t tell Appa this,” She winced. “But I might have been failing out of college.”

  ***

  She had no idea how long she talked for. It could have been an hour or three; all she knew was the hands of the clock on the wall were in a far different place than they had started. The sun was pink on the horizon, and the parking lot outside Freddie’s had emptied considerably. Only a blue SUV and Daehyun’s hot red ferrari—he couldn’t outrun all his boyish desires—remained to simmer under the summer sky.

  Stolen story; please report.

  “So let me get this straight,” her brother said, pointing an accusatory finger over the carcass of her burger. His face was visibly exhausted; as if she had aged him three years during her monologue. “You expect me to believe that you died from food poisoning, became some sort of magical action hero in a different universe, then somehow became a god, crawled your way back here to finally say hi, and even after all that, you’re still not sick of cheeseburgers?”

  “That’s about right,” she said, picking a stray fry from his abandoned plate. It was stiff.

  “Momo!” he whisper-shouted, taking her by the shoulders over the table. The fly flopped onto the ground mid-bite. She frowned at it. “You’re insane!”

  “I told you you wouldn’t believe me!”

  “I didn’t expect you to tell me you think you’re a god!”

  “Well!” she flung her hands up. “I didn’t expect to become one. But here we are.”

  “No. I don’t accept that,” he huffed, shaking his head. He let her go and rolled back into the bright red booth they were occupying. It was about as uncomfortable as sitting on a bowling ball. “If you want me to believe something as insane as that, you’re going to have to prove it. Show me.” He lifted up a fry. “Turn this fry into a butterfly.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I can’t just turn fries into butterflies.”

  “Don’t give me that attitude like what I’m asking isn’t completely rational compared to what you just put me through for the past two hours.”

  That shut her up.

  She bit down on her lip. She knew he was serious. Daehyun was as stubborn as a bull. That wasn’t new. He’d always been this way. It wasn’t exactly a response she could blame him for, either—she would have asked him to do the exact same thing if the situations were reversed. But she was scared that the moment she used her powers in a noticeable way, the Nether would catch on somehow, and all hell would break loose.

  Screw it. What was the worst that could happen? If some alarm bell did go off, by all accounts she’d just be sent back to Valerica, and have to redo her Reaping mission again. No big deal. She wasn’t exactly a fan of Richard Smith anyway. They’d wipe Daehyun’s memory, and she could just visit him again and then tell him she was in some kind of coma instead.

  “Okay,” She took a long breath in. “I’ll show you.”

  She looked down at her plate. There was still a crumb of burger meat left on it. She picked it up between two of her fingers and raised it to her face, just above her nose.

  “Does this magic trick involve fast food, too?”

  Momo glared at him. “Shut up.”

  She took a quick look over her shoulder. The only remaining employee was a guy with a mop scrubbing the floor in a mindless circle while he played a Match-3 game on his phone. Besides him, there was also a family sitting a few booths behind her, but they were busy monitoring their toddler who was currently flopping around on the floor with her iPad.

  None of them were looking in her direction, but Momo crouched down into her seat regardless. Daehyun gave her an increasingly exasperated look.

  Before he could interrupt her again, Momo closed her eyes and whispered the spell to herself. When she opened them again, whatever Daehyun had hoped to say had completely died on his tongue. His expression was one of complete bafflement.

  She glanced at the window next to them, giving her a glimpse of her new form.

  Hunched over, grumpy, and as wrinkled as a candy wrapper—she had become Old Man Liang. She wasn’t sure why he had come to mind of all people, but there he was. Momo tugged at the old man’s uneven collar, straightening it like she’d always wanted to.

  “So?” Momo said, turning to her brother. She was surprised by just how much effort it took her to produce the sound. It was like she was fighting her lungs tooth and nail just to heave out the breath, and even then it sounded like the dying whine of an engine.

  Daehyun had gone pale. “You’re dead. I mean— he. He’s dead.”

  “It’s just a costume,” Momo said. “A very uncomfortable one. Man, I can feel exactly how many cigarettes this guy smoked in his life. They’re all sitting right here.” She motioned to the nape of her neck, and pressed down lightly. “Dear god. The guy’s skin is like sandpaper.”

  “This is so gross. You seriously had to pick him of all people?” Daehyun whined, shielding his eyes like he had stared too long at the sun. “I believe you, alright! Just– go back!”

  “Crybaby. Fine.”

  You’re out of Mana.

  Momo balked at the text that popped up in front of her.

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “What?” Daehyun yelped, peeking through his fingers. “Are you normal again?”

  “No,” Momo moaned. “It looks like I’m stuck like this.”

  He slapped his hands down on the table and looked at her in horror. “Stuck? What do you mean stuck? You’re just going to look like an old dead dude forever?”

  “Calm down. It’s just for the time being,” she said, then yawned. She was suddenly very sleepy. She had the strange desire to ignore the bill completely and blame her old age if anybody noticed. Damn. Did old people really think like that? “I just need to save up some more Mana. Apparently I’ve spent too much of it the last few days.”

  Daehyun dragged the skin of his face down with his hands.

  “I really can’t handle this.”

  “Imagine how I felt when it all started.”

  He shook his head, seemingly unable to come up with a retort for that one.

  “Okay. It’s time for you to drive me home. I need to lay down,” Momo grunted, pushing herself slowly up from her seat. It took about as much exertion as it used to take her back in college, before her transmigration, which was extremely concerning for her past self. “My old man bones are giving out on me.”

  “Alright. Fine. I need to sleep off all this trauma anyway,” Daehyun said, wrapping his arm around her waist as she stumbled upward. “Try not to die again on the walk to the car.”

  “No promises.”

  ***

  Back at Fred’s, the toddler waddled up to her mommy at the booth. The child had taken a rather interesting photograph with her iPad, and was intent on showing her.

  “Mama,” she said, raising the device above her head. “Weird man. Look.”

  Her mother’s face went pale.

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