The first person to see them was Taesung.
He was standing watch on the low wall at the edge of the courtyard with a spear across his shoulders, half asleep on his feet, when the door opened in the wall of the school beneath the silver tree. He jerked upright so fast he nearly dropped the spear. Then he saw who was coming through, and his mouth fell open.
"They're back!" he shouted. "Hey! They're back! Everybody, they're back!"
Lights came on in the windows. Doors banged open. Feet pounded down the stairs.
Haneul got there first. He came out of the main building at a dead run in an old jacket thrown over his sleeping clothes, his hair a mess, and stopped a few steps away from them. He looked at Jin, covered in dried blood. At Echo, grey to the elbows. At Joon and Seul and Areum, burned and battered and swaying on their feet.
"You said a few days," he said. Her voice was shaking. "You said it'd be fine."
"It was a few days," Jin said.
"You look like you died!"
"Only a little."
