The crowd hadn't even finished screaming when Ho-seok held up a single gloved finger.
"I said," he repeated, louder, "that was the beginning."
The hall slowly went quiet again. People sat back down. The old men with the roof tile clutched it to their chests like a treasure. The family with the wet trousers wrung out their sleeves and leaned forward.
"You've seen my city," Ho-seok said. "You've flown over it. You've stood on its bridges." He tilted his head. "But have you ever seen what's underneath it?"
He pointed straight down at the stage.
The floor turned to water.
Not the stage. The whole hall. Every wooden board under every cushion and stool and foot rippled at once and went clear and dark and endless, and suddenly Jin was looking down through it at something impossible.
