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It's a warm spring night. And contrary to what the fates think their strings tell them — this is not how the end of the world begins. There are crickets heard in the brush of the woodlands behind the convent. It's almost peaceful except for the crickets, the spring heat, and the last cries of a mother followed by the first cries of her child. Nothing else. This is not how the end of the world begins.
The scene is the end of something, however.
Ma-Eum labored for hours. The sisters had her in their most secluded room, far from the ears of the outside world. The Mother Superior told her they do not wish to hear the outcome. It was insulting enough to the other nuns that they had to bear the obvious sight of Ma-Eum and her sin for nine months. But Ma-Eum, after hours of labor, holding her daughter, does not consider any of this wrong.
Ma-Eum holds the baby girl to her chest and she wonders, remembering who helped create this little thing, if her daughter can already tell she'll never get to know her mother beyond a ghostly form...
My choice, Ma-Eum reminds herself, Mine.
Hades had agonized over it. He knew her end. Ma-Eum would die in an empty room with her heart in her hands. But it had been too late for her to choose another way then; she had a child growing in her and the choice to keep her was the second choice she had been given in her life. She hadn't chosen to be left in a convent. She hadn't chosen to bring the monsters—creatures the sisters rationalized as demonic and tangled to someone as sacrilegious as Ma-Eum—to the church's doorstep. For as long as she can remember, she never had a choice.
She had, however, chosen to love the chthonic man regardless of whether or not she'd get to see the proof of that love in the form of the child they made — her second choice.
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"This is mychoice," Ma-Eum said to Hades the night she found out. He hadn't wanted to hear it, to allow it, but she persisted. She all but begged, "Mine. At least pretend to respect me enough to allow me this much."
"You will die for this choice."
A beat. "I know I will."
"I can't interfere with your fate again."
"No, no, not again."
"It means you will leave me."
"... I know that, too."
"No," Hades insisted, "You don't know it all."
"Is dying meant to be the end of everything? Everywhere? For all time?" Ma-Eum shook her head, "I don't believe that. You won't scare me with my own death. It's mine. I should be allowed enough grace to accept whatever comes with it."
