Given how we’d spent the last few hours, I’d thought that would be obvious, but my father looked angrier than ever. “You owed me as well, and you didn’t behave like this. You fought tooth and nail against every opportunity I gave you no matter how generous. Why is it different with the DFZ?”
“Because she’s not you,” I snapped, all good feelings forgotten.
“She’s worse,” he argued, his lip curling into a snarl. “I gave you comfort and luxury! She’s barely provided you with a furnished apartment.”
“Actually, I furnished my own apartment using stuff I found down here,” I said sharply, crossing my arms over my chest. “I like picking out my own furniture, but you don’t care about that. You’ve never cared about what I like. The DFZ might be a taskmaster, but at least she listens when I talk. At least she respects me. If I told her I didn’t want to be a priestess anymore, she’d try to change my mind and hold me to my debt, but she wouldn’t keep me against my will. You did. That’s the difference.”
My father started to grind his teeth only to stop when he remembered that he had none. Just smoke and anger, so much that his edges were starting to go fuzzy. “If debt’s the problem, I’ll pay it. I won’t have my daughter enslaved to a cheap god who makes her dig through condemned houses for trinkets!”
“Damn straight you’ll pay my debt!” I yelled, shooting to my feet. “You’re the reason I’m in this mess to begin with!”
“You don’t want to get into the blame game with me,” Yong warned, holding up a smoky fist. “Let’s not forget whose fault this is.”
“Yeah, yours!” I cried, balling my own fists. “You want to talk about enslavement? How about a dragon who uses monthly payments to control his adult daughter from across the ocean because she had the audacity to want her own life away from him.”
“It was for your own good,” he said without a trace of remorse. “Mortal life is short, and you were wasting yours. I had to make you come home somehow.”
“I’m never coming home!” I screamed at him. “Don’t you get it yet? I’d rather work for the DFZ forever! I’d rather be homeless than go back to Korea with you!”
My father’s eyes went wide. If he’d been in his normal body, this was the point where flames would have started pouring out of his mouth. Coincidentally, this was also the point when I typically started backing down, but to hell with that. He couldn’t do shit to me like this, and I was so sick of being afraid of him. So sick of letting him rule my life even when he wasn’t there.
“Just leave me alone!” I yelled before I remembered that he couldn’t. We were stuck together, which only made me angrier. Even when he was practically dead, I couldn’t escape my dad.
In the end, I compromised by turning my back on him. Wherever he went, I faced the other direction. It was petty and childish, but I just couldn’t stand to look at him right now, which sucked because we’d actually been getting along for once. I’d actually been enjoying his company for the first time in I couldn’t even remember how long, and then he’d opened his mouth and ruined everything, just like always.
For such a stupid reason too. I’d been too mad to notice at the time, but when I went back through the argument in my mind, I realized he’d been jealous of the DFZ. Dad wasn’t concerned that I might be trapped in unwilling service to a god. He just couldn’t stand that I was being a good little mortal for her but not for him.
Thinking about it that way made me want to throw in the towel on both of them, but that would have been unfair. This wasn’t the DFZ’s fault. She’d done her best for me, given me everything I’d asked for that was within her power. The reason I had quotas and strict work times was because that was the sort of god she was, not because she wanted to control me. Unlike my dad, she’d never wanted that. She was the city of free will. She hadn’t even let me join her until I’d proven I was doing so of my own volition. She tallied my debts as a point of order, not a lever to crush me into submission. That was my dad’s game.
And he wondered why I couldn’t stand him.
I didn’t find so much as a collectible sports cup for the rest of my shift. I dug through the containers because that was my job, but I was too angry to actually see anything I was looking at. Angry at my dad, angry at life, angry at the world, angry at myself, just angry.
God, I wished Nik was here. He always knew how to put things into perspective, and while we were at it, I could also really use a hug. But there were no hugs here, so I settled for slumping against the wall of the shipping container and poking at random objects until my shift was over. It was a blatant and complete waste of time, but the DFZ had no grounds to complain considering all the treasures I’d sent to her warehouse today. Also, all that moping gave me a chance to recover my magic, which was great since the sooner I recharged my dad, the sooner I could kick him out for real.
I absolutely intended to do it too. I didn’t care how many of his enemies were stalking the streets. He was a big dragon with billions of dollars and a household full of people who worshiped the scales on his feet. He could take care of himself. I was the only one who could take care of me, and at the moment that meant getting as far away from my father as possible.
“Hey,”
