Chapter 3: The First Vacation in 800 Years

“That’s it? Because that guy’s face is pretty?”

“I wanted to live at least one life with a face like that.”

Dong-cheon wasn’t convinced by Seol-young’s answer, and gave Min Seo-jun’s body another look. Sure enough, even sprawled carelessly across the bathroom floor, Min Seo-jun was pretty and delicate. Anyone could tell he was an idol singer with a fair, refined face. If there was a problem, it was that the sight of him did not go with Seol-young at all, in a way that was almost unsettling.

Do you know who Grim Reaper Cha Seol-young is? He was the undisputed finest in swordsmanship and every kind of martial arts in the underworld. His skill was so remarkable that he had never once let a troublesome spirit assigned to him slip away. It was Cha Seol-young who held a record so unprecedented it would be written into history.

Seol-young was, as befitted a warrior who had lived with a sword in hand since being born into the world as a human, tall and quick-built, his frame packed with lean muscle. His face was cut the same way. Deep-set eyes, a sharp nose, a firm jaw, a mouth kept shut in taciturn silence. A striking man, one who would not come up short anywhere.

Min Seo-jun was another story. Sure, he had the kind of delicate, pretty face that identified him as an idol singer at a glance. But he was short for a man, and so gaunt that no muscle showed anywhere. He looked as if a single tap would break him.

From head to toe, he was the exact opposite of Cha Seol-young. Yet Seol-young said he wanted that frail body, the very image of everything he was not, and he said it out of nowhere. No wonder Dong-cheon’s jaw hung open.

“I’m curious, too. Why would he make a choice like this, with a face that pretty? Such a waste.”

Dong-cheon was still half out of his mind when Seol-young added the words, in the same flat voice. His face filled with horror in an instant.

“I’m starting to get a little scared now. Why are you doing something you haven’t done in eight hundred years? Since when did you ever care about someone else’s life? Are you really the Grim Reaper Cha Seol-young I know?”

Dong-cheon rubbed his arms, which had broken out in goose bumps, and pressed the question. As if he couldn’t believe the man in front of him was Cha Seol-young, he kept staring at him with narrowed, sharp eyes.

“After living this long, it can happen.”

“You must be about to die.”

“Hmm. I’m already dead, so dying isn’t going to come around again.”

“You bastard, seriously!”

Seol-young’s replies only got more absurd as they went on. “Hey, you crazy bastard.” The words hovered on the tip of Dong-cheon’s tongue of their own accord. He had always counted Seol-young as the most clear-headed person in the underworld. Who could have known he’d be struck from behind like this?

“I know it’s an impulsive decision. But these things are always done on impulse anyway, aren’t they? Don’t you agree?”

“No, I don’t!”

In the end, Dong-cheon couldn’t hold it in and bellowed.

“That human has only one year left to live! Even if he hadn’t hanged himself today, he was going to die a year from now anyway. You know that choosing him means your vacation is just one year, don’t you?”

“I know.”

“You know? You know that, but you’d throw away your first vacation in nearly eight hundred years of working yourself to the bone, all to use it up in a single year?”

Dong-cheon knew Seol-young never bent once he had made up his mind, but he still tried to talk him out of it, spit flying. As expected, it didn’t reach Seol-young at all.

“I don’t care.”

“Hey!”

“Grim Reaper Dong-cheon. Give the upper ranks a good report. See you later.”

Seol-young pushed his sheathed sword at Dong-cheon with a jut of his chin, without a word of explanation. “Hey, hey!” Dong-cheon caught it in a fluster, his voice turning urgent. But that was all. Seol-young took a step onto the body of the young man named Min Seo-jun without hesitation, then muttered one short phrase under his breath.

There was no time to stop him. Seol-young’s form disappeared in the blink of an eye. No, it did not disappear. Precisely, Seol-young had gone inside Min Seo-jun, a body that had lost its soul after its owner died on his own before his destined lifespan was done.

Min Seo-jun, still sprawled there, did not even twitch. He would stay like that until Seol-young settled himself properly inside.

“My god.”

Dong-cheon stared blankly at the sight, then dragged a dry hand down his cheek. “Seol-young, you crazy bastard.” The curse he could no longer hold back finally slipped between his lips. What was he supposed to do about this? How was he supposed to report something that had happened in the space of a single blink?

Pressing his throbbing forehead, Dong-cheon’s face was full of worry. But what was done was done. He let out a sigh deep enough to cave the ground in, and at last turned his body around, shoulders slumped. Even then, he did not forget to straighten Min Seo-jun’s grotesquely twisted leg with his toe.

****

Even grim reapers take vacations. The cycle differs from reaper to reaper, but generally they took one every two to three hundred years. The method, though, could be called somewhat bizarre. They slipped into a human body for a time, turned their backs completely on the underworld, and enjoyed a life in the living world.

Of course, not just any body would do. So what kind of human could they possess? Humans who had killed themselves.

The reason was that, having died before using up their allotted lifespan, they still had time left to remain on earth. So a reaper nearing vacation season would find a human who had chosen death, take that body, and live out the human’s original lifespan before coming back.

For a reaper who had long forgotten human life and spent every day working himself ragged, shuttling between the living world and the underworld, it might have been an amusing vacation in its own way. Some reapers clamored that they didn’t care which human they got, they just wanted to live again.

There were others who swore it was a crappy vacation. But even so, they would still grudgingly borrow the body of a human with time left to live and head for the living world. Skipping the crappy vacation didn’t mean they got any real rest, after all.

For Seol-young, though, it held no interest whatsoever. Every time he went to collect a dead human’s soul, the human world he looked around was a worthless place. He didn’t want to set foot in that gutter of a world. A hard, pinched life in the mortal world did not look like a vacation to him. Over time, he only grew less and less interested.

That was why Seol-young had spent the past eight hundred years working in silence, like an ox. It had been so long that no one even expected Seol-young would ever take a vacation.

And yet that very Seol-young, of all people, today, with no notice, suddenly declared that he would live out the rest of a young man named Min Seo-jun’s life as his first vacation. And he had chosen a life with barely a year left in it. No wonder Dong-cheon nearly fainted from shock.

Seol-young, meanwhile, was perfectly at ease. “What a pretty face. What a shame, to go at such a young age.” He had no idea that Dong-cheon was tearing his hair out, screaming “Cha Seol-young, you rotten bastard!” with everything he had. He was far too busy admiring his reflection in the mirror.

Min Seo-jun. The young man whose body he’d be borrowing, even if only briefly, was lovely and pretty, truly. Seol-young wondered if there was any young man this beautiful in the world. His skin was white and smooth, with not one blemish. His brown eyes were large and round, his nose straight and shapely, his lips red and full. Even the bleached gold of his hair suited his small, slender face.

A real flower of a person. There wasn’t a single spot on him that wasn’t pretty. He looked so young that it was hard to believe he was a grown man of twenty-two. With looks like this, one could look at him again and again and never grow tired. Seol-young took his time, admiring the young man in the mirror.

But he had seen this face somewhere before. It felt strangely familiar. After studying the mirror for a while, Seol-young narrowed his eyes at a thought that suddenly came to him. A moment later, he shook his head and dismissed it. There was no way he could have met a beauty this rare.

Instead, his gaze settled on the long, slender neck, like a deer’s. A clear red mark was left on it. He had hanged himself, so the mark would probably last for days. It stood out even more because his skin was as white as jade. Seol-young rubbed the scarred neck with fingertips gone cold, then stopped.

‘Um… I didn’t… mean to die like this.’

Those were the words the young man had let out as he looked up at Seol-young with a bloodless face. His voice had been faint, the rest of the words almost lost at the end, but he had definitely said that much. His face had been full of fear, his eyes brimming with tears.

If he hadn’t meant to die, why had he hanged himself? Seol-young had almost asked. If Dong-cheon hadn’t been quick to seal his soul into the gourd, Seol-young might have listened to what the young man had to say, without quite meaning to.

It was a thought that did not fit Seol-young at all. Even when the dead carried heartrending stories, he had never once been moved. He didn’t know why it had to be this one.

When Seol-young made that impulsive remark about taking a vacation, Dong-cheon wasn’t the only one surprised. Seol-young himself had been so taken aback by his own words that he forgot to breathe. On the outside, he had been expressionless, but that was the truth.

Just what was this person? What kind of energy did he carry, to shake him like this? He couldn’t understand it.

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