When I Thought I Was Dead

The moment I thought I was dead, the world lit up again.

The first thing I saw was a mold-stained concrete ceiling.

Next came the damp, stale air of an old basement.

And last of all — the pain that had been tearing my body apart on the asphalt was gone, washed clean away.

It didn't take long to figure out why.

I didn't have a body.

More precisely, my body was laid out on the steel table below, and someone in a gas mask and white lab coat was taking an electric saw to my skull.

Wheeeeeeng.

With a cheerful whir, the bone ground open, and my grayish-white brain dropped into a glass jar with a wet plop…

"……."

No scream came out.

My vocal cords were on the table too.

I floated in midair, staring blankly through my translucent hands at the concrete wall beyond.

Okay… let's stay calm and sort this out.

I got rejected on my first-ever confession.

Then I got branded a stalker.

And finally, I got caught in a brawl between a monster wolf and a lunatic and was cut clean in half.

And now I was a ghost, live-streaming my own autopsy.

…Looking at it all laid out like that, the fact that every single one of those things happened today was almost impressive. What was this, a daily quest for bad luck?

"Yoon-ha unnie, that's enough dissection. Did you finish setting up the equipment properly?"

At the familiar voice, I turned my head — and there she was. Lee Ha-rin.

Long blue-tinted hair, catlike eyes. The same prim beauty I'd seen in lecture halls, except now there was no way I could look at her as just "the pretty girl from my department."

She was the woman who'd rejected me — and the one who'd been standing right next to that monster wolf in the alley where I died.

The woman who peeled off her gas mask — the one Ha-rin had called "Yoon-ha unnie" — looked like a graduate student, with narrow eyes behind a pair of glasses. She sat down at a keyboard and smiled lazily.

"Don't worry~ This unnie already bypassed the Valkyrie security protocol that old fart Odin put in place. Now we just snag the soul floating around here somewhere and shove it into the frame. Done."

…The soul floating around here somewhere?

Wait. Me?

At Yoon-ha's signal, Ha-rin opened the worn-out diary she always kept tucked under her arm.

It was the same one she never let out of her hands — the one that looked like a test-prep error notebook every time she passed through the department lounge or the central plaza benches.

"Got it, unnie. Initiating soul induction protocol."

Ha-rin flipped the diary open and casually scribbled something with ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a Monami ballpoint pen. Then she closed it and gave the cover a light tap.

"Soul induction protocol ready."

"Okay. We're snatching whatever soul is floating around here and cramming it into the frame, so watch the timing. You know as well as I do — if it fails, the soul can shatter. Starting now?"

Yoon-ha set her hands on the keyboard in front of the monitor and smashed the Enter key with all the flair of a genius hacker in a blockbuster movie.

"Soul induction beam — fire~"

On cue, Ha-rin opened the battered diary, and a searing white beam of light erupted from its pages — bright enough to blind.

At first, the light shot in the opposite direction from where I was floating.

I barely had time to sigh in relief before the beam banked hard in midair and came screaming toward me like a guided missile that had just acquired its lock.

AAAAAAH?!

No sound came out, but I twisted my whole body in a silent scream.

The beam skimmed past my nose by a hair.

Yes — dodged it—

…The light turned again.

After that, my memory got fuzzy.

I stuck myself to the ceiling, dove under the dissection table, hid behind Yoon-ha's monitor — all of it a desperate scramble to stay ahead of that light.

I was a ghost with no lungs, and somehow I still felt like I was gasping for air.

"…Huh? What the hell is this."

Yoon-ha lifted her hands off the keyboard.

Her perpetually narrowed eyes cracked open, just a little, for the first time.

"Ha-rin. This one is… dodging the induction beam right now?"

"What?"

"That's a speed ordinary souls can't even perceive. What the hell — why does a soul ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠have evasion maneuvers this good??"

Whether that was a compliment or an insult, I couldn't tell. I pulled off a sixth hard bank — and on the seventh, I couldn't dodge. It caught me.

"Gyaaah!"

The instant the light hit me dead-on, a heavy, solid weight flooded back into my empty body.

At the same time, I started falling fast toward the floor.

I hit headfirst, but strangely, it didn't hurt.

Realizing that wasn't good news, however, didn't take long.

"Huh? What the — why is the materialization rate this high?"

"Unnie, is this even working right? This is weird."

Yoon-ha tilted her head at me. Ha-rin's brow furrowed.

Their reactions told me everything I needed to know.

Those two could see me now.

From the moment that light hit me, I'd become visible to them.

I had no idea how. Frankly, I didn't want to know.

With a trembling heart, I slowly raised my hand.

Unlike before, when the other side had shown clean through, my body now held a shape — faint and hazy, like pale mist.

"Hey. You're Sang-hae, right?"

Ha-rin didn't seem to care whether I was a ghost or not. She crossed her arms and walked over at a leisurely pace.

When our eyes met, I looked away without thinking.

It wasn't shyness. Standing in front of the person responsible for my death just made my instincts lock up.

Whether she knew that or not, Ha-rin shook her head like I was pathetic and openly clicked her tongue.

"Did the sync fail? That vacant look is exactly ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠like the one you had when you confessed. It's kind of gross."

That's way too harsh, Lee Ha-rin! Sure, I went a little hard on the confession, but a stalker?!

I screamed until my throat should have torn — but not a single word made it out of my mouth.

The only thing speaking for the size of my injustice was the incomprehensible graph on Yoon-ha's monitor, thrashing wildly as if in sympathy.

"Don't give me that 'this is unfair' face. You got yourself cut in half because you were creeping around behind me like a loser. That's on you."

Ha-rin watched me thrash in mute frustration, then delivered a low, shameless piece of verbal violence.

"So if you don't actually want to die for real, shut up and pray you can get into that body. Once you're alive again, you work for me. That's the condition for me saving you."

Where the tip of Ha-rin's finger pointed, a grotesque mannequin lay with its neck and torso separated, wires writhing inside.

That was supposed to be my new body?

Wait — that was a female mannequin.

"If we did this by the book, trash like you wouldn't even dream of using it. That frame is meant for someone with the caliber of a hero recognized by Asgard. Consider yourself lucky."

Talking about luck to a guy who'd been cut in half and whose brain was currently pickling in a jar of fluid — the department crush I'd been pining for was starting to look like a full-blown psychopath.

But I wasn't given any time to analyze Ha-rin's inner thoughts.

"Security protocol bypass ready! Starting Valkyrie soul loading protocol!"

At Yoon-ha's shout, a blinding white light swallowed me whole in an instant.

At the same time, a vicious pain began — the kind that felt like my entire body was being carved apart.

It was the sensation of billions of cold metal needles forcing their way simultaneously through every gap in my formless, smoke-like soul.

Not simple pain — the feeling of my very existence being forcibly stitched into mechanical circuits, a full-body electric shock that tore my soul to shreds without mercy, on and on without end.

And finally, the terrible crushing pressure of gravity returning to a body that had been cut free of it.

In the nauseating sensation of something disassembling me — my soul — and putting it back together, the memories of my roughly twenty years of life flickered past like a lantern show and crumbled to dust.

So this was how it ended. First confession failed, never once had a girlfriend, cut to pieces in the most pathetic way possible — and the final chapter of my ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠life was becoming some unidentifiable mechanical doll. There really was no word for it except catastrophically unlucky.

Ding!

Over my darkening vision, a red system warning window I'd never seen before in my life snapped open with a sharp mechanical chime.

"It worked, Ha-rin! Installation complete! Whoa, this actually works? …Huh?"

Yoon-ha's excited voice cut off cold.

"Synchronization rate fixed at 12%…? That can't be right… With a bypass install, the sync rate should top out in the single digits…"

The sound of her typing grew faster and faster.

"Ha-rin. This kid… what the hell is she?"

Those were the last words I heard before my consciousness plunged into the dark.