Baek Namu the Reaper
Baek Gi-yeom went to bed the moment the clock struck ten, as precise as a knife falling into its sheath. One by one, the rest of the team followed his lead.
Neoul, who had polished off a mountain of cake thanks to the team’s generally small appetites, wandered around the practice room with a pleased pat to his stomach.
Woo Cheong’s choreography was difficult, but interesting. There were many moves that stretched the arms and legs long and wide, and when Woo Cheong danced, he looked like a fish with magnificent fins, all flashing energy and color.
Every time he made one of those sweeping motions, his hair and clothes seemed to dance along with him, fluttering so vividly that it was impossible to look away.
Could I dance like that too?
Thinking of Woo Cheong’s crisp, light movements, Neoul hurried through the practice room with earnest determination. For now, there were still plenty of places where he moved like a loose, sagging line, or stumbled and lagged half a beat behind.
Again. Again.
Tomorrow, he would do better.
For some reason, a competitive streak had risen in him. He did not even know who he was competing against, but he wanted to dance more splendidly tomorrow than he had today, and then turn to his teammates and say, Ta-da!
I want to show Father and my younger brother too.
Not the sight of him drifting around the Dragon Palace with nothing to do, passing time in bored idleness. He wanted to show them that he could be like this too. That he could dance in such a cool, lively way. Wasn’t it astonishing?
This is fun.
Even after his clothes were soaked through with sweat and his head had gone dizzy from dancing, it was still fun. So fun that he lost track of time entirely.
Oh. There’s no water.
Neoul staggered out in search of water, then noticed that the practice room on the right was still lit.
When he opened the door, he found Baek Yuri alone in front of the mirror, speaking to his reflection. The camera had already been turned off by then.
Like Baek Gi-yeom, he had always guarded his sleep with military precision and done his best to stay in peak condition every day. Neoul found it odd that he was still here at all.
"It feels like it’s all because of me."
His face was heavy with shadow. The darkness that had once flickered across him and disappeared had now spread all over him.
"I want to do well at everything like you do, but... no matter how I imagine what you would have done in a situation like this, I still can’t figure out the answer."
Baek Yuri spoke in a gloomy voice and lowered his head.
But something was strange. The face in the mirror did not lower its head. It kept staring straight at Baek Yuri.
"Baek Namu. Why am I always so pathetic and stupid? If it hadn’t been for Neoul just now, our team would have fallen completely apart. If the stage gets ruined, it’ll all be my fault. I messed up from the very first step...."
The face in the mirror, identical to Baek Yuri’s, let out a scoff.
[Aigoo! You’re at it again. Digging yourself into a hole again, huh?]
Baek Yuri muttered back as if answering him.
"I hate you. Must it really make things worse to comfort me at a time like this?"
[Ah, enough! Those idiots who won’t listen to you? Just snap both their legs off! Then maybe they’d listen!]
"Hey now. If I break their legs, how are they supposed to dance?"
Baek Yuri answered in a sulk, but he also snickered, as if he liked the other’s rough speech.
"Honestly, Baek Namu. Your temper is rotten."
[Heh. I know.]
"That wasn’t a compliment."
When Baek Yuri buried his face in his knees and curled in on himself, the face in the mirror stared at him for a while before speaking in a more serious tone.
[Don’t try to drag along the ones who won’t cooperate. Just show them what you can do. Debut is an individual fight, anyway.]
"Yeah."
[You’ve improved a lot. Still a long way from catching up to me, though.]
"...Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve already caught up to you. Now I’m better than you."
[Aaaagh! That’s rich! Coming from Baek Yuri?! The kid who couldn’t even reach my ankles is now climbing right over my head? Seriously?]
As the face in the mirror exploded in outrage, Baek Yuri’s shoulders trembled with laughter. But to Neoul’s eyes, that laughter looked exactly like tears.
"Baek Yuri-seonsaeng."
Unable to stand it any longer, Neoul called out to him.
Baek Yuri sprang up in alarm. His brown eyes, finding Neoul, shook violently.
Neoul asked, "Do you have water?"
Baek Yuri hurried to find a water bottle and handed it over.
"Y-you saw that?"
"Yes."
"Ah...."
Baek Yuri dragged a hand over his face, then backed against the mirror and sat down hard.
"I’m keeping your secret too, so please keep what you saw tonight a secret as well. Please."
"Yes."
It was not even a difficult request. Why was he suffering so much over asking it?
Neoul answered without concern and gulped down the water.
Baek Yuri scowled and bit his lip.
"I looked like a crazy person, didn’t I? Just talking to myself in the mirror. Laughing alone...."
That wasn’t just talking to yourself.
As Neoul thought that absently, Baek Yuri began tugging at his own hair with a low groan, then spoke with a gloomy air.
"This is a secret."
"Yes."
"When I look in the mirror, sometimes I see my sibling instead of my own face."
"Yes."
"It feels like he’s talking to me. Sometimes he swears at me. Sometimes he tells me to keep going."
"Yes."
"...No matter how you look at it, that sounds insane, right? Even I think my mental health may not be in the best shape."
No, that sounds like your sibling is actually there....
This time, Neoul could not say yes. Baek Yuri was sitting with his back to the mirror, but the Baek Yuri reflected there was facing forward, not showing his back at all.
Neoul was about to tell him that.
But Baek Yuri’s sibling in the mirror clearly did not want anyone to know he was truly here. He pressed a finger to his lips, made a shushing sound, and smiled broadly.
Baek Yuri lay completely slack, speaking as if confessing something he had kept buried for years.
"I’m actually a twin."
It was something he did not tell people easily, but Neoul felt like the unreal presence in front of him, disconnected from ordinary reality, made it possible to say it aloud.
Maybe he had wanted to let it out properly someday because his chest had been so clogged up. Maybe getting caught talking to himself had loosened the reins.
"My twin younger brother.... Baek Namu left when he was seventeen... five years ago."
"......"
"He died in an accident while trying to save a child who ran into the road."
From the ceiling, the ghostly middle school girls all made miserable faces and wailed, "Oh no.... What do we do? What do we do?"
Baek Namu, who had been in the mirror, slipped smoothly out of it and dusted off his clothes. Inside the mirror, he had been wearing the same outfit as Baek Yuri, but outside it looked different.
He wore black like the grim reapers who sometimes came to the Dragon Palace, with a black robe draped over his shoulders. The difference was that his ears were loaded with dangling earrings, and every finger was covered in rings, all of it outrageously flashy.
On his face, there was a small mole in the middle of his right cheek. His face was identical to Baek Yuri’s, yet that single mark made his whole expression seem different.
Baek Namu went over to the ghostly middle school girls, checked their names as if taking attendance, and flicked each one on the forehead.
[You little brats! You ignored the reaper and wandered off, didn’t you? Get back already. Now! If you don’t, you’ll never make it to the afterlife and some nasty ghost will gobble you up!]
The ghosts vanished at last, leaving behind faint, reluctant cries of waaah.
"Back then, they said Baek Namu would not live long because of his illness. He’d had pediatric cancer when he was fourteen, and after a long, difficult treatment, it came back when he was seventeen."
Baek Yuri kept talking.
While he did, Baek Namu finished chasing off the ghosts and came over to Neoul, sitting beside him. Well, floating in the air cross-legged as if he were sitting.
[Hi. Can you see me?]
Neoul glanced at Baek Namu, then looked back at Baek Yuri. Baek Yuri seemed unable to see or hear Baek Namu at all.
Can he only be seen through the mirror?
That seemed likely.
In the mirror now, only Baek Yuri’s back and Neoul were reflected. Baek Namu, hovering beside Neoul and peering in curiously, did not appear there.
Because he was dead.
"That kid said he hated meaningless death."
[You can see me, right? Huh?]
"He said he didn’t want to waste away in a hospital bed and die of illness."
[You can see me, can’t you? What are you, anyway?]
...Honestly, it was hard to concentrate.
Neoul was not sure which twin he was supposed to focus on. For the moment, he decided to nod at Baek Namu and listen to Baek Yuri first.
"The doctor said Baek Namu didn’t have much time left, and Baek Namu himself brought up death a lot, but I didn’t believe it. I believed he’d succeed in treatment like before and become healthy again. Because Baek Namu was better than me at swimming, faster at running, and much better at dancing.... He was always the better one in every way, ever since we were little."
[Hear that? I was pretty amazing.]
"If one of us had to be sick, then it should have been me, the one who only sat around reading books whenever I wasn’t exercising. I couldn’t understand why it had to be Baek Namu. He was clearly healthier than I was. There was no reason he should suddenly get sick."
[Tsk. You idiot. What reason would there be for getting sick? You were just unlucky.]
"But Baek Namu must have been certain he was going to die."
Baek Yuri hung his head low and buried his face in his knees.
"He said he hated meaningless death, and in the end he created a meaningful one by saving that child who ran into the road."
"......"
"He’s the kind of guy who can’t stand it unless even death is under his control."
Neoul quietly turned to look at Baek Namu.
Baek Namu stopped heckling and shut his mouth. When his eyes met Neoul’s, he gave a bitter smile.
"I don’t know whether the reason I see my brother’s face in the mirror and hear his voice sometimes is because I hate him for leaving on his own, or because I miss him."
Baek Yuri rubbed at his eyes and lifted his head. The rims of his eyes had already gone red.
"Or maybe I still... know in my head that he died, but I can’t accept it in my heart."
[Ask him if he hates seeing me.]
Baek Namu tapped Neoul a couple of times and said that. Neoul relayed the question as it was.
"Do you dislike seeing your brother through the mirror?"
"No. I’m glad."
Baek Yuri smiled faintly.
"It scares me a little, because I feel like I’m crazy, but I’m still glad. Really glad... just a little sad too. Because it feels like an illusion."
Baek Yuri seemed convinced that what he had seen was nothing more than a hallucination.
"I even wondered briefly whether I should go to a psychiatrist, but I stopped because if I took medicine and couldn’t see the hallucinations anymore, I think it would get even harder."
"......"
Neoul stared at Baek Namu again.
His gaze seemed to ask whether it would really be impossible to tell Baek Yuri the truth, that he was not crazy.
Baek Namu raised one finger to his lips.
[Shh. Don’t say it.]
He shook his head, and the dangling earrings at his ears chimed loudly.
But Baek Yuri could not hear a thing.
"Please keep this from Baek Gi-yeom too. If he knew I was like this, he’d be upset as well."
"Yes."
"......"
Baek Yuri looked strangely at Neoul, who had nodded so matter-of-factly.
Normally, hearing something like this would make people solemn, or prompt them to try to comfort him somehow, or at least say that they were sorry and that he should see a doctor.... People would react in all sorts of ways.
Neoul did none of that.
Somehow, that put Baek Yuri at ease.
"I’ve kept it all locked up inside for five years. But now that I’ve said it, I feel strangely relieved. Thank you for listening. Thank you for helping me today too."
Baek Yuri rubbed at his face and got to his feet.
"I should head back now. I have to get up early again tomorrow."
"Baek Yuri-seonsaeng, go in first. I will leave in a little while."
Neoul said this while clutching the water bottle.
After Baek Yuri left and his footsteps faded into the distance, Neoul and Baek Namu, both listening intently, spoke at the same time.
"Are you a grim reaper?"
[What are you, anyway? You don’t seem human, and you’re not a dokkaebi either.]