A Face Like Sangsangi’s
When Neoul looked at him with a faintly wary expression, Baek Namu gave a shameless grin.
Don’t worry. You can tell me. I’ll tell you too. That’s right, I’m a Grim Reaper.
At once, Neoul relaxed and answered.
“I am Neoul, the Dragon King’s second son.”
Baek Namu’s eyes widened.
Ah! So you’re the one the seniors were talking about? The mermaid prince! Nice to meet you!
“You know me?”
I only heard bits and pieces, but yeah. They said that whenever they went down to the Dragon Palace to haul out a water ghost, the black-haired mermaid prince would be peeking around with this curious look in his eyes. And every time they saw you, you’d shot up in height again, so they’d think, Wow, kids from other people’s houses really do grow fast, huh?
Baek Namu propped his chin on his hand and nodded.
So how’d you get here?
Neoul explained what had happened. Baek Namu burst out laughing when he heard that Neoul had mistaken Baek Yuri for a rabbit.
Hahahaha! No, seriously, he and I do get called rabbit-faced a lot because we take after our mom, but still! Hahaha! That’s absolutely ridiculous!
He laughed so hard he practically pounded the floor, then wiped a tear from the corner of his eye and finally calmed down.
Rabbits are tiny little animals. I don’t have a phone, so I can’t even show you a picture or anything. Just ask Baek Yuri to show you later.
He laughed again and shook his head, then quietly stared in the direction Baek Yuri had disappeared.
Neoul wondered why he didn’t tell Baek Yuri about his existence.
“Why must I not tell him?”
Huh?
“Why do you let Baek Yuri seonsaeng think the Grim Reaper Baek Namu is a hallucination?”
Ah.
Baek Namu swept his bangs back with a bitter look and then rested his chin on his hand again.
Just keep it a secret that I came by.
“……”
Baek Yuri has a vivid imagination, and he’s very sensitive.
What did that have to do with anything?
Neoul tilted his head, unable to follow the logic, and Baek Namu added an explanation.
I can’t tell a kid who believes I was born on some other star and am living a new life that, in truth, I became a Grim Reaper and I’m still here on this earth, sometimes coming by to look at your face.
“……”
Unless Baek Yuri could see me the way you do. But if he can’t see me and I still say I’m by his side, then he’d keep wondering whether I’m there or not every single moment, and that would only make things harder for him.
Baek Namu walked up to the mirror. Then he stared at the reflection that showed Neoul clearly, while leaving him absent entirely.
Even if a single leaf rustled in the wind, he’d start wandering around the mirror, asking, “Baek Namu, are you there?”
The moment Baek Namu reached a hand toward Neoul’s reflected image, he was suddenly sucked into the mirror.
Then the reflection of Neoul shifted slightly.
His clothes, hairstyle, height, and build all stayed the same, but his face seemed to have changed into Baek Namu’s.
The fact that I died would have hurt Baek Yuri badly when he was trying to convince me not to give up on treatment. The accident happened right in front of him. I died in the ambulance while they were rushing me to the hospital.
Baek Namu let out a long sigh, then slipped back out of the mirror. Neoul’s reflected face returned to its own.
He probably hates me a lot. If I don’t appear in the mirror, he’ll grieve; if I do appear, he’ll grieve again. So it’s better to let him think I’m just a hallucination.
“……”
I hope Baek Yuri and Mom forget me as soon as possible. I want them to find their smiles again. So you mustn’t let them know I’m here.
Neoul thought Baek Namu’s words were contradictory.
“Then why did you enter the mirror and speak to him?”
If he wanted them to forget, shouldn’t he have kept his face hidden and his voice silent from the very beginning?
No, shouldn’t he stop now, even at this moment?
From Baek Yuri’s perspective, every time he saw Baek Namu pretending to be a hallucination, wouldn’t it make him think of his dead brother all the more often, and hurt him all the more?
Well, at first… I was just too worried. After that, it became a habit before I even realized it.
Baek Namu raked his hands through his hair with a dejected look.
It’s not just Mom and Baek Yuri who want to see me. I want to see our family too....
The ash-blond dyed hair that matched Baek Yuri’s perfectly calm style was all in disarray, sticking up like a bird’s nest.
I want to see Baek Gi-yeom, and my relatives, and my friends too. I want to laugh and talk like before. I want to crack jokes. But the only person I ever went into the mirror to speak to was Baek Yuri. I’ve been holding myself back in my own way, you know.
Damn it, I don’t know. I’m pissed. I’m upset.
Baek Namu sprawled on the floor and burst into sobs. Neoul circled around him, peering down at him, and asked,
“Do you regret saving the child and dying earlier than scheduled?”
No!
Baek Namu snapped his head up and glared.
There’s no such thing as regret in my dictionary. That day was the best thing I’ve ever done in my life. Even if I could go back, I’d make the same choice.
He said the only thing he had ever regretted since birth was one incident in elementary school, when he had picked up dried seaweed like it was a snack and ended up in the emergency room.
Neoul nodded, saying he liked seaweed too. He had never gotten sick from tearing off pieces and eating them, though.
I haven’t eaten seaweed since that day. Just seeing it makes my stomach turn.
Baek Namu shuddered and then gazed blankly out the window before getting to his feet.
Aah! Time to go to work! I’ll come back again, mermaid prince. See you next time.
Then he vanished through the wall. The jingling of his earrings faded as he went.
Neoul thought Baek Namu was incredible. How could someone live without a single regret, except for seaweed? It was a boldness worth admiring.
* * *
On the way back to the dorm, Neoul ran into someone whose temperament was the complete opposite of Baek Namu’s boldness.
On the stairs, Yeo Do-bin, who looked just like Sangsangi, was crying in silence.
When Neoul made his presence known, Yeo Do-bin flinched and looked up, only to meet his eyes.
His single-lidded, sharply slanted eyes and pale, fish-belly gaze gave off a cold impression. But to Neoul, the tears trembling in his eyes were even more obvious.
Yeo Do-bin hurriedly wiped his face, put on the round glasses he had been holding, and bowed his head deeply.
“Oh, hello.... Sorry for blocking the way....”
Then he sidled into the corner of the stairs and pressed himself tightly against the wall to make room.
Neoul stared at him, a little taken aback.
He might be taller and bigger than the humans here, but not so much that he couldn’t pass if Yeo Do-bin didn’t move. The stairs were wide.
Yeo Do-bin was wearing a long-sleeved hoodie utterly unsuited to the hot summer weather, and before Neoul knew it, he had pulled the hood low over his head and curled himself up as much as possible.
As though he wanted to erase his own existence and hide from the world.
Since the one who looked like Sangsangi was making himself so miserable, Neoul couldn’t help but ask,
“Is this because of what happened earlier?”
“……”
Since Neoul had stopped him rather than just passing by, Yeo Do-bin seemed startled and froze for a moment before nodding. A lock of hair stuck out from beneath the hood.
Neoul did not fully understand what became disadvantageous if someone had fewer parts, or why it mattered how many seconds of broadcast time they received, but he had at least dimly realized that the earlier uproar by Yeo Do-bin’s team member meant the matter was very important.
Still, Neoul thought the team members ought to be grateful to Yeo Do-bin.
It is a somewhat cruel thing to say, but were they not discarded cards?
Neoul had seen it clearly.
Baek Yuri and Ha On-ha had been turning cards over, casually letting them slide by as though it were a mistake. After that, a few other leaders with a bit of wit had done the same with practiced ease.
But Yeo Do-bin had gladly taken every participant those others refused to choose.
Of course, if Yeo Do-bin had behaved the same way as the other leaders, then in the end there would have come a situation where all the remaining participants were divided up and taken by the teams one by one....
And if that had happened, someone would inevitably think, Those leftovers are just bottom-tier losers with no talent, bad personalities, or no friends—basically nobodies.
There must be a reason they kept not choosing them and putting it off.
But thanks to Yeo Do-bin gathering them all up in advance, that disaster had been avoided.
Neoul wondered whether Yeo Do-bin had deliberately been thinking of how to keep them from being embarrassed or trapped beneath prejudice.
He asked why he had chosen those team members, and why he had picked as many as fourteen.
A round pair of glasses and a sharp line of eyes appeared faintly beneath the hood.
“I just thought it would be fun to play the game together.... I got carried away by the atmosphere, I guess....”
So he really hadn’t been thinking about it at all.
In the middle of that brutal selection process, he had simply been enjoying the game all by himself.
Even Neoul, who had come from the sea, could vaguely read the intricate battle of glances taking place there.
Yeo Do-bin was like a poor great white shark who had been swimming through a field of beautiful coral flowers, only to get his side bitten hard by a hidden blacktip shark and end up bleeding.
In other words, he suffered because his head was full of flowers.
“It’s very late. Are you planning to stay out here and not go in?”
“Because my teammates are in the room....”
Yeo Do-bin hid his face again, pulling the oversized hood down like a little conch retreating into its shell.
He seemed overwhelmed with grief.
But Neoul still could not understand why the atmosphere had become so serious.
“If you don’t have a part, can’t you just make one?”
“...Pardon?”
“If the song is too short, lengthen it and divide it evenly among yourselves.”
Yeo Do-bin slowly lifted his head, blank with surprise, as though the thought had never once crossed his mind.
His glasses were fogged with moisture, and the corners of his eyes were wet.
Maybe because he wore round glasses and had such an dazed expression, his fierce eyes took on a plain, almost innocent quality.
Yeo Do-bin opened and closed his mouth a few times before asking carefully,
“I-I can do that?”
“You would have to ask someone other than me.”
“Ah! Y-yes, right! The writer...! I’ll ask...! Thank you!”
As Yeo Do-bin bowed again and again, thanking him over and over, the hood slid backward. All his tousled hair spilled out into view.
The shark-black eyes that resembled a great white looked up at Neoul quietly.
“Uh... I’m Yeo Do-bin...! Twenty years old... same age....”
He started out with a spirited introduction, but the more he spoke, the smaller his voice became.
“Yes. I know. I am Neoul.”
“Ah... yes. I know that too.... I lived in Australia, so I don’t have a single friend here....”
Australia? Where was that?
Neoul tilted his head. Like Daiki, who had come from neighboring Japan, Yeo Do-bin also seemed not to be Korean. But unlike Daiki, his Korean was remarkably natural and fluent.
“Would it be okay if I said hello whenever we pass each other...?”
“...? Yes, of course.”
When Neoul nodded, Yeo Do-bin’s face lit up.
“Then... can we talk casually too?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you! You can talk casually too! Please... talk to me comfortably too!”
“I shall.”
“......?”
Yeo Do-bin looked briefly puzzled, but he seemed happy enough to have made a friend in a strange place where he knew no one at all.
“I... I could’ve just passed by, but thank you for helping me. Everyone else is a competitor, and I don’t think they like me very much, so... I didn’t think there’d be anyone willing to help me like this. You seem like such a warm person....”
“?”
Neoul was confused, because he did not remember helping Yeo Do-bin at all.
What did I do?
Besides, Neoul’s body temperature was usually twenty-six degrees, so he wasn’t warm, and in the first place he wasn’t even human.
But Yeo Do-bin, with his problem resolved and his face much brighter than before, stood up.
“I think I can go back to my team now. I’m glad I made a friend. Then I’ll gather my courage and go in...! I hope you have a peaceful night too!”
“Very well.”
“Thanks heaps! Seriously, seriously, thank you!”
Yeo Do-bin tiptoed up the stairs, keeping his footsteps silent as he disappeared.
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