Yeomra's Compensation
"Han Junsu... come with me."
Deep in the night. A strange voice drifted through the cramped studio apartment where I lived alone, one I had no business hearing at all, cold enough to send every survival instinct I owned into overdrive, and it had called my name with perfect precision.
Goosebumps raced up my spine, yet even so I shot upright in bed and readied my fists. No. To be precise, I tried to.
"Wha...?"
But things didn't go as I intended. My body rose sluggishly from the bed, then turned toward the direction the voice had come from. Stripped of all control, I felt as though someone else were pulling my strings, and I'd barely registered the bewilderment of it before the figure of a man standing directly before me filled my vision.
A gaunt man in a suit black as pitch. A moment later his lips parted, purple-tinged against that dark suit, his skin pale as death.
"Your time in the world of the living has run out. Lay down every attachment you carry, here and now, and set out on your journey into the next life."
The moment that ominous line landed, wrapped in an aura that would make any living soul recoil, I understood. The man standing before me was a grim reaper.
At the same time, I barely managed to roll my eyes sideways toward the bed, and there was my own body, lying motionless, face blank as a corpse's.
I'm... I'm really dead?
The sight insisted that this impossible situation was real, and my head throbbed with the shock of it, but all the while my body had already begun to move, trailing the reaper as he turned and started walking. Only then, truly grasping the gravity of my situation, did desperate words begin tumbling out of my mouth.
"N-no, excuse me! I think there's been some kind of mistake... I'm only twenty-five this year. No chronic illness, I exercise regularly, so why on earth would I be dead?"
"..."
"Hold on! Just double-check one more..."
But no matter how desperately I shouted, the reaper kept walking without so much as a glance back. Then the fingers of his leading hand gave a sharp snap, and my consciousness cut to black.
Fuck... I haven't even lost my virginity yet...
When I came to, I was sitting in a chair, in a space dyed black on every side, so vast or perhaps so cramped that I couldn't tell which. A mid-sized desk and monitor sat before me, and beyond them a woman who looked every bit the part of a grim reaper was clacking away at a keyboard, heavy dark circles hanging beneath her eyes, the kind that would have dropped a living person from overwork long ago.
The next moment, the reaper spoke in a flat, bone-dry voice without so much as glancing my way.
"Name and date of birth."
"Excuse me, ma'am? I think there's been a mistake—"
"Excuse me, Mr. Deceased."
"Yes?"
"Do you have any idea how many times I've heard that line today?"
"..."
"Including yours just now, that makes two hundred and forty-nine. Of course, I understand that death isn't easy to accept. But your previous life has already been closed out, and preparations for your new one are already underway... so let go of the pointless attachments and follow our instructions."
"Ah..."
Her tone was brusque, yet somehow sincere. I felt my stomach drop and let out a small groan, and with it the reality of death hit home so vividly that I was accepting it at an unnaturally quick pace. That was when the reaper's voice came from behind the monitor once more.
"Then let me ask again. Name and date of birth."
"Han Junsu. Born March 4, 2000."
"Han Junsu... born March 4, 2000..."
Hearing me surrender my name and birth date without a fight this time, she tapped out a few keystrokes, then began scrolling through the monitor with her mouse wheel, eyes glued to the screen. Before long, though, a change crept over her face, until then frozen in fatigue and indifference, and her scrolling fingers suddenly turned frantic.
Zrrrt! Zrrrt!
"Uh... one moment, Mr. Deceased?"
For the first time, bewilderment showed on her face as she picked up the phone on her desk. Could it be...? In that instant, the guttering flame of hope in my heart roared back to life.
"We are so sorry, Mr. Han Junsu! Truly, deeply sorry!"
The female reaper had barely set down the receiver before yet another reaper materialized silently at her side and bowed to me at a full ninety degrees.
He looked more seasoned than the two reapers I'd met so far, and his suit somehow read as more expensive. This was management, no question. A department head, in company terms? At any rate, the sheer force of his apology put me at ease. A man who looked ready to prostrate himself with thorns bared on his back, begging to be punished, was undeniable proof in itself. Proof that my being dragged down here had all been a "mistake."
"First, please give me a detailed explanation."
"Of course, naturally. To give you the conclusion first: Mr. Han Junsu, it is not yet your time to be in the underworld. In other words, you still have a great deal of life left..."
He delivered the answer I'd been hoping for, then went on to explain how such a blunder had happened in the first place. And that explanation was, in a word, both perfectly plausible and completely bonkers.
"So you're telling me the deceased you were supposed to collect was an 83-year-old grandfather named Han Junsu, living in the building right next to mine, same floor, same unit number?"
"Yes, that's correct. Once again, we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused by our error."
"Ah, yes... So then I do get to go back to the living world now, right? And I'll be given some kind of treatment so this whole incident just feels like a dream, yes?"
"Well, about that..."
At my question about what happened next, the reaper froze mid-bow, his words trailing into nothing. His reaction did wonders for my anxiety, and then his bowed body flinched once, fear bleeding unchecked into his voice.
"As it h-happens, Yeomra has decreed that she will explain things to Mr. Han Junsu personally. We shall escort you to Lady Yeomra's presence at once."
"Y-Yeomra? No, wait, couldn't you just send me back to the living world as is? Surely my case isn't serious enough to warrant meeting someone like her— ...Ah."
"Haha... right this way."
I grasped the gravity of my situation a beat too late, and the reaper led the way with a hollow, somehow mournful laugh. A moment later, with no other choice, I followed him through a door that had appeared nearby, and a place utterly unlike the pitch-black void spread out before my eyes. The interior resembled an Eastern palace dressed up with Western carpets and drapery, and at the center of that opulent space stood a man and a woman. The man was the reaper who had mistakenly collected me. The woman, striking in crimson hair and crimson eyes, was, even to a mere human like me, unmistakably Yeomra. That overwhelming presence, and a beauty to rival it, would have made it strange for her to be anything but the god who ruled the underworld.
That said, the two of them were in a rather... delicate state. The reaper lay sprawled face-down on the floor, his already pale skin drained whiter still, while right beside him Yeomra took a moment to catch her breath and smooth her disheveled hair.
"Hoooh..."
The massive baseball bat gripped in her hand told the story of the last few minutes well enough, and then her blood-red gaze swung toward me.
Hers was a gaze of such crushing weight that a single moment of eye contact threatened to lock my body in place.
"Ugh..."
A stifled groan slipped out of me before I could stop it, and a heartbeat later Yeomra's voice rang out, delicate and lovely, yet carrying a majesty I wouldn't have dared defy.
"You're here? Wait just a moment. Let me land three more on this bastard, no, five... Hngh!"
CRAAACK!!
"Ghhk!..."
This went beyond beating flesh. Each terrifying swing of her bat seemed to strike not only the meat and the bones buried deep beneath it, but the soul itself.
CRAAACK!
"I told you to verify the deceased—"
THWAAAM!!
"Did I tell you to do your job properly, or didn't I?!"
Between those vicious swings, Yeomra's fury-laced shouts piled on top of everything else. Naturally the man taking the beating shook, but watching from the sidelines, the department-head reaper and I couldn't stop trembling either. The murderous aura boiling off Yeomra was simply more than either of us could bear...
"Manager Park, clear him out. Wait outside until I call for you."
"Yes, Lady Yeomra."
With the fifth and final swing, the reaper who'd botched the job went limp. The reaper who really was a manager hauled his junior away, and I found myself alone with Yeomra.
"Ahem. Making a guest of honor witness something so unsightly... my apologies?"
"It's quite all right."
"Oh, and, I am a god, and quite a bit older than you, so I'll speak casually. That's fine, yes?"
"Yes, that's perfectly fine."
"Good, good. Then let's get straight to business."
Perhaps my careful refusal to ruffle her mood pleased her, because Yeomra's expression brightened a shade as she climbed the steps to her throne and settled onto it. Somewhere in that process my eyes betrayed me, drifting to her lush rear as it strained at the fabric of her suit trousers, and then a shocking, wholly unexpected truth began pouring from Yeomra's mouth. The unbelievable fact that this incident had shaved a full twenty years off my lifespan.
"I was dragged here by mistake in my sleep. What on earth are you talking about?"
"That would be the Sanzu River toll. Ten years of lifespan, every single crossing. And those bastards are utterly inflexible about it... Anyway, just hear me out to the end. Your thinking will change."
"Even so, that's—"
"Tsk!"
"Yes, ma'am..."
Hearing that my life had been unjustly cut short by twenty years, my voice spiked for an instant, then Yeomra's short rebuke had me shrinking on the spot. She went on in a tone that was almost soothing.
"Unfortunately, there's nothing I can do about the lost lifespan. In exchange, though, I will provide compensation befitting what you lost."
"Compensation, you say?"
"Oh, all sorts of things. Winning the lottery, an extraordinary talent, you know how it goes. Every so often, someone who's been making a name for themselves in the human world dies younger than everyone else. That's why."
"So all of those people became special as compensation for lifespan lost, just like me?"
"Not all of them, of course. But quite a few are cases just like yours."
Scarcely had Yeomra finished her proposal before geniuses began surfacing in my head. They had died young, every one of them, yet each had left a name in history, and as their lives and achievements came to mind, the shock and indignity of my shortened lifespan began to ebb away. Twenty years of life in exchange for overwhelming talent... it was starting to sound like a damn good deal.
Better to burn brilliantly for twenty fewer years than to live out a plain life and wither away in mediocrity.
The next moment, whether she'd caught the shift in my mood or not, Yeomra resumed her explanation with noticeably more energy.
"Sounds like you're interested now. No reason to drag this out, then. Shall we pick your compensation?"
Snap!
The instant her fingers snapped, a blinding flash of light split the air, and a large table materialized before me. Atop it, scrolls were piled mountain-high, easily more than a hundred of them.