Some twenty minutes had passed since Rembrary began his vigil — firing off texts here and there on his phone while monitoring the reactions of the faithful on social media.
A honk blared right in front of him, and Rembrary lifted his head. Shin Jo-woon's car had pulled up directly before him.
He hurriedly opened the door and climbed inside.
"'Tis a mercy you were here, Shin Jo-woon."
"Where'd your manager run off to that he won't even pick up his phone?"
"I believe he departed to attend to his true calling."
"True calling? So managing is his side gig? What exactly is his true calling?"
The Grim Reaper. Shin Jo-woon had hurled a question that was devilishly hard to answer — and it would have been no easier even if Rembrary did not hold such different values from the people of this world.
Rembrary hesitated, then shook his head and swiftly changed the subject.
"The trunk has ceased its racket, I notice?"
"Sharp ears on you."
"Did you have it repaired?"
"Threw it out. Whatever was rattling around in there."
"Because it rolled about so?"
"Because it was broken."
Rembrary nodded along without giving it much thought.
Shin Jo-woon turned the wheel and asked, "You finished with your errand, then?"
Rembrary tapped the sketchbook resting on his knees. "It is here."
"What is it?"
"A signature."
"A signature? Whose?"
"Song Seo-young's."
Shin Jo-woon drummed his fingers against the steering wheel a few times, lost in thought, before uttering an "Ah," and nodding.
"The first Korean model ever to walk a Hallowina fashion show?"
Though he looked to Rembrary like a man with nothing to do but loaf about, Shin Jo-woon, true to his entertainment-industry roots, instantly dredged up Song Seo-young's most noteworthy recent career milestone and asked,
"And what might that be?"
Alas, Rembrary was an idol who understood show business even less than the average civilian did.
"You went all the way to her agency for an autograph without even knowing that?"
Shin Jo-woon asked, utterly dumbfounded. If you simply ran into someone and asked for their signature because they were famous, knowing the details of their career hardly mattered.
But if you deliberately carved time out of your day to visit their agency, surely you were a fan — and surely you knew something of their career? That was the reasonable assumption.
Yet here was a man who, after claiming his manager was unavailable and borrowing Shin Jo-woon's help to make the trip, now blinked blankly and asked what it even was.
"It is a fashion brand. A Rococo-style brand."
"Never heard of it."
Shin Jo-woon gave a slow nod.
"Suppose that's forgivable."
"Precisely."
Before long, the car pulled up in front of the dormitory where Wild Animal had recently relocated.
Rembrary bowed in thanks and stepped out. Shin Jo-woon fished the drawing Rembrary had made for him out of the glove box, gave it a couple of hearty flaps, tucked it back inside, and waved.
Ten in the morning.
A while back, CEO Im mentioned he intended to bring in a teacher to school us in common sense and general knowledge.
He'd said nothing since, so I took it for a remark made in passing.
It was not. And so, the order of events...
When I first arrived at the office, some team leader or other came by and announced that the staff had run a blind test and narrowed this album down to five songs. They would send us the tracks by email, and we were all to listen closely and submit any opinions on the concepts or the lyrics.
This time, two of the five already had lyrics written, and we were told they could be modified somewhat.
I did not know what an email was, so I held my tongue, but Jungseo supplied me with my email address.
Jungseo also taught me how to retrieve my password, and so we gathered in the practice room, phones clutched in hand.
But before we could so much as open our inboxes, CEO Im appeared and introduced a general-knowledge teacher.
A man surnamed Gu — given name, Seji. Declaring he would test our common sense, he separated us into different rooms, handed out test papers, and departed.
The instant I laid eyes on the test paper, I knew this man and I would not get along.
Two in the afternoon.
The teacher declares that my store of common sense is astonishingly empty.
"Then I shall simply refill it. 'Tis easier to fill an empty vessel than to rid one of strange contents, is it not?"
Utterly oblivious to the members laughing at me, the teacher boomed out the words heartily.
I am quite certain this man and I will not get along.
Five in the afternoon.
The teacher demands to know which ancient era I lived in.
I answered none, whereupon he laughed himself silly and then asked about my brother... ah. Am I permitted to speak of this? One moment.
Rembrary, who had been chattering away into his running self-cam, pressed pause for a moment and considered whether it would be acceptable to reveal on broadcast that the newly arrived general-knowledge teacher was an acquaintance of Yeon-woo's brother, Woo Sung-woo.
True, Rembrary himself had known nothing of it until the teacher let it slip.
But if others heard of it, might they conclude the teacher had landed the position through connections?
People rejoiced when they profited from connections, yet gnashed their teeth in resentment when others did the same — this, too, called for caution.
Arms crossed, Rembrary deliberated at length before deciding against recording the matter in his video diary after all. It hardly qualified as essential history.
He shut off the self-cam completely, tucked it into the black pouch, drew his legs up into a cross-legged seat, and pulled out his phone.
It was to check the email the team leader had mentioned earlier.
He still hadn't managed to memorize his email address or password, but thanks to the auto-login function Jungseo had set up, the inbox contents appeared the moment he connected.
'Good grief.'
Rembrary clicked his tongue.
Perhaps because months had passed without a single check, the number of unread messages was enormous.
Fortunately, the email with the music tracks that the team leader had supposedly sent sat right at the top, easy enough to find.
But Rembrary decided it would be worthwhile to learn more about this "Woo Yeon-woo" first, and instead of opening the tracks, he began working through the unread mail one by one from the top.
'Did he have a taste for gambling, then?'
Invitations to gambling dens were conspicuously plentiful.
Not realizing these were spam, Rembrary reasoned that Yeon-woo must have loved gambling indeed, to be courted by dens from every corner, and read on, message after message.
There were also a great many emails stamped (Advertisement), and...
In the end, after painstakingly reading through sixty of them, Rembrary gave up and began scrolling down, glancing at little more than the subject lines. Slogging through that endless parade of meaningless (Advertisement) mail and gambling invitations threatened to devour far too much time.
How many pages did he scroll thus? At last, he reached the dates from before he had entered Woo Yeon-woo's body.
Everything from here on was marked as read — and curiously, not a single advertisement or gambling email appeared among them.
But they were almost all receipts, so even the "read" mail offered little for judging Yeon-woo's character.
Once again Rembrary skimmed subject lines, flipping backward through the archive, until his thumb stopped dead at an email dated three months before Yeon-woo's disappearance.
To: Woo Yeon-woo. From: Woo Yeon-woo. He had sent it to himself — and the subject line read: 'Demon. Confirmation. Scrap.'
When Rembrary tapped the blue lettering beneath the words 'Possession', the mail app slid away and an internet page came to the fore.
It was a screen of red text on a black background, rambling on and on about something.
Rembrary drew the phone closer to read it.
That very moment —
-Bang bang
Came the sound of knuckles rapping on the break room door. Rembrary hastily blacked out the screen and demanded, "Who goes there?"
The one who entered was Jungseo.
"Jongwoo hyung says he'll drive you back to the dorm."
"Ah. Very well. My thanks."
Rembrary slipped the phone into his pocket and rose. He could always review it once he returned to the dormitory, surely.
That plan, however, never came to fruition.
The members had decided to gather and listen to the music together, holding a proper discussion.
Rembrary raised objections, but he was overruled and captured by the others, forced to sit in the living room while all five songs played on repeat for hours on end.
By the time the discussion wrapped, dawn had broken, and Rembrary, utterly spent, went straight to his room and collapsed into sleep.
The next day, Jungseo's film shoot began, and following him to set drove the email clean out of Rembrary's mind.
It was only a cameo, so there was no need to report to the set every single day — but Rembrary insisted on tagging along to lend his support, fearing that Lee Il-bak might torment Jungseo.
Jongwoo felt uneasy about bringing Rembrary, but on reflection, since he'd be appearing as a cameo regardless, it seemed wiser to get a feel beforehand for the set's atmosphere and how the actors had interpreted their characters. So, reluctantly, he brought Rembrary along.
And once they arrived at the set, Sa Gam-jae — whom Rembrary hadn't seen in days — began lecturing him about where on earth he had disappeared to, and the email check was postponed yet again.
"I journeyed to the Underworld."
As Rembrary rebuked him while holding up his call log of missed calls, Sa Gam-jae led him somewhere deserted and confessed honestly.
"In the past, you went to the Underworld and returned straightaway, did you not?"
"There has been talk. Of various matters."
"Talk? What manner of talk?"
"Talk concerning that one, sir."
"Why? What business is it of mine?"
Sa Gam-jae indicated the shadow with his eyes.
Rembrary frowned down at it.
"It has shown itself a number of times, yet never once caused mischief, has it?"
"Prevention, sir, is meant to take place before accidents occur."
"I confess the creature sits ill with me as well. But what has it done since emerging, beyond performing? True, it did battle Nakru — but that was because it was set upon first. ...I say this not in defense of this demon or whatever it may be. I merely ask: the reapers gathered for days upon days of council over a demon that has yet to cause a single problem?"
Rembrary protested, dumbfounded.
It felt uncomfortably like defending a demon, which displeased him — but the real problem was that if he were dragged off to the Underworld over this demon, the one left awake and aware the majority of the time would be himself.
Rembrary genuinely could not stand the décor of this world's Underworld.
Besides, if he went about proselytizing the goddess Redrin in a place like that, trouble would surely follow.
"That is true."
Sa Gam-jae conceded the point meekly enough.
"Then why the council?"
"The demons' reactions are far from ordinary."
"The demons?"
Why do demons keep entering the conversation?
"When that shadow of yours took hold of that body, a small stir ran through the demons, sir. They appear to have taken an interest in you. The demons, which had long been scattered to the four winds, have lately shown signs of converging this way."
Rembrary recalled what Ox-Head had once said to him — that they ought to join forces — and a sudden, uneasy premonition crawled up his spine.
He wasn't about to end up herding a train of demons and demon beasts trailing after him like sheepdogs someday, was he?
But just as Sa Gam-jae moved to say more —
"Whispering about what, hiding back here?"
Lee Il-bak, thoroughly suspicious of Rembrary by now, appeared with a waffle clamped in his mouth, chewing away all the while.
When Sa Gam-jae and Rembrary stopped talking and turned to look, Lee Il-bak glared at Rembrary with disapproving eyes and grumbled, "Don't know why you bothered tagging along when you're only shooting a quick scene at the tail end anyway."
Then he pointed a finger at Sa Gam-jae and snickered. "Speedos."
Sa Gam-jae, who possessed not a shred of shame regarding his own tastes, offered no reaction whatsoever, his face a perfect blank.
Rembrary, too, could recall one or two future occasions well suited to razzing Lee Il-bak, so he offered a serene, entirely good-natured warning, betraying nothing of his feelings.
"I shall pray your boldness serves you long, sunbae."