Is That Jang Tae-ri?
"Man, Woo Yeon-woo's image really is solid. Apparently nobody suspects it was him. Well, I can't exactly blame them—I didn't either."
Kim Mu-rok laughed as he scrolled through his phone with one thumb, but Jung Seo, sitting across from him, gave no answer at all.
"Haha, Jung Seo, what's with that face? Are you mad?"
When Kim Mu-rok teased him, a staff member who'd been monitoring the situation a bit more seriously than Kim Mu-rok took Jung Seo's side with a rather blunt voice.
"Of course he's mad. You just made Jung Seo the guy caught in the middle."
He was implicitly criticizing Kim Mu-rok, but Kim Mu-rok simply turned his phone screen black and replied as if it were nothing.
"It's not like we could just let this slide without saying anything. Everyone saw Rembrary singing his heart out every single day. If his song gets stolen, somebody has to speak up. Besides, this blew up and Rembrary got a wave of sympathy out of it."
The staff member mumbled something back, but Jung Seo quietly listened to the exchange between the two, then rose without a word and stepped away from his seat.
"We're not saying you should've asked permission first. We're just saying you should have at least told Jung Seo in advance, so he wouldn't be stuck awkwardly in the middle of it all."
When even the PD gave him a look that said that was going too far, Kim Mu-rok cleared his throat with a cough. Of course, he still didn't think he'd done anything wrong. The one at fault was the person who stole someone else's song—was the person who exposed it at fault? Kim Mu-rok didn't think so.
But he was the sort of man who could read a room, so he mimed a hacking cough for no reason and changed the subject.
"Ahem. Where's Rembrary? Has he seen this? What's he doing right now?"
"Rembrary. People are saying they feel sorry for you."
Rembrary sat side by side with the Lion Lord, deep in a meal, while the Lion Lord held a phone in one hand, reading out the comment thread Kim Mu-rok had been looking at earlier, the one about this whole affair.
"I was already reading them."
"No, you weren't. You're eating."
"I am chewing while ruminating on what I read earlier, in mine own heart."
The Lion Lord gave him a look that asked whether that even made sense, but Rembrary remained wholly focused on his food. He was the party involved, if nothing else, yet he seemed to have no thoughts on the matter whatsoever.
"This is troubling indeed."
Only after finishing both bowls did Rembrary finally wipe his mouth with a napkin and sigh.
"Why? Everyone feels bad that you're such a pushover?"
"Precisely. I am a lofty and elegant being, not a pushover."
"Huh? Who are you talking about right now?"
"Myself, of course. Myself."
The Lion Lord looked at Rembrary as if he were spouting nonsense, but there was no time to press the question. At exactly that moment, Rembrary's phone chimed.
And whatever the message contained—it turned out to be something. Rembrary pulled out his phone, checked the text, and immediately furrowed his brow and tilted his head.
"What? Who said what?"
When the Lion Lord asked, Rembrary set down his spoon and nodded slowly.
This was what the message said:
Shin Jo-woon, who always seemed to have time to spare, apparently had plenty of it today as well, because he'd come all the way to the Redrin Headquarters parking lot to pick Rembrary up himself. Rembrary had come down early to wait, spotted Shin Jo-woon's car at a glance, walked right up, climbed into the passenger seat, and greeted him.
"Why must thou send texts of such terrifying tenor?"
"It was terrifying, so I sent it as-is. Seatbelt."
"Is Tae-ri perchance wroth with me?"
"Why would you think she's mad?"
"Just. The tone of it. Somewhat?"
"Don't worry. Even if she is, it's not at you. It's at me."
"Why so?"
"Because I lost a bet. Technically I didn't win either, but I was closer to winning than she was."
A bet? A bet out of nowhere? A bet about him? Puzzled, Rembrary turned to look at him, but instead of elaborating, Shin Jo-woon eased the car forward and asked:
"By the way, Pig. Why is it that you act all proper with Tae-ri—'Tae-ri this, Tae-ri that'—but talk to me like this?"
"Tae-ri does not call me Pig. Does thou not know that fair words breed fair words in return?"
That proverb seemed to have its ends and beginnings flipped somehow…… Shin Jo-woon frowned, unable to tell whether Rembrary had mangled it out of ignorance or whether, in his own head, that was actually how it went.
So the pointless back-and-forth continued until, at last, they reached their destination. It was Jang Tae-ri's residence and garden—not the same house she'd lived in before.
But Rembrary had no chance to look around the place. The moment he stepped out of the car, opened the front door, and walked in, he saw Jang Tae-ri sitting cross-legged on the sofa, her eyes flashing dangerously.
Beside her, the cat youkai she always kept draped over her shoulder was dancing a jig with both arms flung high in the air, singing its heart out.
"Tae-ri is mad, nyan! Tae-ri is mad, nyan! Nyannyannyang!"
Jang Tae-ri looked rather annoyed, while the cat youkai seemed to be having the time of its life.
So she always carried it on her shoulder, and now it's down here dancing. Do they not get along? Just as Rembrary was thinking this, Shin Jo-woon asked in a low voice.
"Its name is Jinyangi and its surname is Dwee. You know why, right?"
"How should I know such a thing?"
"That youkai's singing sounds exactly like your rapping."
"What didst thou say?"
Rembrary was just about to demand where anyone got off comparing that nyannyang drivel to his rap, when Jang Tae-ri switched her crossed legs, let out a long sigh, and quietly addressed the two men standing awkwardly at the front door, muttering to themselves.
"Was I really…… supposed to be the last person in the entire nation to hear about this? Is my place in line really that far back?"
So she really was mad when she called. As Rembrary looked at her with some concern, Jang Tae-ri uncrossed her legs and grumbled with firm resolve.
"You two are both way out of line. Genuinely out of line. You gaslighted me! You knew you were gaslighting me and you did it anyway!"
While Rembrary stood there dumbfounded, Shin Jo-woon kicked off his shoes and walked in first, needling her.
"Stretch your legs according to the length of the bed, Jang Tae-ri. Overdo it and he won't understand a word."
"But you will, won't you, Anchovy."
"Jang Tae-ri. Don't you start calling me Anchovy."
Shin Jo-woon warned her coldly, but Jang Tae-ri answered by lobbing a soft cushion at him, then turned to Rembrary.
"So you're Yeon-woo's counterpart? Why didn't you tell me sooner?"
"You're not angry?"
"Not angry. I was stunned when I heard. I never imagined that weird story about you two doing something on broadcast together was that."
Fortunately, she didn't seem angry, and Jang Tae-ri muttered to the air, "I mean, does this even make sense? How does one person become two?" Even after the world had gone through the Upheaval, one person becoming two was apparently still strange.
Which was fair enough. Having a soul enter someone's body and take it over had flustered even Rembrary, who had served as a High Priest in a world where magic was commonplace.
Anyway, since Jang Tae-ri seemed to be sinking into the shock of hearing the news all over again, Rembrary took the chance to ask Shin Jo-woon quietly.
"Did the Anchovy tell Tae-ri?"
When he'd been summoned, he hadn't imagined Jang Tae-ri already knew. He'd assumed she'd find it suspicious and interrogate him. But since she seemed to know everything already, he asked Shin Jo-woon, half sure he knew the answer and half wondering if he didn't.
Shin Jo-woon frowned briefly—"The Anchovy?"—then nodded readily enough.
"Yeah. She must have seen the broadcast where you called me, because she bombarded me with texts going, 'What exactly is going on between you two? Why didn't you tell me anything?'"
Only after a few more words passed between them did Jang Tae-ri seem to have settled her feelings at last. She took a deep, long breath and sprang up from the sofa.
She padded over, stared hard into Rembrary's face, and then, smiling wider than ever before, pulled him into a single, tight hug.
"I'm still not over you telling me last of all. Understood?"
Rembrary had taken Jang Tae-ri's "I'm not over it" as a joke, but it wasn't. She genuinely hadn't gotten over it yet. Not that she planned to sulk and fight about it for days on end. It wasn't worth that much.
But the two of them had known each other's true identities first, grilled meat together, and had a great time inside World Boom—while she'd been carefully left out, only told long afterward. That honestly stung.
Still, thank goodness.
It wasn't that she'd thought he was dead before, of course. But his personality had changed so drastically that she'd felt a distance between them.
Then the altered temperament had simply peeled away with the stranger it belonged to, and even though the situation still made no sense, she found herself remembering the old days she'd missed, and it felt good.
It's a bit strange, I know.
Jang Tae-ri smiled faintly, recalling the time the three of them—Shin Jo-woon, Rembrary, and herself—had gone out together. Now that Rembrary was back, could they do that again? The Upheaval had changed the world, but all three of them were powerful Awakeners, so it shouldn't be hard to visit.
That was when it happened. She'd finished her walk and was cutting through a rather dark alley on her way home when Jang Tae-ri spotted a black silhouette standing beneath a yellow streetlight and stopped in her tracks. It looked like a person's shadow. A person wearing a hat.
But in a world like this one, monsters that looked like people roamed about too, so Jang Tae-ri halted and eyed the figure warily. There were hardly any monsters in the city, but the ones that popped up here and there hadn't vanished entirely.
Meanwhile, the black figure shuffled slowly out into the yellow light spilling from the streetlamp and began walking toward her. As it drew near, she could make out that it was a woman dressed in black.
"Who are you?"
When Jang Tae-ri asked, the woman didn't answer. Instead, she asked a question of her own.
"Is that Jang Tae-ri?"
She spoke well, so she presumably wasn't some monster wearing a human shell. But demanding someone's name out of nowhere without identifying herself wasn't like an ordinary person either. And though the woman phrased it as a question—"Is that Jang Tae-ri?"—she had clearly approached already knowing exactly who she was.
"I am."
Jang Tae-ri answered, ready to use her power at a moment's notice if things went wrong.
Then, as if to show she meant no threat, the woman removed her hat with one hand and bowed.
"I am a Grim Reaper."
"?!"