The Orc's Reincarnation
I have always believed that I was a man devoid of luck. When I took exams, every multiple-choice answer I guessed was wrong. Because of that, my college entrance exam scores were docked, and I never even got to step foot in the university I wanted. My military assignment? The front lines. With no special skills to speak of, I was tossed into a completely random lottery and sent to the most dangerous border, right at a time when nuclear tests were rampant and war was on the verge of breaking out.
Even when I finally got a job and bought a used car, it broke down not long after. In the end, it was cheaper to scrap it than to fix it, so I never really got to drive it properly and returned to a life of walking. When I had my fortune told by a renowned shaman, she said all the luck in my life would burst forth like a fountain in my twilight years. When she asked for a fee to "accelerate" that luck, I just ran away.
And today, my life was a continuous streak of misfortune. Just as I was about to finish some work I’d been too busy to handle, the section chief, who had returned from vacation that afternoon, hounded me and unleashed a barrage of insults.
"...Assistant Manager. It’s not like I didn’t give you the time, could you not have finished it? Did I overestimate you? It’s not like you can just choose not to do the work I assign, right? Huh? Tell me. Did I dump my own work on you?"
...They weren't exactly profanities, but ever since the section chief had been reprimanded once before, he’d been digging at me like this. In front of everyone, I had to bow my head like a sinner and play the parrot. "No, sir." It wasn't his work. He had simply snatched the task from a "golden spoon" employee to curry favor with the higher-ups and dumped it on me. As always, lamenting my own misfortune, I shoved a canned beer down my throat alone.
"This goddamn job, if I had money, I’d quit. Shit..."
I kept working only because I had no money. Staggering, I stopped by a convenience store to grab a quick bite for tomorrow. Feeling bored, I made a request to the part-timer who was dozing off.
"Hey... could you call out six numbers for me? I want to play the lottery. Hahaha!!"
"...Sigh, fine."
The convenience store clerk treated me like a nuisance and scribbled down six numbers. I took out my wallet; I had a single 5,000-won bill left from when I missed the last bus and had to take a taxi. "Five tickets with these same numbers!"
"......That’ll be 5,000 won."
The clerk tossed the lottery slips at me as if throwing trash. I couldn't catch them at once, reaching out two or three times to grab them, then shoved them into my pocket after paying for my other items. "Hehehe!" It was the price of a cup of coffee, but so what? Just imagining throwing a stack of bills at the section chief's face with that 5,000 won was enough to make me happy.
"Ah." As soon as I took out my smartphone, I suddenly regretted it. "If I saved up six of these 5,000-won bills, I could do a 10-pull gacha."
It wasn't going to work anyway, so should I have just spent it on gacha? I stood in place and opened the smartphone game I usually played. It was a typical defense game where you become the owner of a dungeon and summon monsters to protect it, a piece of trash game that jumped on the trend and added gacha even for summoning fodder mobs.
"A trash game with no PvP and a shitty story, and it has the nerve to have gacha..."
It wasn't even a "pretty girl" game; most of the characters had designs I felt like I'd seen somewhere before, but I had just enough gems saved up for a 10-pull. Should I pull? People said to save up because a limited-edition character was coming out in two weeks. "Screw it, I'll pull and die."
When I pressed the button with my finger, 30,000 won vanished. I wasn't a "dog or pig" for the game company, but I enjoyed the game modestly by paying for a monthly subscription once a month. The section chief's bald head was shiny, so the stars of the monsters I summoned with gems were also shiny—
"Damn it. There was nothing." Everything was just one or two shitty stars twinkling, and the best character I got was a 3-star. "Trash game. You sell this for money? No conscience, heh heh."
I force-quit the game. As soon as the summoning ended, I arrived at my room and threw myself onto my old, cheap bed without even taking off my clothes. "My luck is so shitty..." I was so heated I couldn't sleep. 30,000 won was enough to order fried chicken and still have 10,000 won left, and I had wasted it on a game where I turned into a mere obese orc. "So unlucky..." I placed my smartphone by my pillow and closed my eyes. I decided to think of it as warding off bad luck and set my mind at ease. Didn't fortune tellings often say that wealth luck comes in one's twilight years?
"Time to sleep." I hoped I'd dream of grabbing the section chief by his hair.
And the next evening.
I experienced the miracle of the lottery, which I had mindlessly bought five times with the same numbers, hitting five 2nd-place prizes.
"Section Chief Park, you wig-wearing bastard!"
I hugged the lottery ticket in my arms and thanked God. Even if it wasn't 1st place, five 2nd-place prizes meant about 300 million won. "I'm quitting this company and finding a new job, damn it." I would grab the section chief by the head, rip off his wig, and throw it in his face along with my resignation letter. Then, I’d take three months off, find another job to continue working, and use the winnings as capital for investments. "Uwaaa! All my misfortune until now was for this day! Welcome!!"
Since you only need to go to a Nonghyup branch for 2nd place, I would take a leave of absence on Monday and leave the company. I waited for Monday to come, dreaming a happy dream.
However.
The saying that luck gathers in one's twilight years wasn't wrong.
Thud.
My consciousness faded, and my vision went black. To think my final luck would be five 2nd-place lottery tickets.
* * *
"You goddamn convenience store part-timer." I should have known the moment I saw his nasty expression.
"Still, that guy got caught for murder right away and went to prison. You were all over the news, it was a huge mess."
"Is that something to say to a dead person?"
"I suppose so? Sorry. Heh heh."
The guy calling himself a Grim Reaper had a top-tier talent for sarcasm. He was a salaryman working under someone else too, yet he was taking his work stress out on me.
"Look, it’s frustrating enough that I’m dead, do you have to keep teasing me?"
"Teasing? I was just stating the facts. Still, think of it as having performed one great act of filial piety before you left. The lottery ticket you were holding until you died? A firefighter found it and gave it to your parents."
"That’s a blessing in disguise, at least. Man. I ended up doing the filial piety I couldn't do while alive after I died."
"Right. Now, let’s get to the point."
The Grim Reaper handed me a tablet. On it was a contract that looked like a headache just to look at.
"What is this?"
"A Reincarnation Confidentiality Agreement. In exchange for reincarnating with your memories intact, you swear not to tell anyone you’ve reincarnated while in the other world."
"That’s it?"
"Yep, that’s it."
The contract was very simple. Keep the secret. The end. Signing my name meant reincarnating into another world, and naturally, I asked about the suspicious contract.
"Why are you giving me an opportunity like this?"
"It’s a kind of relief policy for poor souls who died without living out their natural lifespan. Since you can't be resurrected in your original world, you get to live out the rest of your life in another world."
"Is my lifespan fixed?"
"No? Whether you die in an accident or live a long life, that’s up to you. So, are you going to do it or not?"
The Grim Reaper tried to snatch the tablet, and I pulled it toward me, pointing to the empty space on the contract.
"I died unfairly, can't you add a little something extra?"
"Hey. Just getting to reincarnate is huge. Where do you get off asking for more?"
"Aren't you even a little sympathetic? Does the Grim Reaper have no humanity?"
"Humanity or whatever, if I write that down, I have to fill out a report, you idiot."
I gained some useless knowledge. Unlike me, the salaryman, the Grim Reaper was a civil servant.
"Tsk. So inflexible."
"Inflexible or whatever, I work according to the manual. I can't give you anything extra, this is purely down to your own luck."
The Grim Reaper changed the screen on the tablet. Even though I was holding it, the fact that the screen changed on its own meant it was clearly a form of supernatural power, not just a tablet.
"It’s a Reincarnation Gacha. The world you're born into is random, the race you reincarnate as is random, and the talents or abilities you're given are random. Easy to understand now?"
"Ah, damn it. I bombed my last gacha, didn't I?"
"But didn't you win the lottery? Just sign it and spin. You should be grateful just to be alive again."
"Is it over in one shot?"
The Grim Reaper nodded. I only had one chance left now.
"Also, if you don't do this, your memories will be completely erased and you'll go to the judgment seat. You’ve seen movies, right? You could go to hell—"
Gacha!
I pressed the button. A massive amount of light burst from the tablet, and my consciousness went dark. I didn't know what kind of being I would be born as, but at least it would be much better than this life.
"Bu-hieek."
I had reincarnated as an orc.