The Thirty-Third Assignment: Even a Brush of Sleeves ④
"If we look on the bright side, Chief Team Member Changmo is probably pulling himself together in his own way."
Nahee did her best to steer the thought toward something hopeful. Both she who offered it and Heukchi who received it knew perfectly well it was nothing more than a wish. Rose-tinted imagination had no place here. In the end, they would have to prepare. The two of them sank, for a moment, into a shared lament over their lot.
"There's no point in the two of us going back and forth about it. Did Team Leader Simyeong say he would meet with Yeoni?"
"Yes. Courier Seo Yeon-ui met with Chief Team Member Changmo yesterday as well. I believe they discussed the matter then."
"There's no chance Team Leader Simyeong would sit still while we're in this state. Very well — we'll hear from him and formulate a plan. You may go."
He waved her out, adding, as an afterthought, that he was sorry to have called her in when she was busy. Once Nahee had left the room, Heukchi drew a book from his drawer. It was a register of everyone at the Post Office. He opened it, and a dense field of personal records filled his eyes.
There, in the fourth entry, the name of Chief Team Member Changmo sat in proud, unapologetic ink. In the photograph he was as bright and lively as ever. Seventy years ago or now — there was not a scrap of difference.
I must have gotten old. All these feelings, from a single photograph.
He was a grim reaper, so of course the face never changed… and yet a strange sentiment stole over Heukchi all the same. Perhaps it was because they had been running themselves ragged harder than any other department.
Knock. Knock.
"Director, may I come in?"
He had been tracing the register, lost in recollection, when someone rapped on the door of the Director's office. It was Simyeong — the man he had been waiting for. Heukchi tucked the register away at once.
"Come in."
The door opened and Simyeong entered, a few modest sheets of paperwork in one hand. Heukchi didn't need to ask what the visit was about. He settled back at ease and waited for Simyeong to speak. Simyeong did not launch into it immediately. He set the documents on the desk first.
"I've just come from speaking with Courier Seo Yeon-ui."
"About Chief Team Member Hong Changmo, I take it. Am I right?"
"As you said. Here — I've written down the conclusion that Courier Seo Yeon-ui and I reached."
"Good. Give me a moment."
Heukchi picked up the papers with a light heart. Surely it couldn't be anything too serious. If there were troubles, he would solve them, offer a word of encouragement, and that would be that. He even hummed under his breath as he scanned the contents at a leisurely pace.
The ease did not last. The further he read, the faster the smile drained from Heukchi's face, crumpling into something unrecognizable. Emotions he could not even name swirled through him. Simyeong, as if he had expected exactly this, made a pointed show of looking elsewhere.
At last the review was finished. All that came out of Heukchi was a heavy sigh.
"Huuu."
"Yeoni was skeptical at first, too. If I hadn't been the one to tell him, he wouldn't have believed it either. Hahaha."
"Good that you know. Honestly, even coming from you, I can hardly trust this."
The headache he had thought was improving doubled in strength. He very nearly let fly a stream of abuse to Simyeong's face, telling him to stop talking bullshit. With superhuman patience he forced it back down his throat, the way one presses down the lid of a rice cooker. When he spoke, his voice had gone vacant.
"Is this a genuine opinion? This, right here."
"It's about our junior. I'm baffled myself, but I believe it's possible. At the very least, far more so than the alternatives."
Oh, for heaven's sake.
The coup de grâce, delivered in person. What was he supposed to do with this? The shadow that fell across Heukchi was dark and deep, woven of a bewilderment and a helplessness that had neither bottom nor end. Simyeong, feeling as though the whole mess were somehow his fault, sat in silence. The air in the Director's office turned abruptly, painfully awkward.
"I honestly… thought it would be work-related worries, or complaints. That would have been the more normal thing. I'd even chosen in advance how I was going to handle it."
It was a long while before Heukchi opened his mouth again. His voice had sunk, steeped through with emptiness, and his face was the picture of a man at a funeral. Of the Underworld Post Office's solemn chief, there was not a trace.
"But a romance problem? Vice Team Leader Yuhwa's situation is already a ticking time bomb — and now we're adding Chief Team Member Changmo on top of it. What exactly are we supposed to do?"
"The other possibilities are completely off the table, so what choice do we have? Even if you don't believe it, we still have to prepare. Romance is, strictly speaking, a variable in personnel management."
"Listen here. Would you pinch my cheek for me?"
"This is not a dream, Director. Running away won't help."
Setting his own sorrow aside, Simyeong cut off Heukchi's attempted escape without mercy. It was the thoroughness of a Post Office Team Leader. Heukchi grumbled that a subordinate ought to show his superior a little consideration. The observation that he was aiming his anger at the wrong party can, for the moment, be set aside.
"Fine, fine. You're right. Back to reality, then."
"Ahem. Ahem. My apologies. Once it becomes work, I tend to…"
"You said what needed saying. According to Technical Department Head Nahee, there have been no unusual movements as of yet. For the moment, it seems he's composing himself. We should use that interval to worry about what we're going to do."
The two grim reapers counted on their fingers. The methods that came to mind were not many, and there was a very simple reason for that. They sighed in unison.
"This is going to drive me mad. I can barely recall my own romances, let alone the love lives of children."
"You're better off than I am, Director. I have no experience whatsoever."
Both of them, it turned out, were utterly ignorant on the subject of romance. Heukchi was an aging man who had gotten as old as he was going to get, and Simyeong had been single for hundreds of years — ever since he first took up the work of a grim reaper. They had built a wall against love and then some. They were blank slates in this field, so what the hell were they supposed to do? The two of them proceeded, quite literally, to tear into Changmo, who had dropped this nightmare-grade problem in their laps.
"That damn bastard. We all spent the same hundreds of years keeping an empty bed, and now he pulls this — how are we supposed to solve it? We don't even know the method."
"My thoughts exactly. Isn't there anyone at our Post Office who's actually in a couple? Work like this ought to go to someone with experience."
"Quite right. If you and I take it on, things will only get more tangled."
They needed someone with experience. That was the conclusion both of them reached.
"A silver lining, then. Fortunately for us, we happen to have just the right person."
And at the Post Office, such a person did exist.
"Achoo!"
As if he had caught some ominous stirring from the Underworld, a sneeze burst out of Yeoni without warning. He clapped a tissue over his face in time, so the splash damage came out to a perfect zero. Dayeong passed him another tissue and asked what that had been about.
"Have you got a cold? You do have to be careful with the seasons changing."
"No. It just came out of nowhere. Someone must be talking about me behind my back."
Yeoni had, by complete accident, hit upon the truth. Who was doing the talking, however, he did not guess. How could he possibly know what was happening in the Underworld? Had he known, he would have lamented — but unfortunately, this was the living world, not the one below. Dayeong thought little of it either.
"Your nose is probably just itchy. Don't worry about it."
"Maybe. Anyway, that's how the conversation went. Want me to explain more?"
"No, that's enough. Mr. Changmo might have fallen for someone from the living world… that's actually pretty interesting."
Dayeong had heard the whole story from Yeoni, and she was grinning from ear to ear. It was, as she had expected, a thoroughly entertaining affair. A romance between a grim reaper and a person of the living world! Just hearing it whetted her appetite; it was a spectacle she wanted to watch with her own eyes. Wasn't this the kind of thing you only read about in novels? She half wanted to march straight down to the Underworld and start handing out advice.
Wait a second. This isn't just a fun story, is it.
On second thought, there was a part of it that sat uneasily. Namely, Yuhwa. She was exactly that case — and in a position of competing with Dayeong herself, no less. The moment that occurred to her, a thread of anxiety wound itself through the interest. Things were "for now" in a lull, but there was no telling when they might flare up again. The flavor of it seemed to turn bitter at high speed.
"What's wrong, Dayeong?"
He would have been a fool not to notice a mood that had swung a hundred and eighty degrees. Yeoni read the change in her face and asked, worried, what the matter was. Dayeong smoothed her furrowed brow a beat too late and answered brightly.
"Hm? Oh — I was just thinking Mr. Simyeong is going to have a hard time. He's the one who'll have to clean this up, right? I feel kind of bad for him."
"That's all?"
Yeoni sent her a look of frank suspicion. They had been together for years; there was no chance he would fall for a smokescreen like that. Dayeong, sheepish, tried to talk her way past it somehow. Admitting she was jealous, out loud, was far too embarrassing a thing for a girlfriend to do.
"W-well! Can't I worry about someone? He's your senior — I'm allowed to worry too. I mean it."
"…All right. I won't doubt you, so don't get so heated."
If his other half said that wasn't it, what was he supposed to do? Yeoni was still only half convinced, but he let it go for her sake. There was no shortage of other things to talk about, anyway.
"What do you make of it? This whole thing."
"I just heard the story. It's hard to come up with thoughts on the spot. It's not like it's urgent."
"It will be. Soon."
Resignation colored Yeoni's face. He was the only member of the Post Office who was actually in a couple. They would almost certainly come asking, on the strength of that experience. The sneeze a moment ago had probably been the warning shot. Dayeong caught on to why he looked that way, and the playfulness wiped itself from her face.
"Ah. Right. They'll come ask you and me."
"That's about the size of it. I can't handle it alone, so help me out a little."
Dayeong grinned at the request and gave his shoulder a hearty clap. There was only one answer she could give him, and it had been decided from the moment this conversation began.
"A little? I'll back you all the way to the end. Let's suffer through this headache together."
That much, at least, had gone well.
The two of them had racked their brains in their own fashion, carefully choosing what questions might come and what answers they ought to give. They had finished preparing to face whoever arrived without so much as a tremble. At least, that was what they had assured themselves.
"Ch-Changmo hyung?"
Wait. This isn't how it was supposed to go.
What they had not accounted for was the man in question showing up at school, intending to seek counseling in person.
"It's been a while, you two."
Changmo greeted them without a trace of a smile. His face was stiff, set — the face of a man who had come with his mind made up. Yeoni and Dayeong froze even stiffer than he had, and lost every word they had. This was a development that leaped clean over their predictions.
"Hey. What is going on. Why did Mr. Changmo come himself?"
"You think I'd be like this if I knew? Damn it! We didn't account for Changmo hyung showing up."
They whispered it into each other's ears, looking sideways. Whispering, unfortunately, did not make the grim reaper who had already arrived vanish. Changmo stood there at an awkward angle, waiting in visible agitation, and Yeoni, for his sake, managed a sheepish greeting in return. It was an especially awkward meeting, even for them.
"S-sorry. We were startled — you came without any warning."
"I'm the one who should apologize. Originally Hyung-nim Simyeong was going to come, but I dug my heels in and said I'd come myself. It's my problem, so I figured I ought to be the one to solve it. The Director agreed, too."
"That's fair enough. Except for the startling part."
Yeoni offered him a chair. Changmo had come dressed in mortal-world clothes, so there was no particular need to lock the door. They sat around a desk in an empty lecture hall.
"You know why I came… right?"
"I was on the fence about it until you got here, but seeing you, hyung, I get it. To think it was actually true."
There didn't seem much need to ask. An awkward laugh. A heat tucked underneath it. A faintly excited look around the eyes. Wherever you looked, it was the face of a man who had fallen into something over his head. What he had fallen into, you didn't need to be told. Changmo scratched at his cheek for no reason and laughed. There was a boyish freshness in that goofy-looking smile.
"Hahaha! I thought I'd just forget it, but I couldn't. It keeps staying in my memory. I figured this was going to become a problem at this rate, so I came to you for advice."
"Heh. This is a first, seeing you like this, hyung."
So even grim reapers could smile like that, Yeoni thought.
"What can you do. It's not like grim reapers don't have feelings. This kind of thing can happen."
"What did Simyeong hyung and Yuhwa nuna say?"
Changmo hesitated a beat, then drew a finger across his own throat. Yeoni saw it and swallowed a laugh. He could guess well enough what the atmosphere had been.
"Ah — never mind. You don't have to tell me. Obviously they lost it."
"Don't even start. Yuhwa nuna even grabbed me by the collar. What's so wrong with a junior finding someone he likes? I swear, I can't live like this."
"The other two are probably tearing their hair out over you as well. Anyway — you came for advice, so we should solve it. A junior who turns away from his senior's worries isn't worth much."
Yeoni's eyes lit up. The panic had ended at the first shock. Curiosity and anticipation set his heart racing, and Dayeong, settled in beside him, was no different. The two of them looked at Changmo with the composure of people who had been through this themselves.
"Tell us everything. All of it."
"We'll help you thoroughly."
For a while, they would be seniors and juniors not of the workplace, but of the business of love.