The Thirty-Fifth Assignment — Between Sweet and Bitter ④
"I agree that art is something apart from the everyday. But I don't think you need to make a show of that. The moment you borrow the power of letters and grammar, it's writing — it's literature. An unfamiliar method might feel strange, but calling it a problem strikes me as a hasty judgment."
"I think roughness is a matter of effort. You can deliberately chisel something to look rough, but if you simply leave it rough, it's hard to say the creator poured their heart into it."
Changmo and Seri went on trading points like that, one after another. The others who had been taking part in the critique fell quiet and turned to watch. A few looked genuinely interested; a few even picked sides and started cheering. Yeoni, who didn't know the first thing about any of it, stayed put and kept his mouth shut.
Changmo kept insisting that literature had no need to be special. Seri kept explaining why literature had to be. Both of them had a point, and both of them had a blind spot.
"If there's an intention behind leaving it rough, you have to read with that intention in mind. The writer themselves says they left it that way on purpose, don't they? Judging only the rough form while ignoring the intention is going too far."
"Just because they left it that way on purpose doesn't automatically make it an excuse."
A few of the spectators had started whispering among themselves.
"Who do you think's going to win?"
"Seri, probably. She's been cutting her teeth in this club for years."
"That hyung of mine isn't exactly a lightweight, though. I've never heard anyone fire back that cleanly."
And Changmo was a face nobody had seen before. On several levels, it made for excellent entertainment.
The argument ran on for quite a while. Seri's pride had been well and truly pricked, which was only to be expected — but Changmo was warming to it too, and the whole exchange grew steadily hotter. The two of them went at it alone for a good ten minutes. In the end, they had no choice but to admit that the other had a point. Seri was the first to raise the white flag.
"I suppose that's fair. It's quite different from how I think about it, but I suppose we should call literature literature."
"What you said isn't wrong either. Distinctions are necessary, of course. Still, this work has its own flavor as literature, and it's enjoyable. That much I can say with certainty."
"Understood. Hmm… it seems we've ended up hogging the conversation. Does anyone else have something to add?"
Seri looked around, a little sheepish. Everyone waved a hand or shook their head. They had been so busy watching the two of them go at it that any urge to speak had evaporated. Besides, the other groups were more or less finished too. In the end, the two of them had essentially closed out the entire critique session by themselves.
"Alright. The mood's wrapping up anyway, so let's leave it here. Thank you, everyone!"
Seri bowed with real energy. Her clubmates were generous with their praise, telling her she'd done well. The cheers aimed at Changmo were a bonus, and he answered them with a bright, easy smile.
"That was incredible. I thought you'd just phone it in and grab a drink."
Yeoni said it with a faintly stunned look on his face. The spectacle of the last few minutes had been more than enough to rewrite his assessment of Changmo. All that talk about knowing a thing or two had been the real deal. Changmo flashed him a V-sign.
"Told you I had opinions."
"I mean… it's not like you can study literature doing that kind of work. You must be busy with all sorts of things."
He had come within a breath of saying the words Grim Reaper out loud. That was how startling Changmo's reversal had been. Changmo smiled, then leaned in and whispered the secret of how he'd pulled it off. It was a very simple, very airtight trick.
"If I were a mortal with a few decades to work with, you'd be right. But I'm a Grim Reaper. Time doesn't just sit around for us — it overflows. Work overflows too, which is its own problem, but that doesn't mean there's no room left for a hobby. It all depends on how you use it."
Easily several centuries. It was the equivalent of being handed more than ten ordinary human lifetimes. Even with a crushing workload, a gap that wide was more than enough to fill in the cracks and then some. Yeoni listened to the explanation and felt a little deflated. Put simply, he had just poured spare time into it like water.
"That's a painfully hollow secret."
"Don't underestimate Grim Reapers. For the record, the Directors are all masters of janggi — Korean chess. Simyeong-hyung likes fishing, and Yuhwa-noona is into practicing Subak, that old unarmed combat style that's been around since the Three Kingdoms."
It was a genuinely interesting bit of trivia. But that was far enough down the rabbit hole. Today was the day to get acquainted with Seri, not the day to catalogue Grim Reaper hobbies. The two of them stopped whispering and straightened up. The club president was just delivering the closing remarks.
"We'll leave the mutual critique here. Did everyone have a lively discussion?"
"Yes!"
"I don't even need to ask. You've all had a proper go at tearing each other apart, so from here on we'll eat, drink, and talk. Dinner will be out shortly — hang tight."
The hour of enthusiastically taking each other apart was over. Next came food and drink, to lift the mood. It was the moment Changmo had been waiting for. He stole a glance at Seri's profile, pretending to look forward to the meal. She looks even prettier like this. Whether it was leftover heat from the debate, those clear eyes seemed to shine all the brighter. This was what people meant when they said a gaze sparkled with intelligence. A vitality he hadn't felt when she was sitting quietly now seemed to radiate from her. He was gazing at her, thoroughly pleased, when she spoke.
"You did well. You spoke really well earlier, you know that?"
"Th-thank you."
Changmo's face went red as a thermometer shooting up the scale. All the momentum of a moment ago evaporated on the spot. Yeoni pinched him in the side, to absolutely no effect. Fortunately, Seri didn't seem to find him suspicious in the least. Instead, for the first time, she smiled.
"Hehe. You were so sharp during the critique, and the moment it's over you completely change. I get that a lot too — that I'm a different person when I'm criticizing something and when I'm not."
"Ahahaha… I'm a little shy, that's all. Aside from the friends and noonas I already know, this is the first time I've really talked with a woman."
Yeah, right.
The word shy sent a full-body cringe crawling up Yeoni's spine. Shy? Who? Playboy Hong Changmo? If he hadn't come here to help, he might have blown the man's cover then and there. He kept shooting Changmo a look sharp enough to draw blood. Changmo, of course, pretended not to notice at all.
"That's surprising. From the outside I would have taken you for the outgoing type."
"It's hard to judge a person by the surface alone."
"That's true. We said hello at the start, but let me introduce myself properly. I'm Song Seri, a sophomore. It's a pleasure to meet you."
Seri held out her hand. Changmo forgot to return the greeting entirely and just stuck his own hand out and took hers — the dazed reflex of a man who'd been put under a spell. He caught himself a beat later and corrected course, which was just as well.
"I-I'm Hong Changmo. I'm not a student… I'm a senior that Seo Yeon-ui here knows. Pleasure to meet you too."
"Wow. You're not even a student, and you still came all the way out here. You must really love literature."
The hand in his was slender, yet warm. The urge to squeeze it gently welled up in him, unstoppable. If Changmo had been even a little more ruled by his feelings, he would have done it. Yeoni took one look at his burning cheeks and despaired. So this Grim Reaper senior was a man after all.
I can't even.
"I stay pretty busy, so I can't really keep a hobby that eats a lot of time. Reading was about the only thing I could fit in here and there. That's how I picked up a surface-level sense of it."
"That was not surface-level. I'd love a chance to talk more sometime."
Seri smiled one last time and let go of his hand. Changmo had a miserable time of it, crushing the desire to keep holding on. It had never been like this when he shook hands with his fellow Grim Reapers… so this was what happened when a special feeling took root. Even he found the change a little wondrous.
"Then the honor would be all mine. Ha. Ha. Ha."
Hyung. Has it occurred to you that you look nothing like yourself right now? I physically cannot watch this.
Yeoni, who had seen more than enough, hissed at him. Changmo had transformed so thoroughly he might as well have been a different person — a different Grim Reaper. The fingers jabbing into his ribs were merciless. And still Changmo would not put the smile away. He didn't even snap at Yeoni once.
So what? I finally held her hand. Honestly, I could die tomorrow with no regrets.
Can a Grim Reaper even die again? Stop talking nonsense and get a grip. If Simyeong-hyung and Yuhwa-noona saw this they'd have a fit.
It's fine, it's fine. All's well that ends well.
He already looked like a terminal case. Should someone hold up a mirror? Faced with that blissed-out grin and nothing else, Yeoni finally threw up his hands. Persuasion was clearly a lost cause.
Do what you want. Just don't make it too obvious.
It was the barest scrap of advice he could still offer.
At last the food arrived. Tonight's spread was jokbal and bossam — braised pig's trotters and boiled pork belly for wrapping. Another school was sending guests, so the club had splashed out. Everyone cheered at the rare appearance of actual meat. Except for Changmo, most of them were at that age where they could gnaw on steel and still ask for seconds, so of course they did.
"Let's eat!"
A generous platter was allotted to Seri's group as well. Everyone shouted it out and reached for their chopsticks. Changmo, though, didn't grab for anything. He hesitated.
Ugh. Now what.
Of all ingredients, meat was famous for being absolutely saturated with yang energy. The modest serving of spicy stir-fried pork he'd had last time had been his limit. A meal this meat-heavy would be a nightmare to deal with afterward. The one mercy was that plenty of vegetables had come along with it — lettuce, kimchi, the rest.
Vegetables it is, then.
"Not a fan of meat?"
He had just sworn himself to a vegetarian dinner when Seri suddenly held a wrap out toward him. The savory smell of pork wafted from inside the lettuce. Changmo broke into a cold sweat. Having it waved under his nose like that was a serious problem.
"Ah — no. I don't dislike it."
"Have one. A thank-you for actually taking part."
Appetite screamed at him to take it. Reason screamed at him to decline, politely. Eating it would be happiness now and misery later. And yet it was a temptation he could not easily refuse — because the person offering him a meat wrap was Seri.
How could a man refuse when his lady herself offers?
"Thank you."
H-hyung!
In the end, Changmo took the wrap and ate it. Yeoni, watching from beside him, was appalled. Seri's friends and the rest of the club stared at Changmo with a mixture of envy and naked jealousy. Other people's reactions aside, Seri accepted a wrap that Changmo made for her in return.
"You eat well. People really should just eat well, that's what I always say. Want another?"
Maybe the mood had carried her. Seri wrapped a second one with real spirit and held it out. Yeoni tried to intervene from the side, but the man who was supposed to be refusing had already gone over completely.
Ah, forget it. If I eat myself to death, at least I'll have a nice complexion. Eat. Just eat.
It was the moment the finest Grim Reaper in the Underworld Post Office fell to becoming the finest sucker the Underworld Post Office had ever produced.
The next day.
"So you keeled over the second you got back, is that it? Laid up all morning until noon?"
"I-I'm sorry. I couldn't refuse when she kept offering, and then…"
In the end, it had caught up with him.
Seri had handed him quite a few wraps. Changmo had taken every last one, gobbling them down like a dog in front of its owner. The option of not eating had been deleted from his mind a long time ago. The result of that overeating was the sorry state he was in today.
"Aigoo! You boneheaded fool. What were you going to do if you'd come down with Excess Yang Disorder? You should have paced yourself. You never pull this kind of thing, and now you're showing me every sorry face in the book."
Fortunately, he had avoided Excess Yang Disorder. A bit of meat wasn't enough to land him with a full-blown case, and Changmo had always managed his yang energy better than the other senior staff, which was how he'd slipped past the danger. What he got instead was a stomach that burned all morning.
From Simyeong's point of view, it was enough to make a man lose his mind.
"I nearly jumped out of my skin talking to Yeoni last night. I thought I must have misheard. How does one woman turn a Grim Reaper inside out like that? Reflect on this!"
"I'll be more careful next time. I'm really sorry."
Changmo apologized in a voice small enough for an ant to crawl through. Even with ten mouths he wouldn't have had a word of defense. Simyeong glared at him with a look of pure exasperation, then finally gave it up. If the kid could flip this hard, there was no talking him down.
So this junior of his was a man after all, too.
He had arrived at exactly the same conclusion as Yeoni.
"Forget it, forget it. If I were going to chew you out I'd have gone there myself. At least you didn't come down with Excess Yang Disorder — that's a mercy. Anyway. How was it? Meeting her in person."
He asked about Seri. Given the stunt Changmo had pulled, the answer was already obvious, but he wanted to hear it said out loud. The moment the question landed, Changmo shed every trace of gloom. The look that came over him as he remembered yesterday burned with something close to fervor.
"She's a really wonderful person! Kind-hearted, strong-willed, and above all — beautiful. I liked everything about her."
Even the answer came packed with a passion he'd never shown before.