The Thirty-Seventh Assignment: An Axe Handle in the Immortals' Game ③
"Noona, you're only acting like this because you trust hyung too, right? Don't get all sulky on me."
"...I wish I could believe as purely as you do."
Sometimes that kind of reckless, unguarded faith was something to envy. At least that way, you wouldn't have to feel your insides twist. Even the last incident, it seemed, had failed to soil that innocence. He was glad of that—and yet the contents of the phone call still nagged at him.
Damn it. That old man might get involved? This is going to be a massive headache.
Every one of Simyeong's trio had met the immortal over on that mountain. And not by choice, either. How could they ever forget being toyed with like performing monkeys, all so the old man could amuse himself? Even the memory sent a chill down Changmo's spine. He ground his teeth and made a resolution.
Looks like I'll have to play bait for real. Or else pick a proper fight with him, using work as the excuse.
There was, in fact, a far more serious problem than anything he was imagining—but there was no way he could have known that.
"Yeoni."
"Yes?"
"If you start feeling uneasy, tell me even if it's the morning of. I'll go with you."
Changmo's tone was grave. Both his hands were planted on Yeoni's shoulders. When it came to worrying over their youngest, he and Yuhwa were cut from the same cloth. Yeoni had been taking it lightly at first, but Changmo's expression—stripped of even a trace of a smile—was starting to make him tense.
"Is he that scary? The immortal, I mean."
"Well now. That's a little hard to say."
Changmo cocked his head at the question. If Yeoni had asked whether the old man was irritating, that would have been an easy yes. But scary? He wasn't quite sure that was the right word.
"He's not particularly scary, no. He's not the type to torment people in earnest. Hell, someone who actually enjoys hurting others could never become an immortal in the first place."
"Simyeong-hyung and Yuhwa-noona were being really wary earlier. That's why I figured he must be frightening."
"Yuhwa-noonim already told you, didn't she? In your case, they're worried your auras might mix. As for us, we just can't stand the old geezer because he's a pain in the ass."
Changmo made a show of shuddering in disgust. If the old man had truly been rotten to the core, they would have had it out with him ages ago. An immortal was an immortal, after all. Objectively speaking, he wasn't a bad sort. By way of entertainment, Changmo launched into an explanation of just who the immortal of that mountain was.
"His name is Gonghyo. He's been an immortal for quite a long time. He was already one before Simyeong-hyungnim even became a Grim Reaper, so he's got to be several centuries old at the very least. He's a local among locals up there—pretty much everyone knows him."
"So he's incredibly old, then. Don't tell me he does all that because he's bored."
Yeoni offered the theory with simple, almost blunt logic—half of it a playful shot in the dark. Surprisingly, it seemed he'd hit the mark, because Changmo played right along. It was not the answer Yeoni had expected.
"That's about half right. That old geezer used to pester us constantly to come play with him. For someone who's supposedly attained the Dao, he's disgustingly childish about that kind of thing. I swear."
I-it was actually true?
"The stuff he'd do after calling us over—or just snatching us up—was a whole circus. Wordplay as a baseline, then popping quizzes on us like they were some kind of test, plus a mountain of bizarre questions. It wasn't stray-dog training, for crying out loud..."
Even from a brief description, it was no joke. To have been pulling that for hundreds of years—no wonder all three of Simyeong's team wanted nothing to do with him. The tension had been steadily climbing when a question suddenly occurred to Yeoni.
They'd been doing all that—and the Underworld had just sat on its hands?
"Didn't the Ten Kings say anything? They're not the type to let that kind of thing slide."
"It's a messy thing to touch. You think they wanted to leave him be? But immortals all belong to the Western Paradise. Poke them, and Sukhavati throws a fit. If the Bodhisattva stepped in personally, they'd shut up, sure... but honestly, nobody wants to put that kind of burden on him."
Immortals occupied a truly awkward position. They happened to live in the mortal realm, which meant they frequently crossed paths with the Grim Reapers who walked the same world—and sometimes, they clashed. And yet they served under the Jade Emperor, which made them a nightmare to deal with. There was a reason the Underworld left them well enough alone.
"Is it impossible to intervene by force?"
"The Ten Kings could, or the great houses of the Underworld. But who'd want to? Nobody likes a headache—not in the mortal realm, and not in the Underworld either."
Changmo stuck out his tongue and grumbled. He clearly hated the ambiguity of it as much as anyone. The wry twist of his face said plenty about how much he and the other Grim Reapers had suffered. Yeoni, catching the mood, began to grow wary of this immortal named Gonghyo himself.
"Anyway, you be careful too. Nothing good comes of getting tangled up with that old man. If you're curious and want to meet him, wait until after you've become a Grim Reaper. He'll still be a pain even then, though."
That last bit was vintage Changmo, overflowing with mischief. The summary, then: meeting him would be exhausting beyond measure. That alone was motivation enough to stay far away. Yeoni, thoroughly intimidated, abandoned any thought of seeking the immortal out.
"Got it. I'll be as careful as I can. Lately it feels like these deliveries never catch a break."
"You're telling me. At this rate, we might end up fighting actual battles while delivering letters."
"No way. Who'd have the guts to pick a fight with a Grim Reaper?"
Yeoni waved the idea off as Changmo brought up fighting. But this time, it hadn't been a joke. The humor drained from Changmo's face in an instant.
"People? No. Former Grim Reapers, though—those we've got."
"Ah."
Yeoni's expression hardened a beat later. The easy warmth in the air went cold in an instant. Talk of the rebels was never pleasant, no matter when it came up.
What was he doing right about now?
Ever since the last letter incident, the Rebel Faction had vanished without a trace. Even the letter thefts they'd routinely committed had stopped. A clean evaporation, in every sense of the word. But not a single Grim Reaper believed they were truly gone. Yeoni and Changmo were no exception.
"Any news on their end? I haven't had a chance to ask until now."
"Radio silence. Whether they sank into the earth or shot up into the sky, they went under without leaving a scrap of evidence. Having second thoughts now, after all this? Those bastards."
The curses came out the moment he thought of them. He should have gone with them back then and smashed the whole lot. The belated regret circled through his mind. At the same time, Changmo couldn't help wondering. There was no way they'd simply quit at this stage...
No. Forget it. The Inspection Department kids can handle it.
After chewing on it, Changmo quietly erased the thought. He was busy enough without adding the rebels to his plate. What was the point of giving himself a headache for nothing?
"I'll tell you as soon as we hear anything from that side. You just worry about your own job. If you see a weird-looking old geezer, you run. Got it?"
"Okay, okay. I got it. I'm hungry—want to grab something to eat? Mom, Dad, and my little sibling are all out."
"Heh! Don't want to eat alone, huh? All right, let's go."
The two of them headed outside, shaking off their worries as they went. There was still plenty of time before the delivery deadline, and the rebels hadn't shown so much as a whisker. There was no need to lose sleep over it this early. For now, they decided, they would simply live in the present.
Meanwhile.
"He did accept the proposal, but I don't know if he'll actually follow through."
Suchan sat with his chin in his hand, sunk in thought. He'd pulled off a difficult negotiation, and yet his reaction was oddly muted. Gangnim spoke to him as if soothing a troubled junior.
"The fact that he even listened is a result. The others stopped stirring the moment you brought the news. Worry too much and you'll jinx it—look on the bright side."
"Immortals are so thoroughly willful, sir. The one we're trying to join hands with, especially so."
Suchan lamented it under his breath. Gangnim, apparently finding the point hard to deny, only smiled without a word.
The unease was unavoidable. The immortal was not Gangnim's subordinate. Different affiliations aside, in terms of rank he was unambiguously a superior. They had conveyed their request; the rest was Gonghyo's to handle as he saw fit. There was no room for the rebels to insert themselves further.
"That's why I called it a no-holds-barred method. Enough, enough. You and I both did our best. If the old master won't take us up on it, we'll call it bad luck."
Gangnim made a show of being flippant. For someone who'd been so desperate to pull the immortal in, he looked remarkably at peace. He had, it seemed, achieved a kind of resignation. Everything they could do, they had done. Now all that remained was to wait.
Whether it ended in success or failure was a matter for afterward.
"Gangnim-sunbae."
"You've done enough. I have too. Now it's time to wait. We've gone seventy years without a single rest, haven't we? Until the results come in, we're on leave. Tell the others the same."
He let his whole body sink into the chair. Suchan had been about to scold him, but the hand offering a teacup stopped the words in his throat. Gangnim picked up his own cup as well, and smiled. It was a rare thing, seeing him look so at ease.
"It's been a while. Let's have some tea. There's no drink better for emptying the mind."
"Hah! There's truly no talking you out of anything, sir."
Suchan had no choice but to take a seat. The moment he accepted the cup, he took a sip. The warm, fragrant water eased something in his chest. The taut muscles in his cheeks loosened of their own accord. Gangnim, too, quietly devoted himself to the tea.
"Suchan."
"Yes, sunbae."
"The worrying is my share. Yours is to carry things out. Right now, both the worrying and the carrying-out are done—so don't fret, and save your strength. Understood?"
It had been a seventy-year stretch full of twists, turns, and no shortage of failures. They had come too far to ride every rise and fall, and the burdens they carried were many. Rest was genuinely, desperately needed. Suchan answered the encouragement with a faint smile.
"Understood."
Please, let it succeed.
That was all he wished for.
May 12, 2018 — Saturday
And so the day of the delivery arrived. Yeoni had agonized over transportation until the day before, then simply decided to take public transit. The reason wasn't anything special. He wanted to look around at a leisurely pace on the way.
It's not exactly a pleasure trip, but rushing there and back doesn't feel right either. I'll do the delivery while taking in the sights.
Just as certain rebels had been, Yeoni too was craving rest. The fatigue had piled up in proportion to the ferocity of his exams. The difficulty, nothing like his freshman year, had wrung him dry. If it weren't for the letter delivery, he might well have slept the entire day.
"Nice weather."
He settled into a bus seat and gazed idly out the window. The flowerbeds, their blossoms spent, and the tree-lined streets were thick with green. It was the tail end of spring, the first breath of summer. Sunlight, growing a little sharper by the day, warmed the skin of his face.
The warmth invited drowsiness. Instead of forcing his heavy eyelids up, Yeoni let them fall shut. All the fatigue he hadn't been able to shake came flooding in at once.
When the competition's over, maybe I'll ask her to go out somewhere.
Until he drifted off, he decided to indulge in a pleasant daydream. Once the competition was over, he would surely try to make up for all the postponed dates and everything else he'd put off. Preparing for a future that was all but certain was only human. Various places rose as candidates in his mind. The weather was nice—a park, or maybe the riverside, would be perfect.
But the mental cataloguing lasted only a moment. His consciousness began to flicker and fade.
Ah, I'm so sleepy.
And so, knowing nothing of what awaited him, the bus rolled on toward the tiger's den.
Just as the bus was pulling into its destination.
"So he's finally coming."
From the summit of Mount Mani, Gonghyo looked in the direction from which Yeoni was approaching.
Even from dozens of kilometers away, he could sense Yeoni with perfect clarity. The spiritual aura of the afterlife rolling off the boy was that dense. It was concentrated enough that Gonghyo had nearly mistaken him for a Grim Reaper. How curious, he thought, all over again.
The mortal brat hasn't got a lick of fear. Does he take the Underworld for some county magistrate's office? A healthy terror would be the normal response.
So it was true, then—that he worked alongside Grim Reapers.
Until Gonghyo felt it for himself today, it had been information he couldn't quite bring himself to believe.
"Tsk, tsk. The Grim Reaper lot must have been wrapping him up and shielding him all this time. Left to their own devices, Gangnim and Suchan would have handled it themselves, more likely than not."
There was not a trace of tension in the gaze he turned on the approaching boy. He was a kid who'd lived less than a hundred years, after all. Gangnim and Suchan were too rigid to handle easily, but for Gonghyo, this was nothing. Find the opening, and that would be that. Not that he intended merely to torment the child.
Cantankerous as he was, he was an immortal in name and in fact.
He decided he would grant the request—and, within that bound, give the boy as fair a chance as he reasonably could.
The child does the Underworld's work, so I'll test him the same way I used to test the Grim Reapers.
Then as now, his nature was truly, incorrigibly willful.