Cheon Jieon’s eyes widened. It was the first time Shin Mua, who had only claimed he couldn’t remember anything, had brought up the past.
A chill crept down the back of his neck. Fear washed over him, not knowing what it meant that the memories he claimed to have forgotten were coming back. Jieon stared at Mua silently for a moment before opening his mouth in a low voice.
“Your memories… have they returned?”
His voice was filled with anxiety so palpable anyone could detect it.
“Your memories, have they come back?”
His repeated question was full of impatience. Mua shrugged his shoulders.
“Rather than saying all my memories have returned… there were a few scenes that came to mind when I had that seizure last time.”
“Ah…”
“Probably, the more I adapt to this body, the more memories will surface. If that happens… we might get a little closer to the truth of this incident.”
Learning ‘Shin Mua’s’ memories was certainly a good thing for Mua. Information would come one way or another. The situation would definitely improve compared to now, which was no different from wandering aimlessly through a vast desert.
But saying those words in front of Cheon Jieon somehow weighed on his mind. It was strange that a man who seemed to have nothing to fear in the world, born with money and power—everything—in his hands, would be so bothered by a small, powerless, insignificant man.
Mua loathed humans and didn’t trust their nature. Paradoxically, that’s why he could sense human temperament even more keenly.
Cheon Jieon definitely wasn’t kind-natured. He was arrogant and sometimes seemed immature. But from him, Mua didn’t sense that unpleasant feeling characteristic of sordid and sinister humans.
Of course, that didn’t mean Cheon Jieon was a trustworthy good person. However, it meant that at least for now, this moment when he was living well and eating well in a good house, he wasn’t a bad person.
That fact became a small comfort to Mua, who had been thrown alone into the Living World with no one to rely on. Laughably so.
Jieon, who had been speechless for a moment as if greatly shocked by the fact that Mua remembered the past, turned to leave the room but looked back at Mua again. His deeply sunken gaze coldly shot through him.
“If.”
“……”
“If you come to glimpse all the memories of that body.”
Mua calmly met Cheon Jieon’s sharp gaze.
“If you come to know all of Shin Mua’s memories, even then…”
“……”
“Even then, could you still not be Shin Mua?”
A silence fell between the two. Mua could tell. The human before him wasn’t trying to intimidate or threaten him. This person was simply afraid.
Why would someone who had everything, someone who could easily remove someone like Shin Mua from his life at any time if he wanted to, find it so difficult to dispose of one powerless human?
Why hadn’t he used more vicious or cruel methods to ‘get rid of’ Shin Mua? Cheon Jieon was someone with the power to do so, and Mua had seen countless powerful people who erased human lives so casually in just that way.
Was Cheon Jieon really not that ruthless of a person? Or was there some other reason he didn’t yet know?
At the end of these unknowable questions, Mua quietly opened his mouth.
“Don’t worry.”
His tone had softened considerably.
“The Shin Mua who tormented you is already dead. As long as this body lives and moves, I will always be a Grim Reaper of the Afterlife.”
“……”
“You don’t need to be afraid anymore.”
Jieon stood there and glared at Mua a bit longer before leaving the room without answering further.
Just as Cheon Jieon’s patience had been a small comfort to Mua, did Mua’s answer now bring him comfort? That was something the current Mua couldn’t know.
***
“Ah, shit!”
Jieon kicked off the blanket and sat up with an irritated sound. Hours had passed since he’d lain down to sleep, but far from falling asleep, his mind was wide awake. There were too many thoughts in his head.
The reason needed no further examination—it was because of that person insisting he wasn’t Shin Mua.
The conversation he’d had with him today was stuck in Jieon’s head and wouldn’t easily come out. His gaze and tone, the energy radiating from his entire body. All of it was as vivid as an impressive movie scene.
The real problem was that the scene should have been terrible like a nightmare or horror movie, but it wasn’t. Rather, it was the opposite. Surprisingly, he’d felt a subtle sense of relief from today’s conversation with Shin Mua.
“Did you put some kind of curse on me?”
Jieon muttered, punching the innocent bed. It was suspicious from the start, asking out of nowhere about shamans and superstitions. Why would he ask such a random question unless he was trying to pull some wicked scheme?
‘The Shin Mua who tormented you is already dead. As long as this body lives and moves, I will always be a Grim Reaper of the Afterlife.’
‘You don’t need to be afraid anymore.’
“……”
Jieon’s eyes, which had been rising as if full of anger, quickly settled down calmly. Those words of Mua’s kept ringing in his ears like tinnitus, and strangely, each time, his anxiety seemed to subside.
Because it sounded like words from a being not human, belonging to a world beyond this one, looking down on a worthless human. Because when he said it would be okay, it really seemed like everything would be okay.
Because it seemed like he’d truly escaped from Shin Mua, whom he’d so desperately wanted to get away from.
“Does that make any sense?”
Then Jieon shook his head vigorously in disgust. Hearing crazy talk every day must have driven him mad too.
“It’s the speech pattern. It’s because of that speech pattern.”
Jieon widened his eyes and collected himself. Shin Mua’s speech pattern was definitely problematic. He used speech patterns extremely unfamiliar to modern people so naturally that he seemed to unconsciously assimilate to it.
“Get a grip, get a grip. What are you thinking, seriously.”
Jieon constantly whipped himself into shape and got out of bed. He felt like he needed to drink some cold water and come to his senses.
Thinking about it more generously, maybe Shin Mua wasn’t lying. Perhaps some unknown abnormality occurred in his brain when he injured his head, making him truly believe he was a Grim Reaper.
That would explain why all of Shin Mua’s words and actions were so natural.
“……”
Jieon’s face darkened again as he organized the situation this way. There was another big problem here.
If his mind returned one day, he would become the Shin Mua he knew again, and thinking about what would happen then, it seemed the current state where he insisted he was a Grim Reaper was far better.
“It’s suffocating, so suffocating.”
In the end, with his insides only growing noisier, Jieon grumbled like a child and came out to the living room to drink water.
Right at that moment.
“What the.”
An abnormal chill sharply swept over Jieon’s entire body. His hair stood on end and goosebumps rose all over his body. Though he hadn’t heard any suspicious sounds, his instincts warned him there was an intruder.
Jieon held his breath and moved slowly, searching for the source of the chill. Soon he found the place where an alien presence could be felt. It was Shin Mua’s room. The warning bells in his head rang even more loudly.
Maybe Shin Mua really had let someone into the house. Even if he’d taken advantage of his carelessness to try something, it wouldn’t be surprising. Otherwise, what reason would there be for someone else to enter this house at this hour of dawn?
He hadn’t even confirmed it yet, but strangely, Jieon was certain there was an intruder in his room. Jieon’s senses were feeling the presence of someone other than Shin Mua far too clearly.
Should he grab a weapon? Even as he had such thoughts, he walked toward Mua’s room as if entranced.
In movies, this is when the protagonist always touches something by mistake and invites danger, but Jieon moved carefully to avoid making such a mistake. Finally, he arrived in front of Mua’s door without causing any disturbance.
Fortunately, Shin Mua’s door was slightly open. To prevent any possible mistakes, he covered his mouth with one hand and very slowly approached the open door to look inside.
Along with the pale light of dawn coming through the window, the scene inside the room gradually began to reflect in Jieon’s pupils.
“……?!”
Jieon almost screamed. If he hadn’t already covered his mouth with his hand, he surely would have made a sound similar to a scream.
Contrary to expectations, there was no stranger in the room. Or rather, was it correct to say there wasn’t? At least there was only one person who ‘appeared’ to be human—Shin Mua.
But that didn’t mean Shin Mua was alone. Shin Mua lay on the bed, stiff and rigid as if suffering from sleep paralysis, and at the foot of his bed, there was something.
Something too much like a shadow to call human, yet emanating a too chilling presence to call a shadow. A chill was felt to the bone even without touching it. Clearly not human, yet something with too vivid an existence to say nothing was there.
Jieon froze right there. He could neither enter nor flee to his own room. It was as if his feet were glued to that spot.
Then, that being slowly reached its hand toward Shin Mua. Or rather, the form moved as if reaching out its hand. It was precisely at that moment that Jieon, who had been frozen stiff, sprang inside.
“Shin Mua!!”
Cheon Jieon’s thunderous voice rang through the room. At the same time, Jieon felt the shadow-like form turn to look at him. Though he couldn’t properly see its eyes, he knew. That being was looking at him.
Once again his hair stood on end, but he couldn’t take back the step he’d already taken.
“Snap out of it!”
With the added shout, Jieon’s hand grabbed Mua’s body, and at the same time, the unidentified being that had been reaching toward Mua dispersed like fog.
“Haah…!”
Simultaneously, Shin Mua opened his eyes with a sharp intake of breath.
