Unfortunately, this situation was not a dream. Even though he’d fainted and woken up several times throughout the night from the pain, the absurd reality didn’t disappear, and Mua was still in the form of a human.
Rather, the situation had gotten worse. One more annoying human had increased. Mua stared piercingly at the face of the unfamiliar human who had suddenly come to his hospital room and acted familiarly as if they knew each other, then opened his mouth.
“Cheon Jieon asked to meet me?”
Suchan stared blankly at Shin Mua, who opened his eyes wide and spoke to him informally so naturally. He was probably the person who’d seen Mua most frequently after Jieon. And during the past few years, he had never spoken informally to him.
“Who are you to come and deliver a message to me?”
However, surprisingly, in the current situation, informal speech wasn’t particularly absurd. What was more absurd was the strange manner of speech he didn’t know where it had been learned. Even ‘who are you’—who uses such words these days?
“No, so I’m… I mean I’m….”
The manner of speech that seemed like something he’d only heard in historical dramas was so natural that Suchan almost used formal speech.
“I’m Jieon’s secretary, and Jieon’s body isn’t fully healed yet either so he can’t move… if you’re okay with it, how about going to Jieon’s hospital room to meet?”
“Hmm.”
“Jieon is also worried after hearing the news that you lost your memory.”
Well, strictly speaking, it was a different kind of worry. There was no need to explain in detail.
Meanwhile, Mua blinked his large eyes and observed Suchan. The energy felt from his eyes was clear, so he didn’t seem to have malicious intent, but even so, he was human. There was no need to view him favorably.
If he was Cheon Jieon’s secretary, the husband of ‘Shin Mua,’ he would be quite acquainted with ‘Shin Mua’ too, but there were still no memories rising in Mua’s mind.
To think he couldn’t peek at the memories even though he was occupying the body. Mua had spent a hundred years in the Afterlife, but possession was a first, so there was no way to know if this was right or if there was some problem.
Mua let out a long sigh. His head was already complicated, and now some guy called a husband whose face he didn’t even know wanted to see him. And he was telling him to come. Had he ever seen such an ill-mannered fellow when he was just a lump of flesh whose name hadn’t even dried on the reincarnation ledger?
“Then I’ll meet him, so tell that fellow to come.”
Mua answered with an indifferent attitude. Suchan made a shocked face, but whether he did or not wasn’t his concern.
“The one who needs something should come. To think a mere human would tell me to come and go when my body isn’t even fine.”
Regardless of what the body he was occupying was like, if you added up Mua’s age as a human, he had lived a hundred and twenty years. How dare some human wretch try to order me around?
“Uh, well, that’s….”
Suchan stammered. It was a profession where he had to maintain a poker face without being flustered in any situation, but right now that wasn’t working.
“I will not go.”
Whether Suchan was flustered or not, Mua said what he had to say. Honestly, Mua wanted this person before his eyes to get lost quickly, and he didn’t want to meet the guy called ‘Shin Mua’s’ husband either.
“And, when did we meet that you’re speaking informally? Both master and secretary are equally lacking in manners.”
“Ma-master….”
Suchan’s face flushed red. When did we meet that you’re speaking informally? It was Mua who had acted friendly toward Suchan calling him hyung, hyung, and told him to speak informally first. The word master was equally absurd. Who in the world uses the word master these days?
“Do you have more to say?”
However, Suchan couldn’t question the shamelessly speaking Mua and could only get up from his seat. He was too dumbfounded to think of words to argue with, and more than anything, he couldn’t have a fight about manners with someone who’d lost their memory.
“This is ridiculous….”
In the end, Suchan, who turned around without gaining anything, could only shake his head helplessly and return. When he opened Jieon’s hospital room door and entered without having properly collected his dazed expression, he saw Jieon with an anxious face.
Having prepared his mind thinking he’d see that detestable face again, Jieon asked with a puzzled expression when Suchan entered alone.
“What? Why did you come alone?”
“Jieon.”
“What’s wrong? Did he pull some shit again?”
Jieon clicked his tongue as if he knew it. He was the type who rarely cursed normally, but when the other party was Shin Mua, the story was different. But right now, that wasn’t what was important to Suchan.
“Shit or whatever, Shin Mua, he….”
“What about him?”
“The problem isn’t that he lost his memory right now.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
What in the world was he trying to say, drawing it out like this? Frustrated, Jieon furrowed his brow deeply. Suchan answered with a still-dazed expression.
“He’s completely lost his mind.”
“Lost his mind?”
“Yeah. There’s no problem aside from losing his memory, my ass… he must have injured his brain badly.”
Suchan recited to Jieon exactly what had happened in Shin Mua’s hospital room just before. The more he listened, the more ridiculous it was. Especially when he heard that Shin Mua had used the word ‘master,’ even Jieon was at a loss for words.
“He really used that kind of speech?”
“I’m telling you he did. What, is he from the Joseon Dynasty?”
Suchan, recalling the conversation he’d had with Mua in his head again, shook his head. Setting aside that he wasn’t like the Shin Mua Suchan knew, it wasn’t the kind of speech a person in their 20s living in modern society would use.
“No, is it right for someone’s speech to completely change just because they lost some memory? Is that how it normally is?”
At Suchan’s continuous lamentations, Jieon shrugged with a puzzled expression.
“How would I know?”
“It’s strange, strange. It’s not that he has no memory, it’s like he’s become a completely different person.”
Suchan muttered while repeatedly shaking his head. The shock seemed considerable.
Jieon fell into thought for a moment. It was because Suchan’s doubt seemed valid. Well, he could have lost his memory since he had an accident, but was it right for the person himself to change enough to shock Suchan this much?
“I told you.”
The suspicion that had bloomed in Jieon’s mind from the beginning gradually began to solidify into conviction.
“He’s acting like he lost his memory.”
“Acting?”
“Yeah. So he doesn’t have to divorce me.”
“Hey, even so….”
Suchan, who was about to refute saying surely he wouldn’t go that far, soon trailed off. Recalling the Shin Mua he’d watched from beside Jieon all this time, he seemed like someone who would do that and more.
“I’m right, aren’t I? You can’t say for sure it’s not true either, hyung?”
“Hah… that’s true, but… would he really do that right after waking up from an accident?”
Still, Suchan was still in a ‘surely not’ state of mind. Normally it would be one thing, but Mua had also been badly hurt in the accident and was in a situation where he’d lost consciousness and woken up. He didn’t want to think he was strange enough to pull this trick right after waking up.
But Jieon seemed to have already placed considerable weight on his hypothesis.
“No. He would do that and more. Hyung should have seen how desperately he acted right before the accident.”
“Well, I didn’t see it, but….”
“Anyway, I’ll meet him. Let’s see if he can pretend not to know me in front of me too.”
Jieon glared with a determined expression. He’d already seen enough of Shin Mua’s pathetic acting. If he was really acting, Jieon would be able to see through his true intentions immediately.
Who does he think will fall for such tricks?
Jieon snorted. Anyway, the more he knew about Shin Mua, the more disgusting a human he became.
***
“……”
“……”
Two people with not a single uninjured spot sat facing each other with blank faces. One of them was bedridden, and the other was wheelchair-bound. In a word, it was a sight to behold.
The two just glared at each other without a word. It looked like a pride fight. At the end of the silence, the first to speak was Mua. Mua, ‘bedridden,’ wanted the man before his eyes to leave the hospital room as quickly as possible, whatever the case. So in reality, the one who needed something was Mua.
“So, what’s the reason you asked to see me?”
The face of Cheon Jieon, who was ‘wheelchair-bound,’ contorted sharply. He’d heard from Suchan, but experiencing Shin Mua’s manner of speech directly was nothing but absurd. It wasn’t even third-rate comedy.
“What did you say?”
“Did you injure your ears too? If you can’t even hear properly, what did you come all the way here for?”
“Hah….”
Jieon let out a sigh while running his hand through his hair. At this point, he was certain it was an act.
What in the world did he think amnesia was? He couldn’t even guess what he was thinking when he came up with this concept. Jieon spoke in a tone as exhausted as Shin Mua’s.
“What the hell are you trying to pull?”
“Pull?”
“Yeah. What, you lost your memory? You want me to believe that now?”
“Mm, does that mean you don’t believe my words?”
“What’s with that irritating manner of speech too?”
Mua tilted his head slightly to the side and stared blankly at Jieon.
In fact, having his speech pointed out was familiar. Because of this manner of speech, Mua was often treated as odd even in the Afterlife.
By now, aside from the die-hard old-timers, there were almost no people in the Afterlife who used this kind of speech. Not to mention low-ranking grim reapers like Mua who had never used such speech even when they were human.
Yet the reason Mua used the speech and attitude of an Afterlife elder was simply due to his stubbornness. Mua wanted to appear as different as possible from the humans of the Living World somehow. He didn’t want to converse with them in a friendly manner of speech.
He hoped they would regard him as a completely unfamiliar existence, and hoped he wouldn’t be confused with humans in any moment. He’d rather die than hear he was a human-like grim reaper.
So Mua had ‘practiced’ this historical drama-like speech. The reason he insisted on traditional dopo attire unlike his colleagues who became grim reapers around the same time was also for that reason.
For such a Mua to receive peculiar treatment in the Afterlife was no longer anything special. So what he was carefully observing Jieon for now wasn’t because of the speech criticism, but because of his attitude.
