GRR 31

“I will definitely listen to you. I promise.”

“…….”

“But if I grant your request, you have to follow the grim reaper too.”

Jion glanced at Kwon Chasa behind him and smiled brightly at Park Seolhwa. She took a step forward and narrowed the distance between herself and Jion.

As Jion swallowed hard due to nerves, Park Seolhwa reached out and ‘hooked’ her finger around Jion’s little finger. With that, the deal was struck.

“Then I’ll trust you, Jion-ah?”

A smile appeared on Park Seolhwa’s face, which had been blank the entire time. Jion felt a chill. He looked at Park Seolhwa and unnaturally pulled up the corners of his mouth.

What is this feeling?

He had a premonition that this matter would not go smoothly. The sigh from behind him was more heavier than ever, as though to validate that intuition.

‎

‎

‎

‘I want to know about my mom.’

That was Park Seolhwa’s answer to the question asking what her request was. When Jion cautiously looked up after taking out his phone and opening the memo app, Park Seolhwa slowly took a deep breath.

Not long after, she parted her lips and continued speaking. Jion listened attentively with a serious expression.

‘I was supposed to meet my mom on the day I died. I was living in Seoul with just my dad, and my mom was in Busan for work. I hadn’t seen her for about three months because work was so busy, but she said she would come up to Seoul. She mentioned that she had only managed to take a few days of vacation.’

‘…….’

‘It was a Friday… Mom said she was coming by KTX, so I left to catch her on time. I was supposed to go with Dad, but he suddenly said he had to work overtime, so I went alone. But on the way from home to the station, I ended up dying. Just my bad luck.’

The calm voice actually made it even harder for Jion to respond. Unable to type anything into his phone, Jion gnawed at the inside of his mouth.

‘I was walking while listening to music, so I didn’t even realize someone was following me. I was walking toward the station when suddenly someone stabbed me from behind. It hurt so much, and I was terrified… I was completely disoriented, and then suddenly my body was lifted up. After that, I lost consciousness, and when I looked after I died, I found I had drowned.’

Park Seolhwa took a deep breath after calmly saying words that were chilling just to hear. Jion roughly jotted down Park Seolhwa’s story in a memo app and thought it would be a good idea to look it up on the internet. After all, a related article might come out, just like with Kang Seoyoon.

‘Anyway… by the time I regained my senses and was able to move around, too much time had already passed. My mom’s and my urns were placed side by side in that columbarium from earlier.’

‘What…? Then you’re saying your mother passed away too?’

‘Yeah. When I looked at the date written on the urn, it was about two months after I died. At first, I thought it was all a dream. It didn’t feel real that I was dead, or that my mom was dead. As time passed, I gradually came to accept it, but… I kept having a strange feeling.’

At that point, Kwon Chasa, who had been standing beside and listening, also frowned slightly. Even now, as he flipped through the stacks of registers piled on the living room table of the hanok, Kwon Chasa’s brow was furrowed just as it had been then.

“Haa… my head is spinning.”

Yu Chasa closed the register he had been holding with a pained expression. Jion sympathized and nodded without thinking. Kwon Chasa also closed the register he was holding, roughly tossed it onto the table, and leaned back against the sofa. They had been sitting in the living room going through these records for quite a while now.

“Is this all that’s left?”

“Yes… it’s a little over ten registers. But, given this many, it might be missing from the registers we possess.”

Jion closed and opened his heavy eyes several times while listening to the conversation between Kwon Chasa and Yu Chasa. He wanted to sleep, but he forced himself to stay awake.

The reason the three of them went through such a lot of trouble checking the registers one by one was none other than what Park Seolhwa said.

‘I don’t know why, but I get a strange feeling whenever I go near Mom’s urn. You know, ever since she died, I haven’t been able to feel anything. But whenever I go to Mom, something… it’s hard to explain, but something feels off.’

For some reason, Kwon Chasa, who had been listening to Park Seolhwa without interrupting, suddenly chimed in at that point.

‘It looks like your mother is wandering somewhere in the living world, too.’

‘Like me?’

‘Yes. Then there might be a record.’

After thinking for a moment, Kwon Chasa asked Park Seolhwa a few things, including her mother’s name and date of birth. As soon as he obtained the information, he immediately took Jion to the hanok located on the boundary between the living world and the underworld.

Kwon Chasa suggested that they should quickly look up the register of Park Seolhwa’s mother, Jo Yunkyung. He reasoned that if it was true that Jo Yunkyung was also wandering the living world, they could simply have the two meet and send them to the underworld together.

Jion was surprised that they shared a similar thought for once and agreed. He began checking a significant number of registers with Kwon Chasa. About an hour later, Yu Chasa joined them upon his return from work, and the three of them searched diligently, but they still had not found a register with the name ‘Jo Yunkyung’ written on it.

“It really seems like there isn’t any.”

Even while muttering those words, Kwon Chasa began to check the remaining registers. Completely drained, Jion let out a sigh. As soon as his concentration wavered, he suddenly felt hungry. He took out his phone to check the time and realized it was already nearly 6 o’clock.

I just want to go home, eat, and sleep... Jion felt a bit bitter thinking about how his part-time job kept him from being free.

Then something happened.

Gurgle…!

A loud rumble came from his stomach

“Ah… haha…….”

Their gazes turned to Jion at the same time. Jion hurriedly clutched his stomach and smiled awkwardly with his ears flushed red.

“Um… uh, aren’t you two hungry…?”

Jion, who had been rambling on out of embarrassment, blinked blankly as he watched Kwon Chasa smirk at his question. Was the question “Aren’t you hungry?” funny? Why was that funny? Kwon Chasa was a man with a twisted personality who enjoyed the moments when he was made to look ridiculous.

“We are fine because we cannot feel the Three Desires. Oh wait… I wonder if it is evening in the living world?” Hunger, sleep, sexual desire

Jion tilted his head for a moment after listening to the kind explanation from Yu Chasa. What are the Three Desires? Like the basic human needs or something? While he racked his brain trying to figure it out, Kwon Chasa picked up the last remaining register and uttered a nonchalant remark.

“Yu Chasa, you remember what you bought earlier? Give him that. From the sound of his voice, the student seems really hungry.”

“Oh, right! I had that. Jion, wait a moment. I bought some cup noodles earlier.”

As Yu Chasa scurried toward the kitchen, only Jion and Kwon Chasa were left in the living room. In the midst of this, he didn’t know whether to thank him for considering his hunger, or tell him to stop smirking because it seemed like he was teasing him… It was hard to figure out what to say to someone with such an inscrutable personality.

Jion glanced at Kwon Chasa, who had tossed even the last register onto the table, and cautiously opened his mouth. He thought it would be better to talk about work rather than let this awkward silence continue.

“Um… Seolhwa’s mother. If she doesn’t even have a register, does that mean she already went to the underworld?”

The registers piled high like mountains contained the personal details of the deceased who failed to leave the living world in time, whom Kwon Chasa and Yu Chasa were tasked with taking away. If it was true that Jo Yunkyung was also wandering the living world, hers should naturally have been among the registers held by the two grim reapers. However, among the registers currently in this house, Jo Yunkyung’s was not there.

“We can’t completely rule that out.”

“Then… how can we verify that? What happened to Seolhwa’s mother?”

“I’ll have to ask Yeomra.”

Kwon Chasa answered Jion’s question nonchalantly. Was he implying that there was no major problem in finding out news of a soul who had already departed for the underworld? If so… could he hear news of his mother too? If he made a wish later to know how she was doing, would they grant it? Jion suddenly felt his heart pounding with anticipation and tried to take slow, deep breaths.

Just then, Kwon Chasa suddenly stood up. Jion looked up at him with a confused expression.

“Ask Yu Chasa to take you home. Drink the spring water on your way, too.”

“Uh… where are you going?”

“To Yeomra Palace. No need to waste time, am I right?”

“Ah…….”

He must have been exhausted from flipping through so many registers, yet he was trying to go all the way to the underworld without even a moment to catch his breath. He seemed to feel satisfied only when he handled work immediately, and he appeared to detest wasting time inefficiently.

Come to think of it, Kwon Chasa listened today without interrupting while Jion was talking with Park Seolhwa. He even suggested ways to resolve the situation amicably after listening to her story.

Maybe he thought it was more efficient this time, since it looked like they could handle two matters at once.

“Ah, student.”

“Yes?”

“Leave your number before you go. I’m going to buy a cell phone or whatever it is called soon.”

After speaking, Kwon Chasa turned around without a second thought. As he walked toward the front door without even a simple wave and disappeared from sight, Yu Chasa returned to the living room carrying a tray with cup noodles. Jion’s gaze fixed on the empty hallway for a long time.

He thought that, surprisingly, it seems like Kwon Chasa listens to him well.