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“Well? Are you coming?”
Dongwoo snaps awake, shaking his head just to keep him alert. Normally he knows his own whereabouts, but right now, everything seems to be blending in together with the darkness standing in front of him.
The darkness that just spoke.
“Hello? Aren’t you my new assistant, uh…. Jang Dongwoo-ssi?” the darkness in front of him asks. It mutters a small, “Or maybe I got the wrong person… no, no I’m sure he ‘s the right one… is he?”
“Yes, that’s me. Jang Dongwoo.” He says, barely managing to hold himself together. He’s getting nauseous and it’s just getting worse by the minute.
“Wonderful. Nice to meet you Jang Dongwoo-ssi. My name is Kim Sunggyu, and I am one of the grim reapers of the Underworld. Address me by my name when we’re together, but when I’m reaping someone, please call me Reaper. I don’t feel comfortable using my real name in front of my clients. Some of them like to come back every once in awhile and harass me and I can’t have the dead pounding on my front doorstep. I’d like to get my sleep too, you know.”
Dongwoo is definitely listening to what this dark blob is saying to him, but he’s still kind of disoriented, so it’s just going in through one ear and out the other. He feels a pair of hands cup his face and lift it up, facing it more towards a light.
“Did you hear everything I said?” A voice that is much more distinct, says. As he blinks, Dongwoo’s vision clears up and he sees what’s been talking to him this entire time.
It’s a human. Well, it looks like a human. Like Dongwoo. Definitely not the blob he was seeing earlier, or even the darkness. Maybe it was because of his dark maroon cloak he’s wearing. It looks like a traditional outfit, like something a priest or monk would wear. Except did he just hear this person say “Underworld”?
“Am I dead?” He says, swallowing down the fear (or maybe the throw up) creeping up his throat.
“Well… yes and no.”
“Huh?”
Kim Sunggyu sighs as if he’s tired of explaining. “You’re not dead, but you’re not alive either. You’re stuck in between life and death right now, which is why you’re here with me.”
“I’m here with you? What am I supposed to do?” Dongwoo says, frowning. He’s so lost.
Kim Sunggyu’s lips stretch in a half smile. “You’re going to be my assistant.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“I need these stacks of papers filed -” Kim Sunggyu says, and Dongwoo gapes at it when he points to a mountain pile of papers, all stacked messily on top of each other in the office building. “...along with these-” and Kim Sunggyu points to another enormous, messy stack of papers, “and I also need these pages numbered.” The last thing he points to is the smallest stack of papers Dongwoo had seen so far. He decided he’d start out with those first, and then move on to the others after he was done.
“Is that enough to get you started?” Kim Sunggyu asks, and his question sounds genuine. Dongwoo bows immediately and bounces right back up.
“Yes, sir! I will get started on it now.” Dongwoo gulps. This was going to be a long, long… week. He was nothing but diligent though. He could get it done.
“Oh, I don’t mean right now,” Kim Sunggyu says, eyes widening. “We have a lot more work to do with my clients. This is just when we have extra time. I get paid overtime. I’m not sure if you get paid for this. Did anyone tell you about benefits or your salary before you came here?”
Dongwoo blinks.
“Okay, I guess not. That was rude. Unless you’re volunteering for this? But you don’t seem to have wanted to volunteer for this…” Kim Sunggyu keeps muttering to himself as he goes along, and Dongwoo gets lost in his surroundings for a while. How did he get here? How is he both alive and dead at the same time? What happened to him?
“Lee Sungyeol, stop sticking your nose into everyone else’s business and do your own work,” Kim Sunggyu barks at another employee. “Otherwise I’m not giving you your incentive at the end of the day!”
“Incentive?” Dongwoo asks.
“It’s… their own personal incentive. I uh,” Kim Sunggyu gulps, loosening his cloak around the neckline. His cheeks flush pink. “My employees make up their own incentives. I just follow through with it.”
“Oh,” Dongwoo says. He steps in place next to Kim Sunggyu and follows him through the building as the reaper explains a number of different things to him.
It’s only been a few minutes, but suddenly the Reaper abruptly stops in his tracks and Dongwoo almost bumps into him.
“We need to go,” the Reaper says softly, turning around with a somber look on his face. He grabs Dongwoo’s arm and there’s a bright flash of light and suddenly they’re in a bustling city. There’s an emergency response team stopped on the road with their flashing red and blue lights, making a half circle against the traffic.
A blink and they’re in that half-circle, looking down at a body on the ground. There’s no sign of life for this man, and Dongwoo almost faints at how much blood has spilled onto the street. When Dongwoo looks up again, he sees a man with pale skin and severely dark circles under his eyes. His cheeks seem to be hollow and his eyes are red and hold so much pain behind them. He’s looking down at what Dongwoo thinks is his body. Dongwoo feels like he’s known him before and wants to mourn for him, but the Reaper speaks up.
“Nam Woohyun, I’m sorry for your loss,” the Reaper says, bowing to him. “You will be missed by many.”
The man - Nam Woohyun - shifts his eyes from his body to the Reaper. His mouth creaks open, as if he hasn’t used it in a long time, and he says, “Am I dead?”
The Reaper gives a single nod, clasping his hands together in front of him. “Would you like to pray for your soul?”
“I don’t… I don’t understand,” Nam Woohyun says, looking at his hands. “I feel completely fine.”
“You may feel fine right now, but that’s because your death has not fully kicked in yet. In other words, you don’t realize you’ve died. You may feel completely fine, Woohyun-ssi, but you do not look fine.”
“But I was just crossing the street, I was on my way to see my wife, I… how can I be dead?”
“You were ran over by a car, Woohyun-ssi. I’m sorry it had to happen that way. I will send your wife my condolences. If you would like, I can grant you a final wish.”
“Yes, please. Can it be anything I want?”
“Depends on what you wish for.”
“I want to see my daughter. My wife- she’s due in a few weeks.”
Honestly, if this person dying wasn’t the worst thing in the world Dongwoo has seen today, it’s probably the fact that he has an unborn daughter that he’ll never get to experience watching her grow up. The world is just so unfair.
“I can let you see her, but only briefly. You have a few minutes. Spend it well,” Sunggyu says, and when he snaps his finger, they’re in a hospital. A baby’s cry comes from a nearby room, and Woohyun, frantic, runs into the room to see his newborn daughter.
They let him have a few moments with her in the room.
“Sir, I really don’t think I can do this,” Dongwoo says, trying really, really hard not to cry. “I don’t think I was cut out for this kind of job. There’s just so much pain. How do you do this every day?”
The Reaper folds his arms in front of his chest, thinking for a few seconds about how to respond. “It’s hard. Some days are harder than others. But… at the end of the day, you know the person is in good hands. Him and his family will reunite again someday. It will just take longer than others.”
Dongwoo lets out a heavy sigh. This is too much.
“Can I quit?”
The Reaper looks at him with a blank face. “Hmm? Could you repeat that?”
“I want to quit.”
“Interesting.”
“I want to go back to wherever I was before this.”
“That won’t happen unless you are determined dead or alive, Dongwoo-ssi. Until then, you are stuck with me,” the Reaper explains calmly to him.
For the first time since he met the Reaper, Dongwoo feels a chill run down his spine. The Reaper’s words wrap a dark cloud around his heart, making him feel suffocated. His shoulders slump down, and he sinks to the ground.
“And how long will that take?” Dongwoo says, still in disbelief. Before the Reaper can answer, a timer goes off.
“Oh, it’s time to take Nam Woohyun-ssi to the Underworld. We’ll talk about this later.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The papers keep piling up as the seconds tick by on the clock that’s hanging on the wall, but Dongwoo is doing his best. That’s all he can do at this point.
Filing documents, assorting papers in abecedarian, those are things he can easily get done, without a second thought.
But meeting people who have just recently died? Taking them to the Underworld? He can’t do that. He’s not ready. Dongwoo doesn’t even know how or why he came here in the first place, so what right does he have to escort someone here?
Maybe he’s already dead. Kim Sunggyu mentioned he wasn’t quite alive, but not quite dead either.
“That doesn’t even make sense!” Dongwoo cries in disbelief, letting his head fall onto the desk with a bang. Ouch.
“It makes total sense to me,” a voice chimes in, and before Dongwoo even looks up, he knows it’s Lee Sungyeol. He’s leaning back in his office chair with a pen behind his ear and smirks at Dongwoo. “Think about it - you’re not alive, but you’re not dead either. You’re practically immortal right now.”
“How could I possibly be immortal?” Dongwoo asks.
“Look. You have the power to do anything you want ,” Sungyeol says, swirling around his chair and scooching closer to Dongwoo’s desk. “You wanna fly? Fly. You wanna walk through walls? Walk. Destroy a spaceship? Go for it. Build an empire in two days? Take me with you. Anything you could ever want or desire, you have the chance to do right now.”
“But I don’t want to do any of that,” Dongwoo sighs, looking back at the papers. “Even if I wanted to, I have to be by Kim Sunggyu’s side. I can’t just leave him without an assistant.”
Lee Sungyeol scoffs. “I’ve been his assistant for centuries now, that’s how we all start off.”
“CENTURIES?” Dongwoo says, his jaw dropping open. Lee Sungyeol has been alive AND dead for centuries ?
“I’m exaggerating. Clearly. I’m not that old. Yet.” Dongwoo feels like he’s going to get a heart attack if he spends any more time with this dude. “What I’m trying to say is - the dude’s got a bunch of assistants. So you don’t have to worry about being by his side constantly. Look what he’s having you do right now. You’re filing papers. Thought you’d be done with that in the afterlife, right? Anyways, just don’t sweat it. You’re doing much better than you think you are.”
Dongwoo still felt uneasy about this whole “helping Death” situation, but at least it was better knowing there was someone else who had gone through this and was giving him some advice.
“So what DO you want to do? Besides build an empire and take over the Underworld with me, I mean.”
Dongwoo sighs, staring at his hands. He thinks for a moment and then looks up at Lee Sungyeol with wistful eyes. “I want to know what happened to my family.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lee Sungyeol lets out a big whistle. “That’s rough, buddy,” he says in the most sincere voice Dongwoo has heard since he met him.
They’re looking at a crystal ball in the Necrochamber in the Underworld, and what Dongwoo sees is a number of people - his family members - crowded around a hospital bed. Some are crying, others are weeping, and a few are still in complete shock that it’s not registering that the person they’re looking at is Dongwoo himself.
Dongwoo doesn’t even realize he’s looking at himself until he sees the bracelet that’s on the body of the patient.
The Dongwoo in the crystal ball looks like he’s got severe third degree burns on the left side of his face, neck, and chest, and the Dongwoo in the Underworld is wondering how the hell this even happened.
“So… I’m in a coma.”
“Looks like it.”
“And… if I wake up… I’m going to be in a lot of pain.”
“For sure, yeah.”
“But, if I don’t wake up… if I don’t make it… my family will suffer.”
“Sounds about right.”
“So... what’s going to happen?” Dongwoo asks, turning to face Lee Sungyeol.
“Jang Dongwoo.” The voice seems to come from behind them, and Dongwoo turns around to see Kim Sunggyu with a frown on his face. “This room is forbidden to enter. What brings you here?”
“I just wanted to know how my family is doing.”
“You don’t get to decide that. Right now, you’re in between worlds. This might alter whether you live or die in your world.”
“Then what is this magical crystal ball doing on this round table then?” Lee Sungyeol points out.
Kim Sunggyu shrugs. “I don’t know. I just found it there when I was appointed Reaper and I was told it’s forbidden for anyone else to go in here except the Reaper. Which is me. So get out.”
“But Sunggyu -” Lee Sungyeol starts but the Reaper interrupts.
“Excuse me, who said you could protest? I’m in charge of the Underworld. Leave or I’ll never let you rest in peace at this point.”
Lee Sungyeol grumbles something about never getting rest and having to talk to Kim Sunggyu in private later and Dongwoo can see the blush rising on Kim Sunggyu’s cheeks.
Clearing his throat, Kim Sunggyu escorts Dongwoo back to his desk and tells him to get back to work.
“Honestly, Dongwoo-ssi… I’m sorry about your situation. It's a terrible one to be in. Not knowing whether you will live or die can be a stressful experience. Let me know if you need anything and I will accommodate you.” Then he leans in and whispers into Dongwoo’s ear, “But I have a feeling that everything will turn out all right.” As he straightens himself, Kim Sunggyu gives Dongwoo a wink and walks away, his hands clasped behind his back.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Days turn into weeks and by the time Dongwoo is called into Kim Sunggyu’s office, it’s already been a little over a month since he’s been here in the Underworld.
“You know what you could do for me?” Kim Sunggyu states from behind his desk. There’s a stack of documents and papers scattered around him on the floor, along with some stacked on top of his desk. Kim Sunggyu looks at Dongwoo and fixes his reading glasses that are on the bridge of his nose.
“File more papers?” Dongwoo suggests. That’s all he’s been doing anyway - filing seems to be something he’s able to manage so far (even if he does miss interacting with people other than Lee Sungyeol - but Lee Sungyeol is funny so Dongwoo likes being in the same environment with him).
“No, no, not that. You’ve done enough filing to last for the next two centuries. When you die, I’ll be lenient and make you my personal filer. BUT what I want you to do -” and Kim Sunggyu rummages through a box behind him, taking out a notepad and some pens, “is to observe the living.”
“Observe… the living?”
“Yes. Do you need more clarification?”
“What do I need to observe?”
“Their daily life. It’ll help me categorize them once they enter the Underworld.”
Kim Sunggyu tilts his head to the side, looking over Dongwoo, who thinks he looks pretty nervous right now.
“Is something bothering you?”
“I don’t… I don’t think I can do that,” Dongwoo says. “That’s like… invading their privacy, how can I do that?”
“It’s not like that, Dongwoo-ssi. I don’t want you spying on them, I simply want you to take notes on whether or not they hold the door open for others, or give up their seat on the bus for someone else. It’s not like you have to go inside their bedroom, I just want you to see what they do on a day-to-day basis so I have a better sense of what kind of person they are,” Kim Sunggyu explains calmly. “With your notes I can place them where they belong here in the Underworld.”
“Who do I observe, then?”
“I’m glad you asked,” Kim Sunggyu grins, handing over a paper that Dongwoo takes. “Here is a list of people I would like for you to observe. It’s only a few people so you don’t get too overwhelmed. They’ve all been on my radar recently and I was wondering if you could check on them and see what they’re doing.”
Dongwoo takes a look at the names on the paper and almost falls to the ground.
“These - these people… they’re my family.”
“Yes. They are. Do you know what that means?” Sunggyu says, his eyebrows raised. He has a giddy smile on his face and Dongwoo stares at him blankly. The smile wipes off quickly and Sunggyu goes back to being his usual self, a frown pasted onto his face and his brows furrowed together as if he’s always somewhat annoyed. “It means you’re going back to the land of the living, Dongwoo-ssi.”
Immediately, his eyes light up and Dongwoo’s heart soars. He’s going back? “Unbelievable,” he says, covering his hand with his mouth.
“Ah ah ah,” Sunggyu stops him, holding up his hand. “Remember what I told you. If anything happens to them, I’ll be calling you down to help me place them in the right area of the Underworld, got it?”
Dongwoo jumps for joy. He’s going back! “I’ll make sure everyone’s on their best behavior, Sir! Thank you!”
“Good. That’s - yes, good,” Sunggyu says, the corners of his lips turning up a bit. Dongwoo almost gives him a hug but restrains himself.
Before he knows it, something is pulling him away and his vision goes black.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It takes him months and months of physical therapy and surgery to reconstruct his face, but Dongwoo recovers. He’s in a much better place now and his life has honestly turned up for the better. He’s surrounded by the people he loves the most.
He vaguely remembers someone telling him to watch out for his family, and it might have been a dream he had dreamt while he was in his month long coma, but Dongwoo still values that person’s words.
“Hyung, how are you feeling?” Dongwoo turns and Myungsoo is beside him, sneaking up like he normally does, but not in a weird way, in a Myungsoo kind of way, and Dongwoo smiles.
“I’m feeling alright today,” he says, stretching his arms out and taking a big breath of fresh air. “You look like you have something planned for us.”
“I DO. Howon and Sungjongie are at the arcade downtown, wanna come? I’ll drive us there so we can all be together.”
“Sounds good to me,” Dongwoo says. And it does. Dongwoo can say with certainty that he feels more alive. And getting to spend more time with the people he loves is fulfilling and nothing can ever match that.