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There’s a break between the last soul to escort, and the next to come. 8 minutes, 5 seconds, to be exact. They’re waiting for the Editing Team to make the finishing touches on the reel, as they linger outside of the prison cell.
And a newly-minted, chatty reaper is reflecting on his own last moments, and how-
“I think I was married. I just remember touching my hand a lot? This one, you know?” He lifts his hand, twitches his empty ring finger. Ryeon makes a noncommittal noise, glances at the dead man walking across the prison bars. 5 minutes, and 2 seconds is just not fast enough for this poor excuse of a soul’s lifespan to end. She hears him laugh - this godawful, uproarious noise - and her blood runs hot at how he can laugh, while his daughter had suffered for years and years. She lays comatose in the hospital for the third year and her mother is besides herself, in making the hardest decision a person should never have to make. She is meant to hold her daughter through her life - not pull the plug.
Ryeon’s back straightens, as Joong-gil comes from around the corner. He walks past them, gloves in hand, and towards the cell, “Editing’s almost done. Get ready.”
“Oh. Alright. OK. Got it,” this reaper’s so utterly new, still getting used to the change of mortal and reaper. He’s nervous, he keeps pocketing and unpocketing his hands. He settles with them out. So she allows it as he continues, “Anyway, and there were children, I think. Or at least, my grown up kids, I guess? And tinier ones too, were there - so my grandkids? I must have been married. Not that you need to be married, to have a family. Or a family if you’re married. Say, were you married?”
She isn’t sure if she’s just so hyperaware that she’s imagining it - but she feels the weight of Joong-gil’s gaze behind her, at that. She doesn’t know how to make sense of him in moments like these. He does things, and she doesn’t know how to reconcile him, her, and the in betweens.
(“I, for one, find myself satisfied with my subordinate’s abilities.”)
It is an open secret that she’s from Hell, but her storied past is not exactly broadcasted - for a myriad of reasons.
So, she shouldn’t, she can’t, but she says:
“Yes.”
Her wrist burns.