Chapter Text
With swift and familiar movements, Yoo Joonghyuk separated soul and body with a swing of his scythe. The small orb of light fluttered over his palm, and he whispered something to it—a short chant to guide its way—before sending it off to the Afterlife. It was only after he confirmed that the soul had made its way to the Gatekeepers that he opened his eyes once more.
Before him, a familiar scene of grief and mourning played out. Family members surrounded the hospital bed as they cried their hearts out together. However, there were no more Death Candidates here, so Yoo Joonghyuk only spared them one more glance before turning around and leaving.
He reappeared at the top of a high-rise building near the center of the city to catch a quick breath before moving on to his next job.
Yoo Joonghyuk was just one among many Grim Reapers assigned to this city of Seoul. Everyday, he would hear an alert—in this modern era, it took the form of a persistent beeping sound—that would notify him of any new Death Candidates within his assigned area. Death Candidates were, as the name implied, humans who have begun progressing toward their physical deaths. These normally referred to the elderly who were nearing the end of their lifespans or the sickly whose bodies have begun deteriorating.
Being a Grim Reaper was just a pattern of being alerted by any new Death Candidates, watching over the remainder of their days, and guiding their souls to the Afterlife once they’ve finally breathed their last. It was simple and routine, and Yoo Joonghyuk performed all his tasks with cold and detached efficiency.
However, there was just one thing that had been getting on this stoic Grim Reaper’s nerves recently.
BEEP BEEP BEEP! BEEP BEEP BEEP! BEEP BEEP BEEP!
At that familiar alert sound, Yoo Joonghyuk closed his eyes and let his powers pull him toward the new location—and when he opened them again, he found himself faced with the very thing—or rather, person—that had been getting on his nerves recently.
“Ughhh, I feel so deaaad…”
Silently, Yoo Joonghyuk wished it weren’t just a feeling.
In front of him right now was an ordinary salaryman in his 30s. He was wearing a cheap black suit while lying face-down on the foyer of his puny apartment, having just barely removed his shoes before collapsing right then and there. His work bag lay pathetically by his side—though if you asked Yoo Joonghyuk, the man himself was much more pathetic than even his own bag.
This man was Kim Dokja.
And this, Yoo Joonghyuk thought irately, was the eighth time he’s been alerted by this same man just this month.
Normally, humans only became Death Candidates once in their lives. After all, they normally only stepped onto the path of death because they were steadily progressing toward it already. From there, it’s up to the Grim Reaper’s discretion to check in on their Candidates between work until the time came to reap and guide their soul.
It was that simple.
It was supposed to be.
And yet, Kim Dokja was an anomaly who presented an exception to that time-tested process. He was neither sick nor old enough to be steadily progressing toward his death. For what it was worth, he was very much a member of the ‘living’ side of this world.
Then how was he able to alert a Grim Reaper like Yoo Joonghyuk, you ask?
The fact of the matter was that Kim Dokja was simply so horrendously and infernally bad at taking care of himself that he managed to take that one little step onto the path of death, becoming a Death Candidate and alerting Yoo Joonghyuk—before stepping right back out as if nothing ever happened.
And he did it again. And again. And again.
Beep after beep after beep.
For the past six months.
Yoo Joonghyuk had never seen anyone thrive so naturally right on the entrance to death’s path. The man constantly tottered back and forth yet somehow never veered too far off to either side.
It was driving him crazy.
Yoo Joonghyuk wished he would just choose which side he wanted to stay on for good already—preferably the death side, he thought out of petty spite. But unfortunately for him, Kim Dokja eventually dragged himself off the floor and took a pack of cheap and very-likely-expired instant noodles out of his sparce pantry.
Indeed, consuming unhealthy food that technically sustained him yet at the same time inched him closer to death was just one of the many ways the creature known as Kim Dokja maintained his pathetic balance between life and death.
Yoo Joonghyuk dragged his hand down his face and left.
He had other more important work to do.
Yoo Joonghyuk was summoned to Kim Dokja’s side another 2 times after that, totaling to 10 Death Candidacies within just that month. He was called another 11 times the next month, then 10 times again the month after. There was even a point where he was alerted 13 times, during a particularly stressful period in work.
Sometimes, Yoo Joonghyuk would be summoned to Kim Dokja’s side while he was hunched over his office desk working overtime yet again. Sometimes, he would find him buried under the covers well past midnight, reading web novel updates with bloodshot eyes instead of sleeping like a normal human being. And sometimes, Yoo Joonghyuk would find him desperately scouring the cheap convenience store shelves for his first meal in two days.
Heck, there was even one time when Yoo Joonghyuk was alerted to Kim Dokja’s location while he was just leisurely seated in a subway train.
Seriously, how the hell did this man do it?
It took an entire year of this nonsense before even an immortal Grim Reaper like Yoo Joonghyuk could no longer handle being randomly taken from his work just to be reminded that this sorry excuse of a human still existed.
Begrudgingly, he decided that he had to do something himself.
Now, Grim Reapers had one job and one job only—to guide souls to the Afterlife. For that job, any form of contact with the Mortal Realm was unnecessary. They couldn’t be seen, heard, or touched by humans, nor could they touch anything either.
However, there was an exception to this rule: if deemed necessary, Grim Reapers could exert their powers to make themselves visible and speak with humans. This was usually used when they believed the Death Candidate deserved to be informed of their nearing death—of course, with the condition that the human would not divulge the Grim Reaper’s existence to anyone else.
After all, Grim Reapers used to be human souls too. Thus, they were allowed a certain degree of liberty to act according to their conscience—not that Yoo Joonghyuk could relate.
This was the first time he would be using this ability, and at the end of the day, it was simply to get rid of a nuisance to his work—nothing more, nothing less.
And so, the next time Yoo Joonghyuk found himself alerted to Kim Dokja’s location, he diverted all his anger and annoyance into his powers, feeling it coat his figure with an unfamiliar sensation. Now, he loomed darkly over the man who was crouched in one corner of his room, reading another web novel chapter instead of eating dinner like the fool that he was.
The Grim Reaper folded his arms and growled out, “I’ve had enough of your pathetic tottering, you fool.”
Kim Dokja’s shoulders jumped, his phone clattering to the floor as he looked up in horror at the sudden presence in his apartment. “Who the fuck—?!”
Yoo Joonghyuk narrowed his eyes into a deathly glare and demanded, “Get up and eat your dinner already.”
Now, Yoo Joonghyuk knew for a fact that Kim Dokja did not have any dinner prepared tonight—or ever, for that matter—but he was here to set this man’s life straight, and he would have to start somewhere.
Unfortunately, that “somewhere” was not preparing dinner but instead stopping Kim Dokja from calling the cops and convincing him that he was but an ordinary Grim Reaper who was just very, very tired of his bullshit already—and that alone took two whole hours, so suffice it to say that Yoo Joonghyuk was very much not looking forward to figuring out how long it would take to reach the glorious goal of beating some self-preservation into this fool.
Well, whatever. He had all the time in the world anyway.
It turns out that even if he had all the time in the world, Yoo Joonghyuk did not, in fact, have all the patience in the world along with it. Three weeks was an incredibly insignificant amount of time in the eyes of an immortal being such as himself, but Yoo Joonghyuk was very much closer to losing it within those three weeks than he ever had been over the entire past year.
The reason was that it took those three full weeks to accomplish the miniscule prerequisite step of getting Kim Dokja to listen to him in the first place.
He had decided to start small. In between his other actual work, Yoo Joonghyuk would drop by during mealtimes to pester him to eat, and at midnight to nag at him to go to sleep. However, Kim Dokja only ever relented to him once a day at most—which was absolutely not fooling Yoo Joonghyuk who knew for a fact that he already ate only once a day at most from the start. The man even went so far as to put on earphones and play his music at max volume just to drown out Yoo Joonghyuk’s ghostly whispers at night for him to stop reading and to go to sleep already.
Perhaps he was trying out a new way to become a Death Candidate this time—by bleeding from his ears. As expected of Kim Dokja.
“Are you seriously not leaving me alone? I thought you were a Grim Reaper, not a Grim Creeper. Why don’t you go stalk someone who’s actually dying?”
Yoo Joonghyuk clenched his fists at the annoying string of sarcasm—something that apparently came more naturally to Kim Dokja than basic self-preservation.
“That’s my line, you death-tottering fool,” the Grim Reaper hissed out. “Don’t forget that I’m only here because you won’t stop bothering me in the first place. You are the one who simply won’t leave me alone.”
However, unfazed by the Grim Reaper’s wrath, Kim Dokja just rolled his eyes. “I’m telling you, it’s your weird death alert thingy that’s acting up or something; I feel perfectly fine.”
“And that is exactly the problem with you,” Yoo Joonghyuk grit out. “Besides, do you really plan on lecturing a Grim Reaper on how to detect death?”
“If you won’t stop sticking your nose into my business, then yeah, why not?”
“Kim Dokja, you—”
It didn’t help at all that Kim Dokja also happened to be an insufferable rat bastard who always had to have the last say. Anyone else, Yoo Joonghyuk may have been able to threaten and coerce into staying the fuck alive, but despite his initial shock and confusion, Kim Dokja had adapted terrifyingly well to the fact that he now had a Grim Reaper that only he could see and hear constantly nagging at him to get his shit together.
Perhaps it was this adaptability of his that helped him settle into the fragile lifestyle that seesawed right on the entrance to death’s path.
In any case, it took three whole weeks of constant pestering and bearing with Kim Dokja’s infernal sarcasm before the man finally agreed to genuinely attempting three meals a day and sleeping before midnight. Of course, nothing in life came for free; in exchange for this humble success, Yoo Joonghyuk had now earned the horrendously offending nickname of “sunfish” from Kim Dokja who cited the creature’s permanently sour-looking expression as their point of similarity.
Unbelievable.
Yoo Joonghyuk would have to come up with his own insulting nickname in return, if only to vent a little of this pent up anger out.
After two months of intermittently slipping back into old habits, Kim Dokja had been successfully forced into some semblance of a decent human being’s bare minimum lifestyle of three meals a day and six hours of sleep. It was an arduous journey, one that Yoo Joonghyuk believed warranted him an award from the Judges of the Afterlife, but when he told Kim Dokja as such, he just rolled his eyes and called him dramatic.
If the man understood even a fraction of how insufferable he was, then he would think otherwise.
“Why’re you still here? I haven’t skipped a meal since last week,” Kim Dokja said when Yoo Joonghyuk once again appeared before him the moment he came home from work.
“The fact that you view that as an achievement is enough to prove my point,” Yoo Joonghyuk pointed out blandly. “And besides, that was only the first step. Obviously, I would still be here.”
“Only the first step…?”
Kim Dokja paled at that, as if the mere thought of improving his lifestyle terrified him. Yoo Joonghyuk wanted to strangle him.
“You may be eating three meals a day now, but they are all still cheap convenience store foods.”
“Yes…? What about it?”
Correction: Yoo Joonghyuk really wanted to strangle him. Kim Dokja was just lucky he couldn’t touch him.
“It’s not healthy,” Yoo Joonghyuk elaborated, making sure to enunciate each word so that even the idiot could understand.
Meanwhile, the said idiot threw his hands up and exclaimed, “I thought you just wanted me to stay alive, not turn me into an advocate for a life of health and fitness!”
“Someone with eating habits as pathetic as yours needs to be reformed completely and thoroughly,” Yoo Joonghyuk shot back. “Otherwise, you would simply go back to regularly skipping meals. Am I wrong?”
“Ugh…” For once, Kim Dokja couldn’t say anything in response; he knew that Yoo Joonghyuk was right. The man scrunched his nose up in annoyance before letting out a groan and ruffling his own hair. “Okay, okay, fine. It’ll hurt my wallet a bit, but I guess I can eat a full meal at a restaurant or whatever sometimes. Happy?”
However, Yoo Joonghyuk was never happy. He just looked at Kim Dokja like he was an idiot.
“There is a more sustainable option, you fool.”
“What?”
“I will teach you how to cook for yourself.”
This time, it was Kim Dokja’s turn to look at him like he was crazy.
“Cook?!” His voice curled incredulously around the word as if it were a completely foreign and inconceivable notion. “I mean, sure, it’s cheaper to cook at home, but it takes way too much time and effort to shop for groceries and cook my own food!”
“It generally takes time and effort to maintain a decent lifestyle, Kim Dokja—not that you would know anything about that,” Yoo Joonghyuk said with a pointed glare.
However, Kim Dokja just scoffed. “Fine, criticize my lifestyle all you want. I can accept buying a bit more food and sleeping a bit earlier, but telling me to go out of my way to learn how to cook? That’s just pushing it, buddy.”
“I suppose you don’t mind me pestering you for the rest of your life then,” Yoo Joonghyuk grit out angrily.
Kim Dokja just glared back at him. “You’re here in the first place because I keep interrupting your work; you wouldn’t stay for my whole life—that’s putting the cart before the horse.”
“If anything, I wouldn’t mind staying just to spite you, at this point.”
The two sharp and thunderous glares remained at a stalemate for a long and suffocating moment. Fortunately for Yoo Joonghyuk, it was Kim Dokja who relented first; his face scrunched up, a compromise clearly having wormed its way into his mind. With a heavy sigh, he closed his eyes.
“One condition,” he declared grimly.
Yoo Joonghyuk folded his arms, silently urging him on.
“You answer my questions properly from now on.”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyebrow twitched at his words, but Kim Dokja just pointed between his narrowed eyes and continued speaking.
“You wouldn’t tell me anything aside from the fact that you’re a Grim Reaper and that the way I live is setting off your death alert thingy or whatever. It all sounds so ridiculous, yet here I am accommodating you anyway—so I at least deserve to know more about this, don’t I?”
It was a very valid point. Very valid, but also very troublesome, much like Kim Dokja. Yoo Joonghyuk wanted to avoid divulging anymore information, especially since he had already revealed himself and the bare minimum circumstances… but so be it.
It was a step toward a greater cause.
“Very well,” he agreed gruffly, then added with a sharp look, “So long as you swear not to divulge anything you learn of to others.”
In a rare instance of sincerity, Kim Dokja nodded and said, “I swear.”
Kim Dokja may be an insufferable rat bastard, but Yoo Joonghyuk knew he could at least be trusted on this—he had deemed as such when he first revealed himself to the man. And if the way he handled the fact of Yoo Joonghyuk’s existence for the past few months still wasn’t proof enough, then there was also the sad reality that he didn’t even have anybody around him to tell in the first place.
In place of a handshake, they both nodded to seal the deal.
“In that case,” Kim Dokja immediately declared with a bright smile and a clap of his hands. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask.”
“What is it?”
Yoo Joonghyuk honestly wanted to make him buy groceries right this instant, but he supposed answering a question or two first would make the man more cooperative.
Kim Dokja opened his mouth and asked, “Is your name really Yoo Joonghyuk?”
He blinked at that for a stunned moment.
Of all the…
“Of course it is,” he spat out with a glare. “Of all the things to ask, you ask about one of the few things I already told you early on?”
Kim Dokja shrugged. “I mean, you’re a Grim Reaper and all, but you have a Korean name? Kinda sus if you ask me.”
“That’s because I am Korean, you fool.”
“But aren’t Grim Reapers, like, beings from the… ‘Afterlife’, was it? So is there a Korea there too?”
Yoo Joonghyuk dragged his hand down his face and sighed, making sure to exhale some of his annoyance out before answering, “We Grim Reapers were all formerly human souls in the first place. I was a human before I became a Grim Reaper.”
That seemed to shock Kim Dokja out of his annoying streak. With wide eyes, he asked, “What kind of human?”
“I can no longer recall. It was too long ago.”
“Ugh, what a cliché answer,” he said, cringing.
How odd. Yoo Joonghyuk suddenly felt the urge to strangle him again.
And without a care in the world, Kim Dokja went on. “But I guess that makes sense. I mean, Grim Reapers are usually portrayed as more… dark and mysterious, you know? Whereas you’re just an eternally constipated sunfish.”
“Kim Dokja, if you are just going to ramble on like a fool, then you may as well start walking to the supermarket already.”
“Hey, wait! It was a compliment,” Kim Dokja insisted as he hurriedly stomped his feet into his shoes and chased after Yoo Joonghyuk who had floated right out of his apartment. “I mean, rather than dealing with some creepy black blob that mumbles out a bunch of weird eldritch curses, it’s way more fun to just mess with you, you know?”
“Your definition of a compliment is questionable,” Yoo Joonhyuk said, before tacking on, “And I, for one, would much rather be with the eldritch blob than you.”
“Well, sure, ‘cause you’re boring like that.”
And as if he didn’t just annoy Yoo Joonghyuk to the end of his wits, Kim Dokja smoothly went on to ask, “So anyways, how does a human even become a Grim Reaper? Oh, and if humans can become Grim Reapers, then that means there are others, right? So what about…”
The man’s shrill voice and excitable series of questions left Yoo Joonghyuk’s eye twitching and head hurting. Of course. Leave it to Kim Dokja to give an immortal Grim Reaper a headache. It seemed like all his capabilities were filtered into everything but self-preservation already anyway.
But still, he supposed they did make a deal.
Letting out a sigh, Yoo Joonghyuk proceeded to answer all of Kim Dokja’s questions as they walked together under the chilly autumn air.
Surprisingly, Kim Dokja turned out to be capable of cooking once taught—a fact that genuinely surprised Yoo Joonghyuk who had become far too used to the man being incapable of anything that had to do with basic survival.
He didn’t have the natural sense that would help him tweak recipes to his own liking or to cook without measuring tools, but Yoo Joonghyuk was never expecting that much from him in the first place. At the very least, he was plenty capable of following set instructions. Yoo Joonghyuk would have to convince him to buy a recipe book later on, just so he couldn’t make the excuse of being too lazy to look one up on his phone.
“Do Grim Reapers eat?”
Yoo Joonghyuk eyed Kim Dokja from the side as he ate his first ever homecooked meal. “We can,” he answered. “But we don’t necessarily need to.”
“Huh. How convenient.”
A very Kim Dokja answer. Yoo Joonghyuk was convinced that the fool wouldn’t bother to eat so long as there was no need to. Just the thought of it left his head hurting all over again.
“Then why’re you so good at cooking? Do you remember from when you were a human?”
Grim Reapers couldn’t touch anything in the Mortal Realm, so Yoo Joonghyuk obviously hadn’t cooked anything himself. Kim Dokja could probably tell from how easily he instructed him and how he even adjusted the recipe to make it easier for a beginner to cook. Yoo Joonghyuk just wished the man could use some of that wit toward basic self-preservation as well.
“Immortal life can get tedious sometimes,” he answered honestly. “I once took a break from work for a few years to practice cooking back in the Afterlife.”
“Wow,” Kim Dokja said around a mouthful of rice, then pointed very rudely with his fork. “I don’t know which I should comment on—the fact that a straightlaced rock like you took a break from work to cook of all things, or the fact that your life being so boring must be why you have so much free time to bother me in the first place.”
Yoo Joonghyuk knit his brows together in annoyance. “You were the one who started bothering me first.”
“Ah, so we’re not addressing the first topic? Embarrassing midlife crisis?”
“Just shut up and eat your dinner, Kim Dokja.”
As if Yoo Joonghyuk’s bitter scowl satiated him more than any savory meal could, Kim Dokja grinned and went on to do as he was told.
Regardless, the man was surprisingly cooperative ever since that deal they made. In the first place, Yoo Joonghyuk was honestly quite surprised that he had settled for such a deal. Though it wasn’t the case for him, the deal must’ve appeared unbalanced from Kim Dokja’s perspective; after all, he was allowing someone to reshape his lifestyle simply in exchange for a few answers.
However, the voracious way he asked one question after another made Yoo Joonghyuk realize that perhaps those answers weighed more for Kim Dokja than he initially thought.
And when he eventually asked about it later on, Kim Dokja simply answered, “I like stories.”
Yoo Joonghyuk raised his eyebrow. That much was obvious from how difficult it always was to get the man off his phone at night.
“Are you saying that my explanations on Grim Reapers and the Afterlife are like stories to you?”
Kim Dokja just shrugged. “At the very least, it’s way more interesting than what I usually do. Way more meaningful too, if you ask me,” he said with a wry smile. “All work gives me is never-ending stress and a miserable salary, but reading stories gives me whole new worlds to see and lives to appreciate.”
Yoo Joonghyuk would’ve found the sincere answer unusual coming from the sarcastic man’s mouth had he not already known how obsessed Kim Dokja was with reading. The only time those shadowed eyes ever showed the slightest spark of light was when he read his web novels under the curtain of night, free of his daytime burdens. They always shone like the stars that only revealed their brilliance under the darkness of night.
Kim Dokja noticed the mild expression on the Grim Reaper’s face and smirked. “What’s this? You agree with me?”
Yoo Joonghyuk looked at him for a while before sighing. “It’s more understanding than agreement,” he said, as if to repay the man’s sincere answer with his own. “After all, my work as a Grim Reaper is founded upon a similar concept.”
“Oh? How so?”
“The reason why we are alerted when a human becomes a Death Candidate rather than just moments before their death,” he explained, “is because it is also part of our job to watch over their final days.”
It was a simple and curt explanation, but Kim Dokja seemed to understand anyway. He smiled as he locked his fingers together and placed them under his chin, letting out a long and thoughtful hum.
“So you watch over the final chapter of their lives? How sentimental.”
Again, an unusual lack of sarcasm in his tone—he seemed to genuinely like the idea, even more so than Yoo Joonghyuk himself who actually performed the task. Though he gave that explanation himself, Yoo Joonghyuk never thought of it as anything more than the principle behind his job. Whether he agreed with it or not didn’t matter, so long as he did what he had to do.
In that sense, perhaps Kim Dokja would make a better Grim Reaper than him. At the very least, the man certainly seemed to enjoy dancing with death—to an annoying extent, at that.
With a tired sigh, Yoo Joonghyuk pressed a hand against his head and said, “Just hurry up and get ready for bed already, Kim Dokja. It’s almost midnight.”
However, Kim Dokja just rolled his eyes. “Of course, Yoo Joonghyuk. Because half an hour clearly counts as ‘almost’. I have time for one chapter, don’t I?”
“…Just one,” the Grim Reaper relented with narrowed eyes. “But really just one. Otherwise, Kim Dokja, I swear I will—”
“Yes, yes, really just one—I promise.” The man dismissively waved his hand before taking his phone out of his pocket and eagerly opening his favorite web novel site.
In any case, from there, it was another grueling four-month-long process of gradually getting Kim Dokja to cook more and more frequently. At first, he could only be bothered to cook on weekends when he didn’t have to worry about work the next day. Yoo Joonghyuk had to teach him the very fascinating art of cooking extra, storing it in the fridge, and heating up leftovers. This smoothly bridged into eventually convincing him to cook in bulk on Sundays so that he would have leftovers to pack for lunch over the next few work days. Seeing Kim Dokja eat a full homecooked meal for lunch on a work day for the first time was akin to watching a miracle flash before his very eyes. Yoo Joonghyuk nearly staggered from how blinding his efforts were.
It would still be a long time before the man could cook enough for every meal of every day of the week, but for now, Yoo Joonghyuk was satisfied with having pushed this death-tottering fool into having three full meals a day, most of which were now healthier homecooked meals, and sleeping even before midnight for a whopping seven hours of sleep.
The effects were even starting to manifest physically, from the plumper look on his cheeks to the lightening of his ever-present eyebags. Whenever he noticed these positive changes in Kim Dokja’s life, Yoo Joonghyuk felt an unfamiliarly warm and content sensation bubbling up in his chest.
Just another justified bout of pride at his own hard work, no doubt.
That was what Yoo Joonghyuk thought to himself as he turned around and left for his next job while dragging his scythe along the ground.
It was eight months after he first started pestering Kim Dokja when Yoo Joonghyuk decided to move on to another step in his plan.
“You should go out more in the weekends.”
It was an extra, optional step of sorts—one he didn’t think he’d be able to implement at any earlier stage, if at all possible in the first place. After all, it was hard enough to convince the fool to even be a decent human being who ate three meals and slept on time—so going out in the weekends? It was a nice thought, but Yoo Joonghyuk knew that some things in this world were simply impossible.
Oddly enough, though, Kim Dokja didn’t look as disturbed by his suggestion as he did back when he told him to learn how to cook. The man just looked up from his phone and raised an eyebrow questioningly.
“Go out where?”
“Anywhere, as long as it exposes your horridly pale skin to the sun for once.”
The man scoffed in offense. “My skin is fine. I moisturize it regularly.”
“More regularly than you used to eat your meals,” Yoo Joonghyuk agreed with a half-lidded gaze.
Another thing he learned about Kim Dokja: the man never had his priorities on straight. What kind of person could regularly moisturize his skin yet fail to eat three meals a day? Seriously, if he had even a fraction of the dedication he showed toward skincare as he did toward basic self-preservation, then Yoo Joonghyuk would be having a much easier time already.
“Alright then. I’ll go out for a bit.”
Yoo Joonghyuk snapped out of his thoughts and blinked blankly at Kim Dokja.
“What?”
“I said I’ll go out.”
He gaped at the man in shock, to which Kim Dokja frowned.
“What? Why do you look so shocked?”
“You’re being agreeable,” the Grim Reaper pointed out, sounding faint.
Kim Dokja sputtered in offense. “You talk as if I haven’t been obediently listening to you all this time!”
“Because I pestered you for three whole weeks and even struck a deal with you, Kim Dokja,” Yoo Joonghyuk reminded him flatly. “Last I recall, you were an insufferable rat bastard who hates stepping out of your death-tottering daily routine, especially if it’s to improve your lifestyle.”
Kim Dokja scrunched his nose up in annoyance but couldn’t say anything back. “Well,” he said slowly, pouting. “I happen to be feeling pretty good today, so I’m fine with walking for a bit. Is that bad?”
“It’s the effects of living like a normal human being, Kim Dokja. Congratulations.”
“I kinda wanna strangle you sometimes, you know that?”
Yoo Joonghyuk scoffed. “You and me both.”
He ignored the man’s mumbles of “stupid sunfish bastard” as they left his apartment. A short five-minute walk led them to a nearby park where Kim Dokja settled down on a bench and looked up at the sky. The sun was hidden behind layers of clouds, but he still had to squint, his eyes far too unadjusted to the outside.
When he let his gaze fall back down, he couldn’t help but let out a stifled snort.
“By the way,” he said to the Grim Reaper in front of him. “I know I’m the only one who can see you, but you really do look weird holding that thing in such a peaceful-looking park. Do you have to carry it around all the time?”
Yoo Joonghyuk followed his gaze toward the tall scythe in his hand.
Kim Dokja continued to explain while waving his hands around vaguely. “I mean, you’re a Grim Reaper and all, so I never pointed it out, but you said that Grim Reapers don’t kill—you just guide souls, right? So what’re you even cutting with that? Your front lawn?”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s grip on his scythe tightened menacingly, but Kim Dokja just smiled as brightly as always. He sighed; this man really never made it easy for him no matter how many times he asked these headache-inducing questions.
“We don’t kill,” he affirmed gruffly. “We simply use this to sever the soul from the body after the human has already died.”
“You mean, the soul gets detached from the body when the person dies, and you’re just taking it out?”
Yoo Joonghyuk nodded. “Otherwise, it would remain within the physical vessel and rot along with the corpse.”
For some reason, Kim Dokja’s eyes sparkled curiously at that. “And what happens if it does?”
“Nothing,” Yoo Joonghyuk supplied with a raised brow. “It will simply be unable to pass on to the Afterlife. Even if a Grim Reaper were to get to it eventually, it would no longer be able to do so in its purest form.”
Kim Dokja leaned back on the bench, looking oddly disappointed. “So they don’t turn into ghosts or apparitions or whatever? You don’t actually double as an exorcist and seal them away with talismans and charms?”
Yoo Joonghyuk groaned as he pressed his knuckles against his temple. “You’ve been reading far too many exorcism novels recently, you fool.”
“Hey, with a Grim Reaper stalking me, I can believe anything else,” he said with a crooked grin.
“I am not a stalker, Kim Dokja.”
“Whatever you say, Yoo Joonghyuk.”
They fell into a comfortable silence. The distant sounds of children playing in the playground, the leaves rustling from a passing breeze, and the gentle warmth of the sun against his face—they were all sensations that Kim Dokja wasn’t quite used to, but as he closed his eyes and soaked them all in, he found himself thinking that he wouldn’t mind this every now and then.
It felt… nice.
Quietly, he called out to the black-cloaked figure beside him.
“Hey, Yoo Joonghyuk.”
“What?”
“Why… do you still visit me?” When the Grim Reaper raised a brow in question, he elaborated, “You said a while back that I’m not alerting you anymore, right?”
Yoo Joonghyuk folded his arms and nodded. “Yes, they have certainly stopped for a while now—all thanks to my hard work, no doubt.”
However, instead of snapping back at the smug remark like he usually did, Kim Dokja just fiddled with the hem of his shirt and quietly asked, “So why?”
Yoo Joonghyuk glared at the innocent park in front of him for a brief moment before he eventually looked away and grumbled under his breath, “Obviously, to make sure that your stupidity hasn’t dragged you back into old habits and undone all my hard-earned progress.”
Another breeze blew past them, rustling the leaves above. When Kim Dokja didn’t respond for a while, Yoo Joonghyuk glanced back, only to find the man staring at him in a daze. However, as if the Grim Reaper’s face served as some sort of answer, he then let out a quiet chuckle.
Yoo Joonghyuk grimaced. “What?”
“Nothing,” the man said, smiling pleasantly. “I was just thinking that you have so little trust in me.”
“For good reason, too.”
Despite the snide remark, Kim Dokja just chuckled again as he slung his arms over the back of the bench. “Well, I guess I’ve also gotten pretty used to having you around, so I don’t really mind,” he said, then grinned. “And who knows? Maybe you’re just lonely but won’t admit it?”
Yoo Joonghyuk scoffed at that. “At least not lonely enough to seek out your company, of all the insufferable fools in the world.”
“Right after I said I don’t mind having you around? What a cruel sunfish.”
“Shut up, Kim Dokja.”
But instead of shutting up, the man just threw his head back and laughed. No longer confined within the walls of his small apartment, Kim Dokja’s laugh rang freely in the air and rode along the warm afternoon breeze, sounding louder and brighter than ever before.
“You should just quit your job already.”
That was what Yoo Joonghyuk said instead of his usual reminder to eat the moment he appeared before Kim Dokja one night on the eleventh month since they first met. Meanwhile, the man in question was currently slumped exhaustedly over his dining table after coming home just past midnight from another session of overtime. There was some kimchi fried rice in the fridge, but Kim Dokja looked like he barely had enough energy to just get to his bed, so it was probably staying there until morning.
“Easy for you to say,” he mumbled wearily with his cheek pressed against the cold wooden surface. “Damn Grim Reaper who can go on leave for years and still not get fired. Man, wish that were me. Haha.”
Mechanically dishing out sarcastic remarks was Sign #3 that Kim Dokja was stressed and fatigued. Yoo Joonghyuk scowled; he knew that human society wasn’t that simple, but Kim Dokja’s job simply wasn’t doing him any favors. He skipped dinner a few days ago to meet a tight deadline, and he was probably going to skip it again tonight. No matter how accustomed he had grown to the much healthier lifestyle that Yoo Joonghyuk had forced him into, his job still always found a way to make it crack. It was the one part of Kim Dokja’s life that Yoo Joonghyuk had no way of changing directly.
Letting out a resigned sigh, he floated over to the miserable salaryman’s side. “At least get up and sleep on your bed, you fool. Your back will ache again if you sleep here.”
“What are you, my mom?”
“No, I am the Grim Reaper who will be taking your soul soon if you don’t properly sleep on your bed tonight.”
“Ah, so you’re worse, then.”
He sighed tiredly and closed his eyes. Yoo Joonghyuk glared at him.
“Kim Dokja.”
“Nn.”
“Kim Dokja.”
“What.”
“Move.”
“Later.”
“No. Now.”
“Later.”
“Now.”
“Ugh…”
Kim Dokja groggily pushed himself off the table and staggered through his apartment like a zombie. Fortunately or not, the space was so small that a few steps was all it took to reach the bed.
“So annoying,” he slurred into his pillow after collapsing right onto the mattress. It took no longer than a minute for him to fall right asleep.
Silver moonlight washed over his slack expression, painting Kim Dokja’s skin a much paler complexion than it actually was. Under that stark light, even his eyebags that had been fading away over the past few months were now prominent shadows once more.
Yoo Joonghyuk looked at him and restlessly tapped his finger over his sleeve.
What an annoying sight.
. . . . .
“I’ve heard that humans often find work that’s related to what they enjoy,” Yoo Joonghyuk said the next morning as if picking right up from where they left off the previous night.
A spoonful of kimchi fried rice froze in front of Kim Dokja’s open mouth before the man set it back down and looked up to meet his gaze.
“Okay…? And?”
“Why don’t you give it a try?”
“You mean, find a job where I can do what I like?”
“Yes.”
“Like what?”
Yoo Joonghyuk furrowed his eyebrows. “A job where you can read stories. I don’t know.”
Kim Dokja snickered, rudely pointing at him with his now-empty spoon. “For a career consultant, you sure didn’t do much research, huh?”
“I am a Grim Reaper, Kim Dokja. Not a career consultant.”
However, the man just shrugged and said, “Eh, you’ve already been my stalker, alarm clock, cooking instructor, and now even my mom. Why not add ‘personal career consultant’ to the list?”
“Kim Dokja,” he growled warningly.
The man guilelessly smiled back. “Yes?”
Insufferable. As always.
One thing that Yoo Joonghyuk learned about Kim Dokja over the months he spent observing him was that he disliked tackling serious discussions and, conversely, liked brushing them off with that infernal sarcasm of his. He had to admit that he was quite good at it, but Yoo Joonghyuk wouldn’t be swept away this time.
Starting over, he sighed and looked Kim Dokja right in the eye. “I don’t know much about human careers, so I certainly cannot advise you on yours,” he admitted gravely. “However, even I can tell that your current one is clearly doing you no good.”
In the face of that sincere plea, Kim Dokja pouted and looked away, mumbling, “You think I don’t know that too? My background and funds don’t exactly give me many options.”
Indeed, this was different from just telling him to eat more or sleep more or even to learn a new skill. Yoo Joonghyuk knew that work was both an important yet difficult matter for humans; only the person himself had the ultimate right to make any changes to it.
But even then, Yoo Joonghyuk knew that he could at least nudge him into thinking about it a bit more.
After all…
“I know that you haven’t exhausted all your options yet.”
Kim Dokja looked up at him oddly. “What?”
“You may be stuck after thinking about it by yourself, but you can still try consulting with others,” Yoo Joonghyuk said.
That was a role that a Grim Reaper like him couldn’t fulfill, but perhaps other humans could. This was the option that Yoo Joonghyuk knew Kim Dokja had yet to try—and the reason for that was simple.
“Others? Who ‘others’? In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t have any friends.”
Yoo Joonghyuk looked down at the indignant man with narrowed eyes. “I have certainly noticed how pathetic you are,” he agreed, smiling in his mind when Kim Dokja scowled in response. “And that is also why I can tell that you have no friends not because you can’t have any, but because you don’t want any.”
The man froze at that. “What do you mean…?”
Kim Dokja was certainly isolated at work; Yoo Joonghyuk would have to be deaf not to overhear all the hushed whispers between the man’s co-workers every time he dropped in during lunchtime to remind him to eat.
A tragic victim of abuse.
A shameless murderer’s son.
A miserable bullied child.
A pitiful suicide survivor.
Yoo Joonghyuk had seen many tragedies over the countless final days he had watched over, and even then, he could say that Kim Dokja’s case was among the worst. And so, the relentless rumors surrounding him undoubtedly kept others away from him—but at the same time, it also kept Kim Dokja himself away from others.
“Your co-worker, Yoo Sangah,” the Grim Reaper began. “She often invites you out to have lunch with her and very clearly wants to be friends with you. Why have you never accepted?”
“I mean… She’s obviously just asking out of pity…”
Yoo Joonghyuk scoffed at that. “Pity,” he echoed derisively. “A woman who looks sick and tired of any and all men in her workplace, yet she still chose to approach you—and you think it’s pity?”
The fool fell silent at that. No matter how ignorant he may be, there was no way he couldn’t sense the genuine interest his co-worker showed toward him.
“Jung Heewon,” he continued. “The bartender in that pub you visited for that one company party three months ago. You looked like you enjoyed your conversation with her; she even personally invited you to come visit again.” Narrowing his eyes, Yoo Joonghyuk added, “You never did.”
“I just… don’t like to drink,” Kim Dokja mumbled, now fidgeting uncomfortably.
“She said she would treat you the next time you came, even if you just ordered orange juice,” Yoo Joonghyuk reminded him blandly. “And she likely wasn’t even joking.”
Kim Dokja was no longer looking him in the eye.
“And Lee Hyunsung, that man you ran into in the park around a month ago while he was out jogging. You only talked for a while, yet he even gave you his contact details and told you that you could—”
“OKAY!”
Kim Dokja’s voice rang desperately within the apartment walls. Yoo Joonghyuk closed his mouth and quietly looked down at him.
“Okay,” he said again, in a much smaller, feebler voice. “Fine. I get it. You’re… You’re right. I just—I can’t, okay? I’m…”
He hunched his shoulders and stared intently at his own lap, trying to hide how he was biting his lip. Before Yoo Joonghyuk right now was not the snarky and insufferable Kim Dokja who always knew what to say. No, he was Kim Dokja who had been beaten and battered by one tragedy after another, leaving him unable to trust anything good to happen in his life. Kim Dokja who had gotten far too used to settling for the bare minimum that this cruel world could be bothered to spare for him.
Kim Dokja who simply didn’t know how to ask for help.
While looking at that man, Yoo Joonghyuk narrowed his eyes and said, “Kim Dokja. You may feel trapped in life right now, but from how I see it, you still have three more options to try before giving up entirely.”
Three options. Three people who were willing to listen. Three chances at gaining new ideas and perspectives in life. Or, at the very least, three new places to go to whenever he felt cornered by life itself.
It wasn’t a lot, but even then, it was enough.
Yoo Joonghyuk knew; oftentimes, his Death Candidates would brighten up at just the sight of that one special person even if they were already on their final breath. On the other hand, some of them passed on while carrying regrets that could’ve been easily resolved had someone just cared to spare some time.
In the same way, many tragedies in this world were common ones that could’ve been easily overcome if only one lonely soul were shown just the tiniest bit of goodwill.
Kim Dokja happened to have some of that goodwill around him already—and Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t find it too much trouble to direct him toward it.
“But can I really… I mean, will it even do anything…?”
At that unconfident mumble, Yoo Joonghyuk folded his arms and huffed. “You’ve learned how to cook, eat three meals a day, sleep before midnight, and even go out on walks, all within a mere eleven months, even if it did cost me my sanity,” he pointed out with a raised brow. “So who’s to say that your life won’t improve yet again in another few months?”
And somehow, the way the Grim Reaper tried to hide his sincere words under an indignant expression managed to draw a soft laugh out of the man, his shoulders finally loosening up and slumping back down.
“Alright,” Kim Dokja said quietly. “I’ll… I’ll try.”
With that, silence finally returned to the small apartment room. Curtained by the late morning sunlight pouring in through the window, Kim Dokja finished his breakfast, gathered his dishes, and hurried toward the kitchen sink.
While watching that unusually meek back flee from sight, Yoo Joonghyuk couldn’t help but think that perhaps this discussion had been a little too forced. That perhaps this wasn’t the sort of conversation you’d have with someone you met just eleven months ago, whether Grim Reaper or human. Or that perhaps it was none of his business in the first place.
But then again, he didn’t really have much of a choice.
Kim Dokja wordlessly washed his dishes, for once not annoying Yoo Joonghyuk with his shrill voice or any incessant series of questions, yet the Grim Reaper felt a familiar pain throbbing against his temples anyway.
The clock in the small apartment ticked hollowly, signaling the passage of time.
And Yoo Joonghyuk knew, as he grit his teeth under another sharp wince and helplessly pressed his knuckles against the throbbing pain, that he didn’t have much left himself.
It took Kim Dokja two whole weeks to muster up the courage to finally accept Yoo Sangah’s invitation to lunch one day. Though the man unfairly blamed Yoo Joonghyuk for all the envious stares he got from his colleagues that day, he still spent the rest of the evening talking excitedly about all the books the woman recommended and even promised to lend to him sometime.
It was another week later when he finally made his way back to the pub where Jung Heewon cheerfully welcomed him and jokingly asked if he wanted to have some orange juice after all. Kim Dokja came back to his apartment a little drunk that night, but the expression on his face was worlds lighter than the one he wore whenever he came back from his company drinking parties.
By the end of the month, he was glaring at his phone as he struggled to compose his first ever message to Lee Hyunsung, trying hard not to sound as awkward as he actually felt about it. He even went so far as to ask Yoo Joonghyuk for help, to which the Grim Reaper just rolled his eyes at the man’s dramatics and said nothing.
Yoo Joonghyuk was fairly certain that Kim Dokja had yet to ask any of them about anything remotely related to his career, but perhaps that was something you only talked about with much closer friends in the first place, so he could take his time with it. And besides, even without solving his career problems yet, Kim Dokja already looked just a little bit happier than before.
So he would be fine.
Or, Yoo Joonghyuk could only hope he would be.
Because by the twelfth month that marked one full year since they first met, Yoo Joonghyuk, without warning, suddenly stopped visiting Kim Dokja at all.
The clock in his apartment ticked hollowly, signaling the passage of time. Kim Dokja sat at his dining table, scrolling through a new web novel chapter while eating a warm bowl of Murim dumplings with chicken broth, as he waited eagerly for his usual annoying visitor to arrive.