“From this moment on, you're making a deal with me. You have exactly one month. Find true love within that month. Then I'll make sure you can live for a long, long time. The collateral for this deal is your life.”
As Yeon-woo mulled over Han-gyeol's words, she began to feel that something was off. It was an incredibly good offer for her, but she couldn't understand what Han-gyeol, the one proposing the deal, stood to gain from it. As for her life—the collateral in the deal—he could simply have left her dead at the accident scene yesterday and taken her to the afterlife. Yeon-woo began to wonder if Han-gyeol had some ulterior motive, and whether she was being deceived.
“What’s with that look? You look like you really don’t trust me.”
“Well, obviously. You suddenly saved my life, and now you want to make a deal where I have to find true love. How am I supposed to know what your real motive is?”
“Motive...? I don’t really have one. I was just bored and restless.”
“That’s exactly what makes it suspicious!”
“Then what do you want me to do about it? If you don’t want to, forget it! Forget it! I saved your life, and this is how you repay me?”
Han-gyeol suddenly shouted and pulled a black envelope from inside his suit jacket.
“There’s a register inside with your name on it. If you’re so suspicious, say the word. I’ll take you straight to the afterlife right now.”
“N-no! I didn’t mean that!”
“Decide. The choice is yours.”
“Wait, though. What exactly is ‘true love’?”
Yeon-woo first calmed Han-gyeol down, then decided to hear him out.
“Exactly what it sounds like. True love.”
“That doesn’t tell me anything. What is it?”
“Don’t tell me you’ve never been in love at all?”
Yeon-woo was suddenly at a loss for words. Saying yes would bruise her pride a little, but saying no would prick her conscience. Yeon-woo was thirty years old that year. She didn’t even know her parents’ faces and had grown up in an orphanage. She had barely managed to graduate from school while working part-time jobs, and it had already been five years since she’d gone to every possible length to become the writer she’d dreamed of being since childhood. Yet she was constantly rejected without ever producing a single work under her own name. She scraped by helping famous writers with their projects, and there had never been any room in her life for anything else. She had no time, no money, and no emotional room to spare, so she had never even had a proper relationship. It wasn’t simply that she had never dated. Since childhood, she had never experienced either giving or receiving love, so she didn’t really understand the emotion itself.
“I honestly don’t know.”
“Well... to put it simply—hot feelings, hot nights, hot bodies. Something like that.”
“Hot what?!”
“Your heart, which feels cold right now, will start responding. It’ll pound so hard you can hear your heartbeat clearly in your ears, and you’ll feel some shapeless warmth wrapping around you.”
Yeon-woo placed a hand over her heart. She had never thought of it as hot or cold before, but after hearing Han-gyeol’s words, it somehow felt cold when she touched it. It was definitely alive, and her heart seemed to be beating, but it felt faint somehow. She couldn’t put it into exact words, but it left her with a strange sense of loneliness.
“All right. Decide now. Are you going to make the deal with me?”
Someone who knew very little about love was now standing at the crossroads between life and death, with love as the condition. Yeon-woo felt it would be too unfair and sad to die like this, but she was also afraid she might not be able to do it.
“I really can live if I do this, right? You’re not messing with me?”
“I have my pride as a reaper. Unlike humans, we don’t say one thing and do another.”
“All right. I’ll try. I’ll make the deal.”
Yeon-woo made up her mind. She was scared, but she had nothing to lose. She was supposed to have died the night before anyway. By sheer coincidence, she had met a bored reaper and survived. Even if she failed to fulfill the deal and died a month later, it seemed better than dying here without ever getting the chance to do anything. Yeon-woo clenched her fist, pressed her lips together, and put on a solemn expression. Han-gyeol found the sight so absurd that a hollow laugh escaped him.
“Good. Your month starts today.”
“But why only a month? Can’t you give me a little more time, like three months?”
“No. Our king is on vacation right now, and he’ll be back in a month. Things will get annoying then.”
“Even the afterlife has vacations?”
“We’re workers too. What’s with you?”
“Who’s ‘our king,’ anyway? Is he like the CEO, if you compare it to a company?”
“Exactly. There are two administrators in the afterlife: the Jade Emperor, who manages Heaven, and King Yama, who manages Hell.”
“Oh, this is insane. The Jade Emperor, King Yama, reapers... Is this really reality?”
For a human like Yeon-woo, the fact that the Jade Emperor and King Yama—figures who seemed to belong only in movies or TV dramas—actually existed was astonishing. Even after thinking it over again, she still found it absurd that this situation wasn’t a dream.
“This time, the Jade Emperor’s and King Yama’s vacations overlapped. The afterlife is empty, so I can move around pretty freely.”
“So you’re slacking off on the clock.”
“Hey—and there’s something else. You have to stay hospitalized in this room for the entire month.”
“What?! I have to stay in the hospital for a whole month?”
“Yeah. I have to keep an eye on you.”
“But I have a place. Why...”
“Would it really be okay for a reaper to go to a living person’s home?”
“Oh. The hospital is better. Fine, we’ll do it here.”
“Right, I almost forgot the most important part. The person who will be your first love is the first person you make eye contact with the moment you leave this hospital room.”
Not a single thing she had seen or heard since opening her eyes had been unsurprising. She had thought there was nothing left that could shock her, but Han-gyeol’s words continued to astonish Yeon-woo.
“What?! I don’t get to choose who it is?!”
“Nope. You don’t. I can’t guarantee anything about the person you meet after leaving this place—not their age, appearance, or personality.”
“Are you out of your mind?! Why are you only telling me something this important now?!”
Frustrated, Yeon-woo began flailing her whole body and kicking at the air. Then she stopped when pain shot through her arm.
“Tsk. That must hurt. Your bone is broken.”
Yeon-woo glared at Han-gyeol through narrowed eyes, annoyed by the reaper as he casually slurped his banana milk as if none of this had anything to do with him.
“Wait. Now that I think about it, you’ve been taking banana milk out of the refrigerator this whole time. Isn’t that mine?”
“Yep. It is. A woman who looked like a friend put it in there before you woke up and left.”
“Then don’t drink it! It’s mine!”
“Hey. You’re arguing over a mere banana milk with the person who saved your life? Saying ‘mine’ and ‘yours’ like that is seriously mean.”
If he hadn’t been a reaper, Yeon-woo would already have unleashed a torrent of curses on him, but she was barely holding herself back in case he somehow harmed her.
“All right. Before we officially begin the deal, you have to swear an oath. Repeat after me.”
“You have to do that too?”
“Of course. I don’t trust humans.”
“I, Seo Yeon-woo, enter into a thirty-day deal with Jung Han-gyeol, a reaper belonging to Hell under King Yama’s department in the afterlife, beginning September 3, 2025. The terms of fulfillment are to find true love within thirty days and make my heart beat warmly again. In the event of failure, I surrender my life, the collateral, to the reaper. This contract cannot be terminated midway, and the consequences of termination will be extremely terrible.”
“As you already know, you were as good as dead. You’ve been given one precious chance to live again, so make the most of it.”
They might have been words of encouragement, but Yeon-woo didn’t hear them that way. Now that she had actually entered into the deal, she felt completely lost. What if the person she met right after leaving was far too old, or had a horribly eccentric personality, or already had a family—or was absurdly young?
“Hey, human.”
“You have a perfectly good name. Why call me ‘human’?”
“You’d better hope a reaper doesn’t call your name too often.”
“Why?”
“If a reaper calls your name three times in a row, you have to come with him.”
“Please never do that.”
“Anyway, our deal has already started. Don’t you think you should get out there as soon as possible?”
Han-gyeol was right. Every minute and second mattered, and Yeon-woo knew she had to find her partner as quickly as possible because she didn’t have much time. But worry and fear made it difficult for her to take that first step. Yeon-woo slowly climbed out of bed, took one step, drew it back, sighed, rubbed her face, pushed her hair back, bit her lip, and even chewed on her fingernails. She couldn’t keep still, yet she couldn’t leave the hospital room. After she had fidgeted like that for several dozen minutes, Han-gyeol watched her with an exasperated expression and was just about to finish his fourth carton of banana milk. After sucking down the last sip, he set the empty carton on the windowsill and shouted at Yeon-woo.
“Seo Yeon-woo!”
“Hey, why did you call my name?! I told you not to!”
“Do you know how long you’ve been doing this? If you don’t get out right now, I’m calling it three times in a row.”
Unable to withstand Han-gyeol’s threat, Yeon-woo finally had no choice but to stand in front of the door. She took one deep breath, squeezed her eyes shut, and placed her hand on the doorknob. Since the condition was to make eye contact with the first person she encountered after leaving, she decided to go out with her eyes closed. In her heart, she desperately prayed that the first person she met would be reasonably young, fall head over heels easily, have an ordinary personality, and not currently have a partner or family. Slowly, she applied pressure to the handle. The door gradually opened, and the noisy voices of people drifted in. And so began Yeon-woo’s somewhat dangerous deal with a reaper.