Hyo Jin kicked the black suede high heels off her feet the moment she got into the foyer, then walked into the living room of Eon Jin’s house with caution. Both of her arms were occupied with big brown bags of groceries, and a baguette, which was inconveniently placed on top of the other commodities, was angled in such a way that it threatened to tumble out anytime soon.
Even as her face was almost completely obscured by the packages she was carrying, she was still able to take a good whiff of whatever Eon Jin was cooking. The smell of cinnamon and nutmeg blended with the air in pleasant harmony, tickling her olfactory. Likewise, the enticing aroma of vanilla with the slightest hint of coffee made her crave for breakfast at 11:00 a.m.
“That smells so good, Eon Jin,” she said as she placed the bags on the counter. “But, do you really think you can bribe him with pastry?”
“How can I bribe him if I don’t even know where he is?” Eon Jin said without turning to look at Hyo Jin, electing to remain sitting on her haunches while observing the loaves of banana bread she was baking in the oven.
Hyo Jin skirted the edge of the counter to go to the fridge and get some refreshments.
“You do know where to find him,” she reminded Eon Jin as she poured herself a glass of cold orange juice. “It’s not as if you just met him recently.”
“I just did,” Eon Jin mumbled without thinking.
“You just met Death, you mean?” Hyo Jin clarified after taking a gulp, looking perplexed at her statement. “We have been working with him and for him for more than three hundred years now. Did the frosty water give you amnesia or something?”
Eon Jin turned to Hyo Jin without getting up from her crouching stance, with both of her brows furrowed and the corners of her mouth turned down into a frown.
“Who?”
“Death.”
“Oh, okay,” Eon Jin said, then shifted her focus back to the oven to look at the breads, which at that point had already started to rise.
“Who else did you think I was pertaining to?” Hyo Jin asked, watching her warily from the corners of her eyes. “That investigator, Kim Tae Pyung?”
Eon Jin slowly got to her feet, hands pressing on her knees for better balance, then proceeded to busy herself with the cookies on the counter.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she told Hyo Jin as she picked up the baked goods one by one with silicone tongs, transferring them from the cooling tray to a clear, empty jar. “And I don’t have any inkling as to where he is at the moment.”
“Liar.”
Eon Jin let out one long and deep breath, then said, “Sure, Hyo Jin, sure.”
The grim reaper snorted in disbelief, then went back to stand at her side of the counter.
“Unbelievable,” she told Eon Jin straight up.
“Regardless, it won’t make any difference knowing that he’s back at work this morning,” Eon Jin muttered to herself as she avoided Hyo Jin’s eyes. “Even with his arm still in a cast.”
“Wow. Look what that man made you do, Son Eon Jin,” Hyo Jin scolded her, then raised one closed fist to start counting with her fingers. “First, you have established some sort-of relationship with this mortal, something that you never did in your centuries of existence. You even gave him your phone number, then went out on dates —”
Eon Jin was about to refute her statement, but Hyo Jin immediately put a finger on her lips to shush her.
“Second, you defied Fate’s stern order for you to never interfere while on assignment by saving that man,” she continued. “Now, you are abusing your stature as a quasi-deity to find out everything about him.”
She tilted her head to the side and asked, “Are you a stalker now, my mistress?”
“No,” Eon Jin denied with a smug expression. “It’s something I heard from the grapevine.”
“If you must know, Gong Hyo Jin, your young lady grim reapers were a little too happy to talk about Kim Tae Pyung this morning” — her eyes narrowed into slits and her lips slightly curled upwards — “that one of them actually got to the scene of the accident two minutes and forty seven seconds late. Hah! I even considered summoning the soul myself.”
Eon Jin closed the lid of the glass jar with a bit more force than probably necessary, then placed one of her hands on her hips and asked, “Tell me — how do you do it again, Hyo Jin? Do you state the name of the person at least three times? You have to teach me how to do it, you know, in case I need to call out the soul myself because your grim reapers are so busy chatting about that handsome investigator from the other district.”
Hyo Jin cleared her throat and loosened her tie with nervous fingers as the mistress low-key reprimanded her. The gesture earned her peals of laughter from Eon Jin seconds later.
“I’m just teasing, Hyo Jin,” she told the head grim reaper in between sniggers. “What happened to you? You have really been uptight ever since you became the grim reaper boss.”
Hyo Jin scowled at her, her forehead wrinkled by the knitting of her brows, arms crossed tightly across her chest.
“Besides, I’ve already given her a proper chastising before I left so that’s all been settled,” Eon Jin added, all humor lost in her face as she went back to putting the next batch of cookies in another jar. “You’re welcome, by the way.”
Hyo Jin groaned, and her hand automatically flew to her forehead as she remembered the last time Eon Jin chastised one of her subordinates.
It was about forty or fifty years ago at an abandoned port in the countryside at around two o’clock in the morning. One of her colleagues told Hyo Jin the following day that the greenhorn she took under her wing tried to drown herself in the ocean (It was a futile effort, of course, because all grim reapers were actually souls paying for their sins from their mortal life for half a century.) after Eon Jin lashed out at her, saying that the way she summoned the soul lacked authority and conviction.
She learned the week after that the reason why Eon Jin threw a fit was because she had three assignments in a row that day and had another two lined up at dawn.
“Have you talked to the god of Death yet?” she asked Eon Jin moments later, who was back to squatting in front of the oven with her chin resting on her forearms perched on top of her knees.
Through the reflection of the glass door of the oven, the grim reaper noticed that the somber expression was shadowing the mistress’ face again.
“Seriously, though? Your mood swings are driving me crazy!” Hyo Jin quipped, already frustrated. “Enough with the sulking already.”
“I am not sulking,” Eon Jin murmured in defense. “And yes, I’ve talked to Death at the hospital right after the accident.”
“Ahh... Now, that explains the foul temper that led to the chastising,” Hyo Jin deduced, jeering shamelessly. “Did he append your punishment because of what you did?”
Eon Jin shook her head as she tried to recall her meeting with Death two nights ago at the roof deck of the hospital. She was standing behind the steel and glass barricade when Death paid her a visit, quietly staring over the sea of city lights an hour before the sun broke the horizon.
“You really did manage to cause a ruckus this time, mistress,” said a young boy, probably at the physical age of eight or nine.
Already knowing who it was, Eon Jin turned and gave a deep bow.
Photo by Adi Goldstein on Unsplash
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