TINL Ch 5

Sunwoo stared at Wol, feeling suffocated. Her words, her calm voice devoid of any emotion, saying that she had killed him, scraped and clawed at his insides.

Wol, still not sparing him a glance, ordered another drink and continued speaking indifferently.

“Mr. Sunwoo, you may not remember, but I do. There’s a difference between someone who died and became a god, and someone who didn’t die and remained.”

“…A difference.”

“Yes. So whatever I do for Mr. Sunwoo, don’t feel burdened. Just think of it as collecting a debt, and just take it. Tell me if you need anything.”

While speaking, Wol organized places to visit and sent him the map information.

“These places are hot these days. Choose a few places you like and I’ll plan a route based on your accommodation. If there’s anything you want to eat, feel free to choose anything.”

Sunwoo, gripping his vibrating phone as if to crush it, precariously maintained his composure and twisted the corners of his mouth.

“Don’t you think you said the words ‘I killed you, I killed you’ a little too easily?”

“Are you angry?”

She asked, testing him, as she swallowed another pill. Sunwoo nodded instead of answering, and Wol’s eyes curved into crescents.

“I’m glad Mr. Sunwoo is so angry. It means I’m not the strange one.”

Wol calmly admired the man who was trying to appear calm despite his eyes filled with accusations. Sunwoo was truly enraged by that admiration that didn’t seem like admiration.

“You confess to killing someone and then say you’re glad I’m angry? Are those words you should be saying right now?”

“Hmm. How should I explain this?”

Suddenly, Sunwoo’s gaze stopped at Myungwol’s nape. Her pulse was beating rapidly in her nape, though her expression betrayed no emotion. Facing this slight evidence that she was pretending to be calm, Sunwoo’s heart softened just a little.

“The Heavenly Realm is a place where gods from various mythologies live, just as the myths describe – killing this person, saving that person, sleeping with that person’s wife, getting hit by an axe from the wife’s lover. The gods have no guilt, no sense of sin. Whatever they do, they act as if it’s what they should do because they’re gods.”

“What does that have to do with your confession of murder?”

“Being pushed around by those people, I wondered if I was the strange one for feeling guilty about Mr. Sunwoo’s death.”

Sunwoo’s anger quickly subsided in the face of a confession he never imagined he’d hear from her own mouth and the culprit’s barren repentance. At the same time, he realized the identity of the discomfort that had been growing as he continued the conversation with Wol.

Wol’s words and expressions lacked distinct emotion. Only faint stirrings, like slight pleasure, slight dislike, or slight surprise, could barely be felt.

She seemed like someone whose emotions had withered and worn away. Or someone who had locked away all joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure in a place they could never escape.

‘The only time she showed a somewhat vivid reaction was when she said her hand hurt.’

Sunwoo clicked his tongue at himself for paying attention to the intensity of Wol’s emotions in the middle of being angry, and touched his phone.

“I’m going to pick the most expensive place. As payment for my life.”

“Alright.”

Her unchangingly calm reply made his fingertips tapping on the screen even more ferocious. When he pointedly selected a contemporary cuisine restaurant as a protest, Wol, without a word, tapped on the screen and completed the reservation.

“…Are your business trip expenses that high?”

“It’s my personal money. I can’t repay the price of a life with a company card.”

“…….”

“Go to sleep now. There’s still about five hours left.”

“I can’t sleep. I wondered why I kept having nightmares of my body burning every time I slept, and it was because of you.”

While snapping that he couldn’t sleep, he obediently accepted the eye mask Wol offered and cursed himself inwardly.

‘Stupid bastard. You just take it when she gives it to you?’

Unconcerned about his awkwardness, holding the eye mask without putting it on or throwing it away, Wol took a plastic pill bottle out of her bag and placed it in Sunwoo’s hand.

“I’m glad I brought extras just in case. I also can’t sleep because of nightmares, so I endure it until I can’t anymore and then I take medicine. That tranquilizer works pretty well.”

“Cigarettes, alcohol, tranquilizers… Is your body even intact?”

“Why don’t you consider the fact that my body isn’t intact, so I endure it with those things?”

What… what does that mean?

As Sunwoo silently mouthed the words he had lost, she nonchalantly replied, popping pills and alcohol into her red lips before he could stop her.

“It’s impossible that only my hands were damaged after 600 years of being tossed around.”

As the alcohol and drugs hit her, her light brown pupils dilated so much that they looked jet black. The neat tone of voice, which didn’t match her relaxed eyes, confused Sunwoo even more.

Wol, resting her chin on her hand, smiled slightly as she looked at Sunwoo, who was at a loss for words.

“Mr. Sunwoo, you seem a little sorry for me right now. I’m the one who killed you, and you’re apologizing for a slip of the tongue.”

“…Do you look like you’re enjoying me apologizing?”

“I am. I’m a petty fairy, so I can’t really get attached to gods who don’t have things like guilt or a sense of sin. But Mr. Sunwoo, you seem like a person, not a god.”

“…….”

“As more time passes, gods like Mr. Sunwoo will appear one by one, right? Someday.”

It was a statement that seemed to contain the certainty that she would not be there on that someday.

“Senior, what I just said…”

“Just swallow this.”

A yellow pill popped into Sunwoo’s mouth as he opened and closed it, not knowing whether to apologize or comfort her in this awkward situation.

Startled, Sunwoo gasped, swallowing the pill and coughing.

Wol calmly offered him the glass she was drinking from.

As the strong alcohol and drugs he had never tasted in his life spread through his body, Sunwoo’s eyelids fluttered and closed. Wol’s face, which didn’t look the least bit sorry, shimmered in his blurring vision.

“I tried it because purification and regeneration are my specialties, but it’s not very effective. Maybe it was too stimulating for someone who grew up clean, eating only good things in good air.”

“Why…”

“Why? Tranquilizers are for tranquilizing.”

“…….”

“Oh. Separate from settling the debt for your life, I have a habit of paying back those who annoy me. Remember that if you want to work with me.”

He, who had been about to bite his lip in belated realization, quietly released his pursed lips. If he bit down hard, the feeling of her fingertips that had touched and then left his lips a moment ago would disappear.

“I’ll wake you up when it’s time to get off. Be prepared to get an earful.”

A deep slumber pulled Wol’s voice away from him.

༊·˚

Just before arrival.

Wol shoved a stimulant and carbonated water into Sunwoo’s mouth. He, who had been sleeping like a corpse, coughed and woke up with a start, staring at Wol with disbelief. Wol sighed without a hint of apology and scanned him up and down.

“You say purification is your specialty, but why do the drugs work so well on you? From now on, wash away anything bad from your body as soon as it enters.”

“Huh.”

Sunwoo, who hadn’t expected to be nagged, let out a hollow laugh. Although he had received quite rigorous training from Grandma Seulmunde in addition to resort management, this violent sleep and wake-up control was truly shocking. Wol quietly watched the man blaming her with all his emotions, then pointed to the back of his head.

“We’ll be landing soon, so fix your hair.”

“Is that all you have to say to me?”

“Oh. While you were sleeping, I postponed the dinner reservation to tomorrow. It seems like this negotiation with the Sun God won’t be easy.”

“Not that! You said you were sorry for killing me and that you’d do anything, but then you suddenly drugged me to sleep and woke me up with another drug. Shouldn’t you at least explain yourself?”

Wol sent Sunwoo the changed reservation details and organized the table as she answered his question with a question.

“Mr. Sunwoo, did you break, get cut, or get pierced anywhere while you were sleeping?”

“…No?”

“Your limbs are fine, so what explanation do I need to give? It’s not like someone detached your head from your body while you were sleeping. What explanation do you want?”

Sunwoo’s raised eyebrows slowly returned to their original position. Wol wasn’t trying to pick a fight or argue. She simply genuinely thought that way. He put aside all the words he had intended to protest with and directed his most pressing question to Myungwol.

“Senior, are you… are you really sorry for killing me?”

“If I wasn’t sorry, I wouldn’t have taken this job. Why? Did it seem like I lacked sincerity?”

“Huh… You talk about sincerity after putting me to sleep and waking me up like this? It’s absurd.”

Wol, who had been quietly watching Sunwoo run his hand through his hair and click his tongue, tilted her head slightly.

“A god who lacks basic skills kept trying to test me, so I conducted a test as a lesson. I did what I had to do as a colleague, so what’s absurd about it?”

“What do you mean by ‘testing’ and ‘lesson’?”

“Mr. Sunwoo. You were pretending to be innocently naive while probing me about various things.”

“Me, testing you?”

“Yes. Exactly like you’re doing right now.”

“…….”

“While I’m at it, giving you the lesson that those tricks won’t work, I tested Mr. Sunwoo’s purification and regeneration abilities. Even though it’s your first time in the field, I didn’t know you couldn’t purify drugs or alcohol.”

Sunwoo chuckled a little louder. He was dumbfounded by Wol, who suddenly drugged him and then blamed him, and by himself, who was fully accepting her accusations and reflecting on them.

Wol’s voice flew at him like a knife, directed at his nervous laughter.

“Are you laughing right now? You were hired as a bodyguard, but you’re swallowing whatever comes into your mouth without a sense of danger and you can’t even purify. You should be reflecting.”

“That’s… you said you would atone. I believed you wouldn’t harm me.”

“I knew it. You didn’t read my memo properly, did you? I wrote in bold letters not to trust anything or anyone in the Heavenly Realm.”

Wol, who had been calm throughout, expressed something resembling annoyance for the first time. Frowning with displeasure, she downed another glass of alcohol and tranquilizers, the exact number of which she’d lost track of, and then added a warning to her long sigh.

“Mr. Sunwoo and I weren’t chosen for this job because we’re amazing. We’re expendable workforce, insignificant enough to be used and discarded. It wouldn’t be strange if we were eliminated at any time, so don’t just swallow anything from now on. If you want to receive rewards somehow without being discarded.”

“…Is that a warning that you can kill me twice since you’ve already killed me once?”

“It means I won’t let you die twice since I’ve already killed you once. You say you’ve lived a clean life, but why are you so twisted?”

As she spoke, she motioned with her chin for him to get up. Sunwoo, caught by his own words, couldn’t argue and followed Wol off the plane.

As he walked, following the seemingly angry Wol, Sunwoo was seized by a strange feeling as if he had become a criminal. The only thing that became clear was that things had gone seriously wrong from the very beginning.