IMCT 08

Chapter 8

“Hello.”

“Welcome. Have you had dinner?”

“Huh?”

Before Kim Si-min could react to the unexpected question, the woman immediately took him by the hand and led him to a table set up behind the kitchen.

“I figured you probably hadn’t eaten dinner, so I made you something. It’s nothing special, but eat up.”

“I came here to work…”

“You can work after you eat.”

Since there were no customers yet, Kim Si-min nodded as he looked at the meal laid out in front of him.

“…Thank you. I’ll eat well.”

He had come to help, only to be served dinner instead.

Slurp.

Unable to ignore the woman’s expectant gaze, Si-min scooped up a spoonful of soybean paste stew and brought it to his mouth.

It’s good. Really good. It’s incredibly good.

It was home-cooked food, something he had not eaten in a long time.

A single man living alone usually survived on delivery food or ready-made meals.

For some reason, his eyes grew slightly red as he ate.

Maybe because he had lived alone without his parents for so long.

Maybe because of all the things he had been through recently.

Or maybe it was simply because of the warmth in the food the woman had prepared for him.

He did not know.

“Does it suit your taste?”

“Yes… It’s really delicious.”

“I’m glad.”

That kind smile, bright and sincere, without a trace of pretense or darkness—he had wondered who Park Min-young’s smile reminded him of.

“There’s more side dishes, so eat plenty.”

“Thank you…”

After finishing his meal, he immediately got up, cleared the dishes, and washed them.

He said he was thirty-three. He’s handsome. A decent height, too. And he used to have such a good job.

She watched Kim Si-min with a pleased smile, briefly thinking how nice it would be to have a son-in-law like him.

“How are you planning to help with the work?”

“What?”

“You said you were going to help. You must have had something in mind when you said that.”

“Ah, yes. Maybe I could serve customers or something.”

“We don’t really need much serving. Everyone usually gets their own food.”

“When I came last time, I saw Min-young helping in the kitchen too.”

“Why are you taking me so seriously? I was joking.”

“Oh, a joke. Right, haha… A joke.”

For some reason, Kim Si-min felt like he was being completely outmaneuvered by Lee Sun-hye.

“Have you ever thought about promoting the shop through social media?”

“Social media?”

“Yes. I heard that these days, advertising through social media can be more effective than handing out flyers.”

“Min-young did suggest trying that.”

“As far as the taste goes, I think it’s already excellent, so there doesn’t seem to be much to improve. If you add a few simple dishes that are easy to make and promote the shop through social media with an old-fashioned snack-bar feel, I think it could do quite well.”

While handling loans, Si-min had built relationships with many restaurant owners whose businesses were doing well. He had also heard plenty of their secrets to success, so he planned to use that experience to gradually help Lee Sun-hye.

“Well, Manager, think it over and let me know what you come up with. For today, I’d appreciate it if you could just help with the serving.”

“Yes.”

That day, he spent the entire day clearing dishes, tidying up the dining area, and washing dishes.

What he realized while working was that the shop actually had more customers than he had expected.

Wasn’t this supposed to be about saving a tteokbokki shop?

Business wasn’t bad enough to say the place needed to be “saved.”

After returning home that evening, Kim Si-min fell asleep almost instantly from exhaustion.

Early the next morning, he headed to the Lighthouse office.

Ding.

With the familiar sound of the elevator, Kim Si-min entered the eighth-floor office and headed toward the head of the secretarial office.

“Chief, I’d like to talk to you.”

He lightly knocked before opening the door.

Knock, knock, knock.

There was no response from inside.

“The head of the secretarial office is absent today.”

A voice suddenly came from behind him.

He had not even sensed anyone approaching.

Si-min quickly turned around.

A young man stood behind him in a gray suit, his hair neatly slicked back. There was something about him that strangely reminded Si-min of Park Won-jung.

He looked to be around forty.

“It’s nice to meet you, Representative. My name is Kim Woo-jin, and I’m a secretary in the secretarial office.”

“Oh, yes.”

Although he was the Representative of the company, there was still a lot he did not know about it.

If Park Won-jung was the head of the secretarial office, there had to be other employees there as well.

“While the chief is away, I will be assisting you with your duties. Of course, if you wish, I can be replaced by someone else at any time.”

“Ah, yes.”

“You came looking for the chief. Did you have something you wanted to instruct him about?”

“No. I just wanted to ask him something I was curious about.”

“I see. If it isn’t a personal question about the chief, I can answer it in the Representative’s office. What kind of tea would you like?”

“Oolong tea, please.”

Kim Si-min accepted the offer and sat down at the enormous desk in the Representative’s office, looking out the window.

“Here you are.”

“Ah, thank you.”

After enjoying the warm aroma of the tea for a moment, Si-min took a sip and looked at Kim Woo-jin, who was standing straight in front of him.

For some reason, the man had a very stiff and sharp air about him.

“I received a field training request.”

“You mean Save the Snack Bar.”

“Yes. But the owner there…”

“She is the family of Park Moon-seong, the man who appeared in the news recently after taking his own life by jumping from a bridge.”

“Yes. You already know everything?”

“Well, that’s all we know too. So what exactly are you curious about?”

“The snack bar’s business doesn’t seem to have any particular problems. What am I supposed to do?”

“Well, the person carrying out the request has to determine the details of how to complete it. We don’t know either.”

A vague answer.

Kim Si-min simply nodded.

“May I ask you something else?”

“Of course. I’m a secretary, and my job is to assist you, Representative, so please feel free to ask anything.”

“I want to know more about this company.”

“Hmm…”

A troubled expression appeared on his face.

“You’re the Representative, after all. It wouldn’t make sense for the Representative not to know anything about the company, would it?”

“I suppose that’s true…”

Kim Woo-jin stood up and turned on the beam projector set up in one corner of the Representative’s office.

“Our Lighthouse Co., Ltd. operates between the living world and the afterlife. Our company has three main functions. First, we lend opportunities. Second, we guide the dead. Third, we take opportunities away.”

As he explained, Kim Woo-jin advanced the presentation.

“You have already experienced the first one yourself, Representative. As for guiding the dead…”

“Grim reapers.”

“Correct.”

“Then what does taking opportunities away mean?”

“You will find out in time. It is a kind of punishment.”

Si-min had a rough idea now.

He also had a sense of why this company had been established.

“Thank you for the explanation.”

“Do you not want to hear more?”

“I think I’ll understand as I experience things.”

“As I heard from the chief, you really are unusual, Representative.”

“…?”

Wasn’t he just an ordinary person, especially when compared to the others working here?

“I understand that you have not even been here for a month yet.”

“That’s right.”

“And yet, you seem completely natural.”

Natural?

It was something he had never even thought about.

“Usually, everyone who comes here stays tense for quite a long time. Anyone would naturally be afraid of something they have never experienced before, wouldn’t they? But when I look at you, Representative, you don’t seem to feel that way at all.”

Come to think of it, this strange and otherworldly place did not feel strange to him at all.

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Yes.”

“Then that’s fine.”

Kim Woo-jin smiled at his calm response.

“I see. Then I suppose that is fine. Oh, and about Save the Snack Bar. It may not necessarily mean that you have to increase the snack bar’s sales. If something happens to the person running the snack bar, the snack bar itself would also be in danger, wouldn’t it?”

“Something happening to the person running it…?”

Murmuring those words, Kim Si-min turned around.

Ding.

Kim Si-min was riding the elevator down to the first floor when the doors opened on the fourth floor.

A group of people wearing black suits rushed into the elevator.

“An emergency?”

“Yes. Apparently it’s a… Level One alert.”

“What happened?”

“A dead person escaped. Apparently, they said they couldn’t go up, and their power is no joke.”

“Ah, this doesn’t feel good…”

Judging by the strange nature of this place and the conversation between the people in black suits, they were clearly grim reapers.

“Oh, we haven’t met before. Are you the new guy who joined the secretarial office?”

“Ah, yes. Sort of.”

“Ah! I heard about you from Hwang Su-ho. Apparently you’re going to become the real power in the secretarial office before long. They say Chief Park Won-jung personally recruited you because you’re such a talent.”

“It just happened that way.”

“Hahahaha. I can’t even remember the last time Chief Park recruited someone. We should grab a drink sometime. You might even come to our team for field training one day.”

“Oh, can an ordinary person like me really guide the dead?”

“You’re ordinary?”

“Yes. I don’t know. I don’t think there’s anything special about me.”

The grim reapers all wore expressions of utter disbelief.

“Someone like you can really talk to us this casually?”

“What’s strange about it?”

“Most ordinary people become intimidated when they meet a grim reaper. It’s because of the nature of what we are. Well, it’s awkward to say that about ourselves.”

Si-min still did not quite understand.

“Is that so?”

“Yes. But, Mr. New Guy…?”

“Ah, I’m Kim Si-min.”

“Yes. Employee Kim Si-min, you don’t have any of that fear at all. I think that alone means you’re not exactly ordinary.”

After hearing everything they had to say, Kim Si-min gave a vague nod.

“Anyway, let’s have a drink sometime. We’ve got something urgent to deal with, so we should get going.”

“Sure. Let’s do that.”

The six men and women in black suits left the company and disappeared into the distance in an instant.

“…”

For now, just focus on helping Aunt Lee Sun-hye’s shop.

The next day, after finishing his lunchtime workout, Si-min headed toward the snack bar.

When he arrived, he saw a group of men who looked like gangsters gathered outside the shop.

Gangsters in broad daylight in the twenty-first century?

Then again, when he saw the news about so-called MZ gangsters gathering together, drinking, and acting like they were living in the days before the War on Crime, he sometimes wondered if the twenty-first century was really that different.

Inside the shop, the woman and Park Min-young were standing close together, confronting them.

“So why are you coming to us about my dead father’s debt? Don’t you know this is illegal?”

“It’s not dead Park Moon-seong’s debt. It’s Lee Sun-hye’s debt.”

The thugs looked to be in their early twenties at most. They seemed to be the kind of so-called MZ gangsters people talked about these days.

“Say something that makes sense! When did my mother ever borrow money?”

“Look carefully. Her name and signature are right here.”

The young thug held up several sheets of paper that looked like a contract.

“That… I didn’t even know what I was signing. They asked me to sign it, so I did. I didn’t know it was for a loan. I’ve never even seen your faces before.”

“Does not knowing make the contract disappear? You signed the paper, so you have to follow the contract. If you can’t pay, your daughter can pay instead. She looks like she’d be able to pay it off pretty quickly. We’ll take her to a workplace, so she can start working today.”

The young gangsters pressured the mother and daughter crudely, acting as though there was nothing in the world they were afraid of.

“Get out! You think we’re just going to sit there and take this from people like you? You’re threatening us by showing up in a group like this in broad daylight?”

Park Min-young shouted despite her trembling fingertips.

“Don’t you know how scary the world is these days? The internet’s so powerful that it can ruin your life in an instant. Wanna become famous today?”

“Get the hell out of here, you filthy bastard!”

“Ah, you fucking…”

When Park Min-young shouted at him with a sharp glare, the thug finally raised his hand.

As the thug’s raised hand came toward her, Park Min-young squeezed her eyes shut.

Grab.

The thug’s hand, flying toward Park Min-young’s cheek, was suddenly caught by something solid.