Finding You

CHAPTER 31

The boy with the distinctive bowl cut fidgeted at the back seat of Hyo Jin's car while the overly-confident grim reaper drove wordlessly. It was the fifth time during the long drive that he removed the midnight blue tie that he decided to wear on top of his white button-down shirt only to re-do it. And yet, he still was not satisfied.

Hyo Jin turned to look at him from the passenger seat, already growing tired of his restlessness, and said, "There is no need to fuss since it would just be you, me, this guy Tak Gu" – she gestured towards their driver – "and those two meeting at the said rendezvous, your divinity."

"A deity should always appear impeccable no matter the occasion," Death countered as he pulled the narrow end of the silk fabric after doing an impressive Half Windsor knot.

"Well, you did not bother to hide your disinterest when Eon Jin requested for your company a week ago," she reminded him. "Funny, but it seems that you are having ants on your pants now."

Regardless, the puny immortal ran a palm over his front to smoothen the invisible wrinkles on his clothes and threw his cute nose up in the air in subtle indignation, making Hyo Jin stifle a chuckle.

"What time should we be there again?" Death asked to divert the conversation away from his apparent jitters.

Hyo Jin resumed her position, although instead of facing ahead, she turned her head to the side and stared out the window with her chin resting on her palm.

"Eon Jin mentioned to be there a couple of hours after noon so we could catch a little warmth and sunlight," she answered.

Death's curled his upper lip, then sourly commented, "As if the timing would help. Those two are both mad as a hatter to hold a wedding ceremony in the middle of this cold season."

"Perhaps guessing every living moment if this was their last day together really drove them at the brink of insanity" – she mused absentmindedly – "if not their ill-fated love story and more than three hundred years of waiting."

Clearly understanding what she meant, Death heaved out a heavy sigh.

"We are going to summon her one way or another because she is a missing soul," he said. "You should have known it from the beginning, Hyo Jin."

"I might have been completely aware that it would come to this point and I simply chose to deny it," the grim reaper admitted with implied impudence. "I know that it is something set in stone, too. Nevertheless, I cannot help but think that the gods could have been more compassionate after everything Eon Jin had to go through."

The higher being sat up straight and crossed his arms on his chest, inconspicuously rolling his eyes before stating, "If it would be of any consolation to you, Son Eon Jin's case requires me to walk on eggshells. It's not every day that the missing soul is a fellow deity's paramour."

When the makeshift path to the river appeared within her sight, Hyo Jin braved herself to appeal to the immortal, "Can I be the one to call her name if and when the opportunity arises?"

"Wouldn't that torment you?"

"I am bound to suffer for five hundred years anyway."

Death deliberated on her plea for a minute, then elected to shrug it off.

"I will leave the matters to you, then," he consented as soon as the vehicle came to a full stop at the unpaved roadside behind a parked black sedan.

Down by the dock, Kim Tae Pyung was distractedly stubbing his foot on the elevated wood of the platform and was patiently waiting for their visitors and his bride. He was brought back to reality the instant Death greeted him with his usual eerie congeniality.