Finding You

SPECIAL CHAPTER: WRONGFUL IMPRESSIONS

As the guards escorted the courtesans out of the hall on one of the evenings of October 1895, a lady with an indecipherable expression walked past them and straight to the room where the slain minister was, sprawled on the tabletop and was bathing in his own blood after a rebel assassin thrust a sword into his gut.

Was it lack of interest? Was it poorly suppressed scorn? Was it pure arrogance? No one could say for sure since apparently, there was not a living soul in that house who beheld her presence with their mortal sight.

She set foot into the chamber with a scowl that did not make her any less of a beauty – even when one of her brows kept raised in palpable disgust, the corners of her rouged lips turned downwards, and her sleepy, doe eyes were cold and piercing.

It was a shame that no one could see how she gracefully settled herself at the principal position of the table, sitting with one of her legs hooked under the several petticoats of her regal black hanbok as if the place was her domain. She was a cut above the rest; both her jeogori and chima were created using a rare type of silk and the intricately embroidered patterns of red lotuses adorned the ensemble that was beyond doubt ahead of its time.

She rested her elbow on her knee, absentmindedly biting on her thumb as she waited for a grim reaper she had not met yet to finally arrive at the scene of the crime.

Exactly a minute later, the sound of approaching footsteps captured her attention.

"I hope you know that we are already behind schedule," the mystical woman said without looking at her companion who just reached the doorway.

The latecomer – specifically by the enigmatic lady's standards alone – stopped dead on her tracks the second she heard the indignant comment of the entity she was to team up with from here forward.

"He expired thirty seconds ago," the grim reaper countered as she straightened the collar of her black jeogori, her tone equally commanding in her refusal to back down. "The rule explicitly stated to summon a soul within three minutes, if I am not mistaken."

"What may be factual is not always acceptable," the woman replied through gritted teeth. "Have you always held the time of other people in such low esteem?"

"Let us stop wasting yours, then" – the grim reaper quipped dismissively – "mistress."

As soon as the murdered minister crossed the great divide, the mysterious lady stood up. Her hand automatically flew to the base of the stylish eonjun meori she wore that night, checking whether a hair was out of place prior to leaving the room with self-assured strides. The grim reaper followed suit, carefully observing the woman from a safe distance.

"Good riddance, Hyo Jin!" a fellow female grim reaper exclaimed in sarcasm the following morning as they traversed the woods. "You started your working relationship with the mistress with the wrong foot. I can only imagine how the next four centuries would be like for you."

Gong Hyo Jin let out a sigh as she envisioned their succeeding encounters, stomping on the ground and tugging at the end of her braid in frustration.

"I cannot believe what Death decided to put me through, sunbae-nim," she groaned. "First, he took me out of my perfectly peaceful life in the countryside to stay here at the capitol wherein something significant happens every single day. Now, he pairs me up with a mercurial quasi-immortal whose temper is much, much worse than the powers that be – and she is not even a god, for crying out loud!"

Her colleague laughed before chiming in, "'When it rains, it pours', they say."

Those words manifested to reality a week later, both in a literal and figurative sense.