JKA 29

1129 had blurted out a word without thinking, then hastily corrected it. Whether Jiwoon lived or died wasn’t the important thing. Saying that his job was to prevent such a death was more accurate. So he quickly revised it to a statement that fit his situation. That was all, but Jiwoon’s crying face twisted even more fiercely.

“O-other than that, why are you angry?”

“…”

“I-if you don’t tell me, I don’t know, y-you know that.”

At the sight of Jiwoon wailing sorrowfully with his hands clenched into tight fists, 1129 stood up from his seat. Then, without a moment to say anything, he vanished in an instant. Jiwoon watched him disappear from before his eyes. The house smelled of someone living there. The smell of food was strong.

But the one who had made it was gone. The chair across from him was neat, as if no one had ever sat there from the beginning, and in front of it, there were no utensils, no plate, nothing. Everything was placed only in front of him. He looked like someone who had cooked rice alone and started eating alone.

The moment he realized that fact, Jiwoon covered his face with both hands. An indescribable emotion surged through him. He felt like he had done something wrong to 1129, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to figure out what it was until he told him directly, and that tormented him once again.

Aegis, who had been peeping at Jiwoon’s house while hiding his presence as much as possible, widened his eyes as 1129’s hand suddenly appeared and roughly grabbed his chin, and he hurriedly reached out. Hastily grabbing 1129’s wrist, Aegis shouted in panic.

“Hey, what the hell are you doing out of the blue…!”

Aegis, who had been grinning while watching 1129 and Jiwoon fight, didn’t know what to do in the face of this sudden assault. For some reason, after being caught by 1129, he couldn’t even run away.

“Didn’t I tell you not to hang around here reeking of that fucking smell?”

At 1129’s cold, low voice, Aegis felt his life was in danger. It felt like goosebumps were breaking out on his back and cold sweat was running down. But even in that situation, his mouth moved steadily well.

“Y-you’ve never said anything like that.”

Seeing him muttering and chattering away even with his chin caught, 1129 felt another surge of irritation and let go of his face as if to throw it away. Then Aegis clutched his stinging cheeks and glared at 1129.

“What are you looking at, you bastard. Maybe I should just gouge your eyeballs out.”

“You’re an angel, why do you talk like that?”

“Get your face out of my sight.”

“…”

“Looking at your face right now is pissing me off…”

1129, who had been speaking as if chewing on each word, suddenly stopped and looked at Aegis. Looking at this face makes him angry. Come to think of it, he remembered getting angry the moment he saw Aegis’s face for the first time. It was fainter than the anger he had just felt during his conversation with Jiwoon, but it was definitely unpleasant to be face-to-face with him.

It wasn’t just because he was a demon. It was true that he literally smelled like shit, and demons were biologically repulsive to him. When you got down to it, it was because their origins were different. There were cases where an angel could become a demon if they wished, but in other cases, angels were bound to feel disgust towards demons.

They were bastards who touched, handled, and ate only the foul things like rotten filth from the pits of hell. It was perhaps natural to feel disgust looking at such things. But why was it? The feeling he had towards Aegis was similar to that, yet different.

The reason for that feeling was his face. Aegis’s face was so familiar. But what familiar face could he possibly have? Angels don’t have faces to begin with. His current appearance was purely a product of Jiwoon’s preferences. If so, there was only one face that was familiar to him.

“You look like him.”

“…What?”

“Where did you get that face?”

It was the same for demons, their faces were created according to human preferences. These things too originally had appearances far from human. It was just that when they approached humans, they changed their appearance so that humans wouldn’t be afraid and would find them alluring.

“You weren’t originally born looking like that, were you? Why do you have a mug like that?”

“A mug like that… this is a pretty decent face, you know.”

Aegis exclaimed as if it were unfair. He couldn’t understand what the problem with his appearance was. He didn’t know all about human preferences, but this face was a pretty ‘high-grade’ one. It was a face he had obtained with so much difficulty, it wasn’t something that deserved such an evaluation from that ill-mannered angel.

Well, if he had to compare it to that crazy angel right now, his face was a bit lacking. But that was that, and this was this. Objectively speaking, his face was also quite popular with a majority of humans. Wasn’t that a given, since he had chosen it with that in mind?

“…H-how hard I worked to get this face.”

“Get?”

“Ah, I mean. I’m not good at materializing yet, so I have to choose and buy a face. This is a face I barely bought by scraping together everything I had before I came here.”

“…”

“You can’t take the face of a living person. You have to choose from among the dead. I just chose a high-grade one from the faces that came up for auction. A face like this isn’t common. Would a common, run-of-the-mill face come up for auction? Well, you probably saw a celebrity somewhere and feel that way.”

“Only the faces of the dead… it doesn’t matter where they are?”

At 1129’s question, irritation flared up in Aegis. It was infuriating that he had suddenly appeared and started going on about his face, no matter how annoying his peeping was. Even if it wasn’t his real face, he hated being criticized for his looks. He was already feeling resentful because the expensive face he had bought didn’t seem to be working well, so it was even more so.

“How would we know the face of some guy who went to heaven? Of course we come here after skinning some bastard in hell! If everyone used it, the rarity would drop, so it’s not like we’re literally skinning them, it’s more like we’re just buying the rights.”

“…”

“No, why are you curious about this? So annoying! If I knew this would happen, I would’ve paid a little more and bought a top-grade face.”

Watching the grumbling Aegis, 1129 unknowingly covered his mouth with one hand. A familiar face, a dead soul, hell. The moment he combined those three keywords, an unbelievable result emerged.

“…I thought he had reincarnated, but he’s in hell?”

By the time Jiwoon stopped crying, all the food on the table had gone cold. 1129 still hadn’t returned, and he was all alone in the small studio apartment. He had only spoken about the results he had produced after doing as he was told and asked for help, but he didn’t want to eat the meal prepared by 1129, who had suddenly gotten angry and left.

But funnily enough, no matter what his heart and thoughts were, the hunger his body felt was something he couldn’t help. Although 1129 had made it, and the food was already cold, it smelled delicious. During the day, he had used up all his energy talking with Hanbyeol, and after returning, perhaps because he had cried for a long time, he was extremely hungry.

‘I can’t waste food.’

Thinking that, Jiwoon picked up his utensils and ate the cold rice. There was no way the food, made solely to his taste, could be anything but delicious. With every mouthful of food he pushed into his mouth, his hunger grew even more. In the end, after eating all the food 1129 had made, Jiwoon stood in front of the sink, clearing the empty plates.

It was something he would never normally do, but Jiwoon turned on the water at the faucet and picked up a sponge. 1129 wouldn’t be by his side forever. That was a fact he had known from the beginning. There had been more than one or two times when he had wished he would just quickly stop caring about his life and disappear.

And yet, Jiwoon had never once done the housework with his own hands since 1129 came to him. It was partly because he hadn’t done it properly before either, but it was true that he hadn’t even thought of touching it. Since there was someone who did it for him, he had taken it for granted. It was even more so because he hadn’t been told to do it, but he had done it so efficiently on his own.

He left the rubber gloves just lying there and squeezed a lot of dish soap onto the sponge. Then he picked up a plate that hadn’t been properly rinsed and scrubbed it hard with the sponge. If 1129 had seen him, he would have surely sneered, saying he must have been determined to do the work two or three times over.

But as soon as that thought occurred to him, Jiwoon squeezed his swollen eyes shut and then opened them, continuing to wash the dishes with more annoyance. It was because he was angry at himself for thinking of 1129 even in a situation like this. This damn stuff, if I just leave it all, 1129 will take care of it. Even as he muttered that inwardly, he thought that perhaps he might not come back.

But would he really? He didn’t know. Just before he disappeared in a fit of anger, he had said that the only thing he was interested in was Jiwoon’s life or death. That meant if he were to throw himself off the veranda right now, saying he was going to die, he would come. But he didn’t want to do something like that. Because the thought of not wanting to do the dishes didn’t lead to the thought of wanting to die.

While he was engrossed in washing the dishes with his hands full of foam, the cell phone in his pocket rang. At this, Jiwoon roughly rinsed only one hand in the water and took out his cell phone. The caller was Seungyoon.

His wet hand slipped on the screen a few times. At this, Jiwoon roughly scrubbed the phone screen against his pants to wipe it. Then he wiped his wet hand in the same way, placed the phone on one side of the sink, and answered the call. As soon as he switched to speaker mode, Seungyoon’s voice came through.

—Hey, why did you stop talking about the editor in the middle of it? Can that kid start working right away?

“I didn’t see it because I was eating and doing the dishes.”

—You, eating and doing the dishes? You’re bullshitting me. Cut the crap.

“It’s not crap. Why would I lie about something like that!”

Jiwoon shouted, needlessly making the clattering sound even louder. Then Seungyoon spoke as if he were surprised.

—Oh, I can really hear the sound of dishes. You’re not just putting on a show, are you?

“You’re so annoying, really.”

—Who do you think is the one who should be annoyed right now? You quit being an editor after the semester started. I’m dying right now because I don’t have anyone to edit. If you have time to eat and do the dishes, can you send me some edited clips?

Come to think of it, he hadn’t been able to edit properly for the past few days because he had been so out of it. It was because the deadline for making shorts of already uploaded videos was somewhat flexible, but Seungyoon, seeing his chance, started rattling off at him.

—Do you know how much I accommodate you? I know the semester started, but still, how important highlight shorts are to me.

“…Something came up recently. I’m sorry.”

—What’s with you, it’s creepy. Don’t suddenly try to be sociable, it’s scary.

“…”

—Whatever, is that kid any good? I interviewed a few people for a test, but their style really doesn’t match mine.

“He’s a friend from my department, and he’s better at editing than me. But he hasn’t edited YouTube videos before. But I can help him with that.”

—Since you say he’s your friend, it sounds like another lie.

Seungyoon said playfully and burst into laughter. True, he had thought he wouldn’t believe him if he introduced him as a friend. Even when they talked via message, he hadn’t answered the question about whether he was still looking for an editor, and had been more obsessed with the word ‘friend’.

“…He is a friend. The one I told you about before.”

—Ah, the one you said had a good personality. If he’s still friends with you, his character passes.

“Anyway, can you give him some work? He can work a lot more than me. He said the more the better.”

—Well, it’s good for me if he works a lot. But it bothers me a little that he’s never done it before. You need a certain sense for this, you know. Even though your sense for normal social life is lacking, your… internet world social sense is pretty good.

Although he knew he was talking about memes and funny points, hearing Seungyoon’s words somehow made him feel bad. He knew better than anyone that his social skills were lacking, but he had had too many of those self-deprecating thoughts just today, so hearing it from someone else’s mouth didn’t sound very pleasant.

But anyway, he was the one asking for a favor. He knew well that Seungyoon was a professional and couldn’t just hire anyone because he asked. He could tell that since there were a million things to teach from one to ten besides just knowing how to edit videos, Seungyoon, who was looking for someone who could be put to work immediately, had been considerate enough to even call him.