reap what you sow (M) | youngjo
— Positioned as the lead detective in a case of over fifty missing citizens, you’re gifted notes from someone named Ravn. With death all around and people’s lives in your hands, you’re forced to pair up with the world’s most deadly myth: the Grim Reaper, in order to solve the case.
DETAILS — [ 18+ | drabble | 7k ] PAIRING — reaper! youngjo x detective! gender-neutral! reader GENRES — grim reaper! au, strangers to lovers! au, crime, horror, romance, angst, supernatural WARNINGS — death, murder (serial killings), blood, autopsies, weapons (knives), dangerous situations, swearing, talk of life after death, corrupt corporations and authorities, manipulation, & dimension shifting. NOTICE: this story has very graphic details and dark themes. while being made as story-building, they are still heavy topics. please read at your own risk.
prologue.
Over fifty missing bodies. People had been issued missing, one after another over months at a time, and yet not a single sign of them had come up in the search parties. Not a fingerprint, not a discarded piece of fabric, and much less common but still possible, not even a note.
How do so many people fall off the face of the earth without a single sign, you might ask? Well, for one, they don't.
The chief had clicked your office door shut, the blank walls only condescending as you sat with an equally blank mind. Staring down at the array of files on your desk, glaring over at the cork board covered in photographs of all the victims; from an insider's perspective, you could tell there was no common link. Each person stood different. Identical victims were more common in serial cases. Some type of link, string, figure of similarity that could be caught by the naked eye, or at least a professional's.
Yet there was nothing. Their lives were different, some rich, some poor, some old, some young. Every arrow pointed in a different direction, which rendered you clueless to a motive. But it assured one thing: this was a serial killer—one on a rampage through the city, and that was most dangerous.
Fingers pressed to your temple, you were truly out of your element. Not new to the world of crime or kills, this case brought your knowledge to a dead end. No start, no evidence, no clues, no task, and zero directions. What were you to do here?
Palms brushing against the vanilla folders opened thrice in one session with the chief of the department, you were on your last limb. You had nothing to tell the families struggling with pain and loss, no words for those locking their doors with added bolts at night from the fear that they were next. It was human nature to be scared, but what could bring someone to cause such chaos?
The white letter hidden beneath the piles of folders held all the answers seering your mind. Plastic gloves pulled over the skin of your hands in order to not tamper with evidence, the printed name on the back of the envelope stumped you.
Ravn, the name written in black ink dried to the enclosed letter as you ripped open the lid and pulled out the single, folded printer paper. You could see the same ink littering the inside, could make out single letters within the words, but nothing could have prepared you for what was written inside.
"The bodies have been in my safe keeping. They drop like flies in a window, their cuts and bruises fresh. But there are too many, too fast. I cannot keep up with them under these conditions. Something must be done, someone must be stopped. Come alone." Written in calligraphy, the alias named Ravn cut their words sharp until the letter read straight to the point.
Here was what you had been wishing for. Bodies of the victims, lacerations that can be transcribed as signatures, links that could bring the killer forth in a matter of time. All from one donor, the strange one called Ravn.
An abandoned mill's address read at the bottom of the page, one long shut down. Possibly a place harboring the so-called Ravn holding onto the bodies. Nothing like this had ever been registered in a case before. With everything on the line, you couldn't hold back the weightlessness of your body rising from the desk to escape to the destination.
So much death, and not a single red flag in your mind. Anyone would have seen what was ahead of them long before they stepped into that old, wooden building. Black ink written from a feather, harbored bodies held onto for a reason, words written in such a way. He was right before your face: death, but you were too far gone to realize.
one.
The moonlight emitted shadows as you walked. You couldn't ignore the matching frame to your motions, limbs swing in tandem with your own. But it was fluttering, almost translucent, and encased in small flame-like patterns. Fetched and followed, it was what brought you within the abandoned building.
Creaky metal beams, decaying wood, and shattered windows. Had you been with a partner, they would be advising you to leave right this moment. But the clatter in the distance, one room brighter than the rest: it kept your feet from moving in the opposite direction.
His back was to you, huddled over the cold body of a victim. Almost stiff, the lace on the trims of his shirt were your last concern as you noticed the sharp knife in his hand poking around a gash from a blunt object.
He didn't need to see you, it was clear he sensed you coming into the building from long before you made an appearance behind him. "I don't usually ask for help from the authorities." He claimed as if he was embarrassed, but his hands didn't shake like that of a nervous person.
It was only when your eyes met your full surroundings that a gasp left between your lips and the man spun on his heels. The deceased were all around, displayed on operating tables and rolling carts in the same way a morgue is set up. It was obvious they had been here for a long while, the smell slipping up your nostrils nearly making you faint.
"Sorry!" He moved fast on his feet, running his index finger through an open jar of vapor rub. In an instant, his gentle hand was cupping your cheek as the opposite swiped the gel at the edge of your nose. The smell subsided, your eyes watering from the minty scent now stronger to your senses. "Takes a while to get used to."
"You're used to the scent of death?"
His eyes shifted from your face, smile fading as his sight caught the floor. A gentle brush of a towel to his finger, and he was headed back towards the victim that originally had his attention.
"Please excuse this. All of it, in fact." His voice was shallow, hidden in the howls of the city floating through the cracks in the windows. "Usually I work alone."
"Are you Ravn?" The question seemed stupid slipping off your tongue now. The man had accompinated you as if you were non-threatening, even made physical contact with you, and now you questioned that he was the right person.
"In your line of work—" his sentence sounded condescending. "—don't you usually ask questions right off the bat?"
"I was a little more concerned with the scent of the multiple bodies around us right now." Admittedly, you were already in over your head.
His head tilted, eyesight watching your frame move around from where he stood to the other side of the victim. They were cold, pale, and lifeless: and yet you wished they would speak of what truly happened. Ravn was knee deep in the wrong side of the situation, and appeared as the blank space in a detailed painting.
"I am Ravn," he nodded, but kept his sight on the body before him. "And this looks bad." Aside from his lips forming a short-timed pout, his face stood still. "These people—" he sighed within his words, but even he couldn't explain this much." "—I found them like this."
His position got darker by the second.
"Every laceration, the death sites, and these victims: they're all at random." His cold, black eyes found yours, your nod making his lips run thin.
"This is what I've been working with this whole time now." You sighed. "It's all out of rage. Wrong place, wrong time. Makes me ill just thinking about it, and more standing in the middle."
The man nodded, eyes filling with remorse. Ravn, riddled with insight on the case and set dead in the middle without your recognition, seemed to understand your position on a personal level.
"You and I both." Another short smile, and the silver tools left the body of the victim.
They were recent, name floating into the precinct not long before the letter sat on your desk. It was odd timing, and even worse seeing the poor person in reality other than their name alone.
"My job requires me to work fast, you see?" Head aimed equally with your face as his arms opened straight, palms on the cold counter below the body, he spoke slowly. "Snapping fingers, fast."
Again, you knew this all too well. Lives depend on time, and your entire job revolves around working on a timer.
"This serial killer, it's backed me up so much I can no longer keep up. It's costing me my position." His job, something you should have questioned the moment he mentioned it, appeared far more important than yours by the mention of it.
"Then, what are you doing with these bodies?" Peering around the room, a shiver snuck up your spine. It was fuller than a hospital at its busiest hour, and still had room for more. "Why are you holding onto them? And why are you the one taking them?"
For the duration of the case, no bodies had been stored in your own morgue at the police station. Night by night, people would vanish from the city only to never be seen again. Almost like the killer was right under your nose the entire time, and could go invisible.
"They're here where the killer would last check." Ravn's voice wavered more now than ever, the vibrations seeping into your own nerves. "They're safe with me."
An explanation, why they went missing twice in a row: once alive and another dead, was finally given.
"And who are you, exactly?"
The man pressed his hands down so hard on the metal table that his knuckles turned white from loss of proper circulation, his eyes scanning your serious face. He seemed to not believe in your question, and was answering only to entertain himself over your response.
"A colleague." He said plainly, hands regaining blood flow as he rose them in the air and rubbed at his wrists. "A necessity."
"Then why do you work alone?"
Your question made him still, brows creasing. "You and I are the same, remember?"
"I had the choice of joining a team, or turning over the case." Your mouth moved smoothly, but he was straightforward.
"My occupation is purely solo." His eyes gleamed in the moonlight, allowing you to see the small, brown specks fluttering within his irises. "As I said, we're on the same case. Only we're in separate jurisdictions. I've had run of my side, but you seem to have stuttered."
It was a dig, but you stood your ground.
"I am a last resort to your operation?"
"Plan, more so."
Your fists balled tightly, recreating the whites of his knuckles on your own. Sensing your anger, his throat cleared and his eyes grew soft. "I am letting you in now. Trust me, this is far past my rules and regulations. My job is truly on the line now, as I assume yours is too considering I am your first lead in so long."
Your growl was so under your breath that even you hardly caught it, but he still smiled lightly. His hands stretched, index finger pointing down at the victim below. It was there, and you had missed it. Something unseen by eyes before being claimed by Ravn, an "X" was marked on the wrist of the victim.
Your eyes blinked out of fear and recollection, fingers fiddling the notebook out of your bag's pocket to re-read your own notes. Something new, and a second break to the case in one night with the help of your eclectic partner.
"A link—" you whispered, bewildered.
"They're on all of them. It's only when I touched them that I noticed it. Is it in your notes?" A single shake of your head was all the response he needed. "Write it down." He quietly advised, the watch on his wrist moving from his peripheral to the front of his face.
"I must take my leave." He sighed, looking at you through the long, deep locks of his hair.
"L-Leave?"
"It's my work shift. I still have common-day work." He nodded with his own words, taking short steps backwards towards the door. "Please, stay as long as you need to. Don't turn them in or else all will be lost."
"I-I, uhm." Your stuttering was cut short, the frame of the tall man exiting the room with a small smirk on his lips.
"Take your time." His voice echoed longer in your mind as he left, hands pulling the bag from your back and setting the case files on the desk opposite his.
The room was cold, your coat doing nothing to calm the neverending shivers quaking through your form. How could Ravn stand this for so long? You didn't understand.
"Found bodies. Matching X's on wrists. Common links coming abroad. Ravn?" Your notes seemed slimmer than what you had before. So out of context, and painful to read such short descriptions of such a deep case. "A forensics team would be delightful right now." You chimed to yourself.
The man was more eccentric than anyone you had ever met. Usually, people within the case were there all along. They wouldn't show up a quarter of the way in, and they most definitely wouldn't be so vague about their positions or knowledge.
Ravn, the man made you shiver again. His desk sat empty-seated, and way too easy. Closing in on it with the wheels of the chair under you guiding you, your fingers caught the first handle of the top drawer. Breathing unsteady, hands shaking, it was just what you hoped for.
A letter titled "Notice of Grim Corporations." followed by a list of reasonings and ending with a final sentence explaining his soon-to-be resignation. "Failed to show up on time. Inserted self into cases higher than his position. Went against words of superiors. Involved in an altercation with a representative."
Ravn had racked up more indications of worry for you, and he wasn't even in the room.
The page slipped back where you found it, not an inch off, and your brows didn't unfurrow on the short ride back over to your desk. The wheels of the chair squeaked, but your mind raced a thousand miles an hour.
Ravn, the victims, talk of the serial killer, a corporation, a resignation from a list of reasons, and a representative. It was all too much to take in at once. Thoughts speeding to a stand-still, it was one mere image going through your frontal cortex that halted your world.
Your feet slid across the floor with dread, the name scribbled onto the tag at the end of the empty cart being lifted by your fingertips. It was new. Certification, the name not on your missing victim list, and a sudden realization of where all the arrows had been pointing this entire time.
The man, the being more-like-it, was farther than you could comprehend. And he knows who's going to die next.
two.
Notes jumbled, mind scrambled, and cold tiles beneath your shoes: his voice brought your back to straighten out. Ravn, almost a shadow in your peripheral vision, walked into the room with blood dripping from his fingertips.
“Ravn?” Almost tossed up from your seat by your own strength, your shivering form before the man didn’t make a single difference to him. Once aligned, like he had everything in his mind to figure about this case—he walked with a hunch until his back pressed into the torn leather chair of his desk with a huff.
A deep purple bruise formed on his cheek, appearing painful but ignored by him as you moved in closer. His dark hair fell over his forehead, covering his eyes and making him seem more of a cloud than he already was.
“What in the hell is any of this?” Your voice was shattered, anxiety in your lungs as your bones shook. Almost over the edge, your mind. “Blood. Why is there blood?” Questioning his appearance seemed to overlap the racing accusations in the front of your mind before they slipped out of your mouth. “Am I working with the killer?”
His smile was forbidden, seen only for a glance, and his eyes held as colder than before.
“What a backwards question.” His mouth shuttered at the sight of his own hands, palms to the ceiling and a stricken expression worn on his face. “Don’t get the wrong idea so early into our partnership.”
A scoff at the back of your throat meshed into your speech. “Am I meant to ignore the fact that you know who is next to go? To die, their name meaningless and just another on the list?”
“You finally looked around.” The tone in his voice was bored, but his eyes glistened in light of the sky turning dawn outside.
“How do you know these things?”
“Take a look for yourself.” His voice was gritty, making you spin slowly on your heels. Pivoted, shivering, and more afraid of him than ever.
The new victim’s body laid just as still as the others. Drained of color already, cold and filled with seams of the evil doings towards them. Your hand couldn’t muffle the scream leaving you, Ravn’s sudden appearance behind you and his hand at your lower back making you shift away from the scene and out into the dark hallway.
“Disheveled clothing ripped and bloodied, just as always. It’s like a continuum, this horrid work.”
Zoned out, your legs carried you back inside, but the dreadful scene was no easier to deal with. Ravn was so calm, his notebook now in his large hands being written into with the similar tactics done to the poor victim.
An ‘X’ on the wrist, another body, the strange man scribbling the forensics into his notebook, and the sun rising above. Clueless, once more, wasn’t the correct word to pinpoint where your mind was at. This was a three-ring-circus, and you were just the audience.
“The killer always wears so many clothes. I’ve never seen their face, only watching them do the last of their work and make an escape. Strength is an understatement, but they don’t seem so threatening as they leave. How is that?” Pen against his bottom lip, he thought aloud.
Ravn now letting you into his head was almost as confusing as your notes. Messy, baffling, and insane-sounding.
Pacing back to your seat and falling down like a heavy rock descending a mountain, you wanted it all to pause. A recap of what you know and don’t know would be helpful, but with a rushed case like this—impossibility was the top lead.
Head in your hands and sight trying to block out the dim lamp on the desk, you felt the puff of air before you smelled his deep cologne. Ravn, positioned on the peak of your desk with his feet still solely on the ground, spoke from his gut. “Been a while since you got a good night’s rest, huh?” He watched you with dark eyes as you tried to not leer out from exhaustion, the adrenaline abating in your veins from the chain of events.
“How can I sleep when more people die in one week than I can count on both hands? What do I even do?”
Sorrowful, his eyes beady and attentive on your form. It was almost like a mirage you awaited to see, his speckling sight staring into your own eyes. It almost meshed the sound of your phone ringing in your pocket, the green button sliding to answer only to be blared with the shrieking sound of your chief’s voice. Your location was asked for, but you didn’t even know how to form a single word in response before he clicked the call away. “Stat”, his voice claimed.
Ravn’s arm caught you by surprise, the tight hold on your wobbling form giving you the idea that you rose to leave too quickly. His face so odd, strange and gloating, broken at the sound of your voice. “What is it?”
“I can take you to the killer.” Tongue twisted, voice caught and silenced in your throat, and a scarred expression on your face made him continue. “But this is going to be difficult.”
“What part hasn’t been difficult so far?” You huffed, his head slightly nodding in agreement.
“You’re going to have to watch and not make a move. Can you do that?”
Sheer perplexity, he was asking you to not do your job. Like the matter at hand was smaller if you just played nice, and things would all work out in the end. His choice of words was sickening, but made sense in hindsight.
“You have to let me work. You have to let them work.”
“You want me to watch this serial killer take someone’s life?” Your voice was pained, his calming face making it narrow out into disbelief. “You want me to w-watch someone die? I can’t.”
“I-I’m sorry.” His stutter caught you off guard more than the tears appearing to fill his eyes. “But they’ll already be dead.”
three.
The cork board was filled with the same faces you had seen lying on rolling cards and operation tables, relentless and restless in your bones. White board filled with new bullet-points, all too confusing to consider but too important to erase and rewrite. Red string connected so few things taken notice of. The alluring man’s name written in calligraphy—larger than others, the Grim Corporation in a smaller font beneath, and the serial killer framed in a boxed further down. It was like a roadmap to a place you had never, and would never, travel to. So many confusing trails, dead-end cul de sacs, and places not often gone.
The aggressive turn of the door handle startled you, the black dry-erase marker in your hand flying forward and leaving a thick line through Ravn’s name on the board. He cleared his throat, your chief at your back stunned into stillness and a quick silence.
“Chief?” Your voice was small, but enough to get into his ears. The grimace on his face was so horrid like he was seeing the face of an old enemy and didn’t know how to truly react. His hand rose upwards, flat-palm in your sight as a tell to give him a second. His eyes shifted over the board in high speed, pupils dilating directly at the visual of Ravn’s name written and added into the case.
“This is—” he begins, voice so groggy. “—is y-you are in way over your head, dear. So far. Like home-run ball fleeting from the field into oncoming traffic, far over.”
You were unable to mention your confusion at his reaction before he spoke again, cutting away at your voice as he always does.
“This is so much larger than just you. Please—and I beg you for this, give the case over to a team. Before you lose your head, or more importantly—your life.”
“Trust me, I am neck deep now, sir.”
His head turned at your calm response, brows furrowed and eyes blood-shot. The man that had overseen the entire case since the first body hit the cement and lost its soul; he, too, had been in too deep throughout this entire process.
“I am on the right track now. So close, I can feel them breathing on the back of my neck.” Your off-putting metaphor was too on point, the chief shaking his head in worry but not able to speak his reasonings. “I have a chance. To put these people and their families to rest, that's all I am working for now.”
“In over your head.” Was his last words, your body returning to your desk only for sleep to finally pull you in.
In nightmares, your control is so little. Even lucid dreaming has no real hold on the horrors of the mind when the body rests. That is how being the authority when a killer is on the loose feels. Watching, waiting, finding every little puzzle piece to get the big picture. You were originally working from such a small bit of the image until Ravn leapt in and gave you all four corners. Each piece was something new, riveting and keeping you on the edge of your seat; but still you had such large middle parts to configure. Only this time, the pieces alongside the picture look nothing like the image being made.
Eyes peeling open to be met with darkness, it was your basic survival skills to stand up straight and feel the brick wall at your back. An alleyway cascaded with nothing but moonlight just as the abandoned building had been the night before, you shivered from the cold air of midnight. The office you fell asleep in had faded away and left you standing in a new place: a new puzzle piece.
Ravn stood, dark and tall, in a way that was so ominous. Like seeing a ghost for the first time after years of non-belief, a shadow crept in on him. Moving slower one second and faster the next, your heart thumped in your ears and mouth couldn’t form the words fast enough.
“Ravn!”
Faint, diminishing with the same wind that carried it, he heard you. A solid, seamless voice in his ears he had grown fond of brought him to duck and miss the assailant. But it wasn’t enough to protect him, the otherworldly bits seeping inside of your own surroundings. A solid fist to his gut, and Ravn was breathless. Small sounds, grunts of pain and eyes narrowing in on the figure before him; this was where things turned.
“Working with the cops now, are you?” Only in horror movies could you hear something so disturbing, yet intriguing enough to continue and absorb it all no matter how scared you were. “Have you sunk that low, dead one?”
“I’m not dead yet.” Response tired but there, Ravn shook in his shoes and stood up straight.
“Oh—but you will be. Your magic is nothing compared to the world I have creat—” A sudden halt in the killer’s voice made you blink rapidly, a single touch of Ravn’s hand to their shoulder silencing them. Your body felt faint watching them sink to their knees, an ill appearance in the visual alone.
His form turned, Ravn’s eyes finding you behind them. No matter how shallow you felt within the case, what little you brought to the table: Ravn gave you something to work with. His palm floated over the killer, their body visibly heavier until the final sight of them was too obvious. Face like stone, eyes open and staring at the sky, and chest still: death was finally upon the bringer of chaos, but at a cost.
Ravn’s long legs bent at the knee, his lips just outside the shell of the killer’s ears as he whispered something to them. Eyes so sad, world so still, the fluttering black specks and dark cloud surrounding them took him away in an instant and left you standing alone with the one you had been searching for.
Finally able to feel your limbs, you maneuvered to the carcass in a fast motion. Cuffs on your belt pulled and latched onto them out of precaution, it was too eerie of a surrounding to not believe in their death. Even the call over your radio didn’t sound real until others showed up at the scene and witnessed the serial killer at your feet.
Still in time, black marks covered their every vein and a painful expression lied on their face. So ill-looking, everyone hesitated to lift them onto a backboard and begin to take them in. A mattress was no comfort, no words leaving their lips in the duration of their holding for questioning. And no matter how much you pried, requested for any sign of remorse, the only true sight of what they were was when a smirk rose on their lips and their eyes went dead.
Unknown causes. That was the label on their page of the case. You wanted to walk outside into the dead of the night, pull at your hair and scream your lungs out, but even you couldn’t wrap your head around the situation. Drained, overseen and underseen all at once, your attempts to bring them back went unheard. No adrenaline shot could revive someone so evil, and no words spoken by them could erase what had been done.
The lonesome feeling of the world growing colder made the sight of the smoke enwrapping your form seem normal now. Same as Ravn had gone, you found your vision clouded until he sat before you. Good as new, fine and ripe; but you, sick and distorted.
Eyes closing and peeling back open to find him smiling, the first thing you saw was the name tag clipped into his black shirt. It read “Youngjo.” as if he had a name within a name, your startled response seemingly rehearsed in his head.
“No one ever gets used to this.” He claimed, the sound of his voice calming you at once.
You felt your body grow sore the more you sat up in the chair, Ravn staring at you in concern before pulling at your hand to help you sit all the way up.
“That was a nasty fall. I’m glad you didn’t hit your head.” Your brows furrowing made him nod, recollection of the sudden exhaustion making you pass out just as the cloud took over now refilling your mind. You were so cold before, now wrapped with his blazer and warming up by the minute. “I’m only used to taking out bad humans, so please excuse my physicality.”
“B-Bad humans?” Your palm felt the knot growing on your head. The displeased look in Ravn’s eyes clearly was for himself as he went on, but you couldn’t help but notice how his hands ran along his legs like he was holding back from reaching for you.
Your sense of reasoning had been dismissed for the case, overtaken by the need to find one person and end all the terror around you. It didn’t hit you until now, how much you had learned but ignored.
There are limits to humanity. Those who trespass on the edge of insanity are considered lunatics, but they play a part within the circle of life. Someone loses their meaning of the world, goes out on a limb to create madness, and sanctifies all that matters. They make people hold their children closer, marry the one they love, and turn the volume up higher on the TV when watching the news.
The ones who bring fear into the hearts of the innocent, and leave everyone wondering what would drive someone so mad: where exactly do they come from?
"If I told you I don't fear those I work for, I would be lying." Youngjo began, his teeth almost chattering with every word. "Corruption, chaos, and limitless communications have always been a part of your world, but they're too outlandish to understand—aren't they?"
What he was saying confused you, nonetheless.
"That's because their doing is otherworldly—our world." His teeth clenched together and hit tone got deeper as he went on, but you could see the worry in his eyes. "This is their doing. The killer on the street. The representative of their business."
Representative. It has come up a few times now.
"Their hire is to bring in numbers. But this killer, more serial now than most, has gone way out of the league meant for jurisdiction." You wanted him to bite into the true fuel that had him running, but the truth itself scared you to your core.
"So I was brought in. Severe backup, I guess." He seemed almost disappointed in himself. "And for once, I couldn't do my job alone."
And now, you.
"It was our job to stop this serial killer. But it was my job to make sure they got their penance. That is our only difference."
“Y-you mean to tell me, I really was in over my head.”
“And out of your element. As you are here, now.” He chuckled at your disposition, but kept his eyes warm as they looked over you.
“And where am I, exactly?”
His office had sucked you in, looking almost more alive than the man himself. It took all your might to understand that you were both just two people in the position of work, doing the job you’re meant to do, but getting caught in the crossfire. His world inhabited the same as yours, and fate of the worst brought your paths to cross.
“Welcome to Grim Corporations.”
four.
“What are you?”
“Do I really need to explain?” Ravn, now Youngjo, had been sat on the edge of his desk staring at your disturbed looking form for a matter of minutes now. Processing, worrying, feeling betrayed and used, all of it was in your eyes now.
“You’re It, aren’t you?” You asked in a slow tone, his brow rising in an obvious way and paired with the same smirk he flashed before. “The grim reaper.”
“There are many of us, actually. This entire corporation was created to give life to the dead.”
Perspective, it makes up everything. You were simply a pawn, a small speck in the large image of the puzzle. For once you understood: you had never been the one putting it together.
“I was a ‘rushed death’, as they call it.” He began, mouth moving like he was ready to pull back his own curtains and reveal his real world. “As a service for my good deeds, I was gifted a position here.”
“Life after death exists.” Hushed and meant to be in your own head, he nodded.
“My downside was that I was never truly good in life, either. I stole to survive, worked my way up the food chain of my corrupt job to make ends meet, and never thought of what was outside of my own eyes. But I never harmed anyone, and that seemed to open the door for me in the afterlife.”
You listened like this was a novel, the personal diary of the man you had come to know but not understand. Ravn, a mirage, became a full blown figure as he showed you Youngjo.
“Even though I never brought anyone any dismay, it truly felt like I did when I took this job. It was a second chance I believed didn’t exist, and I was stupid to take it.”
“Why is that?”
“Because the cost was more than moving on. I didn’t know how I obtained the job, let alone the truth behind it. Death was around me all the time, it was all I grew to know.” Youngjo, tortured by life even after death, found solace in seeing you exist. “You were the first real soul I had come across in so long. I was so grateful to find you and make you a partner for my last case.”
“But you gave me everything.” You halted him in place, confusion sending you back into the seat in wonder. “The bodies, the forensics, the locations—even the killer.”
“Truth be told—you gave me them. I saw them all while working through you. The human range of emotions are a powerful thing. Every gut feeling, worry, sense of losing humanity while human: it guided me to finding the killer long before he got the true kill. But sadly, my job doesn’t allow me to get between a representative and the dead.”
There was that word again. His anthology pulled at your brain and made you think: just what were they to this operation? Crazy people given a task to go along with? Create the chaos necessary to cause death and hysterics?
And then it hit you. His specifics on getting “between” had been there before. The resignation letter wrote it in a proper way, you just didn’t have the correct example to connect the dots.
“You have gotten between them before. The killer, they were sent out by the corporation?”
“Do you really think an innocent human is capable of going so mad so easily? You said it yourself, you couldn’t believe someone would cause such chaos.” His point was made more than once, and he even reclaimed your own to help you understand. They were the cracks between the pieces, the ones overlooked but needed to fit the puzzle together.
“But t-this is so messed up.”
“It’s the way of the universe. People have died since the beginning of time, we’ve just been there to collect their souls and guide them into the next life.”
“They don’t always make it to that new life.”
“The mind of a detective.” He chuckled, crossing his legs and holding up his chin with his palm in focus. “No, some are forced to join the corporation as reapers. Simple transaction. Some just can’t go through, can they? If they all did, how full would the other side truly be?”
He didn’t have to say it, but it was on the tip of his tongue. That forcefulness was immorally done, Youngjo’s quick death a symbol from one of the released serial killers sent out by the same business that recruited him. They needed new reapers to fill in old positions, so they used death at their expense. A horrible cycle, and one ever-turning.
It was only when the familiar scent of coffee in your nostrils startled you back into your reality later that day that you really grasped it all. Your chief busting inside your office and barking an explanation of the bodies being found at the old mill meshed into your deep breath of reality. The case was in closing, and all those lost were moving in the circle to move along or gain a new position.
Relief rushed through you despite how terrible things are in reality. Out of your control, your world returns to a small circle, and your body leaning back against your chair to cradle your head and bring you rest.
And rest finally came. Weeks of sleeping so hard you woke with energy, worked at a good pace, and found tranquility in reminding yourself that the outside world remains just as fucked up as your own.
The dip in the mattress made your heart skip, his scent floating back into your nose with a deep breath. Happiness in your mind, his frown swallowed your excitement. His term finished, he was finally out, but not all stories have happy endings.
“When a reaper is resigned, they are free to rest peacefully.” He spoke lowly, taking his time to explain.
“That’s a good thing, right?”
For the first time, real tears dripped down. Warm against your thumb as you held his face, his voice was so small that it almost didn’t sound like his own. “That means I can’t see you again until you die.”
epilogue.
The eyes staring back at you were so beady and filled with love. Youngjo had seen the ins and outs of life time and time again, yet he was so stunned by you. Someone so brave in a cruel universe only catering to pain and chaos. He could only smile as he cried from his attachment to you.
His own hand rose to your face, thumb now mimicking the circles you made on his cheek. He could touch you without any real harm, not send you to sleep or make you worry. He can’t kill you just by thinking about it, and that to him was most freeing. Lips closing in on your own in a deep kiss, feeling him pull away from you was most dreadful.
But again, the world works in a circle. You watched his eyes grow estranged, a scroll appearing from thin air as he skimmed over the words written. “Something was written smaller than anything else in my contract.” He begins. “I was tailored in so fast I didn’t think it was important, so I just signed so I wouldn’t leave yet.”
“What was written?” You whispered, watching him contort into pure bliss as he reread the small font.
In the smallest letters drawn in calligraphy just as he writes, he read: “In addition to the option of rest, another life will be stored for the soul’s use after their term if another good deed has been met.” His words stopped, a sob breaking through his voice. “A good deed?”
He sighed, well knowing that his first life was nothing but mundane and spite of survival. The tasks done were resourceful to him now, but they were never defined as a good deed. It was clear, so clear, that he sees himself as evil.
“You brought people to rest, souls in the afterlife and families living alike.” Your eyes watered in tandem with his, faces mere inches from one another. “And you saved my job. This case was all I had, my last chance. That’s why I was so adamant to solve it. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have the chance to help anyone again. And you helped me.”
The scroll turned golden right before your two sets of eyes, the man before you shining bright. The thick lace of darkness that had been above him for so long lifted, healed right under your sight. Life was replenished to him as if he had never gone in the first place. “I’m not evil?”
“You never were to begin with, Ravn.”