Team Leader, Let’s Retrieve the Transmigrators First!

There was something strangely familiar and nostalgic about its resonance. Without realizing it, the man turned toward the voice with a dazed expression.

“Lee Jin…woo? Who’s that… Ah, m-me? That’s me, right?”

The man asked hesitantly from inside the thicket.

Lee Jinwoo.

It was a Korean name that didn’t suit his Western appearance at all, yet after hearing the man call him by it, Lee Jinwoo began to recover his memories of his previous life little by little, starting with his own name.

“Haa, yes. That’s you, Lee Jinwoo-ssi.”

Was this how it felt to hear Korean in a foreign country where no one spoke your language? Something suddenly welled up inside Lee Jinwoo.

As though bewitched, Lee Jinwoo rose from where he’d been crouching in the thicket.

“I’ve been looking for you for ages. What were you thinking, running off to a place like this?”

When he turned around, he saw a man with an expression as indifferent as his voice, dressed in simple traveling clothes beneath a robe. The man was quite tall, and his broad, squared shoulders made him look even taller.

With dark blue-black hair reminiscent of the night sky, a color uncommon in this world, the man didn’t seem lacking even compared to the Grand Duke of the North, the tallest and most well-built man Jinwoo had seen in this world.

“Uh, it’s not like I ran here because I wanted to…”

“You just had to transmigrate into an R-19 novel, so getting all the way here to find you was quite a nuisance.”

A faint trace of irritation appeared on the face of the man, Kangmu, as he recalled the hardships he’d gone through.

Only then did Lee Jinwoo become wary of the man who knew his original name and even knew that he’d transmigrated. He took a step back and spoke.

“Wait, what… are you talking about? You know that I transmigrated into a novel?”

Kangmu’s handsome face crumpled as though this were a nuisance. Anyone would react the same way after spending hundreds of years having these exchanges with the dead.

“Of course I do. How else would I know that you, Mr. Edwin, were originally Lee Jinwoo-ssi?”

While Lee Jinwoo was still lost in confusion, the soft patter of light footsteps came from the darkness.

“Iryeong-ssi, you’re late.”

Kangmu’s lips curved into a graceful arc. The smile transformed the expression that had been businesslike to the point of coldness the entire time. At the end of his gaze was Iryeong, bent over with his hands braced on his knees as he caught his breath.

“Huff, huff. You should’ve brought me down before you left.”

“I thought getting down from a tree was something you could manage by yourself, Iryeong-ssi.”

“…It’s a different story when it’s the top of a conifer about five meters tall.”

Do you think everyone’s a monster like you?

Lee Jinwoo looked over at Iryeong, who had suddenly appeared and was grumbling. With platinum-blond curly hair, green eyes, a round face, and neat, delicate features, he looked more cute than handsome.

He wore a nobleman’s casual attire embroidered in ivory and light green, with a decorative cloak stylishly draped over it.

Aside from the bits of bark clinging here and there to his chest as though he’d rolled around somewhere and his disheveled clothes, he looked every bit the young master of a respectable family.

“Um, who exactly are you two…?”

At Lee Jinwoo’s words, the two who had been bickering turned to him at the same time. Kangmu’s face hardened, strikingly different from the way he’d looked at Iryeong, and he spoke in a businesslike tone.

“We didn’t come here to leisurely exchange introductions. We only came to retrieve your soul, Lee Jinwoo-ssi.”

“Retrieve…? I’m not going back to my original world?”

“No. You already died in your original world a week ago. Your soul moved somewhere else, so there was no way your body, an empty shell, could hold out.”

“I… died? I’m dead?”

Lee Jinwoo was beginning to think the man was insane. He was standing here perfectly alive, yet this man was informing him of his death and saying it had happened a week ago, a timeframe that didn’t even make sense.

“Th-That can’t be. I’ve already lived here for half a year.”

Just as he thought he’d properly met Kangmu’s eyes, the man who kept spouting incomprehensible things, memories from the past began to stream through Lee Jinwoo’s mind like a panorama.

“Ah…”

He remembered that he’d been hospitalized with an incurable disease.

“Um, Team Leader. I’ll explain.”

Unable to listen any longer, Iryeong stepped forward. Kangmu stared at him with a look that plainly asked, Why me? What did I do? But Iryeong lightly ignored him and spoke in a voice brimming with customer-service professionalism.

“I suppose the explanation was a little lacking.”

Iryeong curved his eyes and gave Jinwoo a sympathetic smile, as though he genuinely felt sorry for him.

“I completely understand how bewildered you must be, suddenly hearing news of your death when you’re already in such a difficult situation, but you really have passed away, Lee Jinwoo-ssi. Time itself flows differently in the world of the original story and the world you originally came from.”

Unlike Kangmu, Iryeong’s gentle and kind voice calmed Lee Jinwoo somewhat, and he asked,

“…Then are you two grim reapers^[1] or something?”

Note/s:

[1] Grim reaper / 저승사자
– The Korean jeoseung saja is a psychopomp who escorts the dead to the afterlife. Unlike the Western hooded Grim Reaper with a scythe, Korean popular depictions frequently imagine reapers as officials carrying out the administrative business of death. ↩

Also, just another note about the leads’ names since the author provided the hanja. I found the contrast interesting so I wanted to share it with you guys too~

Kangmu 강무 (剛武)
剛 (강 / gang) – strong, hard, firm, unyielding, resolute
武 (무 / mu) – martial, military, warrior-like, valor, force
—Taken together, 剛武 has a strong, masculine feel, suggesting ideas like “unyielding strength” or “a resolute warrior.” It suits Kangmu’s strong and steady nature.

Iryeong 이령 (離泠)
離 (이 / ri or i) – to leave, separate, part from, be distant from, depart
泠 (령 / ryeong) – clear, cool water, coldness, or a clear and delicate sound, especially the sound of flowing water
—By contrast, 離泠 feels softer and more ethereal, evoking separation, distance, clarity, and coolness. It gives Iryeong’s name a more delicate, wistful quality.

At a thematic level, you could say:
Kangmu 剛武 – the one who remains
Iryeong 離泠 – the one who longs to depart