Team Leader, Let’s Retrieve the Transmigrators First!

“Oh dear, I can tell you suffered plenty without you even saying anything. The Team Leader can be a little extreme, but there’s a lot you can learn from him. If you stick with him, your performance numbers are practically guaranteed, so hang in there.”

“Haha… Yes.”

It had felt closer to being dragged around like a piece of luggage, but Iryeong merely laughed.

“The fact that the Team Leader postponed his vacation to take a new hire like you around means he thinks highly of your potential. I think I spent about a hundred years waiting at a desk back in my day.”

“I see.”

The subject of that damn vacation, which Kangmu had already hammered into his ears until they hurt, had now come up from Myowon too.

“Besides, you have to work for at least three hundred years before you qualify for a vacation. Team Leader Kangmu gave all his performance-reward vacations to the other team members, so this was probably going to be his first proper vacation. Up until now, the closest thing he’s taken to a vacation was spending a day or two fishing at the Samdocheon^[1]. That’s not a vacation, that’s more like taking a couple days of annual leave.”

So you have to spend even longer here than I thought before you can take a vacation…

Iryeong despaired at the thought of his own vacation, impossibly far in the future.

‘I’m already exhausted to death after a single business trip. Is Team Leader’s body made of iron or something?’

Those who belonged to the Underworld didn’t sleep, and they didn’t need to eat, so there was no need for them to rest. But the Soul Retrieval Team was different. Because they operated inside physical bodies in the worlds of original stories, they needed sufficient rest in the Underworld. Only then could they recover the energy expended on business trips.

The resulting fatigue was considerable, so the Soul Retrieval Team couldn’t help being more sensitive about vacations than the other teams.

“Even the Team Leader seemed to be having a hard time this time, so he applied for vacation, but then he postponed it because he said he’d train you, Iryeong-ssi. So hurry up and learn, build your performance numbers, and do your best.”

“Uh, yeees…”

Iryeong had no idea what exactly he was supposed to do his best at, but Myowon looked relieved as he even clenched a fist in encouragement before leaving the office.

He’d thought it might just be his imagination, but no matter how he looked at it, Iryeong couldn’t shake the feeling that Myowon had started looking much happier after ending his partnership with Kangmu and forming a new pair of his own.

Was this what it felt like to end up holding the bomb in that mortal-world game called ‘hot potato’?

Iryeong felt strangely unsettled.

“…Let’s just write the report.”

Scratching the back of his head vigorously, Iryeong walked over to his desk, which faced Kangmu’s.

Since new hires who hadn’t been on many business trips yet were also responsible for reports from other pairs, he had a mountain of reports to write.

As Iryeong worked on the paperwork while staring at his monitor, he suddenly glanced at Kangmu. Kangmu was slouched deep into his chair in a lax posture, his gaze fixed on his tablet. He didn’t look tired, but his eyes seemed vaguely bored.

‘He gave up that precious vacation just to train me?’

“Team Leader, are you going back on vacation?”

The question slipped out before Iryeong could stop himself. He couldn’t help feeling bothered that Kangmu’s vacation schedule had been disrupted because of him. Kangmu replied listlessly.

“No. I’m not going.”

“Why not? It’s a rare vacation.”

“Not in the mood anymore.”

“Do you go on vacation based on your mood? Isn’t the point to rest when you have the chance…”

Muttering to himself, Iryeong soon nodded.

Did there need to be a reason if he simply didn’t want to go?

“Well, if you don’t want to, Team Leader.”

Iryeong answered indifferently and filled in the blanks on the report form open on his computer. Taka, taka. The pleasant sound of typing occasionally echoed through the office, occupied only by the two of them.

The Soul Retrieval Team, which Iryeong belonged to, had far more paperwork than the Reaper^[2] Team, whose roster automatically listed the dead souls they were supposed to collect. That was because the unusual circumstance of transmigrating into an original work wasn’t something just any soul experienced. It required a special trigger, such as a reincarnation truck, and they also had to assess whether the trigger itself was appropriate.

On top of that, thanks to the dramatic expansion of Soul Rights, more transmigrators were choosing to remain in the worlds of original stories. In other words, the number of souls they had to continuously manage until eventual retrieval was piling up.

“I was really planning to go have some fun in the mortal world this time.”

The regret seeping from the voice of someone who claimed he wasn’t going grated on Iryeong’s nerves.

Note/s:

[1] Samdocheon / 삼도천
– An East Asian Buddhist river associated with the journey of the dead. ↩

[2] Reaper / 차사
– Chasa traditionally means an official messenger or agent dispatched on someone’s orders. In Korean afterlife imagery, it can refer to agents who escort the dead. Calling them Chasa/Reaper Team highlights the joke that traditional emissaries of death have become ordinary government employees. ↩