Team Leader, Let’s Retrieve the Transmigrators First! - Chapter 4.1
If Kangmu regretted missing his vacation that much, couldn’t he have left Iryeong’s training to his former partner, Myowon-sunbae, and gone? Or, if he was absolutely determined to train Iryeong himself, couldn’t he have done it after coming back from vacation?
It sounded as though he were deliberately saying all this for Iryeong to hear, and Iryeong felt irrationally irritated.
“I heard last time you spent a day or two leisurely dipping your feet in the Samdocheon and fishing.”
Iryeong left out the part Myowon had tipped him off about, namely that Kangmu had picked a fight with the reapers escorting souls across the Samdocheon at the time. Kangmu tossed the tablet he’d been looking at onto the desk and pressed hard between his brows as he spoke.
“Exactly. That’s why I wanted to spend this one like a proper vacation.”
“Aha. So I heard you were planning to go to the mortal world this time.”
“I heard the mortal world’s actually worth visiting these days.”
Trips to the mortal world were one of the Underworld’s newer employee benefits.
Underworld employees who vacationed in the mortal world were given temporary physical bodies, allowing them to live like people in the mortal world. Ultimately, it was a preview of the reincarnation that souls working in the Underworld would experience after completing their terms of service.
It was an ingenious incentive the Ten Kings[1] had devised after deliberation to improve the work performance of Underworld personnel, who were prone to becoming indolent or losing sight of their goals and turning dark over the course of their long terms.
It was a policy that went beyond dangling a carrot in front of a horse and actually let the horse take a bite. Their scheme to work the horse even harder once it knew how good the carrot tasted was obvious, but since reincarnation was the ultimate goal of Underworld employees, many secretly longed to experience the mortal world.
In any case, that was still a story from the distant future for Iryeong, so he wasn’t particularly interested. But he couldn’t exactly ignore his superior while Kangmu was talking, so he offered an appropriate response.
“Really?”
“Of course. They say the mortal world these days is different from the old days. It changes so fast that every day is different. The Team Leader of Reaper Team 1 said it’s quite fun, living like humans, going around to good restaurants and trying this and that. He also said that if you spend about half a human lifespan there, it genuinely feels like you’ve reincarnated.”
If vacation lasted not one or two years, but half a human lifespan, it certainly was tempting. Wasn’t that basically a complete simulated reincarnation experience?
“If it’s such a fun vacation, why aren’t you going? Couldn’t you just get yourself back in the mood?”
Taka, taka. Iryeong continued typing diligently with his eyes fixed on the monitor. As a result, his reply to Kangmu lacked any real sincerity.
“How could I possibly be in the mood if I left you behind, Iryeong-ssi?”
The sound of typing abruptly stopped. Iryeong took his eyes off the monitor and stared at Kangmu, who had turned his chair completely around to face the window. Even the man’s straight, broad back looked irritating as he lounged around after saying something so utterly ridiculous.
“You said the mortal world’s that much fun… Just go, please.”
“I only thought about it for a little while. Everyone kept saying it was fun. But what am I supposed to do there alone?”
“Do you really have that little faith in me?”
“Hmm…”
“…You aren’t even denying it.”
Iryeong imagined tying Kangmu, who was spinning his chair half a turn this way and that while admiring the view of the Hwangcheon[2] in front of him, to a pillar on a sightseeing ship bound for the mortal world and forcibly sending him on vacation.
It did make him feel a little better.
Of course, it wasn’t something he could actually do.
“I’d worry about you, and I’d miss you.”
“Team Leader, have you forgotten that time passes differently in the mortal world and the Underworld? Even if you spent a year in the mortal world, it would only be half a day in the Underworld.”
“Even for that half a day, I’d keep worrying when I thought about our new hire struggling away. You took that long just to get down from one tree. How could I not worry?”
It was a five-meter tree. And my stats were basically no different from a human’s.
Not wanting to make pathetic excuses, Iryeong kept his mouth shut.
“Haa… I’m sure.”
Let’s stop talking to him. Shaking his head, Iryeong buried his face in his monitor again.
As Iryeong’s hands moved faster, the clacking of the keyboard gradually sped up as well.
“I’ll look forward to seeing what sort of extravagant vacation you spend, then, Iryeong-ssi.”
“Yes, yes. I’ll have more fun than anyone else. I’ll go to the mortal world or wherever.”
“You’ve still got three hundred years before you qualify for vacation, so I imagine the plans you make in the meantime will be quite grand.”
Note/s:
[1] Ten Kings / 시왕
– The ten great kings who judge the dead in the Underworld: King Jingwang, King Chogang, King Songje, King Ogwan, King Yeomra, King Byeonseong, King Taesan, King Pyeongdeung, King Dosi, and King Odo Jeollyun.
– Korean Buddhist art traditionally depicts the deceased appearing before these kings for judgment, with King Yeomra among them. The novel recasts this religious hierarchy as the senior administration governing the Underworld. ↩
[2] Hwangcheon (황천 / 黃泉)
– Literally “Yellow Springs,” a traditional East Asian term for the realm of the dead or the Underworld. In this novel, it is reimagined as a literal waterway flowing through the Underworld. ↩
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