7 | Let me introduce you to my party people

Why does everything in my body hurt?

Why is it so lit here?

Why do I hear those many voices?

In conclusion, why the hell am I lying on a hospital bed, with this many doctors around me whispering to each other, in a room so lighted it gives me a headache, because somehow, my body can feel pain now?

"Can so—" I can't say anything more because of my dry throat, when I don't even feel thirsty.

But when I try to raise a finger to point at the water glass standing next to me, I end up screaming in pain, with every muscle hurting me so much. Fortunately, one of the doctors notices and rushes to raise me slowly and help me drink it.

"Can someone tell me what's happening?" I manage to articulate with trouble moving my whole mouth without wincing because of my clicking jaw joints sending me tremors of pain.

Despite my best efforts, none of the doctors seem to be in a hurry to give me answers. They keep talking with one another and take notes, glancing at me everytime they punctuate their sentences, incomprehensible because of the ringing in my ears.

"One at a time, please..." I mumble, trying but failing not to sound rude.

"You were involved in an accident." The moment the gray-haired woman with her lab coat who says that to me enters the room, I understand she's the boss among them given how everybody stopped whispering to bury their noses to their notebooks. "You were not in a critical condition when you arrived, so it's not surprising to see you're already awake."

"Huh? But, ma'am, the patient was—" when one of the young-looking doctors tries to interject, another one with more wrinkles on his face grabs his arm to stop him from talking.

But he's already drawn his boss' attention.

She slowly turns his head to peer at him, her face barely moving an inch as she starts talking in a controlled voice. "Mister Choi... if you have something to say, please, go ahead."

Mister Choi looks to the other doctors, seemingly unsure whether he should continue his sentence or not. When the one grabbing his arm turns his head the other way around, letting his coat go, he clears his throat and starts stuttering a bit. "It's just that... the patient was in a critical condition. She... she died in the ambulance! We brought her out of the morgue—"

"What? Are you saying it's a dead woman we have in front of us, then?" The woman points at me, laughing as if she were dumbfounded.

Indeed, the young doctor's statement does seem hard to believe when I look at my body that's been severely scratched, yes, but without a trace of a deep wound somewhere. Even the pain starts to fade away slowly.

"But— there are medical records! She's been announced dead, she—" Mister Choi tries to chime in, but he fails when the woman cuts him.

"Medical records? Where? Here?" She grabs the file left on the table at the end of my bed, to open it. "I see no such a thing. She seems perfectly alive and well to me. If you have trouble making the difference between a corpse in the morgue and a patient who's alive, then maybe we should reconsider your internship, Mister Choi."

"What? No, no, please, I just—"

"Mister Kang, Please, escort him out of the room. Call the university to tell them we're highly unsatisfied by Mister Choi's performance." The doctor who grabbed Mister Choi's arm earlier simply nods, his eyes still on the floor as he forces the young intern out of the room while he cries and begs. "The rest of you, please leave too. I will do a check-up on the patient."

In just a moment, everybody runs out of the room, obviously not wanting to lose their jobs like Mister Choi. Yet, they're quickly replaced with two middle-aged men entering the room right after them, dressed as civilians but with their police badges attached to their belts, representing the image of a golden sea eagle behind a rose of Sharon with the taegeukgi in it. From their hair to their clothes, both of them seem like they've jumped right out of the bed, but given the dark rings under their eyes, I bet they haven't slept for days because of work.

One of them, the smallest and skinniest of the two, who also has the most gray hair on top of his head, greets the doctor who looks more annoyed than anything, then glances at me as if I were some kind of bug, his colleague staying in retreat to quietly observe the corridor from the door window. He slowly starts walking and stops in front of the end frame of the bed, to push down on it with his hands as he studies me carefully with an annoyed look.

But I don't display any sign that would make him believe I'm impressed.

"Don't you talk because you think the silence is scaring me?" I ask, raising a brow as he keeps looking at me like I'm smelling fish or something. "Ya, short-legs! If you're gonna ask questions, do so already, I've had enough mystery for one night already.

"Sh—short-legs?" He shrieks in disbelief, clicking his tongue. "Ya! You brat! Who do you think you are to insult me right to my face?"

"Cursing doesn't need any social requirement. Besides, shouldn't you already know who I am? You're the police officer looking at me as if I had syphilis. Meaning you should have investigated me before coming here, and you should even know something that makes you look at me like that."

"Seriously? You—" he seems so mad, he's out of words so he just clicks his tongue while breathing through his nose. "Ya! Listen to me, we've worked our ass off to get rid of any proof that showed you died in that accident in just a couple of hours. Now I don't know what you are, but if that scumbag of an angel paid us this much to cover it up, it means you're probably one of those wenches working in their account. But I don't care how important you are to them : if you annoy me, I won't hesitate to bring you with me where we put those demons away!"

An angel? Paying them for what, now? Wait, what is happening? Who are those two police officers and this doctor? They... seem human. But it looks like they know more than me about this world I've been forced into in just a few hours.

"You don't have anything left to say, huh..." He grins, looking satisfied that I've shut my mouth, now looking around me in disbelief.

But he doesn't know me yet.

"Did you call me... a wench?"

"Huh? Is that the only thing you got out of my speech? Ya—"

"You called me a wench for supposedly working in the account of an angel. But you said that you've been paid by that same angel to cover up anything related to my accident and my death. Doesn't that mean you're a wench too... short-legs?"

He opens and closes his mouth a couple of times, throwing his arms around and looking everywhere, probably searching for something to attack me with. He runs to grab a table lamp on the drawer on my right and raises it in the air, making his other colleague run in a hurry to try and stop him. So in a motion, I take a piece of glass from earlier and brandish it towards short-legs. He takes a step back and steps on his colleague's toes, both of them then falling on the floor and getting up arguing with one another.

In the end, Short-legs simply looks at me as if he were ready to spit on me, but he doesn't do nor say anything else. He and his colleague simply leave the room, the latter studying me for longer than usual before he disappears behind the closing door.

I let go of the glass and breathe out, closing my eyes for a second and hearing the doctor, who stayed still until now, sigh too. Quickly, I'm forced to open my eyelids, facing a blinding light right before my right eye, then my left eye. I shake my head as the doctor puts away her small flashlight, and starts taking my blood pressure, sitting next to me on the bed.

"Who were those two officers? Who are you? Why did you cover up the truth about what happened to me?"

"Don't take it personally," she asserts, in an emotionless voice betrayed by her sharp movements showing she doesn't like me very much either. "People like Officer Hong and his colleague, me and thousands of other people are forced to work with some things that are no human to try to prevent the rest of humanity from discovering what kind of messed-up world we are in, ever since people like you started provoking disasters upon disasters for your own pleasure."

"I'm not— I'm like you. I'm human."

She abruptly drops her equipment and sighs in annoyance to move away from me and barely looks back at my face while she takes notes. "I just took you out of the morgue, yet the MRI and the X-Ray show no sign of broken bones or damaged organs. I'm still waiting for your blood tests but I'm already sure that they will be clean. Because you're right in front of me and you're breathing. You simply have scratches and muscle pain but your neck was already broken when they brought you here in that ambulance. The last human I saw in your condition was my own son after a motorcycle accident. And he didn't come out of the morgue. I don't know what you used to be. But believe me... you're not a human anymore."

She gets closer to me, her heels hitting the floor to echo in the deadly silence room. I feel every hurting muscle in my body stiffen, finding nothing to say the moment she mentioned her dead son. She keeps an undaunted face, as she puts a finger in front of me and asks me to follow it to test my balance.

"You have to come by later to make more check-up tests in case you feel any side effects. As for today, once I have your blood test results, you'll be free to go. Rest until then," she says, taking her last notes before leaving the room without even looking back.

Still too stunned by everything that just went down, I lay back in the bed, resting my aching head on the soft pillow to look out of the window at my left.

The first sun of the year is barely getting up. It's only been a few hours since I died and came back to life for a brief moment. Only until Death finds me again and I either accept its deal or... or what? What will happen to me? It didn't give any details about it, it just hinted that it would be something very unpleasant that I will possibly regret. But what will accepting the deal make me lose as a counterpart?

Gosh, my head hurts even more just thinking about it.

I should just focus on my dad's voice I got to hear after all those years.

My dad...

No, no, I can't think about him either.

"Aaah!" I yell, hurrying out of the bed.

If I lay down one more second, I might go crazy and eat my own hair. Why does even dying have to be this complicated? Can't I be left alone anywhere I go? Does reality have to follow me everywhere like a puppy?

I try to open the window to get some fresh air, but of course, we're in a hospital, so they're locked. I guess I'll have to take a stroll in the corridor then. I put on my slippers and drag my feet all the way to the door, loudly complaining about the pain. I step outside and stretch, while looking at all the doctors and nurses going to other rooms or helping patients in a gown to walk and people roaming around, waiting for news about their loved ones.

Shit... I wonder if Cho-hee or my brother-in-law Nam-sun have tried to call me. They've probably panicked when they couldn't get a hold of me, since I left my broken phone at home. And maybe they even contacted the police and—

What am I saying?

It was New Year's. They probably just tried to call once and then enjoyed their time with their loved ones.

I shake these thoughts out of my head and slowly start walking in the corridor, wincing at every step I take. Was getting up in this condition a bad idea? Should I let my muscles rest but eat up my brain with my endless thoughts or should I grind my teeth at the pain and keep walking to forget about my own death, that night in 2005, my own dad's voice, begging—

Oh come on, I can't be thinking even when I'm walking! That's not how it's supposed to work!

Can someone please sedate me?

Or at least, distract me?

"You..."

I stop and glance at the person in front of me who just said that. But I realize the young man in military uniform who looks back at me has been probably dead for some time now, dried blood all around the bullet mark on his forehead. So I quickly look at the wall I'm leaning on and pretend to hurt more than I really do, to start turning around and join my room.

However, I suddenly find myself standing toe to toe with not one, two, three ghosts, but dozens of them. Some are standing next to crying people in the corridor, looking all sad while they survey them, while others seem to be wandering aimlessly around for a long time already, walking back and forth to where they were. Yet, when I suddenly stop, taken aback by this view, one of my slippers slides from my foot and ends up in front of the same young soldier who suddenly appeared before me.

That's the moment where all the other ghosts stop what they were doing. And they all turn to look at me.

I don't want any distraction! I take it back, I take it back! I'd rather get sedated, please!

I take a deep breath and try to act as natural as I can, walking past the military ghost without touching him and still feigning more pain than I actually feel, even though my heart keeps pounding stronger against my chest with the stress, hurting enough to make me flinch. Fortunately, a hand catches me before I fall on the floor and... it's that ghost.

Shit.

"You... you smell of death."

Was that supposed to be a compliment? Did that guy date anyone before he died so young?

The rest of the ghosts start to approach us more and more, forming a suffocating crowd around me, that the living people keep getting past. I try to keep as stable as I can on my shaking legs. I try to take a few steps back, but the military ghost grips my arm even harder, his hand seeming more opaque than the rest of his translucent body. I pull back my arm but he tries to resist.

His face distorts in pain as his hand slowly starts to turn translucent again, his grip feeling lighter on my arm. I clearly know from the old fish lady and the bride who stayed with me for so long that ghosts can't touch anything unless they try really hard, like the old lady did back in the day when I threatened to exorcize her with salt and she managed to grab my shoe to throw it on my head, at the expense of not being able to move for hours right after.

So he will let go of me, that's for sure. But I hope he does so before more and more ghosts get near me like they're doing now, as if even the ones on the other floors were somehow aware of the gathering here. I look at all of them, some of them with open wounds, others with missing body parts, all crying and all yelling so many different things that they create an uproar taking over the conversations of the living people around me. I can no longer even see those, they disappear under this big mass of dead people approaching me like flies approaching light. Then they all start begging, my ringing ears only able to make out what some of them say, the rest seeming like background noise.

"Please, don't take us!"

"I want to see my mom again!"

"Say goodbye to my son—"

"I don't deserve to die!"

"I left my dog all alone at my house, save her!"

"Why me? Why me of all people?"

"My granddaughter died because of me..."

"Who are you?"

"What's happening to me?"

"I want to live!"

"Who are you?"

"Who are you?"

"I want to live!"

"Let me live!"

"Please, let me live!"

"She... she came to take us!" The soldier screams, on top of every other voice.

I take a deep sigh, trying to tame the pain as the ghosts press closer to me, and this military ghost won't let go, despite the fact that he's obviously suffering while trying to keep his hand material.

Looks like I have no other choice but to handle this the usual way, huh?

"Ya! Do you wanna know what they used to call me in high school?" I glare at the soldier, controlling the shake in my voice because it's starting to become unbearable to stand on my legs, instead using it to sound more menacing. "Crazy Dog. 'Cause once I bite something, I don't let go."

I dig my teeth deep into his flesh, ignoring the taste, weirder than I've imagined, and his screams of pain. I bite him until his hand finally becomes translucent again.

And with that, all hell breaks loose.

The ghosts start screaming and move closer to me, trying to touch me and grab me. So I'm left with no choice but to turn and start running down the corridor, passing through some of them, each time feeling goosebumps take over me at my core and make me violently shake. But I turn without turning back, even when I hear their cries and their steps coming after me.

I take turn after turn, bumping into a new living person each time. I can barely keep up the pace when my heart beats so fast and a horde of crazy-looking dead people is running after me without having to worry about breathing. And from their never-ending screams, they also don't really seem eager to stop the race, like I do the more I run in newer corridors and things become blurry for me.

It's a pretty unfair match, if I'm honest!

More and more doctors and nurses are screaming for me to stop every time I make one of them drop something on the clean floor. Some of them curse at me when I take their stack of papers, pen or stethoscope to throw it at the ghosts getting material just to grab me from behind. I guess for them, I'm a patient running away from the psychiatric ward and fighting against something invisible in the air.

The problem is, I'm getting so tired, that my sore legs just don't seem to be responding to my brain commands very well; so much so that at some point, when I breathlessly and hopelessly run to the emergency exit door, I don't just bump into some civilian. I fall on him and make us both go down.

I scream and pull a face at my head banging so suddenly against the tiles, as the man I've dragged along me on the floor kindly helps me up and stays in front of me, covering most of the ghosts still running my way.

"Are you o—"

One of the ghosts from the group still running from the other side of the corridor wailes so suddenly, it makes me scream. Completely taken aback, I don't even hear the rest of the man's question and just try to fill my lungs with air before keeping on running, when my feet can let me down any moment now. He looks at me, surprised by my sudden outburst, but I can only focus on the united group almost catching up with me, with the soldier being a step ahead of them.

I try to take a few steps back and discreetly reach for the emergency exit door's handle without turning to face it, keeping my focus on the soldier ghost looking back at me as he starts to slow down and the light of the sun newly getting up stops going right through him. Instead, it seems to light him as his translucent body doesn't let me see the floor behind me, becoming more and more material to the point where even the few living people passing by notice him and start whispering about his open wounds and ripped army uniform.

Shit, shit, shit, not good, not good at all!

"Ma'am, maybe you should wait for a doctor to pick you up, you—"

"I'm sorry!"

That's all I can yell, before I grab the man before me by his shoulders and push him backwards. In a scream, he ends up hitting the soldier ghost and gives me enough time to open the door and prepare to run to the emergency stairs. But I stop by, just a second, when yet another scream, more powerful this time, of the man I've just used as a distraction fills the entire corridor.

And when I look at him, I slowly realize in horror the reason why.

The man is still held by the ghost, his face distorted in shock and pain, as the sharp edge of the knife the ghost has stabbed him with in the back is getting out of his chest, spraying blood all over the floor. People scream and start running everywhere. I even see Mister Choi, the intern from earlier, get out of a room and fall right back on his ass to cry and yell. Then, his eyes meet mine and he points a finger at me, probably recognizing me. He tries to say something but fails, because he stutters too much.

But then, he looks back at the soldier who lets go of the dead man and stares right at me.

I try to take a deep breath and control my shaking body, but my legs are locked. I can hardly hold the sweat and my bladder now, after witnessing something like that. But I have to keep moving. Because the ghost starts taking slow steps towards me and the other ghosts have finally caught up with him, now walking behind him too. The man he's hurt because of me is still bleeding out on the floor, but as the soldier, who's still the only ghost trying to stay in a material form so the only one visible to the other living people, is getting further from him, I see Mister Choi taking a deep breathe and knee-walking as silently as he can to tend to the man.

OK, at least, he's taken care of. We're in a hospital, he can't die, right?

I didn't just provoke someone else's death, right?

Shit, I don't have time to think about that! Move, Soo-jin, move!

It looks like the panic forces my body to finally obey, and in a great adrenaline rush, I find myself sprinting down the emergency stairs, followed by dozens of screaming ghosts. I go so fast that I miss some steps and roll down the last floor we're at, until my whole sore body bumps onto a door and there are not any stairs left.

So I open the door and rush inside what seems to be the basement. I go through narrow and dark corridors, barely lit by mostly broken lamps on the ceiling filled with cracks like the walls, and made of dust and the gas pipes of noisy heaters.

After taking more and more turns, not knowing where I'm going, I end up in a large room that serves as stocking for all kinds of medical tools and scrubs. I try to run, but my feet give up and I fall head straight into a spider web, trying to catch my breath as I feel like my lungs are on fire. I hold myself on the wall with one hand to get up and try to walk, but I stop to throw up.

Where can I possibly go to escape from ghosts who will never tire out like me?

I suddenly get alert when I start to hear the screams getting closer again. So despite every aching muscle in my weak body, I take one step after the other, getting faster and faster to run while limping to the exit door of this stock room. But the moment I grab the door handle, a surge of pain takes over me as something drags me backwards by pulling my hair.

I suddenly come nose-to-nose with the soldier ghost. I try to resist and run. But he suddenly grips me harder from the hair and hits my head on the wall. I fall on my knees, my hurt head and my heartbeats throbbing in my throat making me forget where I am. I can't even think of getting up that the ghost grabs me by my neck and gets my face closer to his.

Through blurred lenses, I can see his face distorted in pain as much as mine, his eyes slowly filled with black until his brown doe irises can't be even seen, as veins start to pop on his dead pale skin.

"Bring me—bring me back to... life." He struggles to talk, as if something got stuck in his throat everytime he tries, and I can feel his grip getting weaker as his other arm starts to look more and more translucent. "Bring me back to— life. I have to— I'm going to... I'm going to get married after my service is— is..."

Some black liquid starts coming out of his mouth, stopping him from talking and getting him on his knees too. That's when I take advantage of the situation and take a deep breath, before turning my head as far as possible and bite him for the second time. He lets go in a scream and I get back on my feet to rush to the door, just as the rest of ghosts come in.

Shit, they saw me!

I start running again, this time in a clean basement corridor with an elevator at the end, and many doors around. Without thinking, I open one of them and pray that the ghosts didn't see me enter here. I turn around to look for something to block the entrance and only now realize that the room I randomly got into is... a morgue.

You've got to be kidding me!

I observe all these tables lined up, with corpses on them covered in white sheets. Still as they lay down. Completely frozen. Utterly dead. I'm in a room full of dead bodies.

And I can hear the ghosts of those dead bodies now screaming in the corridor.

So I'm left with no choice but to rush to the closest table with a dead body on it, to start pushing it while swallowing my own saliva to stop myself from puking.

Shit, I can't believe I'm doing this!

And to say that I was lying on one of those tables not too long ago...

I block the entrance, shut the lights and run towards the tables on the back, bumping into them as I have trouble seeing in the dark and almost throwing up everytime I happen to touch something to guide myself that probably belongs to a dead body. I do that until I find cover under one of the tables and put my hand on my mouth to cover up the whimpering sounds that I can't control.

What have I gotten myself into, now?

As I try to rethink every single decision of my life under the table of corpses, I don't have time to realize that I see two pairs of legs before me in time. Because when I do, the table and the body on it have already been thrown away, with two angry-looking ghosts staring at me now.

"She's here!"

I see the rest of the ghosts get inside the room, without even having to move the table I've put at the entrance to block the door, since they're getting right through the door.

"Oh, come on! You should have told me about that, I wouldn't have touched that many dead bodies if I knew you could go through doors and shit!"

Now, I'm seriously annoyed. But I don't think that's going to save me in any way, now that dozens of ghosts circle around me and press closer, their wailing and screaming getting higher and higher as many of them start speaking at the same time again.

"Bring us back to life!"

"Don't take me!"

"My daughter is alone—"

"I just got a promotion!"

"My book is finally going to be published—"

"I don't want to die!"

"I don't want to die!"

"I don't deserve to die!"

"Bring me back!"

"Bring me back!"

"Bring me back!"

I kneel and curl up in a ball, pressing my hands against my ears and trying to breathe as they get closer and closer. My body feels more weary, more painful. I can feel the floor spinning under me, sweeping me right off my feet to get me lying on the floor. I try to crawl but more and more ghosts get in my way, going back and forth through me, each time draining me a little bit more. I can't make out anything I see or hear. I can't move a single muscle. I can't even seem to breathe as the room gets darker with each second. I can see small blood drops on the tiles, coming out of my nose and my mouth.

What is happening to me?

I feel like I'm ready to die for the third time, maybe finally for good.

And I think that until the very moment the door of the morgue opens, and light erupts in the darkness of the room to reveal an imposing silhouette standing on the doorstep.

Suddenly, the ghosts stop screaming and start moving to make way in front of me. I look at the person's shoes as they take a few steps inside the room, until they get closer to me and cover up the light from the corridor. I slowly raise my heavy head and through the haze, I finally get to see a surprisingly familiar face.

Azrael simply mouths one simple phrase as he looks at me. "Use your powers."