# 2
Meet Me in the Underworld 1
A blue sky.
A real forest clearing, not a concrete jungle.
‘So... I’m dead, then.’
The first thing he did upon coming to his senses was a simple acceptance of reality. His slightly dazed gaze slowly swept across his surroundings before lowering to observe his own body.
"......."
A nondescript hospital gown. Beneath it, his body was covered in bandages and adhesive patches everywhere. The situation must have been quite severe, for there was scarcely an inch of him not wrapped in bandages. Some spots even looked as though blood had seeped through.
‘At least there’s no pain.’
Death is usually associated with pain—had he simply skipped that step? Despite looking like he should be in considerable pain, he felt nothing at all.
He looked around once more.
Is this the underworld? It probably is.
But it looked so different from what he had vaguely imagined while alive, or from what others had described, that he felt ill at ease.
It was a forest.
To be precise, a wide clearing situated deep within a forest.
Countless people in all manner of dress were gathered here and there across the clearing. Outside the clearing, trees rose tall and densely packed to the point where it was impossible to tell what lay beyond them.
Some moved about in groups of threes and fives, while others did nothing at all, lying on the ground or sitting on benches.
In the distance on one side, there was something like a makeshift shop. Similar structures stood elsewhere. He could see people lining up to purchase something.
Near one of the shops, a bright light flashed at regular intervals. Each time, someone standing there would be wrapped in the light and disappear.
He didn’t know where they went, but just as many people appeared as disappeared.
Thus, many were gathered in the clearing.
Most of them were elderly.
Of course, there were young people too.
There were even small children among them.
"Mommy! Mommy!"
Like a child lost at an amusement park, a little girl was looking around and sniffling. One of the nearby ladies took the child’s hand and headed off somewhere.
‘This place... is definitely the underworld, right?’
He had been sure he was dead, but on second thought, he grew uncertain. He looked a little further.
Many people held saws, axes, and various tools. In the distance, where the forest began, logging was in full swing even now.
But the strange thing was that the trees, falling with thunderous crashes, did not strike the ground—they scattered into the air like dust and vanished. It was no ordinary sight.
That made the place feel like the underworld once more.
‘A place of labor, then?’
In that case, was it somewhere close to hell?
Perhaps hell itself.
But there were no fiery pits, which felt strange. Had he been wrong about hell all this time?
No, perhaps it wasn’t hell.
"......."
He stopped thinking.
Rather than worrying alone, it seemed faster to ask someone. A young man happened to be passing nearby, so he quickly headed over.
"Where on earth is this place? Is this the underworld?"
If this was indeed the underworld, he had many questions about what he was supposed to do here from now on. But the young man, looking somewhat exhausted, ignored him and walked past.
Most people reacted that way, but someone did engage with him. It was a man sitting not too far away.
"It doesn't seem like it's your time to be here yet."
But the man only said that while looking at him with an inscrutable gaze. He wanted to ask more, but the man stood up and moved toward the edge of the forest before he could stop him.
What were they all so busy with? Even those sitting down would soon rise and head for the forest’s edge. Not a single person would listen to him properly.
‘Right. If it’s over there...’
Just then, his eyes caught a small shop in the distance and the long line of people before it. If he went there, they might have the leisure to listen.
He quickly headed over and spoke to the elderly man at the very back. The man looked him up and down and shook his head.
"Go on up and speak to them."
A withered, twig-like finger pointed to the front of the line, toward the counter. Inside, a shopkeeper with a bored expression was attending to customers.
The line shrank faster than expected.
The shopkeeper was a heavyset woman.
Her lips parted as she stared at him.
But her gaze was directed not at him, but at someone behind him.
"Excuse me."
"Next customer."
"...Hey."
A tap.
He tried to argue, but the person behind him pushed past without a care and pressed up to the counter. The attendant dealt with them as if nothing had happened.
Those called customers received a slip of paper with something written on it and moved away.
"Why is everyone ignoring only me?"
No one answered.
He remembered the subtle looks of exclusion from his school days. A foreign gaze, as though he could not belong in their world—as though they were looking at a completely different species.
‘So even in a corner of the underworld, there’s no place for me?’
He retreated with a hollow expression.
He wasn’t even angry. He simply laughed.
"Haha."
He had thought that no matter how tough life was, at least people became equal in death. But was it the same even here? Was he being discriminated against and ignored in the underworld too?
"Is it because I have nothing? ...Because I couldn’t bring passage money for the road to the underworld?"
With a self-deprecating mutter, he headed to a nearby bench. Just as he plopped down and looked around, he somehow felt a gaze from beside him.
He turned his head to see an elderly gentleman in a suit and fedora looking at him.
"Why are you here?"
The old gentleman had asked out of nowhere. He was flustered, not knowing how to answer.
But the gentleman continued.
"You haven't died yet."
The moment he heard those words, a sound like *Kuwung!* seemed to come from somewhere. As if the space itself were vanishing, darkness began to envelop everything.
Pitch-black darkness claimed every corner of his vision in an instant. Even sound disappeared. He couldn’t feel anything.
‘...A dream?’
He thought in the middle of that darkness. Could it have been just a dream?
But the ground, the air, and the voices of the people there had all been too vivid for a dream.
Besides, he couldn’t explain the current darkness by saying he had simply woken from a dream. It felt as though he were trapped in a space where nothing existed.
It was a darkness in which he could not prove his own existence beyond the fact that he could think. Still, he sensed no sound, no sensation.
‘What state am I in right now? No... who am I?’
He tried to grope through his previous memories, but for some reason they were uncertain and vague. He couldn’t clearly remember what situation he had been in, whether he was dead or alive.
How much time passed that way? Finally, his vision brightened and sounds returned.
But his expression did not brighten.
Because he had returned to that forest clearing.
*
*
*
"Chanho... Gang Chanho."
He murmured softly.
Was it because it was a name from a life already ended? It was his own name, yet it didn’t roll off his tongue easily, as if he were speaking someone else’s name.
But that was only for a moment. Gang Chanho, sitting quietly on the bench lost in thought, finally began to remember the situation just before ‘death.’
‘They all say I haven’t died, though.’
The people he had more or less become acquainted with all told him he hadn’t died. He knew why they said that.
Gang Chanho quietly raised both hands and looked at his palms. They were covered in calluses and scars. Not very pretty hands. But he had lived diligently, thankful that at least his hands and arms were whole.
‘At least I made a living with these two hands.’
With neither talent nor inheritance, possessing only a healthy body, his utmost had been to work with his body and earn his meals day by day.
Gang Chanho opened his mouth slightly.
"It’s different."
Definitely different. Still looking down at his hands, he raised his gaze to look around. Countless people walking about, the various clothes they wore.
Then he lowered his eyes and looked at his hands again. They were definitely different. How so? The color.
‘I mean, I see myself in color.’
Wondering if everyone was like that, he found out they weren’t. The others definitely said they saw other people in black and white. To be precise, not completely monochrome, but murky to the point of being nearly black and white.
But he was different. In others’ eyes, too, he appeared in vivid color. Recognizable from afar. Truly ‘full color.’ That was the difference between him and everyone else.
That seemed to be why the others thought he ‘hadn’t died.’ Apparently, there were people who came and went like that briefly from time to time.
Some called it a ‘system error,’ while others called it a ‘bug’ or a ‘reaper’s mistake.’
Whatever they called it, the meaning was the same: it was an abnormal situation.
"Why only me...."
Gang Chanho muttered, organizing his faintly surfacing memories. He had accepted that this place was not a dream, at least, but he couldn’t understand why he had to be here like this.
So it was frustrating. He felt that if he could somehow find the cause, he might be able to return to the original world—the so-called world of the living.
But to do that, he would first need memories from before the ‘accident,’ which were still unclear.
‘A traffic accident? I think it was something like sudden acceleration.’
Perhaps because the shock of the accident had been so great, he couldn’t remember clearly.
But there had been a car accident, and he seemed to have saved someone. Perhaps because the memories weren’t clear, the gaps were being filled entirely with imagination.
If his concentration lapsed even slightly, utterly absurd scenes would come to mind. In one imagination, he was opening a car door and pulling someone out; in another, he was simply struck by a vehicle and sent flying.
The type of vehicle, the color—different every time he imagined it.
‘Maybe my brain isn’t intact.’
He looked down at his body once more.
The body wearing a certain hospital’s patient gown. If he hadn’t died, there was a high probability he was lying in a hospital bed in this exact state right now.
What was here was probably something like his soul. His body was likely unconscious and hooked up to a respirator.
He knew he had sustained a head injury too. Because bandages were wrapped there as well.
Perhaps that injury was why he couldn’t remember properly. Gang Chanho, trying to concentrate a bit more, shook his head and stood up.
"Huh?"
It was then that his eyes widened. Fixing his gaze on a corner of the clearing in the distance, his expression said he couldn’t believe what he was seeing now.