Name: Kim Taeyoung. Age: 22.
Three years since graduating high school.
“How do we take down Azaeros~”
And a third-year active no-lifer.
His nickname: ‘Guardian of Order.’
“Gather all the stones? Nope~”
A pitch-black room.
Eight characters moving in perfect coordination on the monitor before his eyes.
“Ganging up with the hero party and adventurers?”
The computer spat dust from inside its chassis,
and the keyboard emitted a vivid red light with every press.
“Nope~”
And then, an urgent sound from his phone.
[Emergency Alert]
[Seoul Metropolitan City] Emergency warning issued for the Seoul region at 02:33 today.
A large number of flying objects presumed to be nuclear missiles have been identified.
Please evacuate to shelters immediately, and ensure that children and the elderly may evacuate first.
Find nearby shelter: https://…
‘? Hey guys, what’s this?’
“Let’s go, Rice-Grace!! Body Slam!!!”
A blinding light came through the window.
That was my last moment.
***
I died.
Probably. I must have died.
Common sense says there’s no way someone cosplaying as the Grim Reaper would break into my house and stare holes into me.
Ah. Did they even need to break in?
For some reason, my house had been completely stripped bare, leaving only the frame.
Hmm…
This is a bit risqué.
Anyway, I think I’m dead.
That’s my conclusion.
“…-ssi?”
Ah, right. That person had been saying something to me.
“Kim Taeyoung-ssi?”
“Yes...?”
The Grim Reaper in front of me looked at me with an extremely tired expression.
“Ha… You don’t seem to have heard, so I’ll quickly summarize.
So, you’re dead, and now you’re going to the afterlife. Since the afterlife exists in a different dimension from this universe, you’ll be moving via a gate.
It takes about ten minutes, no additional fees apply, and upon arrival, an assigned employee will explain what comes next.
If you sign this screen, it means you’ve understood everything I told you and consent to the afterlife transfer procedure. It takes effect immediately upon signing. Understood?”
Something incredibly long seemed to pass by.
I didn’t understand any of it.
“Ah… yes, so I just sign here...?”
“Yes, yes. I’m in a bit of a hurry, so could you please make it quick? There’s a lot of dead people today.”
‘A Grim Reaper walking around with a tablet getting signatures… is this for real…?’
I took the pen the Reaper handed me and carefully wrote my name in the ‘Signature’ box at the bottom left of the document.
But do I not need to read this?
They say you should read contracts carefully before signing…
Rationalizing with, ‘Well, they’re the Grim Reaper; they wouldn’t try to scam me,’ I handed the pen back.
“Yes, signature confirmed. Have a comfortable dimensional transfer. Thank you.”
“Thank you…?”
The Reaper thanked me and immediately passed through the wall, exiting quickly.
Not long after, I heard indistinct voices from next door; apparently, the same guidance was being repeated there.
‘Man, what a day…’
In the Reaper’s place remained only a green portal with sparkling LED text that read ‘Afterlife-Bound Portal.’
“I just go in here…?”
The afterlife in another dimension. So the afterlife really existed?
“Will I be judged when I get there…?”
Thinking of the multiple hells from the movie *Along with the Gods*, I slowly stepped into the portal.
***
“Mister, stop pushing, I can’t breathe!”
“You think I want to push? There are so many people here, use your head!”
‘This is the path to the afterlife?’
This place, like the hellish subway at rush hour, was none other than the passage leading to the afterlife.
Perhaps because everyone was a spirit, I couldn’t smell the musty subway stench or other people’s body odor, but…
The path to the afterlife was like an escalator.
Even though I was standing still, it felt like the scenery was passing me by.
A mysterious space with a white background where black lines passed me by.
It would have been nice if there weren’t so many people.
“So what on earth happened?”
“Didn’t you get the phone alert? A nuke dropped right in the middle of our country.”
If a nuclear bomb fell in the capital, no wonder.
But I’ve been feeling this for a while—aren’t there way too many people…?
Look, there’s even a crack up there now.
‘Huh? A crack…?’
“Huh? What’s that, no way?”
“Hey, hey, why is that splitting open?”
As if confirming I wasn’t seeing things, the surroundings quickly grew chaotic.
A thunderous creaking sound pierced through the clamor.
And soon, silence fell.
Were people surprised by the noise?
Or had I been ejected from there?
The endless line of people gradually grew distant.
Other people who appeared to have been flung out along with me looked like tiny specks.
Something began to form in the white void.
Red, blue, green.
I felt like I was falling.
The single-colored lights gradually materialized into shapes.
Ah. Is that the sky?
The blue background and white clumps of a clear, ordinary day on Earth came into view.
Clouds that seemed about to envelop my body shrank to a graspable size,
and finally, I lost consciousness.
***
When I came to, I was leaning against something.
Looking down, I saw a knife in my right hand and wounds on my skin.
‘…Wounds?’
“Ugh…”
They weren’t deep, but blood was beading and flowing from them.
A cold draft from somewhere brushed against my wounds,
“It hurts…”
I lifted my head, and a full-length mirror came into view that hadn’t been there before.
Pink hair reaching just below the shoulders.
A small face with compact, finely arranged eyes, nose, and lips.
A cute face with a definite presence.
From blue eyes that looked like a mysterious tropical sea, seawater seemed to well up bit by bit,
and the frail body was covered in scars seemingly from different times.
And,
“Uh… uh…?”
what I saw was unmistakably the body of a small girl.
Kim Taeyoung, 22 years old, third-year no-lifer.
TS reincarnated into another world.
And in a child’s body, no less.
***
Creeeak—
I got up from the cold wooden floor to look around.
Beside the bed I had been leaning against was a small shelf, on which sat a sheet of paper and a small bundle packed so full that silver and copper coins were visible.
I placed the knife I was holding on the shelf and carefully picked up the paper with writing on it.
The letters, seemingly pressed down hard by someone, were ones I had never seen, yet I could read the contents without awkwardness, as if I had always known them.
---
[Will]
To whoever finds this place in the future.
I do not know if the me you see is a corpse or merely bones.
What is certain is that you trespassed into my home.
It’s fine. By the time this will is found, it will be an ownerless house.
Because I will no longer be in this world.
I have one request for you, the trespasser.
Whatever my current form may be, please bury me under the tree in the backyard.
That is the place where I stayed the longest and loved the most since settling here.
So I wished to remain there even after death, but being buried alive was a bit frightening.
So, shamelessly, I ask that you bury me there.
Your reward is in the bundle beside it…!
To someone whose name I do not know
From Rumi
---
After reading the will, extreme lethargy washed over me, and the previous owner’s memories began to surface.
Her name was Rumi.
An orphan raised in an orphanage, who majored in alchemy at the Academy but ultimately couldn’t adapt, running away before completing her first year and holing up in the forest… a severe outcast.
‘No, was the Academy really that tough…?’
The place she fled to was a forest beside a small provincial city on the outskirts of the kingdom.
She seemed to have made a living by periodically going to the market, using her limited alchemy knowledge to craft useful items from forest herbs, then selling them while sitting on the ground wearing an oversized robe pulled down deep over her head.
The money saved that way was in this bundle.
Once I sorted out the situation, the sensation of pain from all over my body overwhelmed me again.
“First… let’s do something about these wounds.”
The wounds all over my body were too painful to ignore.
***
Among Rumi’s surfaced memories was a method for making wound salve using herbs learned at the Academy.
What she mainly sold at the market was also an ointment for minor wounds that had the side effect of skincare benefits.
Apparently, she had some skill, as it was quite popular among adventurers and ladies through word of mouth.
The problem was that she sold out every batch, leaving no stock at home.
Rumi, having lost the will to do anything, had used up all herbs at home and never gone out to gather more,
so to make the ointment, I had to go outside and gather herbs myself.
I dragged my weak legs, opened the door, and staggered outside.
Just a short distance from the house was a magic waste disposal site bordering the forest, where ingredients for the wound salve were scattered about.
After walking for about ten minutes, I reached the disposal site.
“Herbs… where are the herbs… huh?”
While looking around, a strange green object caught my eye.
A translucent slime half-buried among the herbs, flickering with a pale green light as if gasping.
By this world’s common sense, it was discarded magic that had been thrown away due to reaching the end of its lifespan or other reasons.
‘But it looks so much like a slime, transparent and squishy…’
Even after pulling out the surrounding herbs, the slime remained in place. Upon closer inspection, I could see a sky-blue flow swirling inside, and black residue clogging a passage leading from inside to outside.
“Looks like it could be wiped clean with a quick swipe…”
After a moment’s hesitation, I tried to put my hand inside the slime.
The moment my hand touched the squishy body, my small hand and the surroundings froze, and text appeared in the air.
[Approach from a higher dimension detected.]
[Execute Administrator privileges?]
[ Y / N ]
“Administrator privileges…?
What is this… approach from a higher dimension…?”
My body had become immobile for some reason.
As soon as I thought about executing Administrator privileges, my frozen arm moved forward, piercing into the slime.
Squish…
It doesn’t hurt…?
‘It just feels like waving my hand in the air…?’
As I brought my hand to the black residue inside, another message appeared.
[Delete ‘Product_Ash’ object?]
[ Y / N ]
Once again, as soon as I conveyed my intent to delete, the visible black residue vanished instantly.
[Updating status of target ‘3D75DC-8A2B’.]
[Administrator privileges temporarily terminated.]
“What… what is this…”
And then the slime leaped at me.