Work Text:
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’til death do us part?
no.
[a fragile laugh forced its way out] no?
—
“I need him back,” repeated Humin, stubborn in the very way one gets when their biggest fear has already occurred and they are desperate to undo it. “Na Baekjin. I need you to give him back to me.”
Death raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you despise him, boy?”
“Yes,” Humin hissed under the weight of the complicated truth. It’s never wise to hick up half-lies before a Deity. Her omniscient huff almost knocked the boy out, so he let the other shoe fall: “But I love him more than I could ever hate him.”
“Oh, you mortals,” the Macabre Lady breathed out—not out of need but for the art of it. “You and your convoluted emotions.” She sounded mildly irritated yet impossibly fond.
It gave Humin hope, which made the boy the most dangerous to his well-being.
He stood straighter now. His spine hoisted the flag of an innocent challenge, and the glint of life, hastily settling back into those Bambi eyes, unfurled it.
Grim Maid of Finite Beginnings huffed again, and let the well-meaning child get away with his insolence.
“Let’s pretend you are well within your rights whilst making such an unnatural demand,” Death hummed as she leant forward on her delicate shrine. “What does a mere human have to offer in exchange? Could the burden of your gratitude justify my clemency before our Father?”
“You can have my soul.”
“Your soul?” A silky eyebrow rose up like petals do with spring breeze. “And prey tell, youth, what shall I do with a human soul? What use would I find to something as cheap as salt in the sea?”
“Uh, I don’t know…” Humin trailed off, unsure but eyes brighter than they have been before the negotiation commenced—fuelled with that sweet, impossible hope. “Eat it, I guess?”
Lamentful laughter pulled the pale light up for a waltz. “Eat it?” Ghastly Sovereign repeated the boy’s fumbling with a delighted incredulously. “Oh, Park Humin. My sweet child. You reckon Death is gluttonous and greedy?”
A sincere apology dangled off Humin’s tongue but the boy refused to let it slip free. He furrowed his brows and let the defiant set of his shoulders support his locked jaw. “You took Na Baekjin from me,” he whispered eventually. “He didn’t even have his driver’s licence yet.”
Death stretched her delicate neck to her right. Her curious gaze encouraged the youth to further his case. “He was barely a young adult and he had to survive for so long that he didn’t get to live at all.” From the ablaze corners of the boy’s eyes, translucent grief leaked out silently. But the force of such a bitter stream shook the body and cracked the voice. “He didn’t have a moment of happiness someone—anyone who cared enough—to capture that… That his funeral portrait held no smile, you know?” Trembling hands kept batting away the fresh streaks but tears barrelled through Humin’s efforts. “He was s-so young… We are too young. I need him back, please.”
Mumbler of the Eternal Melody shuddered with a fleeting awareness of her empty reign. It has been two eternities since she last had a visitor. “I heard a similar string of pleas before,” Death considered out loud. Wariness coupled with indifference in her wrinkle-free features, untelling of an eternity of unthanked labour. “From a faithless fool named Orpheus. You humans rarely know what you want. At least that honey-tongued Thracian was humble enough to beg properly whereas your tongue is barbed with accusations, boy.”
“I will beg,” Humin shot back eagerly—his purpose pure and unwavering. “When I find him, I will beg for his forgiveness. When I bring him back I will beg him to live right. I will beg him to laugh aloud, to eat delicious food, to travel without any lucrative business as an excuse, to run without being chased. I will beg him to choose peace over fear, to ask for help when things got too heavy, to call and wake me up when he can’t fall asleep. I’ll beg him to be my first kiss and for his hand in marriage. Please, Madam, please let me find him. I will beg and kneel and do all sorts of things, just grant me a way to make this right.”
Death pulled her silent cloak tighter around her velvet skin and took in this ephemeral creature’s overflowing grief, and felt ungodly compassion fill up the golden cup of her chest.
“I didn’t kill him,” the deity gently reminded him, like Humin is not a boy willing to walk through hellfire but a wounded fawn. “The world of the mortals is the business of mortals, human. It’s not my job to lead the souls to that fleeting stage. All authority that falls within the purview of my word pertains to those who left the mortal play behind.”
Her lofty speech could have been mistaken for a firm refusal—if not for the regret colouring her tone. Humin received not a reprimand but a secret: “Creator deals your cards. You humans play amongst yourselves. If one of us happened to dare to exceed the expectations of our duty, another surely would take offence. It might sound cruel and irresponsible to human ears, many before you let me know of that before they found a corner to eternalise. But we are of different species, my boy. Your Gods have no fight in them. We are spectators and we don’t grow as we age.”
Humin listened to her with the helpless anger of an abandoned child, and distantly wondered if that’s how Baekjin felt while he was alive—faced with a system that only excused its limitations and pretended that sympathy was enough for the young orphan to fend for himself.
Some time passed, neither party of the negotiation could measure it objectively—the Goddess was too ancient and the human too young.
It was Humin who eventually broke the wretched impasse.
“You said that you aren’t supposed to bring souls to life—not that you couldn’t.” Wide, sorrowful eyes clawed at the Immortal Welcomer where, if her figure resembled more of a human’s her heart would have been. She pitied him. “It is unfair. It is cruel. But you don’t sound cruel, Lady. If you are capable of righting a wrong, then you should do it. It’s only right.”
“Fine,” Death then allowed in her godly ease. Not because she was convinced. Fairness and justice meant very little to an entity who has never lived and never will. “Today, I am bored no more. I shall let your Creator know that Park Humin paid his penance in entertainment. I shall warn the Starved and the Resentful that you are not to be harmed, boy.” For you have told me all about love.
For that there are those rare moments where a Holy Spectator got to interact with the actors of their only stage—bright, loud and eternally out of their Godly reach—and crumbled with envy.
Gods are often cruel to humans when they struggle to reign in their child like jealousy.
But they can also show themselves indulgent under the very circumstances.
Sometimes a deity goes out of their way to perform a miracle—only to lean back and imagine themselves experiencing something they will never truly understand: to be on the receiving side of that mortal happiness.
“You may now go down and fetch your beloved. But beware, the stairs of my kingdom are steep. That tired boy might not wish to return from his slumber. Might not have the strength left.”
The boy—this freshly moulded creature whose eyes now shone with a mist that reminded Death of the chain of mountains where she came into being—looked down as the whirlwind of obsidian steps willed themselves visible to his moral gaze.
“Don’t worry,” Park Humin assured a being who experienced nothing of sorts. “I will carry him if I have to. That stubborn bastard won’t even get to drag his feet.”
The Macabre Lady found herself laughing for the second time in her countless eternities. “I fret not, Humin Park. Or is it Baku, as I shall lend your name to the Bards?”
Warm blood begets a pink hue over the boy’s cheeks. “Uh,” nearly squealed Death’s impromptu guest, bewildered and abashed. “I don’t think that’s necessary, Ma’am. I’ll just grab Baekjin-ah and flee, I promise.”
Death softly shocked her head, then made a glasslike gesture to shoo her little adventurer away. Park Humin had a long march before him, better not waste more godly blinks. Na Baekjin, like all the other lads and lasses with withered futures, was tucked away in her eternal garden of motherly grace.
But the Goddess felt no doubt that Baku would find his lost half, and find him fast.
Their Creator put down His pen in between His chisel and His hammer, and He spared this scene a curious glance.
What He saw incited a smile of Grace.
That mortal of laughable age, with no holy blood diluting his feeble vessel, glowed like well-sung Heroes of a bye-gone age.
Love lit up all the candles along the boy’s path.
—
’til death do us part?
no.
[a fragile laugh forced its way out] no?
no, baekjin-ah. no way, love. there is no expiration date, beautiful. I will love you even when death do us part.
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