Chapter 4: Verdict (1)
What’s this? A stand? No, it was a counterattack, as expected. I thought nothing could ever hurt me, but I was wrong. I was a husband of a whore as I watched her make a fool of me.
As soon as the iron-bottomed stand fell to my face, I missed a step and fell. After I hit the back of my head hard against the counter, I remembered that I had many regrets during my school days.
I was merely a deadbeat student.
“You little fuck! You want to play with me?”
Puck! Puck!
The soles of the naked man trampled my chest without mercy. It was suffocating and I felt darkness wash over me. But then, the man’s little guy fluttered back and forth as he trampled me. Why did it catch my eye in the midst of being treated like a dog?
“Go fuck yourself!”
“Woonjon!”
Gush!
I could feel hot liquid staining my shirt and spreading wide. Am I being stabbed?
I could hear my wife’s scream and the man’s exhilarating breath.
The sound lingering in my ears was fading away. My consciousness blurred and my eyes closed, forever.
For some reason, everything felt like a dream.
I was 42 old, and I, Lee Jungwoo, was stabbed in the heart and met the face of death right away.
That was my life.
***
“Next.”
This was the afterlife.
If you thought the atmosphere of the underworld was gloomy and dark, you’re mistaken. If I could describe it… it was like a bank.
Sitting on a fluffy couch with a waiting ticket, a man in black, perhaps a grim reaper, took me inside in the order of someone’s timely death.
“Lee Jungwoo? Is Lee Jungwoo here?”
“Oh, yes. Sorry…”
Unconsciously, I missed my turn while watching television. By the way, the television here was interesting.
When I asked the person sitting next to me if that was a live broadcast, he burst into laughter and said he was watching a soap opera. It turns out that he and I were watching a different channel.
How amazing it was that we could watch different channels while looking at the same machine… it was a pity that such an object could only be found in the afterlife.
“If you go in, be polite, Lee Jungwoo,” the grim reaper warned me with a solemn look.
“Ah… yes, yes,” when I answered absentmindedly, his eyes flared.
The grim reaper’s looks could kill. Yep. I’m dead already.
I nodded reluctantly with haste.
When I opened the huge door and entered, I saw a giant sitting on a jade seat near the end.
Giant… it’s a giant… I’m sure it’s a giant, considering the size of my feet to the size of his. Yeah… it was a real-life giant.
I lifted my head and looked up at the giant whose height was equivalent to a nearly ten-story tall building.
He was the king of the underworld, King Yeomra. He looked down at me gravely, touching his long beard.
“Give the king courtesy.”
Next to King Yeomra, was a servant who wore the same costume as an angel of death. He looked down at the folder and he soon spread out something similar to a scroll.
“Name: Lee Jungwoo
Age: 41
Place of Birth: Seoul, Korea.
Is everything here correct?”
“I’m 42 this year.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes.”
“I see. Then take a sit.”
“Sit?”
Suddenly, a wooden chair appeared behind me. It wasn’t surprising, to say the least. I was in the underworld. I flung myself down the chair and sat comfortably.
“You were killed unjustly.”
There was a pounding in my chest.
King Yeomra’s voice was so neutral that it was hard to tell what he was feeling. He looked dreamy and mysterious, his voice alone revealing that he was no human being.
Nodding, I said, “Yes, it’s unfair.”
“He was caught wandering through the countryside for over 60 days, avoiding many eyes.”
The man, who appeared to be a servant, said to King Yeomra.
What a snitch!
“I see. It’s wrong, but understandable. Well, such is the way of life, it’s unfair. It was also your destiny.”
King Yeomra’s expression made me a little uncomfortable.
Destiny…
It would be easy for him to say when he’s only looking at my report freely and process me quickly and fast.
But… was it also my destiny to be stabbed to death at home by a man who fucked my wife? If so, screw destiny.
“What will happen to me?” I asked.
“You’ll get a verdict. Upon observation, you’ll be evaluated as good or evil.”
At King Yeomra’s instruction, the servant stuck his hand out through the void and suddenly brought out a scale. What superpower… there was nothing that couldn’t be done in this world.
The servant pulled out a bundle that read “good deeds” and a bundle that read “bad deeds.” I wonder what it was for.
King Yeomra began explaining, noticing my curiosity. “This is the weight of good and evil you’ve done in your lifetime. When the weight of good you’ve done is heavier, you go to heaven; when evil is heavier than good, you go to hell.”
“Is heaven and hell real?”
====
Yeomra-Daewang (‘King Yeomra the Great’): Supreme ruler and fifth of the ten Kings of the underworld (Shi-wang), who judge the sins of the deceased and decide what to do with them. He is the first person to have faced death (as in the story of Yama in Hindu Mythology. In fact, Yeom-ra is the Korean pronunciation of Yama). Like every other powerful god, he has many powers, including shapeshifting, reviving dead people, etc.