Snowman

01. I was born from you.

 

 

 

 

I was born from you.

One winter when the snow fell thick and heavy,

shaped by your fingertips

and your warmth became my breath,

 

here I am.

 

 

 

In a winter so cold it felt like the flesh itself would freeze, Seoha gathered the thickly piled snow and made one small, clumsy snowman.

It was the unique habit he always indulged in at least once every winter when he got drunk, and he had made about thirty snowmen like that.

After standing a long while just staring at the ridiculously shabby snowman left in front of someone else’s shop, Seoha finally got up and

staggered away toward home.

 

And Yeo Jun, the snow that had made that snowman, watched the little back growing distant for a long time. For a long time.

He could barely remember the last time he had watched someone like that. He just kept watching that back until

it shrank to a dot and disappeared, and deep loneliness stained the corners of Yeo Jun’s lips.

 

"...I miss you."

 

The heart that couldn’t even last 30 seconds after Seoha left sank to the floor and melted softly away.

And that small whisper had been heard in full by Taehyun, the underworld's month-duty messenger, who had been watching Yeonjun.

Month-duty messenger Kang Taehyun. He was the one who watched over the soul dwelling in the snow that had made that snowman. Born of karmic debt from a past life, a shinigami who watched over the snowman that had fallen as neither human

nor beast, but an inanimate thing—a snowflake that would melt and vanish when spring came.

 

When was it again? Even when he had stood before the king of the underworld and received the judgment to be reborn as 'snow,' as a small creature neither human nor beast,

he had not moved an inch. And that same guy was now a snowman, feeling his heart stir toward a human woman.

 

"There’s a way."

 

"...Can I see her?"

 

"You’ll have to pay a price, and there are some conditions too."

 

"I’ll do it."

 

At that answer, with neither hesitation nor fear, Taehyun quietly looked down at the snowman. Why? Why go so far as to gamble your life?

For a long while, Taehyun stared at the snowman—or rather, at Yeonjun, who had become the snowman—with a face that couldn’t make sense of it, then picked up the snowman whole and entered the intensive care unit of a university hospital. There, a young boy lay breathing only with the help of a respirator and IV drips hanging all over him.

"Choi Beomgyu, only twenty years old. He should have lived fifteen more years, but because of the mistake of a previous messenger, he became a living corpse. You’ll use this boy’s body. In return, leave your emotions behind."

"...If I have no emotions,"

 

"If emotions take root in your heart and warmth returns to it, you’ll die. When spring comes, snow melts and disappears, by the natural law forged by the gods. Still want to do it?"

 

A horrifyingly sweet, horrifyingly cruel conditional life was shoved before one who had been reborn as an inanimate thing.

 

In truth, Taehyun already knew what Yeonjun would think. He had seen countless forms of humanity while doing messenger work all this time.

 

And because of that, he also knew Yeonjun would live that life desperately.

"Even if it’s only for a very short time, that’s fine. I just want to see her one more time."

Even after being reborn as an inanimate thing, human attachment was so stubborn and so terrifying.

 

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