His Name
Like an angry person, the Goblin sent Eun Tak back to the hotel. He came back home and leaned against his room’s door. His body trembled as a heart-breaking pain filled him. Eun Tak was still running towards him, her footsteps in rhythm with his heartbeat; he felt alive. Being able to live and wanting to live were two completely different things. He hated himself for wanting the latter. He fell to his knees, writhing in pain. It was as if he was being stabbed all over again.
Trying to endure the breath-taking pain, the Goblin decided and decided again to disappear. To end this life before he wanted to live again. To end this life before he became happy again.
The Goblin and the grim reaper sat at the long table, drinking beer. They hated themselves for their own reasons.
The grim reaper had finally met that woman again. When they first saw each other, he had cried, and now they had seen each other again, but he couldn’t say anything. Sunny had asked for his name, but grim reapers didn’t have names. They were just reaping dead souls for the gods; they were only civil workers. Every grim reaper had gotten their memories erased. They couldn’t remember anything from their past life; their faces, their jobs, their family; their friends; and their names. They couldn’t even remember how they had died. Sunny had also asked how life had been. He wasn’t even alive.
The grim reaper felt empty. The woman's face kept popping into his mind and he would have gladly run off to meet her anytime, but he was afraid. He was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to tell her anything like this time.
“Are you really going to die?” The grim reaper asked the depressed Goblin.
“Yeah. Before the first snow comes.”
He had to pull out the sword before then. Before it was too late to turn back.
The Goblin’s determination and the silence were heavy. The grim reaper nodded his head; it was the only thing he could do.
The Goblin got up and headed out the door into Eun Tak’s suite room. When he looked inside, the girl had lit up all the candles and was catching fire on the last one.
“Were you going to call me again?”
“Oh my gosh!”
“I’m coming in, but why were you trying to call me?”
“Why did you come here? Did Duk Hwa tell you everything?”
The Goblin looked at the girl, confused.
“To tell you the truth, I got into trouble with Duk Hwa.”
“He’s probably not righteous enough to tell someone off.”
“I emptied the fridge for some good reasons… Could you pay the bill for me? I’ll pay you back with my part-time money.”
There had been a ghost who had died from studying too much. That ghost had been chasing after her for a while, so Eun Tak had solved the ghost’s problem. The ghost didn’t want her mother to worry, so Eun Tak had filled up the studying ghost’s fridge with food. But there was no reply from the Goblin.
“Is it not possible? You are the one who drank the beer and I used the food for, as I said earlier, somewhere good. If you try to ignore me again, I’m going to blow all these candles off! You might have to come and go all day today!”
The Goblin lifted his hand and suddenly all the candles went off. The surroundings got dark, and smoke filled the room.
“Don’t summon me anymore.”
Silence followed. Was he angry? What was he angry about? The Goblin’s voice was low and meaningless; suddenly he felt like a dangerous man.
“You don’t need to anymore. I’ll always be with you. Let’s go home.”
“...What home?”
“The home that I live in. You can live there now; you’re the Goblin's bride.”
They were the words she had wanted to hear but something felt off. The Goblin who did not make a family, the Goblin who rejected her existence, had suddenly told her the words she wanted to hear.
“Do you love me?...”
“If that is needed, I will.”
His words were just ice. He felt further away than before.
“I love you.”
The Goblin had told her he loved her, but never had he been so far away.
Lightning struck. The thunder was so loud, Eun Tak jumped in surprise. The lightning had struck her heart; her heart singed with pain.
“Do you hate me that much?”
She would have ignored it if she could, but she couldn’t. It was down-pouring outside.
“How much do you hate me to be this sad? It’s dripping wet outside. Actually, I don’t care. Even if you don’t like it, I’m going to live in your house.”
The Goblin wanted to apologise for upsetting her, but he couldn’t.
“I’m not in the situation to choose between cold goblins and warm goblins. All I have to do is pull out your sword, right?”’
“Yes.”
Eun Tak pushed down the lump in her throat.
“Wait for a moment, I need to pack my bags.”
It was still raining on the way back. Eun Tak wanted to ask when it was going to stop, but she couldn’t; her pride won her anger.
“What’s your name?”
The Goblin didn’t answer.
“I’m not asking because I’m curious or anything. I know we are further than marriage and closer than cohabitation, but I’m still a bride, aren’t I? I think I deserve to know the groom’s name.”
The Goblin could make it rain all the way home, but the only thing Eun Tak could do was see the sword and pull the sword. She wanted to know something about him.
“I guess we aren’t even a ‘we’ yet.”
Eun Tak gave up. What was she expecting from that stupid broomstick who knew nothing about a woman’s heart?
“I think it started before you were born.”
He stopped at the red light.
“We.”
Eun Tak had wanted them to be a ‘we,’ but she didn’t want the Goblin to be sad about it. That would just make this relationship sadder.
“Once I was Jung Shin Yoo. In the future, I will be Jae Shin Yoo. And right now I am Shin Jae Yoon. My real name is."
Eun Tak held her breath.
“Shin Kim.”
The signal changed, and the car started again. The girl smiled softly under the green light.
*
Eun Tak was living at the Goblin’s house, meaning that she was now living with a grim reaper. The Goblin asked once more if she was okay with this, but Eun Tak assured him that everything was going to be fine. The grim reaper didn’t hate Eun Tak; in fact, he was starting to realise the god's plan in not letting him take her 19 or 9 years ago.
Everything had been decided so quickly that Eun Tak did not have a place to sleep. The house owners were also fighting about how to decorate her room; a modern style fireplace and pastel-toned walls. The Goblin and the grim reaper fought about such stupid things. There wasn’t a single bed lying around, so Eun Tak slept in the Goblin’s room. The grim reaper who had to take in Goblin for the night was fuming in his sleep; he couldn’t do anything, the Goblin was still the owner of this house.
The Goblin stared at the ceiling in deep thought.
“Have you ever seen a god?”
There was no answer from the grim reaper, who had his white blanket over his head.
“Are you seeing the gods right now? Is that why you always have your blanket over your head, creepily?”
“I think I told you not to speak to me,” the grim reaper said as he took the blanket off his head. “How would a civil worker like me meet a god?”
“I have.”
“What do they look like?”
The butterfly that had sat on his sword; the Goblin took out one of his oldest memories.
“They were just… a butterfly.”
“Gods are always like that. They make it so that we can’t act carelessly with even a passing insect. If we knew their faces, we would at least be able to hate them specifically.”
The two stopped and thought for a while. Staying in this world as someone who wasn’t a person for long periods of time was hard.
“If gods actually only give us pain we can endure, I think the gods overestimated me.”
“... Is it hard?”
“Don’t worry. I won’t ask you to hug me when I cry.”
The grim reaper laughed, exasperated. He was a very bright Goblin; making jokes in the serious of times.
“Why can’t we see gods when humans always see them?”
The grim reaper’s resentment filled words marked the end of their conversation.
Eun Tak looked around the Goblin’s room in curiosity.
“Oh, that is the coat he wore when we first met,” Eun Tak said as she looked at the big brown coat hanging in the closet. His room looked like him. It was old, elegant, and marvellous, like him.
“I never said to have this book, I just told him to have a look!”
She placed down the book she had lent him in Canada. At least he hadn’t thrown it away. Next to the book was a very old diary. Just looking at it, she knew that it was quite precious, so she flipped the book carefully with the tip of her fingers. The diary was filled with the Goblin’s will, but she couldn’t read it. It was all in Chinese characters. Eun Tak flipped another page and the autumn leaf she had once given him fell out.
She smiled. He hadn’t thrown it away.
Just a few moments ago, she hated him for making her upset, but already she was happy again. Eun Tak placed the leaf carefully back into the diary and stood up.
She had to sleep early if she was going to cook breakfast tomorrow. The Goblin had let her live here, the least she could do was cook for them.
She had slept early in order to do so, but when Eun Tak woke up, the two men were already cooking. She was going to clean too, but the two men started fighting about who was going to do the dishes, so she left them to it.
Before she left the house for school, she called the two men and told them she had something to say.
“Announcement.”
The grim reaper and the Goblin raised an eyebrow.
“One. I would like it if it didn’t rain much. The citizens don’t like it, so when I am living here, please stay happy.”
The grim reaper nudged at the Goblin and told him to listen carefully.
“Two. If you don’t like something about me, tell me. Please don’t take me, tell me that you are going to take me, or try to take me to heaven.”
This time, the Goblin nudged at the grim reaper and told him to listen well.
“Three. If you have anything urgent to tell me, please call me. Don’t suddenly appear before my eyes and surprise me. My phone number is 010-1234-1234. Just saying, I can’t call you when I’m at school, I don’t want to call you when I’m at my job, and I don’t have my phone on at the library. That’s it for today. Bye.”
Eun Tak stuck the ‘announcement’ on the fridge and left for school.
The Goblin and the grim reaper were left at home, looking at the announcement on the fridge. Was she expecting them to actually call her? They didn’t even have a phone. The grim reaper glared at the paper.
“I think she’s looking down on us because we don’t have phones.”
“Oh, shut up.”
They decided to buy phones.
*
Eating lunch with friends was immature. Well, that’s just what Eun Tak told herself. She quickly cleared her lunch and headed towards the computer lab. She opened the internet.
Shin Kim. She searched up the name the Goblin had told her. If he had become a goblin, he must’ve been extraordinary. Lots of things popped up, Congressman Shin Kim; musical actor Shin Kim; and a former Goryeo’s general Shin Kim.
“A general means… Oh, he was a civil worker. That’s nice.”
He was born in 1802 and he was a general. That was all she could figure out. There was so much more to him, but nothing had been recorded. She had really meant it when she had told him to stay happy.
When she came back from school, the Goblin was sitting on the armchair arrogantly. He had finished decorating the girl’s room. Eun Tak quickly ran up to her room and looked around. The Goblin had told her that he had placed enough for her to live, but he had done way more than that.
The clock on the wall, the bookshelves, the cute cactus plant, and the gorgeous painting. Her lips turned into a smile. It was her first-ever room, she had never had a room of her own before.
“Is this place heaven? Did you really do this all by yourself?”
Eun Tak asked the man who had followed behind her. The Goblin’s mood got better as he saw how excited she was.
"I requested someone to do it with the heart that I did it by myself.”
“Oh.”
Eun Tak smiled at the Goblin’s honesty.
“Then rest a little. Don’t put any nails through the wall, and walk on tiptoes. My room is right under yours.”
As soon as he finished talking, Eun Tak lifted her heels. She was in an excellent mood.
It wasn’t only Eun Tak who was in a good mood; the Goblin was too. He had told her to walk on tiptoes, as in not to disturb him, but he perked up his ears on purpose to hear what she was doing.
“She’s moving the plant. She needs to place it south.”
The girl kept moving around.
“She likes the bed.”
He could hear her laughing with delight at her new bed.
“She’s coming out of her room.”
The Goblin smiled, pleased with himself. It was a light feeling; a unique feeling from when he saved all those people as a guardian angel. Eun Tak always thanked and apologised for small things. She made him feel bad and pleased often.
A small knock came on her door while she was solving her maths homework. When she opened the door, the grim reaper was standing there, darkly. Eun Tak knew that the grim reaper couldn’t take her when the Goblin was around, but she was still tense.
The reason the grim reaper found her wasn’t quite what she expected. He asked for a good name that girls liked; apparently, he didn’t have a name. He needed a name to tell Sunny the next time he saw her. The grim reaper had now got a phone, but he couldn’t even call her.
“I don’t have a name, so I’m trying to take reference. What names do girls like?”
“Why don’t you have a name? The Goblin has one too.”
“...What is it?”
“Shin Kim. Pretty, right?”
The grim reaper fumed with anger. The Goblin had something he didn’t have.
“Do you have any names you were thinking of?”
The grim reaper thought for a moment.
“Frederick? Franklin?”
Eun Tak stifled a laugh. She had always feared this man, but now she saw him again, he wasn’t that scary at all. It was the first time she had seen a grim reaper stressing because of a girl. It was a hilarious situation but the grim reaper was very serious, so she helped him out.
“Three names girls like the most are Bin Won, Bin Hyun, and Woo Bin Kim.”
All the names she had told him ended with ‘Bin’s. In the end, the grim reaper just chose a name out of those. That day, the grim reaper became Woo Bin Kim; now he could go meet Sunny.
*
The Goblin had realised how busy the life of a year 13, who was getting ready for university, was. She went to school at dawn, went to the library, went to her part-time job, and then came back home late at night. It was hard to see her face at home too; she always put a sign on her door reading ‘Studying.’
He wanted her to pull the sword out quickly. He wanted to go to nothing quickly, but the busy life of a year 13 wasn’t helping him. The Goblin stuck memos on her door and desk, asking her to pull out the sword, with a platter of food.
Every time she saw a memo, she smiled. The Goblin must really want to become prettier. But she wanted to slow the process down; she needed to be important to him for at least a little longer.
While washing the plate the Goblin had sent her with dinner, the man came to see Eun Tak.
“What is your dream? What do you want to be?”
He was asking a very random question, so Eun Tak raised an eyebrow.
“You’re stuffing your face with so much of the food I gave you, but you’re still not pulling out my sword. What are you studying so hard for? What’s your dream?”
“A radio director. I’m studying all towards that.”
“That’s not what I mean! Are you sure you are going to get into university with that non-understanding brain?”
Eun Tak did know what the Goblin was talking about.
“Well actually, I did think about it a lot, but I think you need to wait a bit longer.”
“A bit longer? Are you sure you thought about it ‘a lot’?”
“What happens if you suddenly kick me out because I’m not useful anymore? If I imagine that happening, I get so stressed, I can’t study.”
“If you can’t study why do you keep eating all my food?”
"See, I told you. Your true colours are showing. Is your food that much of a waste? Then you should have just given me 5000 dollars and kicked me away.”
“I’m the Goblin. I am fire and water. How could I just give you money?”
“I would’ve taken it all nicely.”
The Goblin looked at the girl with a frown. Eun Tak had said it like a joke, but in that joke, her truth was hidden. If she pulled the sword out, her role as the Goblin’s bride would be over. She wouldn’t be useful to the man anymore. She didn’t want that.
“But why do you consistently ask for 5000 dollars? It’s such a weird amount; it won’t even get you a house in Seoul.”
“I don’t even dream of a house. That amount is enough for me to sleep in a sauna until I graduate; 2000 is for my university fee; I’ll get my student loan, and the rest is for me to stay alive. Like eating and clothes and stuff like that. It’s not a weird amount; I figured I’d need that much to live. And plus, to people who don’t have anything like me, 5000 dollars is like 5 million dollars.”
The Goblin felt sorry again for this girl. Every single word she had spoken made his heart heavy. He wanted to pat her on the head - it was the only thing he could do - but today, even that was hard.
Next to the speechless Goblin, the grim reaper walked past. He had heard them talking.
“Why aren’t you paying her already? You cold-hearted Goblin.”
The Goblin didn’t hear the end of the sentence; he could only hear the front. Once, Eun Tak had misheard paying as dating. It was impossible to hear paying as dating - one started with a p and the other with a d - but he had.
“Pronounce your words properly!”
“He said, Pay-ing.”
“You go study.”
Eun Tak glared at the Goblin and went back upstairs annoyed; the grim reaper shook his head and walked out of the kitchen.
The Goblin just stood there in horror at himself.
1 Comments
The sudden coldness in chapter 9! Comment and give me feedback!
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