The sun had already slipped behind the mountains, leaving a cool blue darkness spreading over the land.In that gloom, the fallen aircraft burned like a massive fireball tearing open the night.
Black smoke towered upward like a chimney.Flames carved bright wounds through the dark, twisting and snapping with every gust—as if something wild was trapped inside the wreckage.
From far down the runway, fire engines rushed in, their red lights pulsing like blood in the dark.Their glow mixed with the flames, casting warped shadows across the shredded metal.
The impact had split the ground itself.Concrete shards lay tangled with torn steel, a grotesque sculpture shaped by violence.The jet had shattered into dozens of pieces strewn across the asphalt.
Fire engines pushed through the debris.Columns of water arced high.Ambulances pulled in behind them—but the responders stopped, frozen before the wall of heat.
A tremor shook the fuel tank.
It swelled.
And then it exploded.
A pillar of fire roared into the sky.Metal fragments whistled outward like bullets catching the firelight.Flames crawled across the fuselage like a living creature,chewing through the broken frame with burning jaws.
The cargo hold burst open.Suitcases shot out onto the runway, rolling wildly before flames devoured them—zippers melting, fabric shriveling into black curls.
Within seconds, the runway looked like a vision of hell.Screaming alarms.The stench of burning metal.Debris scattered like bones.
And under an overturned sheet of fuselage,a few trembling fingers slipped into view.
They clawed at the ground, desperate.
Slowing.
Weakening.
Until they finally fell still.
Time broke.
The flames froze mid-arc, suspended exactly where they had reached.As if someone had hit pause on reality.
Fire tongues hardened in the open air.Weightless embers hung, caught in the moment of falling—but denied the fall.
The last echo of the sirens cut out instantly.The half-formed sound wave froze, locked in place like cooling metal.
People’s open mouths stayed open.But their voices never came out.A scream lingered in the air, reduced to a silent shape.
Silence deepened—a muffled vibration underwater.
No breath moved.Not even dust drifted.
Time itself seemed to lose its footing.
And everything sank into stillness.
The ink-black sky cracked with a thin, trembling fissure.Through it, two streaks of shadow dropped straight down, slicing through smoke.
But it wasn’t a fall.
They descended as if gravity meant nothing to them—gliding between frozen flames with an unnatural calmthat warped the air where red fire met black shadow.
They touched down lightly on the runway.
And at that instant,the suspended embers quivered—so faintly it was almost invisible.Like the surface tension of water breaking for the first time,the membrane of frozen time shivered.
The air twisted.Ash trembled.
At the center of every distortionstood two men dressed in black.
Their very presence stirred a ripple across the concept of time itself—subtle, but undeniable.
They were from Reapers Inc., Earth Branch — Soul Retrieval Division, Team Two.
“What in the world happened here…?”Rookie agent Yoon Ji-chung stepped through the frozen scene,studying the half-burned debris with wide eyes.Sweat dripped inside his helmet.
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“Ji-chung,” Team Leader Kim Beom-woo said quietly,“this one’s going to be a long night.”
He gestured toward the wreckage.
“Scan everything. Upload it to the branch server.We had a completely different search scheduled today, but—well, that’s over.”
His voice carried the kind of tired acceptance that only comes from experience.Even here, with flames frozen around him, his footsteps were light—as if he’d walked through worse many times before.
“Listen carefully,” he continued.“The crash is recent. Souls should still be close to their bodies.
Check the remains.Scan the souls.Match them immediately.
Give it a day and the souls scatter,and catching them becomes hell.”
He exhaled sharply.
“Head Office sent auditors because our retrieval rate dropped.So let’s not embarrass ourselves today.”
“I got it, sir!” Ji-chung said—trying to sound bold,though his hands trembled.
Beom-woo muttered under his breath,“Great… work piled to the ceiling,and somehow this is what counts as rookie training…”
Beom-woo crouched and vanished into the wreckage,leaving only faint streaks of light behind.
Wherever his fingers touched,burned bodies slid free from the twisted metal.
On each corpse’s back crawled the faint mark of a Triple-Time Resonance—a parasitic astral imprint that clung to the dead.
He pressed his scanner against one.
Beep.Identification confirmed.
He scanned the dazed soul floating nearby.
Beep.Match complete.
“Confirmed.”
With a tap of the transmit key,the soul dissolved into light.
He moved like a shifting shadow—slipping through the seams of frozen time itself,retrieving soul after soul with effortless speed.
Then he saw it.
At the far end of the runway,a lone spirit bolted through the smoke.
“Oh? Running, are we?”Beom-woo’s lips curled.
He stomped the ground once.
The air for five kilometers warped.
In the next heartbeat,the fleeing spirit’s head slammed under Beom-woo’s polished shoewith a heavy thud.
“No—wait! Please!”The spirit’s cry echoed strangely in the frozen world.
Ji-chung arrived late, panting.
“Sir! This guy… he still doesn’t know he’s dead, does he?”
Beom-woo didn’t look at him.
“Scan him.Find the body.Match it.”
“Yes, sir!”
Ji-chung scrambled through the debris.
They had already processed 284 bodies.Almost done.
Then he found it—a torso missing everything below the waist,buried beneath scorched metal.
Beep.Match complete.
“Confirmed.”
Beom-woo pressed the transmit key.The trapped soul vanished into light.
They searched the wreckage one last time.No unidentified bodies remained.
Standing at the center of the ruined runway,Beom-woo crushed a charred metal shard beneath his boot.
“Operation complete.”
------
Meanwhile in Seoul,Baek Kyung-su was calmly walking his family through everything that had happened to him over the past year.
“So you expect me to believe that?”Yoon-jung’s voice sliced clean across the living room—cold, sharp, unforgiving.
“Try saying it with a straight face.What woman—what sane woman—shows up with thirty million won,thanks you for ‘changing her life’ with a couple of sentences,and then offers to send her son to be your disciplewhile paying another thirty million every six months?
Seriously, Baek Kyung-su.Your imagination has gotten impressive.Try being realistic next time.”
When he finally explained the real story behind the money,Yoon-jung let out a snort—half disbelief, half exasperation.But in her eyes lingered a tiny flicker of …but what if?
“It might sound unbelievable,” Kyung-su said quietly,“but it’s all true.Have I ever lied to you?
You know my phone password,my pattern lock,you even manage my digital certificates.
No one lives more transparently than I do.So please—just this once—believe me.”
Da-hye leaned forward, eyes shining.
“Wait, Dad… this is all real?No way. That’s wild.
So how much did she give you because of the accident?”
Yoon-jung fell silent, thinking.Then something clicked behind her eyes—sharp, decisive.
“Alright.Then there’s only one solution.I’m meeting this woman myself.That’s the only way I’ll know whether to believe any of this.”
Kyung-su’s eyes widened.
“Hold on—do you really have to?What are you even planning to say to her?You don’t actually think I had… other intentions, do you?”
At that, Yoon-jung burst into loud, uncontrollable laughter,clutching her stomach.
“Oh please!Who would fall for a middle-aged, out-of-shape man like you?Men are unbelievable—a woman is nice to them once and they start drooling,thinking she’s fallen in love.”
She immediately turned to their daughter.
“Da-hye, did you hear that?Your dad still thinks he’s some kind of catch.If he’d just look in a mirror, he might finally wake up.”
Kyung-su’s face twisted.For years he had been buried under the stressof handling a bankrupt company alone.He hadn’t taken care of himself at all—overeating, no rest—and now carried every sign of stress-induced weight gain.
“Dad… yeah, that part’s kinda true,” Da-hye said, laughing.“But I’m with Mom!I want to meet this woman too.I’ll figure out real quick who the problem is.”
Yoon-jung snapped toward her daughter.
“You? Going there? Absolutely not.Have you lost your mind?Why are you meddling in your parents’ business?This is my matter. Stay out of it.”
“What? How is Dad’s situation your matter alone?Of course I’m involved!This is insane.”
The two of them never lost an argument—not to anyone, and definitely not to each other.As their voices rose,a vein throbbed at Kyung-su’s temple.
Heat surged up his face.A twitch formed at the corner of his eye.Finally, he grabbed his head with both handsand shook it violently.
“Why… why are you both doing this to me?!Aaaaargh!”
