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Chapter 2
1. Hit the Road, Jack (1)
“Hey. You.”
I heard that in the East, grim reapers come to guide the dead to the afterlife.
I expected a frightening and gloomy voice, but instead I heard the voice of a lovely young schoolgirl. Since things had turned out this way, I hoped her face was pretty, too.
“Hey, wake up. If the professor sees you like this, you’ll get eliminated immediately.”
What language is this?
Unlike English, it lacks rhythm, but it sounds very pleasant to the ears. Is this the language spoken in heaven?
I slowly touched my face.
‘It’s gone.’
The sunglasses I always wore to hide the strange direction of my blind gaze were gone. I felt around nearby but couldn’t find them.
‘What am I thinking?’
The Grim Reaper should already know my situation anyway. It’s not like they’d find me strange for opening my eyes.
Carefully, I opened my eyes.
Joy surged up from deep inside my chest. My body trembled from excitement. Seeing something after sixty-six years filled my heart to the brim.
‘So they’re letting me see before I go.’
I felt grateful toward God.
So He had granted the final wish of an old Black man.
Then the voice from earlier spoke again.
“Are you sick or something?”
I turned my head.
A teenage girl with short hair was staring at me with wide eyes.
Even if she’s a grim reaper, isn’t this too casual considering the age difference? Ah, maybe grim reapers don’t age.
“I’m not sick.”
“W-why are you talking like that? You sound like an old grandpa.”
I am an old grandpa. Can’t you tell? I’m seventy-three this year.
Wait a second.
Why does this place look so modern for the road to the afterlife?
It looked like I was inside a building. There were around a hundred plastic chairs lined up in a large hall, and kids with number tags attached to their chests were sitting around.
One was spinning drumsticks in his hands. Another was strumming a guitar.
Is there a separate heaven only for musicians?
But more importantly, what did these kids do to die so young?
As I looked around and tried to stand up for a better look, the girl jabbed me in the side with her elbow.
“Sit down! The professor’s coming out.”
Half-rising from my seat, I looked at the man called “professor.” He entered while looking through some papers and spoke.
“Numbers 31 through 40, come inside.”
As soon as the professor called out the numbers, ten students with number tags hurried over and lined up in front of him. After checking the number of people with his eyes, he led them somewhere else.
‘Are they being judged?’
I’m screwed.
So those religious people were right after all.
I never believed in God while I was alive. I drowned myself in alcohol, drugs, and beautiful women. If someone like me gets judged, ending up in hell is obvious.
I’m doomed.
At that moment, I suddenly felt pain as if someone were digging through my skull with a metal rod.
“Gghhh!”
It felt like my head was about to explode. It felt like a red-hot iron rod was stirring through my brain.
I grabbed my head and lowered myself. I wanted to scream, but the pain was so intense that no sound came out.
The Grim Reaper sitting next to me panicked and shook me.
“Hey, what’s wrong with you? Should I call the professor?”
If I’m going to be judged and sent to hell anyway, I want to stay here just a little longer.
Hell probably has a bunch of terrifying-looking bastards. By then, I might even miss the days when I couldn’t see.
Then, into the place where the iron rod had dug through, something began flooding in.
My eyelids shook violently.
Countless unfamiliar memories tore through my mind.
‘Whose memories are these?’
They were records of someone else’s life.
A flood of messy, unfriendly memories poured into my head like a waterfall.
‘Ughhh!’
This was the worst pain I had ever experienced.
Even though I had lived seventy-three years and gone through all kinds of hardships, the wisdom gained from a long life became completely useless in the face of physical pain.
Inside those memories, I saw a child.
A boy born in a country called South Korea.
He had a younger sibling seven years younger than him. His family was poor. Of course, compared to the Black families of the 1930s, when I had been born, they were better off, but by this country’s standards, they seemed quite poor.
His name was Song Minjun.
A boy born in 2007, three years after I died in 2004.
It was once a happy family of four, with a father who drove trucks for a living.
That happiness shattered when Minjun was ten years old.
His father, who worked late into the night for the sake of the family, died after falling asleep at the wheel, crashing through a guardrail, and plunging into a river.
And just like many families without a father, poverty came to Minjun’s home as well.
‘Whose memories are these?’
The face of the boy I saw through those fragmented movie-like scenes.
I had never seen him before in my life.
But the kid was incredibly handsome.
Whose son is this? He looks like he’ll make a lot of girls cry someday.
If I had looked like this when I was alive, would I have been even more popular?
“Hey, get up. Are you really okay?”
After the memories finished piercing into my brain, I finally remembered where this place was.
At the same time, I realized the girl beside me wasn’t a grim reaper.
My head still throbbed, but it was more bearable now. I slowly raised my head and looked at her.
“I’m okay. Nothing’s wrong.”
“Really? Your eyes are all red.”
“Yeah. I’m just tired.”
I didn’t know this girl.
Today, I came to take the practical entrance exam for the Applied Music Department at Hongin University’s College of Performing Arts.
This girl was simply the student sitting next to me because her number came before mine. We had no connection at all.
I glanced at the number on her chest.
Then I looked at my own.
‘That means I’ve reincarnated as a South Korean student born in 2007.’
And the handsome East Asian guy from those memories was me now.
But why?
Being reborn was fine. After all, this was a new life where I had regained the eyesight I had wished for so desperately.
If I had been forced to live blind again, that would have been hell itself.
But now that I could see, this felt more like a reward.
Still…
Why South Korea all of a sudden?
It wasn’t a completely unfamiliar country. I had visited once before.
On October 6th and 7th, 1990, I performed in the Seoul Arts Center together with my friend B.B. King.
That was my only connection to South Korea.
‘Why this country of all places?’
There had to be music here too.
But somehow, I had jumped twenty whole years into the future in the blink of an eye, so I had no idea about current music trends or which country’s music was popular these days.
Of course, American music was probably still spread all over the world like before.
“Numbers 41 through 50, come inside.”
The professor’s cold voice echoed through the waiting room again.
The girl next to me swallowed nervously.
“Ah, what do I do? We’re next. Which academy do you go to? SMMD? SBC?”
Academy?
No matter how much I searched my memories, I couldn’t remember ever attending one.
“I don’t go to an academy.”
“You mean not anymore? Then before?”
“I’ve never gone to one.”
The girl looked dumbfounded.
“There’s actually a crazy person preparing for an applied music exam by himself?”
Then she glanced at my face.
“Well, at least with your looks, you could apply to the acting department instead.”
Was that supposed to mean I’m handsome, or that someone like me would obviously fail? Pick one.
‘Wait. What exam am I even here for?’
I desperately searched through my memories.
I was fairly confident with instruments. Especially piano.
While searching my memories, I found scenes of Minjun climbing the hills behind his house alone to practice singing.
‘Vocal department.’
I spent my entire life singing, and now it looked like I’d be singing again in my next life, too.
Since I could finally see now, I wanted to try becoming something like a painter in this life. I wanted to live a wonderful life expressing everything I saw through art.
‘But…’
This kid’s family was poor.
The reason he started music in the first place was because he knew he couldn’t escape poverty through an ordinary university path, four years of tuition, and a tiny starting salary after graduation.
Music was a path where luck and hard work together could lead to striking it rich overnight.
That was the same reason I started music when I was poor, so I understood him.
The girl whispered to me.
“What song did you prepare?”
Suddenly, the memory came back.
Minjun had applied to four universities in total for practical exams.
Two in Seoul and two in Gyeonggi Province.
Because his family was poor, attending a university far away would be difficult. Living outside Seoul would require renting a place and paying extra living expenses.
Out of the four schools, the one he was testing for today had the highest reputation.
‘Hongin University.’
The school itself was located in Mapo, Seoul, but this department used the Daehangno campus near Jongno.
What were the application guidelines again?
‘The first exam is one free song.’
The details returned to me.
The test had two stages.
For the first stage, the song had to be under one minute and forty seconds, and the intro could not exceed four bars.
All songs had to be sung from memory.
Any style was allowed, but only Korean lyrics could be used.
Among the flood of memories, I remembered bringing something here.
I felt around nearby and grabbed a guitar case.
‘So Minjun sings while playing guitar.’
But is he good?
No, that’s not the issue.
I’m not confident about guitar.
I know how to play, but only at the level of strumming basic chords, so I can sing anywhere because of the instrument’s portability.
I definitely wouldn’t call myself good at it.
I took the guitar out of the case.
A cheap guitar I had never seen before appeared.
The girl watching me frowned, but I looked at it with deep emotion.
‘So this is what a guitar looks like.’
I had always been good at imagining objects by carefully touching them, so I already roughly knew the shape.
But this was my first time seeing its colors and craftsmanship.
Well, naturally. It was my first time actually seeing one.
‘It looks cool.’
I strummed the strings.
The sound was muddy and unclear.
In my previous life, I probably wouldn’t have even glanced at a guitar like this.
The girl clicked her tongue.
“If you’re going to sing with a guitar like that, you should’ve just prepared an MR track instead. When was the last time you changed these strings? They’re rusty.”
She was right.
Honestly, if I were going to sing with mediocre guitar accompaniment, it would probably be better to sing without any accompaniment at all.
But why did Minjun want to go to university so badly?
You don’t absolutely need a university degree to sing.
I never graduated from university either.
I attended a school for the blind until my parents died, but that was it.
I didn’t even have a high school diploma.
And yet, I still succeeded.
But there’s a saying in this world:
“That was right back then, but it’s wrong now.”
That’s how everything in life is.
Something that was obviously correct in the past may no longer be correct in modern times.
And this was an Eastern country twenty years into the future. Things might be completely different from America.
Besides, I didn’t even know whether I would continue living in this kid’s body or if I had only entered it temporarily.
I couldn’t ruin a young man’s life.
For now, I should at least take the exam.
At that moment, the exhausted-looking professor entered again and spoke.
“Numbers 51 through 60, come inside.”
The girl beside me stood up.
“It’s our turn. Let’s go.”
I stood as well and smiled faintly.
“Since I’ve already taken over this body, I should help fulfill this kid’s dream first. My dream can wait.”
I was still only in my late teens now.
I had an incredibly long life ahead of me once again.
Long enough to postpone my own dreams until later.
