untitled
 

pg, baekchen
2501 wc
prompt: supernatural (creatures) and from EPM

--

"Seoul?" Chen blanches, "But I'm perfectly content here in Beijing!" 

A tall being wearing the latest issued reaper uniform sighs. Pale hands come up to pull the hood down and Chen was left staring at the face of bad news. Kris' visage was twisted in a sympathetic expression but his eyes were unyielding.

"Why are you even complaining? Seoul was considerably smaller than here."

"Bu-but," Chen splutters in protest, "Xiumin?" A shake of the head. "Lay?" Another sigh. "Luhan? Tao?!"

Kris hefts the large winged scythe without an effort and looked straight at Chen. His face has melted back to its default indifference and its the last thing Chen sees before the hood was back in its place. A guttural sound replaces the previous smooth tenor of Kris' voice as he speaks, "Orders are orders."

Like all grim reapers, Kris disappears in a blink. Chen was left staring at the vacated spot, his ears ringing from the sound of fluttering wings, and his own robe ruffling in the breeze that accompanies the disappearance. His scythe, smaller than Kris' but still larger than most humans, floats beside him and was emitting a particular forlorn electrical sizzle. Probably reflecting its owner's feelings.

"Damn it." Dejected, Chen takes hold of his scythe and pulls up his own hood. He walks outside the recently reaped house, passing carelessly through upturned furniture, broken doors and sealed windows. He leaves the bodies of its occupants scattered in their heavily barricaded dining room, their souls long gone and limbs not quite intact.

Chen vanishes just as the telltale signs of reanimation starts.

-

The sole reason Chen has vehemently tried turning down his reassignment was that he does not like being alone. Petty, quite, but contrary to common misconception, not all reapers walk the earth in singles. Some does, yes, but others usually go in groups like them. Him.

He had never been alone before. Especially in a foreign country that oddly feels familiar. The whole thing would be what humans call terrifying. But reapers were not humans (they probably were before, a lifetime vaguely there in the back of their minds),  following orders were their unbreakable oath and collecting souls to send them to the Registry Office was their life.

As such, orders were orders and Chen was duty bound to follow. No matter how hard, how far, and Chen winces, no matter how appallingly infested that country was.

-

With a crack of lightning hitting the dark ground of Seoul, Chen appears in the middle of a dilapidated city. The place reeks of death and gore; crumbling buildings and rusting metals were abundant, various objects litter the place, and the stench of decay was present all around.

Chen wrinkles his face in distaste when a particularly foul-smelling body brushes past him.

"Ugh," he steps away and swings his scythe through it. Instead of reaping like in normal living beings, because the soul the had already been collected even before its reanimation, the blade passes through like it was an empty space. The rotting body shuts down, frozen in its upright position like a wax figure.

Chen estimates at least half a year before it can move again, based on its state of decay. Or if he's lucky, a year until it breaks down in pieces and crumbles to ash.

"Grrrhgggrrrnn..."

"Not a minute and I'm already being swarmed." Chen grumbles, turning around after sensing and hearing another rumble of vocal cords behind him. 

He sees a boy lumbering towards him. He was wearing clothes with a number of dark splotches; the white of his top barely recognizable from dirt and stains, while the jeans? Chen guesses, also dirty and ripped in various places. And then there was some sort of horns made of fabric on top of its grimy hair. Reindeer antlers, looks like.

"Rraarrrghgrrr..." Chen blinks, surprised, when the bo- no, dead body of a boy, stops a few steps away. It stands there, body hunched and head tilted as if observing Chen back. Which would be impossible because grim reapers should be invisible to it.

Now that he could really look, Chen momentarily wonders at the almost pristine condition of the body before him. Unlike the others that either has torn limbs or large chunks of flesh bitten out of them, this one has no such things. It looks dirty, true, but otherwise unharmed and looking freshly dead.

Curious and curiouser, when Chen moved a little closer, instead of lunging at his general area like most (reapers naturally attract the undead even though they can't see, probably like water to dry land if one would compare), it just stands there unmoving with its dead eyes brighter than most.

"You can see me? You're weird."

"Grrrraaaaahhh..." It shifts, its body shuddering and limbs twitching in response.

Was it trying to have a conversation with him?

"Can you understand me?" Chen asks, incredulous and a little bit amazed. 

It doesn't respond but it raises a shaking hand. Chen frowns in confusion and his amazement fades down, thinking it wasn't different from the others after all. Until it wiggles its wrist, almost impatiently, and Chen spots a banner? rolled around its forearm and crusting with dirt.

"S? M Tow?" Chen squints, "S M Town?"

"Raaaghrgahg..."

"That's your name?" Chen snickers until he notices another barely readable word underneath. "Oh wait," letting go of his scythe and pulling his hood down, Chen grasps the wrists and scratches away the stain covering the rest of the letters, "aha! Baekhyun!"

Abruptly, something pulsed at the back of his mind. A heartbeat from a lifetime, a memory that was there but not. It was impossible, Chen tries to shake off the thought, no reaper remembers.

"Graaaah! Graaaaaaaaahhrah!"

Chen grins, thinking that the sounds that Baekhyun were suddenly making were celebratory grunts and growls. But then the sudden increase of groaning and shuffling noise caught his attention. A swarm of probably hundreds of dead bodies were comi