“I saw you here yesterday too,” he says in greeting, as if they aren’t standing beyond the edge of the bridge, looking down into the winter-dark waters a million meters below. “You come often?”

A few moments of silence, and then, the man looks up. “No,” he admits, hair blowing across his forehead. Jet-black, wispy, as it had been in life. “It calls to me, draws me to it. The river,” he adds, as if it wasn’t already obvious. “I’m missing something, some long-forgotten memory associated with this place.”

He hums. The steel railing is cold against his hand, threatening to sap all strength and feeling from his body. He doesn’t even need it - there’s no way he can fall, not here, not now - but he holds onto the metal bars like they’re a lifeline. “Do you know what it is?” he asks the man beside him. “The river, I mean. Do you know what it’s for?”

The man shrugs. “It doesn’t matter, does it?” He raises his head, looks into the pale, misty distance. “Not anymore.”

Silence falls again, broken only by the soft crashing of waves on sand. The river is big, long and wide, and the only way across is by bridge or boat. Occasionally, a dim yellow glow makes its way across the river, slowly. The telltale lamp of a soul-carrier, he knows, ferrying the newly-deceased to the land of the dead.

“Song Seunghyun.”

The voice comes from behind, and he jumps, losing his grip on the bridge. For a split second, he freezes, the exhilarating fear of free-fall coursing through his veins. Then, abruptly, someone grabs his arm, pulling him back to reality, and Seunghyun returns to his senses.

“Can you not?” He lets out a shaky breath, heart still pounding from the encounter, and the person in front of him laughs, throwing back the hood of his loose black robe. “Jaejin, I’m serious.”

Jaejin shrugs, joining him at the edge of the bridge. “You need to let him go,” he says, nodding to the side, where the man still stares listlessly into the distance. “It’s been years, and don’t forget, I broke protocol for you. You do know what would happen if you were reported?”

The man starts suddenly, peering over his shoulder at the spot where Jaejin stands. “Who is that?” he calls, voice tinged with fear. Turning to Seunghyun, he demands, “Who are you talking to? There’s no one there.”

Jaejin fixes Seunghyun with one last stern look and fades out of sight. Something clatters to the ground, and even without looking, Seunghyun knows that it’s a scythe.

It was bound to happen, he knows, approaching the spirit reluctantly. He knew the consequences, knew what would have had to happen eventually, knew the inevitable ending. Jaejin’s right. It’s time to let go.

***

“Hyung, wait up!”

“I’m already walking slow enough. Any slower, and I’ll disappear to the land of the dead.”

Lee Hongki was a mystery. One that Seunghyun desperately wanted to uncover, but it seemed impossible. Everyone knew Hongki, yet no one seemed to be genuinely close with him, not to the point of truly knowing him.

Seunghyun aimed to be the first, yet he soon found that there was a reason why so many had tried and failed. Understanding Lee Hongki wasn’t as easy as it seemed; his mind shifted gears faster than anything Seunghyun had ever seen before, and it was nearly impossible to keep up with his train of thought.

Yet Hongki seemed to appreciate the effort, and Seunghyun lived for the small smiles he’d flash him sometimes, when no one else was looking, and the knowing looks they’d exchange when no one but Seunghyun knew what he was talking about.

Slowly, Hongki opened up, and Seunghyun learned that he’d been found on the banks of a river, washed up ashore with a note that read ‘It’s not your time. Come back in twenty years.’ No one knew what it meant, but sitting on the banks of that very river one day, Hongki admitted that he understood the cryptic message.

The truth was, he had died in birth, but as he was born between All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, the wandering spirits had taken pity on him and sent him back to the human world by way of the river that spans life and death. Yet, being from the land of the dead, he only had but a few short years to enjoy life. The next month, when he turned twenty, he would return to the grips of death.

Naturally, Seunghyun refused to believe him. He maintained this useless denial up until the very last moment, when he saw Hongki step into the misty gray river at midnight. The water swallowed him whole, and Lee Hongki disappeared without a trace, leaving not so much as a single ripple on the surface of the water.

Driven by grief and regret, Seunghyun had stumbled into the river after him, only to end up with wet jeans and soaked shoes. Jaejin, the Reaper assigned to Hongki’s soul, sympathized with this devastated boy and agreed to let Seunghyun take over his place as Hongki’s Reaper.

As such, Seunghyun gained full powers to reap the souls of the deceased, as well as prevent them from moving on. He stopped Hongki’s spirit right as it stepped onto the bridge spanning life and death, refusing to move a single inch until Hongki returned to the world of the living.

And so they struggled for years, Hongki sitting at the edge of the bridge with no memories of life, unable to move on, and Seunghyun standing with him, day after day, desperately trying to retain the man he’d barely known.

Deep down, he knew it would have had to happen anyway. The scythe is heavy in Seunghyun’s hand, but as he approaches Hongki’s spirit, he realizes that this was the very irony of Hongki’s life anyway.

A child rescued from death, yet bound by its laws to return before the peak of life, always walking the distance between night and day, pacing the bridge between life and death. Limbo, purgatory, always in between. This was the real Lee Hongki, not inhuman yet never belonging in the world of life, and Seunghyun has to learn to let him go.

His vision blurs as Hongki’s spirit turns to face him, a smile blossoming on its face. Seunghyun swallows, his hand shakes, but he takes a deep breath and passes the scythe through the spirit’s image. “I release you,” he whispers, voice cutting off as tears slide down his face. “Go now, be at rest.”

***

Seunghyun will never forget the day he first met Lee Hongki. It was a crisp October day, the wind already carrying the chill of winter. Leaves blew in swirls on the ground, and he spotted a lone figure standing on the bridge over the river, leaning against the railing, looking into the depths of the water.

The boy had dark hair that fell over his forehead and eyes that seemed to see more than what was present. Captivated and curious, Seunghyun approached the bridge. But instead of talking to the boy, he simply stood a distance away, leaning against the railing, looking down into the swirling water below.

And so it went for days, Seunghyun and the boy standing side by side, peering into the river like it held some profound, undiscovered secret about life. Though he did want to know the boy, Seunghyun couldn’t bring himself to talk to him. Their shared experiences on the bridge felt almost sacred, reverent, in a way, and he would have hated to break the comfortable silence.

Then, one day, the boy approached him first, walking up and leaning against the railing. “I saw you here yesterday too,” Hongki said with a smile, wisps of hair falling into his eyes. “You come often?”