Yesteryear

Another Immortal

The usual trot of work and life had finally reeled Wooyoung in enough that he could distract himself from his slowly healing heart when the peace got disrupted again. Work had become his new drug, his new way of throwing himself at his passion and not thinking about anything aside from it.

When Yongguk asked him to come to his office on one Tuesday that was like any other, Wooyoung expected the man to give Wooyoung yet another job or to ask if the three of them wanted to have dinner together. However, as he stuck his head into the room to check if it was fine to enter, Yongguk's face was dark. He said nothing, just waiting tensely until Wooyoung had closed the door behind him.

Wooyoung gulped before he sat down. He shoved his hands under his thighs to keep himself from shaking as he awaited whatever bad news the man had for him.

It couldn't be worse than San's death.

"It's about San," Yongguk began, and maybe it could be worse.

"What about him?" Wooyoung asked with his voice lowered. He tried to rule his emotions, tried to keep the barely scabbed wounds from bursting back open.

"I just got a call from a man claiming to be immortal," Yongguk said in one breath. Before Wooyoung's expression could slip, he continued.

"It's not him. The person claims to be a fairly young immortal, who only recently noticed they stopped ageing. He asked whether it would be possible to track his traces back in time to find out how that happened since he can't remember doing anything in particular for it."

Wooyoung was a block of ice on his chair. Frozen in movement, only his brain worked as he stared at Yongguk with empty eyes.

"He claims to have been born in 1901 and looks to be in his forties, still."

Another immortal. Another person who didn't age. Who didn't remember what happened to them.

"Maybe he knew San," Wooyoung pronounced the thought on Yongguk's face out loud. "Maybe San found a way to make people immortal."

Yongguk gave a slow nod before he skimmed the notes that he had scrawled down during his phone call.

"I would like to believe so, but if he knew about San, he wouldn't be confused about becoming immortal." Yongguk let the words hang in the air, unsure whether he should continue.

It took Wooyoung longer to catch up since he was still too shocked about the arrival of the new immortal. He didn't know the man, but already his heart yearned to meet him to see if he knew anything about San, anything that would help Wooyoung cope.

"I looked at your theory of inheriting immortality before I called you here. Do you think this person might be related to San, and he handed his immortality down?"

Wooyoung mildly shook his head.

"San was shot through the head. There was no handing his immortality anywhere." He didn't mean to sound bitter about it, but Yongguk ducked his head with an apologetic smile.

"Right, excuse me for asking. I did the math and if he was in his forties, this stranger became immortal around the same time San died. I wondered if there could be a connection."

For a moment, they stared at each other with mutual insecurity. Their brains' steam collected in the air above them as they ran that thought through every theory they had ever had about immortality.

Becoming immortal by accident.

Few immortals around.

Inheriting.

Wooyoung's eyes narrowed first. When he looked around for a certain folder on Yongguk's shelf, his boss watched him with rapt attention. The folder with Wooyoung's work inside of it was dark green, and he slammed it on the table to flick it open.