A postpartum care center in Seoul.Two in the morning.By Reapers Inc. time, the Hour of the Ox.

  A newborn cries with its mouth stretched wide open.Another kicks and flails, tiny limbs thrashing in the air.A nurse assistant lifts a diaper, eyes widening in surprise.

  Then—everything stops.

  The crying.The movement.Even the air itself.

  Inside the newborn nursery, frozen in absolute stillness,employees of Reapers Inc.’s Reincarnation Department drift through the room.

  Dressed in pristine white suits,they hover just above the floor, gliding soundlessly,their voices low and unhurried.

  “Team leader… are we short on souls again today?”The junior fidgets with the scanner, unable to hide his irritation.“I heard Korea only got assigned two hundred and fourteen.”

  “At this rate,” he adds, “how are we supposed to get any work done?”

  The senior, who has been checking the babies one by one, slowly lifts his head.His gaze cuts toward the junior.

  “Is this your first day?”He exhales sharply.“This happens all the time. The Retrieval Division can’t pull in enough souls.”You know that. So why complain every time?”

  Muttering under his breath, the junior moves the scanner over one of the eight babies.

  Beep.

  He leans closer, studying the display.

  “Triple-Time Resonance activated.”

  The senior doesn’t turn his head. Only his eyes shift.

  “Check it again. Make sure all three phases are active.If even one fails, the baby could end up with physical defects.”

  The tone is harsh—but the warning is real.

  The junior nods and runs the scan again.

  “All clear.”

  Only then does the senior tap his wristwatch.A hologram flickers to life—the day’s work order.

  “Today, four hundred thirty-five babies are scheduled for reincarnation in Korea.”He pauses.“Operations assigned us two hundred fourteen souls.”

  Silence.

  “So tell me,” he says. “How many are we short?”

  The junior answers on instinct.

  “Two hundred twenty-one.”

  The senior’s lips curl into a crooked smile.

  “I wasn’t asking you.”He scoffs.“I can do basic math myself.You always act like I can’t.”

  Here we go again.

  The junior sighs inwardly.This isn’t how this was supposed to go.

  Helping never earns thanks—only another lecture.Regret shows plainly on his face.

  “Listen carefully,” the senior says.“Any newborn has to receive Triple-Time Resonance activation and a soul within one hundred days of birth.”“If not, they won’t survive long.”

  He taps the hologram.

  “And you must double-check the reserved reincarnation dates.”“Why management ever approved a reservation system is beyond me. It just complicates everything.”

  He lowers his voice.

  “One mistake, and you’re filing an incident report.”“Later on, when that soul grows up as a human, they file complaints. Cause problems.”“So don’t screw it up.”

  The reservation system allows souls to choose their reincarnation date in advance.

  The babies lying in the nursery were all born at different times.

  To confirm a match, Reincarnation Department employees had to scan each newborn individually—cross-checking birth data again and again until the timing aligned perfectly.

  Only then could the soul be linked and the reincarnation process proceed.

  Of course, not every soul qualified.

  The system was a VIP privilege—granted only to a select few recognized in Heaven as model souls.

  From Reapers Inc.’s perspective, it was a polished promotional campaign.Something like:

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  “Choose a great day to be born.”

  On the surface, it looked harmless. Even cheerful.Just another corporate event meant to boost numbers.

  But underneath lay calculation.

  The goal was simple:to secure as much peace generated from happy lives as possible—one soul at a time.

  There weren’t many reserved souls overall.

  The problem was timing.

  When reservations clustered together, the workload multiplied overnight.

  And unfortunately, this was one of those peak periods.

  No wonder the team leader’s nerves were shot.

  Before reincarnating a soul, the Reincarnation Department had to follow a complex process.

  The real issue?

  There was no unified manual.

  Only an outdated guide last revised a thousand years ago.

  No one actually read it.

  Most employees relied on whatever their seniors remembered—and passed down verbally.

  Which was why the senior’s nagging never stopped.

  “Check that baby’s Triple-Time Resonance data again,” he snaps.“See if the birth time matches the reservation list.”“If it’s a reserved case, report it to Operations immediately and have the waiting soul sent down.”

  The tension in his voice makes the junior hesitate.

  “Uh… there is one on the list.”He swallows.“Should I… report it now?”

  Hearing the junior’s deflated voice, the senior realizes he’s been overly tense.His expression softens—just slightly.

  “Alright.Report it immediately and connect the reserved soul to that baby.”

  After a brief pause, he adds, almost as an afterthought,

  “…Good work.”

  The junior, caught off guard by the belated praise, looks embarrassed and scans the display again.

  Out of the eight babies, only one appears on the reservation list.The other seven do not.

  After hearing the report, the senior falls silent for a moment, deep in thought.Then he speaks.

  “From here on out…report only three cases to Operations and request soul connections.Put the rest on standby.”

  Before the words have fully settled, the junior sends a message to Operations and reactivates the scanner.

  Beep. Beep. Beep—

  With trained precision, soul connections for three babies are completed in sequence.

  The senior exhales deeply and scratches the back of his head.

  “For now… we’ll have to stop by the slaughterhouse.Pull some livestock souls and balance the numbers while we double-check everything.”

  He continues, muttering under his breath.

  “You know how many animals you have to mix just to make one human soul, right?And every species has a different ratio.That’s what really drives me insane.”

  Never good with numbers to begin with, the senior grows noticeably sharper whenever calculations come up.

  Reading the tension in the air, the junior gathers his courage and cautiously tests the next step.

  “So then…we’re heading out again today to collect wild souls roaming the streets?”

  The memory of getting chewed out earlier for mentioning the wrong number flashes through his mind.This time, he avoids talking about numbers altogether.

  At the words wild souls, the senior reacts as if he’s been waiting for them.He immediately launches into what he calls his greatest moment on Earth, retelling it like a battlefield legend.

  Of course, the junior had been standing right beside him at the time.Still, the senior boasts as if he alone had witnessed everything.

  Employees of Reapers Inc. possess the ability to manipulate time—to stop it, speed it up, or let it flow exactly as it does for humans.

  A few months earlier, the two of them had been wandering through a mountain road without moonlight, searching for dead wild souls.The world around them was locked in time-stop mode.

  That night, not a single soul appeared.Their frustration grew with every step.

  Then, a wide stretch of open road emerged ahead of them.

  And there—

  A car stood with its headlights blazing, flooding the surroundings with light.In front of it, a family of wild boars stood frozen in place.

  Curious to see how the scene would unfold, the senior switched time back to normal mode.

  That was when the story truly began.

  “Alright, let’s move.Wouldn’t it be perfect if, like last time, ten wild boars all died in a single road accident?”“Those are the days that make the job easy.”

  What the senior referred to as last time was a major incident on a long rural highway.

  A night of pitch darkness, without even a trace of moonlight.

  A large female wild boar was crossing the road, leading nine piglets behind her.

  Judging the smooth asphalt to be safer than the rough forest path, the mother lined her piglets up tightly behind her.

  The sight resembled a skewer of sausages crossing the road in a neat line.

  But at that moment, a heavily intoxicated driver was racing down the empty road at near-blinding speed.

  As headlights suddenly flared from behind, the boar family froze completely.

  They turned their heads in unison, staring into the blinding light as if witnessing something divine—their minds utterly blank.

  And in the next instant, the driver struck.

  The piglets were hit first, one after another, swept aside like bowling pins.

  Thud. Thud. Thud…

  Last came the massive mother, standing firm in the middle of the road as if guarding it.

  The car slammed straight into her, like crashing into solid rock.

  BAM—! CRUNCH—! SKREEEEE—!!

  Unable to withstand the impact, the drunk driver’s car spun off the road and overturned.

  The hood crumpled like a crushed tin can.The boar’s weight, flung upward, shattered the windshield, sending glass fragments flying in every direction.

  They sparkled in the air—as if someone had scattered a handful of jewels from the sky.

  Miraculously, the drunk driver survived, saved by the deployed airbags.

  The senior, who had witnessed the carnage firsthand, still remembered the scene vividly.

  That was why he never missed a chance to retell it to the junior, boasting as if it were his own heroic tale.

  Thanks to that family of wild boars, soul collection that day had been easy.

  But reality was never that accommodating.

  In Reapers Inc.’s official manual, the phrase—

  “Use of wild animal souls is strictly prohibited.”

  —was printed in bold.

  Of course.

  No one actually read the manual.

  And on days when souls ran short, that prohibition was treated as little more than decorative text.

  Because in practice, there was no other way to balance the numbersexcept by scraping together wild animal souls.