What is beyond death?

The thorn that has been piercing my heart as a servant of the Goddess of Life for a long time has been tormenting me endlessly.

What is life born for, what is it lived for, and what is it died for?

The Mother of Life said that I must find the answer to such questions myself, and I have continued to ponder the questions.

What is life? What is death?

What should I live for?

My hands, which have lived for a long time, have become wrinkled like an old man, and my vision has begun to blur.

All of my physical being was telling me that the time given to me was running out.

The answer I have come to after a long period of contemplation may differ from the answers of others, so I will not write it here.

Instead, I will pick up the pen to write about the Afterlife that I heard from the Mother of Life.

I hope that what is written here can be helpful to others.

...

Where there is light, there is darkness, and where there is birth, there is death.

All living beings live a life of being born, living, and dying.

And the soul of the living being that reaches the destination sheds the armor of the body.

But that does not mean it is liberated.

What lies behind it is a cold judgment that evaluates life.

The grim reaper who collects the souls exists everywhere.

The grim reapers walking in the dim darkness are the most secret harvesters of this world, wandering the world with a huge scythe to harvest the souls the dead.

There is no soul that can escape their touch. Just as death is inevitable, they too are an inevitable existence.

There is no place in this world where there is no darkness, and they can go anywhere in the darkness.

There will be no place they cannot go.

However, they were not as cold as ice. They are said to give the departed a moment to leave a last word to their family before departing for the Afterlife.

If there are family members by their side, they give them the strength to speak in their own voice, and if there are no family members, they allow them to leave a last word through a dream.

They may be kind.

However, one should not rely on their goodwill to try to live a little longer.

All they can give is a word. If you expect more, the cold scythe will only start the harvest.

The soul grasped by the hand of the grim reaper crosses the endlessly cold world and reaches the door of the Afterlife.

Beyond the door made of black rock, another world unfolds.

After passing through the deep cave made of black rock and passing the fierce gaze of the guardian statues of the Afterlife, the place reached is a vast river that cannot be thought of as having passed through the cave.

The river, so wide that the opposite bank cannot be seen, is filled with pitch-black water. On the riverbank of this black river, there is a place covered with small pebbles.

This river, called by various names, is the river that divides the world of the living and the world of the dead.

It is called the Samdocheon River or the Styx River, and it is said to be a clear boundary that divides the world of the living and the world of the dead.

To prevent the living from accidentally crossing this river, and to prevent the dead who have crossed the river from returning to the realm of the living.

The wide river blocks the way.

As you walk along the side of such a river, you can see the figures of young children on the riverbank.

The children in the Afterlife. It is said that the unfortunate souls of the children who died before their parents stay on the riverbank.

Children who died before their parents. Children who died without becoming adults. Children who have driven a huge nail into the hearts of their parents.

These unfortunate children are not allowed to go down to the lower layers of the Afterlife, and they spend their time on the riverbank, gazing down at the black river.

It is said that in the black river, the faces of their living parents can be seen.

The sight of the children in the silent Afterlife, unable to take their eyes off the faces of their parents reflected in the river, is truly heartbreaking, even though I have not seen it directly.

The children continue to gaze at the images of their parents.

The images of the parents left behind in the mortal world.

The images of the parents struggling and suffering in the absence of their children.

The children, making a sad face while looking at their parents' images, unconsciously reach out their hands to the river, but the images of their parents in the river are just illusions, and the ripples caused by the children's hands only make the images blurry.

The children not only mourn the sight of their parents, but also cheer for their parents to overcome the pain and stand up again someday.

And it is said that the children come to know that they were deeply loved by their parents from seeing the images of their parents in the river.

The pure sorrow of the children is washed away by the river.

At some point, the children who have been gazing at the river from the riverbank rise from their spot.

The moment the children leave the riverbank is when their parents come to the Afterlife.

At that time, the children rush to their parents and grab their hands.

And they descend to the lower layers of the Afterlife together.

While it may be a cruel environment, it is a necessary environment for the souls of the young children who did not even understand the concepts of life and death.

The children who did not live a full life and did not become adults needed to know that they were loved beings.

However, if the parents the child has waited for a long time are those who did not mourn the child's death, like beasts, or even those who were filthy and inflicted violence on the child, if they are the ones who caused the child's death, and if they try to reject the weak hands of the child upon arriving in the Afterlife...

The child will burst into a loud cry.

If the sorrowful cries of the child fill the riverbank, a woman will appear from somewhere, hearing the cries.

This woman, known as the Ghost Mother, is said to have lived in the East originally. After losing her young husband at a young age and her only child, she could not forget her lost child and took in orphaned children without parents. However, she was engulfed by madness upon seeing parents who abused and drove out their children, and she tore those parents apart with her bare hands, killing them.

She was eventually executed for murder, but her vengeful soul could not leave the mortal world. The Mother of Life, taking pity on her, took her soul and assigned her the role of protecting the children in the Afterlife.

The Ghost Mother, wearing a bamboo hat and covering her face with a dark cloth, approaches with a thick, large blade dragging on the ground, and gently wipes the tears of the crying child.

Then, she grabs the neck of the parent who made the child cry and heads somewhere.

It is said that the Ghost Mother slices off the flesh of that parent's entire body until they truly regret and acknowledge their wrongdoing, as long as they reflect on everything.

Even though the body is dead and only the soul remains, the parent writhes in the agony of having their flesh torn off while still alive. After having all their flesh stripped, a part of their flesh is forcibly shoved into their mouth as they are led down to the lower layers of the Afterlife.

However, such parents are only a small minority.

Even now, the children who arrived in the Afterlife before their parents gaze at the images of their parents reflected in the river, hoping that their parents will come, but wishing for them to come as late as possible.

The first layer of the Afterlife exists for these children and their parents.

The path leading down from this first layer is across the vast river, so the Grim Reaper ferries the souls of the dead across the river.

At the old dock on the riverbank, the only means to cross the river, an old boat is tied up.

The boatman who operates this boat, said to be on the verge of sinking at any moment, is a man whose tongue has been cut off, so he cannot speak.

Originally skilled with words and clever, he managed to trick the Grim Reaper who came to fetch him, and gained three more years of life. Even after those three years, he tried to deceive the Grim Reaper again with his eloquent speech.

However, his tongue was cut off by the Grim Reaper's black scythe, and as punishment for tricking the Grim Reaper to extend his lifespan, he was condemned to be the boatman of the Afterlife for the rest of his life.

While it can be considered self-inflicted, after this incident, the time the Grim Reaper can give to the dead was reduced from one night to just enough time to speak a few words, so many of the dead must be resent that boatman.

This boatman demands a fare from the dead, and although the dead are surely penniless, for some reason they take a small pouch from their clothes to pay the fare.

The nature of this fare is the help the dead have rendered for others in life, and the gratitude of those they have helped.

What one has done to help others in life becomes helpful in the Afterlife.

If one has lived selfishly without helping others, and even oppressed others, they would not be able to pay the boatman's fare in the Afterlife, but it is said that such cases are extremely rare, so there is no need to worry about it.

However, if there were such a person, what would happen to them?

The Mother of Life did not say a word about this, so I cannot write anything.

I can only hope that there is no one out there who hasn't helped anyone.