“Haa! F***!”

Whoa! Immortals swear, too.

“Sorry. Still, a guy’s gotta swear a little to live. Even as an immortal, if you get caught swearing, they fine you in points.”

Uncle Chwihwaseon glanced around on all sides.

“Fuck it all. I ran out on the royal court because I hated it, and now I’m an immortal busting my ass year after year for nothing.”

With nobody around, he let loose with the curses.

Now that was the Chwihwaseon I knew.

Jang Seung-eop had lived a lowborn life; a life of rules had to be hard on him.

The swearing was part of the same package.

“What’s a contract immortal?”

“Never heard of it?”

“No. None of the others ever mentioned anything like that.”

None of the immortals I’d met were contract workers.

“I told you it’s just like the human world here, didn’t I?”

“Yes…”

“The immortal world’s the same. No talent and no connections, and it’s a hard place to get by. Whew.”

Uncle Hwaseon let out a long sigh.

Whatever he was suffering, I could tell it was a lot.

“Even rolling around in a field of dog shit, this world beats the next one.” (TL Note: A Korean proverb: “Better to roll in a field of dog dung in this world than to be in the next”—any life, however wretched, beats death.)

“Still, isn’t dog shit going too far?”

“If you shit a lot, you earn good points for producing fertilizer.”

Whoa! What kind of dog crap is this?

“When a dog shits, it becomes fertilizer for the ground, and the dog gets a bonus from the invisible little critters that live off it while it breaks down. That’s the set order of things. It’s nothing much, but if you keep shitting, it adds up like an installment savings plan and gets settled at the end of the month. That’s exactly how a dog gets to be reborn as a person. They even give up their bodies to be eaten for people’s health, right? That’s worth a fair number of points, too.”

“Then if I’m a dog in my next life, I’ll be sure to shit in a field.”

“Exactly!”

What is this good god even saying!

Why is he nodding at a question I asked as a joke!

“So what’s a non-permanent immortal?”

“Just what it says. The kind of being that’s not quite good enough to hire as an immortal, but too useful to let sit idle.”

“That makes perfect sense.”

He sounded like a non-permanent worker among immortals—not good enough to hire as permanent, but handy to work to the bone.

“I painted some when I was alive. You know that, right?”

“Of course! Chwihwaseon’s still famous today.”

He’s in the same class as Danwon Kim Hong-do and Hyewon Sin Yun-bok.

He was famous for works like Fierce Hawks and Eagle Surveying the Eight Directions, his ten-panel screen of birds and beasts, and his twelve-panel screen of geese and reeds.

He even shows up on the advanced Korean history exams.

“Nephew, have you ever heard of Immortals?”

“The eight-panel screen, Immortals?”

“That… was the immortals’ hiring exam.”

“Ah!”

“Some f***er of an immortal showed up in my dream and said, Paint me something, so I painted it. After I died, it turned out that was the performance review for non-permanent immortals. If I’d known, I’d have painted it better! They give exams however the hell they feel like! Permanent means you’re everything? Shit!”

He seemed to have a lot pent up.

“Why didn’t you get permanent…”

I asked carefully.

“Why ask when you know? Ever seen an immortal with a rotten temper?”

“Yes…”

He didn’t seem very good-tempered even now.

There was no way he’d saved up any points.

He must have been too busy making lots of money, drinking and playing with gisaeng.

“Tae-san. Save your uncle, just this once.”

“Is it urgent? Did you borrow from a loan shark?”

The world of the immortals was so much like the human world that I had to ask.

“The evil gods’ realm has plenty of those, but not here.”

Amazing.

The realm of the gods even had loan sharks!

“So why, then?”

“For the Jade Emperor’s ten-thousand-year jubilee, there’s going to be a big conversion to permanent positions. A lot of the non-permanent ones could go permanent.”

“Really? You’ve landed a great opportunity.”

“So what I’m saying is… spot me a little.”

“Spot you what?”

“What do you think! I’ve got to slip the permanent-hiring officer a decent bottle of immortals’ liquor at least!”

“Ah!!!”

The world of the immortals really had it all.

Maybe the human world hadn’t gone to hell because of humans after all.

The water up here has to be clean before the water down there can be.

“You know Jang-geum noona, right? Why not borrow from her?”

“She’s remodeling her restaurant these days, so she says she’s out of points.”

“I see…”

The way I saw it, the remodeling was an excuse; she just didn’t trust him enough to lend to him.

“I know Hwang Jini noona—want me to introduce you? She seems to have a fair number of points.”

“…We fell out a while back when I got drunk and caused a scene.”

“Ah, that’s too bad.”

This is why they’ll never make him permanent.

What are you supposed to do with someone who comes to the realm of the gods and still can’t shake his human habits?

“Don’t you earn points painting murals here? Buy it with those.”

I didn’t really feel like lending to him either.

If I wanted painting talent, I could just call another immortal.

“Tae-san. After the finder’s fee and paying off the guys under me, there’s not much left.”

“The guys under you? There’s something below non-permanent?”

“Day laborers.”

“!!!”

Don’t tell me—the construction day laborers I know?

“They’ve got it worse than me. A lot of them earn one day and scrape by one day. At least I’ve got a contract term. Day laborers, the second their points run out, they drop straight into hell or the animal realm.”

“Th-that’s really cold.”

“Money has no eyes, and points are the same. When an immortal’s points run low, nobody goes near him. When the reaper of rebirth comes near, the good smell disappears and a stench takes its place.”

“Really?”

“Gods aren’t free from birth and death either. We just don’t have the limits of a body like in the human world—so we feel joy, anger, sorrow and pleasure even more deeply. That’s why everyone in the world of the immortals fights so hard to hang on.”

It was something I’d half sensed from talking with the immortals.

“What’s good about going permanent?”

“Plenty! First off, they pay into all four insurances for you, in points. And you get guaranteed tenure until retirement.”

Just talking about a permanent position put a glimmer of hope in Uncle Hwaseon’s eyes.

I’d lived that same non-permanent life myself, so I knew exactly how that felt.

My heart wavered.

“You didn’t want much when you were alive, did you? I thought you were a man of pleasure who envied no one…”

“That was then, and this is here.”

I nodded.

Doing well in the human world is no guarantee of doing well after you die.

Uncle Hwaseon’s words drove the point home once more.

I was going to live it to the hilt—as a human in this life, and as an immortal after death.

“Tae-san…”

Uncle Chwihwaseon called my name again, desperate.

“Sigh… all right. Since you want it that badly, I’ll spare you some.”

“Waaaaaaah! Thank you! If I go permanent, I won’t forget this even after I’m dead!!!”

Uncle Chwihwaseon hugged me tight.

A once-in-a-century genius, someone I’d never have met in the human world, now looked as if karma points had given him the whole world.

You really do have to earn well while you’re alive—whatever the currency.

“Foreman~.”

Just then someone came up from the far end of the corridor, voice oozing with brown-nosing.

Before I knew it, three immortals were upon us.

But the way they looked…

“What took you so long! It’ll take forever to fill all this! Keep this up and you’re going straight to hell!”

“Foreman, why so grumpy today? We can knock this out in no time. Loyalty!”

“You’d better know I’m only going easy on you because I feel sorry for you. You know another team ran out of points not long ago and dropped into the animal realm all at once, right?”

“The Picasso team?”

“Yeah, Picasso. Their commissions dried up and they were out.”

“I knew that team would end up like that. Those modernist types are like that, aren’t they? Like they’re the only ones who ever lived? Who’s going to appreciate a painting nobody can understand? Painting’s best when it’s intuitive! Serves them right for showing off.”

This guy really had a way with words.

His confidence was sky-high.

He’d just trashed the Picasso I knew, right to my face.

Just how great did he think he was?

“Uncle, who are these guys?”

I was curious who these three unusual foreign day-laborer hyungs were.

“These guys? They’re not very famous, so I don’t know if you’ll know them.”

Chwihwaseon picked his nose and brushed the three of them off.

Still, the three foreign day-laborer immortals held their ground.

“You’re his nephew? Nice to meet you. I’m Gauguin.”

“What? Wh-who?”

“Paul Gauguin, that’s me.”

G-Gauguin!

My jaw dropped.

Paul Gauguin, the leading painter of Post-Impressionism, was standing in front of me as a day-laborer immortal.

If art students who knew Gauguin found out, they’d all foam at the mouth and collapse.

“You know him?”

“W-well…”

Chwihwaseon asked if I knew him.

The answer didn’t come easily.

“This one here’s Cézanne.”

Nothing could surprise me anymore.

The lonely pioneer called the father and mother of modern art.

A singular painter who thought his whole painting life had been a failure and didn’t sign his work.

Paul Cézanne, who’d put thrill and despair on canvas.

The man my middle school art teacher had praised to the skies bowed his head to me, awkwardly.

The flattering eyes of someone trying to get on the foreman’s nephew’s good side.

Is this for real?

And at the very back, standing awkwardly, one last man.

He looked all too familiar.

One look and I could guess who he was.

That man, with a big bandage wrapped around his left ear.

“Van Gogh?”

Swish, swish-swish.

Everyone held their breath at the rough scrape of a brush laying oil paint on canvas.

The brush never stopped, not once.

For three whole hours, the brushstrokes went on without a break.

There was no hesitation.

It cut through the waves like a sailing ship crossing a vast ocean.

It was as arrogant as a mountain goat on a crag no one else can reach.

Wh-what the hell is that kid!

Professor Sim Cheol-su couldn’t move from behind the canvas.

Neither could any of the students.

The bell rang for lunch at the end of fourth period, but nobody left.

No—they couldn’t.

At first it was nothing more than a bet between a professor and a student from another department.

Professor Sim Cheol-su had told the class to paint whatever subject they felt most confident in.

Anything went, starting with drawing.

It was a sudden assignment, but third-year art students weren’t about to hesitate.

There were plenty of materials.

They set to work at their easels on whatever they did best.

It was just an extension of the way class usually went anyway.

Most of them chose a quick drawing.

It was the best way to put the law student in his place within three hours.

That was when the law student, Jang Tae-san, pulled out oil painting supplies, bold as you please.

Everyone was shocked.

Oil paint isn’t an easy medium.

And the supplies he pulled out were brand new; anyone could see he’d just bought them.

He clamped the canvas firmly to the easel, like an art student.

He did it completely naturally.

Oil paints, oil brushes, a palette knife, a palette, oil cups, linseed oil, turpentine, even a rag—he took out every last supply.

While everyone was still gaping, the law student gazed quietly at the easel.

He held seven brushes in one hand.

Only masters used brushes like that.

Every student stared at the law student in disbelief.

Then he went at it with the brushes, without a trace of hesitation.

Crazy!

The law student was crazy.

He squeezed the paint straight from the tube and painted with it.

He laid on color so thick it left furrows in the canvas.

Outlines nobody could make sense of shot into place.

He painted without limits, the way a grade-schooler does.

Color and form were distorted.

Bright, deep yellows took over the canvas.

It looked like Monticelli’s style, which put color above line.

Sunflowers in a vase came into view.

“V-van Gogh!”

One of the students in the class cried out his name.

The genius who, along with Cézanne and Gauguin, defined Post-Impressionism.

At the name van Gogh, a shiver went through the room.

A tremendous shock ran through them from head to toe.

Yellow sunflowers were van Gogh’s signature work.

Intense color and thick brushstrokes, building a texture no one could imitate!

This was the van Gogh who’d painted sunflowers from dawn till dusk in the Yellow House in Arles.

Shake, shake, shake.

A tremor that started in Professor Sim Cheol-su’s hands spread through his whole body.

The god of painting has come!

Painters who’ve reached a certain level know it.

The moment, while painting, when something takes over your body like a shaman’s possession, and you paint in a state where you and the work are one.

The god of painting, come down again!

Van Gogh, no less!

A world-shaking event on the first day of March semester, in a junior-year class at Hanguk University.

The law student, possessed by the god of painting, smiles.

And before anyone knew it, the painting was finished.

Twelve yellow sunflowers bloomed in the classroom, smiling brightly.

(End of Chapter 113)