Psychological Counseling (1)
Somehow, my sweet three-day vacation came to an end.
Psychological Counseling Room
Instead of heading to work, I showed up for psychological counseling, just as Lee Mina had ordered.
My senior had gone in on the first day of the break.
Scheduling this right after a three-day vacation was probably the team leader's idea of consideration.
I should at least buy her coffee tomorrow morning.
Work at the Management Bureau long enough and your brain will go to pieces for any number of reasons.
Field Response Team? Don't even get me started — my jaw would fall off listing them all.
Information Team also takes heavy mental hits sometimes when they get hit by a phenomenon-type entity mid-censorship.
Like, say, a naked ■■■ image or whatever.
Of course, every other team is the same.
As long as you work for the Bureau, the reasons your mental health can get shredded are endless.
Which is why the Psychological Counseling Office exists, my dudes.
Gotta keep the staff's heads screwed on straight so they can keep working them harder!
What a beautiful Bureau philosophy, am I right?
So certain departments will end up visiting this place more often than the cafeteria. Learn the route by heart.
.
.
.
When it came to medical matters, StamenSurgerySurgery was the expert.
Thanks to them, I had everything prepared to look like a complete washout today.
I'll hit the recommend button as thanks.
Please take a number and wait.
Ticket number 3. Two people remaining ahead of me.
I'd eaten breakfast and arrived right at opening, and I still wasn't first in line.
I'd walked in the second they unlocked the doors, too.
Centered on the front desk, there was a consultation room labeled on the left and another on the right. In the waiting area, besides me, one employee in a suit sat staring at his phone.
I sat on the sofa, waiting my turn, and looked up at the monitor installed above the desk.
Kwak Chunbong, Section Chief — In Session
Chilly Chilly — In Session
Section Chief Kwak, the man who'd poked his head out from a pile of raw beef tartare, was currently receiving treatment.
When did he even get here? A reserved patient, maybe?
I was wondering whether a section chief got to come early for special treatment when—
"Hwoooooooooooooh!"
A metallic, shrieking howl leaked through the crack of the consultation room door.
The name Kwak Chunbong, still listed as In Session, began to blink slowly on the monitor.
Which meant the one making that noise right now was the section chief…
What kind of treatment makes a person sound like that?
The door burst open.
"Whew, that hit the spot. Oh? And who might you be?"
"Good morning, Section Chief."
"Psychological counseling? Has the new hire already managed a Level 2?"
No, actually — Level 3, 2, and 3.
The Backrooms vary wildly, but they told me to count it as Level 3 by Level 0 standards.
"Things just kind of worked out that way."
"We've got a talent on our hands! Already getting thrown into that kind of dangerous work."
Kwak Chunbong clapped me on the shoulder with genuine delight.
"The trainees I handle orientation for always become so hard to find later. Every time I see you in the cafeteria, I feel so proud."
His carefully smiling eyes held a complicated tangle of feelings.
"I hope I get to see you often — or at least for a long time."
"I'll try to make it to the cafeteria at meal times."
"Hahaha! Who in the world wants to look at their superior's face while eating?"
The section chief patted my shoulder a few more times and left the counseling room.
The trainees he personally orients are the ones who become hard to see…
Does he only do orientation for people who come in through the Human Rights Waiver Track?
I should ask the team leader when I get the chance.
Once Kwak Chunbong left, his name vanished from the monitor.
At the same time, a voice came from the reception desk.
Treatment for the entity Chilly Chilly has concluded. Managing personnel, please return the entity to its containment chamber.
An announcement that the entity's treatment was finished.
An entity getting psychological counseling?
"Excuse me."
The moment that question formed, someone called out to me.
The employee who'd arrived before me and been waiting.
So he wasn't here for counseling after all.
"Yes?"
"From this moment on, lower your head. Until the room temperature returns to normal, you must not look up under any circumstances."
"Can I look at my terminal?"
"As long as you don't look this way."
"Understood."
Saying it like that means it's almost certainly part of the management protocol.
Otherwise he wouldn't have bothered mentioning it.
I messaged Choi Yuna, who would already be at work, and asked for the entity report.
Last time in the cafeteria, she'd had other entity files saved on her phone. Odds were she had one for this little guy too.
The door burst open.
Sssssssssssss…
While I kept my head down trading messages with my senior, I heard the left consultation room door open.
At the same time, the lobby temperature began plummeting at a terrifying rate.
It felt like someone had flipped on several air conditioners set to 66°F all at once.
What on earth is going on over there?
I forcibly suppressed the urge to look and opened the entity report Choi Yuna had sent.
DESIGNATION:Chilly Chilly
THREAT LEVEL:Level 2
CLASSIFICATION:Entity-type
Chilly Chilly is a 6×6 cm black cube-shaped entity discovered at ■■■ Butcher Shop in Majang-dong, Seongdong-gu, Seoul.
The entity was first identified by police responding to a report of abnormal conditions in the butcher shop's freezer warehouse. At the time of discovery, the internal temperature of the freezer had dropped to −72°F, and one responding officer suffered fourth-degree frostbite after only brief contact with the entity.
Field investigation confirmed that the butcher shop owner had been using the entity as a substitute refrigerant system, exploiting its continuous emission of extreme cold.
In the absence of external stimuli, the entity continuously radiates cold, and the intensity of the freezing effect increases over time. Observation indicates that prolonged neglect could freeze the entire surrounding environment solid.
Following acquisition, the Management Bureau contained the entity in a specialized containment chamber constructed of ████ alloy.
During management experiments, it was discovered that the entity responds positively to a specific category of jokes. The following record is excerpted from that period:
Lee ██: "What happens when ice dies?"
(No response)
Lee ██: "Diving."
(7 seconds of silence)
Lee ██: "…Die-ving."
(Containment temperature: −24°F → 5°F)
(Faint vibration detected)
Lee ██: "You laughed, didn't you?"
(Temperature: 5°F → 34°F)
Lee ██: "What's ice's favorite sport?"
(No response)
Lee ██: "Skating."
(3 seconds of silence)
Lee ██: "Because it's ice."
(Containment temperature: −24°F → −22°F)
Lee ██: "Ah, that one was a miss."
(10 seconds later)
(Containment temperature: −22°F → 41°F)
(Strong vibration detected)
Thereafter, the Bureau successfully maintained the entity's temperature within a stable range by deploying an approved joke list once daily, and transferred it to the Gwanak Branch.
However, once nearly every available joke had been exhausted, management difficulty rose sharply. Recently, with usable jokes effectively depleted, management has been conducted using the Psychological Counseling Room entity Rest Comfortably.
Rest Comfortably can generate preferred narrative content for the entity in real time and is currently evaluated as the most effective temperature-regulation method.
Due to Rest Comfortably's nature, however, the content of the stories exchanged cannot be verified. Immediately after stabilization via jokes, the entity exhibits a phenomenon of rapid re-freezing if subjected to an outsider's gaze. The cause of this phenomenon remains undetermined.
…Was it embarrassed about laughing at dad jokes?
There really was every kind of entity under the sun.
The door behind me clicked shut, and the ambient temperature began climbing back to normal.
I checked my watch. About three minutes had passed.
They still have to walk that thing all the way to the containment chamber at that pace…
Containment procedures for Chilly Chilly are currently in progress. Directing one's gaze toward any area corresponding to Route F is prohibited.
A further announcement will be made when containment is complete. Until then, please do not look toward any area corresponding to Route F under any circumstances.
A timely PA announcement from the speakers.
Given the employee's walking speed and the distance between the counseling office and the containment chamber, it was going to take a while.
Please let nothing go wrong until then.
"Don't think I've seen this face before."
Having finished the daily memory wipe for Kwak Chunbong, Cheon Jinseong took a short break, then picked up the file of the employee waiting outside.
"Let's see… Employee Park Seongbin… what the hell is this work history?"
Liminal Space. Why Are You Luckier Than Me? Eternal Life General Hospital.
That was not a lineup of entities a new hire should be meeting in a mere two weeks.
"He should have been brought here the moment he came out of the Liminal Space."
Even accounting for the Bureau's chronic understaffing, this was deeply wrong.
A new hire who survived a Level 3, immediately thrown into an entity that chewed through N-Class personnel — all because of the Human Rights Waiver Track.
No — dumping him into a Level 3 from the very start hadn't been normal either.
Is this how the Gwanak Branch has been burning through its new hires?
Old incidents stirred in the back of Cheon Jinseong's mind, trying to answer the contents of the file.
He forced himself to look away from them.
"No need to go digging up trouble."
He didn't need to know everything. Just collect a salary several times safer than field work and do his job as a counselor. That was enough.
With that thought, Cheon Jinseong pressed the button to begin the session.
The door clicked open, and a clean-faced young man walked in.
For someone who had just been through a string of high-level entities, he looked far too put-together.
"I'm Cheon Jinseong, your counselor. Please, have a seat."
Even after being offered a chair, Employee Park Seongbin just stood there blankly.
"Employee Park Seongbin?"
"Op."
"Pardon?"
Suddenly Park Seongbin made a bizarre sound. Then, with exaggerated gestures, he launched into a dance and started singing.
"Woman by day! Self by night! Op! Op! Op! Op! Op!"
"E-Employee Park Seongbin?"
"I have a human! I have a woman! Uh! Human woman!"
"What on earth is this…"
Looking at Park Seongbin, Cheon Jinseong realized it far too late.
Of course a staff member who'd endured that much hardship without proper care wouldn't be alright.
Watching Park Seongbin dance and shout "Op! Op! Op! Op!" over and over, he couldn't hide the pity on his face.
The Management Bureau truly was a cruel place.