055. Welcome to Happy Lostco [2]

Choi Eun-ha's family was the kind of typical middle-class household you could find anywhere.

Her father was a department head at a mid-sized company, so money was never tight.

They even owned their home in Seoul — she had never once felt like she was going without.

If you had to pick one thing unusual about the household, it was that Eun-ha's mother was Swiss.

But Eun-ha had never felt particularly inconvenienced by having a foreign mother.

"Eun-ha, did you have fun with your friends? Did you leave early because of something you had planned today? You could've just eaten with them, you know..."

"I wasn't hanging out, Yi-yeon oppa. That oppa I used to work with at the convenience store had some trouble come up, so I went to help him out. And a family dinner is a promise you keep."

Eun-ha's mother was so fluent in Korean that you would never guess she was foreign.

"Hehehe, our Eun-ha keeps her family dinner promises too — she's so adorable I could die! Right, honey?"

"That's right."

"Ugh, stop it."

"...But... you weren't meeting this Kim Yi-yeon friend alone, were you?"

"Dad! It's not like that! I met up with Momo and other friends too!"

And so, once the meal was over.

"Hmm, dinner finished faster than I expected. It'd feel weird to just go home — should we stop somewhere on the way?"

"Oh, we're out of milk at home. Want to grab some groceries while we're out?"

"Yeah, that works."

Eun-ha and her family headed to the nearby supermarket.

The store had recently been remodeled, and both its exterior and interior were clean and well-organized — browsing it was actually pleasant.

"I'm going to go look at cosmetics."

Her usual makeup had just run out, so Eun-ha wandered the store alone, apart from her parents.

As she walked, a thought suddenly crossed her mind.

There's no one around...

"Something about this gives me the creeps..."

Doesn't that happen sometimes? When a place that should be packed with people is empty, the sheer gap between expectation and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠reality makes your skin crawl.

What Eun-ha was feeling was exactly that.

"Let's head back."

She tried to return to the grocery section where her parents were.

But no matter how far she walked, the grocery section never appeared.

No — that wasn't all. Something about the store itself had gone wrong, too.

Every product on the shelves had turned into brands she had never once seen in her life.

"...Okay, let's just get out of here."

Having caught on that something was off, Eun-ha gave up on the grocery section and decided to leave the store first.

But no matter how far she walked, no exit appeared.

In that moment, Eun-ha knew for certain.

"The I-myeon..."

She had fallen into the Inner Space — the anomaly domain she'd only ever heard about in stories.

"...Oh, shit..."

Eun-ha had heard plenty of anomaly stories through her connection with Kim Yi-yeon, but she'd only personally experienced a few: the hair demon possession case, the Solitary Haunted House case, and the Crown Prince Ghost case.

"Actually, that's more than I thought, huh?"

But her situation now was qualitatively different from back then.

Setting aside the first case, when she'd been possessed and her consciousness was hazy.

In the other two incidents, there had never been a single moment when Eun-ha was genuinely afraid.

Because Kim Dosa had always been right there beside her.

Eun-ha had a firm belief: no matter what anomaly crossed her path, Kim Dosa would handle it somehow.

But Kim Dosa wasn't here right now.

Her legs — the legs of a girl who always pretended to be tough — began trembling like a newborn fawn's.

But Eun-ha quickly slapped her own cheeks and pulled herself together.

"Calm down..."

She'd heard Kim Yi-yeon's stories a hundred times over.

There had to be a hint in those stories for surviving this situation.

What's the first thing Kim Yi-yeon does when he encounters an anomaly?

"He figures out what the anomaly actually is. Okay — so what's the anomaly I'm caught up in right now?"

Fortunately, identifying this one wasn't hard.

A supermarket transformed into a maze with no way out.

"...The supermarket creepypasta."

An urban legend that originally went viral in the West — the story of people trapped and wandering inside a giant supermarket that had turned into an inescapable labyrinth.

Eun-ha could recall it instantly partly because she was a horror buff.

But mostly because she had literally just read a tip email about exactly this.

"Oh right — contact!"

As she turned the tip email over in her mind, Eun-ha belatedly remembered the app Kim Yi-yeon had invited her to.

The Anomaly Suppression Squad.

She'd shuddered at the horrific naming sense at first, but right now that name looked like her only hope.

After sending the message, Eun-ha clicked her tongue.

"Ah, damn it, that's embarrassing..."

Because just a few hours ago she'd thrown a tantrum over absolutely nothing, this was mortifying on a deep level.

"Tsk. Should I have learned some sorcery after all?"

Watching him teach Ha-ram, it didn't seem like talent mattered much — he just taught anyone.

Just then, a call came in from Kim Yi-yeon.

"Ha-ram, give me a ride."

"Yes, sir!"

Just as I was heading out after seeing Eun-ha's message, Yu Min-seo stopped me.

"Something's happened to Eun-ha unnie, hasn't it? P-please take me with you too!"

"Min-seo, you?"

"Yes! While you were training this past week, Teacher, I contracted with another fairy! It'll definitely help!"

She had good timing, but even a genius like me can't do everything alone.

And Yu ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Min-seo was a prodigy of summoning magic handpicked by Salamon and Seire.

"...Fine, come on."

"I'm coming too!"

"Momo, you..."

"Eun-ha is my friend. I'll be bait or whatever it takes, so take me with you!"

"...Damn it, I don't know anymore. Everyone, get in."

And so Ha-ram took the wheel, I sat in the passenger seat, and Min-seo and Momo climbed into the back.

[Eun-ha]

-Please help me, Yi-yeon oppa....

The fact that she'd reached out through the Coil Channel instead of a normal call meant ordinary communication was impossible for her.

For all I knew, she was in a situation where every second counted.

"Come on, pick up...!"

I dialed, anxiety gnawing at me — and thankfully, she picked up after a single ring.

-Yi-yeon oppa?

"Yeah, Eun-ha. What happened?"

-I think I've fallen into the I-myeon.

"Where?"

-The newly remodeled Lotte Mart near Sillim.

"Ha-ram!"

"Yes!"

Ha-ram punched the destination into the navigator and floored it.

"Okay, so what's your situation right now? Are you tangled up with an anomaly? Any other clues?"

-Yes, the place I'm in is...

Eun-ha described where she'd fallen, then explained that she was probably inside the "Supermarket Creepypasta" from the tip email.

"The supermarket creepypasta?"

It wasn't a tip I'd sorted myself, so the details were fuzzy.

"It looks like a spin-off of a famous creepypasta set in a Walmart in America — the story of someone who goes to Walmart one day and finds the entire store transformed into a giant labyrinth, trapping them inside."

"If it's an American urban legend, shouldn't it show up in America? Why is it haunting Korea?"

Was this the age of globalization for anomalies, too?

Just then.

-Ah.

"What is it?"

-Um... I found the store's rules of use.

"Rules of use?"

-Yes... let me read them from the top.

-What even is this?

"The initiation of the narrative..."

-Sorry?

"Nothing. Talking to myself."

I brushed it off so Eun-ha wouldn't panic, but the situation was far from good.

The notice Eun-ha had just read was an initiation of the narrative — an anomaly deliberately exposing its own story.

Urban-legend-type anomalies use Narrative Coercion to force their story onto their victims.

And that story is a double-edged sword that the legend itself cannot violate either.

But what if someone caught up in the anomaly knows nothing about the legend it's based on?

Narrative Coercion is powerful precisely because it's a double-edged sword — but also because it's judged to be a covenant binding both parties, established by sharing the story between them.

In other words, if the victim doesn't know the legend, the force the legend can exert is weakened.

But some legend-type anomalies use a loophole to break this rule — and that loophole is the initiation of the narrative.

'You don't know my legend very well? Then let me tell you!'

...Deliberately presenting the story through sight and sound like that, and then —

'Now you know it, don't you? Which means you've agreed to my story and its covenant, yes?'

— they strong-arm the narrative onto you.

You'd think you could just not look — but that's impossible.

From the moment the anomaly initiates its own narrative, you're judged to have consented to the story whether you looked or not.

The fact that this legend used the initiation of the narrative meant its standing as an anomaly was considerably high.

Knowledge really is power.

"Eun-ha, photograph the rules first, then send them to me too."

-Got it!

While we were on the call, the car reached the supermarket.

"Eun-ha, the rules list four hazards: the food court, the butcher section, the troublemaker customers, and the manager. The food court and the butcher are fixed locations, so they're not much of a problem. What you need to watch out for are the troublemaker customers and the manager. So wait in as open a spot as you can find, keep your guard up, and stay put."

-Okay!

"Call me the second anything happens!"

With that, I ended the call and headed for the cosmetics section where Eun-ha said she'd last been.

But on the way there, I saw a familiar face locked in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a standoff with the staff.

"I'm telling you, my daughter is missing!"

"Ma'am, please calm down. She's a grown adult — she may well have just gone home on her own."

"She won't answer calls or texts!"

"And that's exactly why — a grown adult doesn't always pick up when her parents call!"

"Honey, please calm down! Why are you so anxious?"

"I-I just have such a bad feeling... Eun-ha... our daughter feels like she's vanished from this world...!"

"What kind of talk is that? If you speak that abstractly, I can't help you either."

The ones going back and forth with the staff were Eun-ha's parents.

I slipped in between the employee and the couple.

"Oh, if it isn't..."

"It's been a long time, sir."

I'd met Eun-ha's parents before, at the police station, over the hair demon case.

The father's name was Choi Joo-hyuk, and the mother was Claire von Hohenheim, if I remembered right?

Back then, my eyes had happened to meet Eun-ha's mother's, and I'd flinched.

Because the look in her eyes had been intense to an unnatural degree.

I pushed the stray thought aside, and turned to reassure Eun-ha's trembling, anxious mother.

"Please calm down. It's all right."

"C-calm down...? My daughter has disappeared...!"

Ever so gently,

I took Eun-ha's mother's hand and let a thread of Do-ryeok flow into it.

At once, a touch of color returned to the pale, washed-out face of Eun-ha's mother.

"It's all right. I'm here now."

"...Y-you'll find Eun-ha for me?"

"Of course. That's why I came in the first place."

It was time to see the results of a week spent sulking cross-legged on my desk.