058. Welcome to Happy Lostco [5]
The Daoist Masters—the middle rank of Jeong-myung-gyo—numbered twelve in all, and Jeong-yu was one of them.
"Ugh…!"
Jeong-yu, rooster mask and all, clutched at the hand Kim Dosa's attack had blown apart.
Even with the Leader's grace, it won't heal.
The Leader's grace was nothing short of a god's blessing. It granted his faithful power on par with divine beings and a formidable regenerative ability—and naturally, a Daoist Master like him had received a far greater grace than any ordinary believer.
Yet even that great grace could not close the wound Kim Dosa had dealt him.
No, "wouldn't heal" wasn't even the half of it.
FWOOSH!
The moment he relaxed his grip even slightly, the hand caught fire all on its own.
"What devilish power is this…!"
"Jeong-yu, your wound—"
"It shows no sign of closing, Jeong-sul."
Four Daoist Masters had been dispatched on this expedition: Jeong-yu, Jeong-sul, Jeong-hae, and the High Daoist Master Jeong-myo. True to their names, they wore the masks of a rooster, a dog, a pig, and a rabbit.
"Who on earth is he? I never heard the Administration Bureau had anyone of that caliber," Jeong-sul said, frowning behind his dog mask.
"His face was different, but there is something about the sorcery he used that troubles me," Jeong-hae said, straightening his pig mask, having listened in silence until now.
"Troubles you?"
"Yes. You will have heard of it too, Jeong-yu—the rumor that a Demon Slayer has appeared in Korea as of late."
"You can't be serious…?"
"My suspicion is that he is the Demon Slayer himself."
"But you said his face was different?"
"Different, yes—but there are precious few in Korea capable of barrier arts as demanding as the Vairocana Mantra Barrier."
"…Fair point."
The Vairocana Mantra Barrier that Kim Dosa cast so casually was, in truth, a sorcery notorious among psychics for how fiendishly difficult it was to handle. However thoroughly he disguised himself with the 36 Heavenly Transformations, the very sorcery he chose had singled him out and exposed his identity for him.
"…The Demon Slayer. And the name most likely to belong to that man is Kim Dosa."
"Kim Dosa? You mean that man who colludes with broadcasters to stage his little frauds—the one it's embarrassing to even call a psychic?"
After the Seonhwa High and Baekmuleo incidents, Kim Dosa had been hailed among psychics as a revolutionary, a true rival to the Paranormal Administration Bureau itself—but once the Yeoindo incident hit the airwaves, voices questioning his abilities had begun to spread through their circles as well.
Being too good an actor was its own kind of problem.
"Furthermore, Kim Dosa stands accused of toppling a branch we relied upon to fund the church's cause."
"You don't mean the 'factory' in Gangwon-do?"
"I do. According to information one of our faithful—a senior police official—unearthed, the person who slipped past the factory's surveillance and escaped that day appears to have been Kim Dosa. At the time we assumed we'd merely let an unlucky loach slip through our fingers, but…"
At those words, Jeong-hae's face went pale.
"You're saying Kim Dosa has had his eye on our Jeong-myung-gyo since then?"
"…It's possible. And if not—then explain it to me. The factory, the President, and now this expedition. What are the odds that he appears at every single important occasion to obstruct us, purely by chance?"
It was Jeong-myung-gyo that former President Lee Jin-seok had paid an astronomical sum to purchase a fetal curse effigy from.
Jeong-sul's tone of conviction drained the faces of Jeong-hae and Jeong-yu—who had been listening without a word—into gravity.
A mysterious figure named Kim Dosa, materializing to interfere at every critical turning point of their great work. Could that truly be coincidence?
Jeong-yu raised the hand whose embers still refused to die and spoke.
"…We must cut the weed before it grows. But doing so right now would be difficult, I fear. For the moment we should withdraw and prepare ourselves to face him…."
"I agree."
"As do I."
And so, without ever knowing it himself, Kim Dosa had become a great enemy of the faith, secretly laboring to bring Jeong-myung-gyo crashing down.
Not, of course, that the cult had been his enemy since long before they ever tried to carve open his belly.
Then—
"Jeong-yu. Is your hand still not healed?"
"Forgive me, Jeong-myo. For some time yet… Kim Dosa is no ordinary psychic. Let us return and make preparations—"
"Is that so."
At those words, Jeong-myo extended a hand toward Jeong-yu.
Jeong-yu reflexively took it, and—
Crunch.
Jeong-yu's body was crushed to a pulp.
Jeong-myo picked up the one part of Jeong-yu that remained wholly intact—
Whoosh.
—his wrist, and hurled it away.
"If a Daoist Master can no longer serve his role, then he must step down from his post."
"……"
"……"
Jeong-sul and Jeong-hae held their breath at the horrific sight.
"Let's go," Jeong-myo said to the two of them.
Unspoken behind the words hung a silent warning: falter, and the same fate awaits you.
"Y-yes, sir!"
"We're going!"
Even among Daoist Masters, an abyss yawned between the senior and junior ranks. And Jeong-myo loved nothing more than the moment that gulf was laid bare—the moment he could confirm, once again, that he stood above them all.
But then—
"Hm?"
Fwoosh…
A small flame bloomed in Jeong-myo's palm. The ember left smoldering in Jeong-yu's hand had leapt across to Jeong-myo's the instant their hands touched.
"Hah!"
Jeong-myo clenched his fist hard and snuffed the fire out.
But…
Fwoosh…
The flame he believed thoroughly extinguished had never truly gone out at all. A fire striving to reach Samadhi was not the kind of fire that died so easily.
FWOOOOSH!
The transparent flame kindled by the Vairocana Mantra Barrier swallowed the Problem Customer whole.
————!
The Problem Customer's body sloughed away, melting down into sludge and collapsing in on itself.
7. Problem Customers displaying violent behavior or speech may be present within the store. The head office does not intervene in any disputes between customers under any circumstances; we appreciate your understanding.
In other words, the Problem Customer enjoyed no protection from Narrative Coercion.
Dangerous enough to an ordinary civilian, perhaps—but not much of a threat to a psychic.
"M-my goodness, Mr. Kim Dosa! That's a variant that would take a good four or five Administration Bureau agents to subdue—!"
Retracting my earlier remark—apparently, to a strong psychic, it really wasn't much of a threat at all.
Either way, the news that the Problem Customer wasn't particularly powerful was welcome.
If the food court and the butcher shop are fixed locations, and the Problem Customer is no real threat… then the only thing left to watch out for is the Manager? What the hell—Lostco's a pushover?
Well, that would explain why Cosmos and Jeong-myung-gyo strolled in so fearlessly.
"Team Leader Kang In-hyuk, do you know anything about the Manager? All we have is 'kill yourself if you meet it'—nothing of substance."
"Ah, yes! The Administration Bureau has information compiled from all of our exploration experience to date!"
Team Leader Kang In-hyuk rattled off the hidden exploration intel that had never once been written into the store's usage rules.
And as I listened, one thing became certain.
So the Administration Bureau had its own agenda, too.
The information Kang In-hyuk was laying out now was nothing anyone could learn from entering Lostco once or twice. In other words, the Bureau had been coming and going from this place regularly all along.
And despite visiting that often, they still hadn't exorcised Lostco—which meant one of two things.
Either they lack the ability, or they lack the will. No—maybe both?
Conclusion: the Administration Bureau couldn't be fully trusted either. But for now, worrying about Lostco itself mattered more.
"9:45… time…."
Lostco had shown nothing special so far, but this could hardly be all there was to it.
Factor in the Commencement of the Narrative, the denial of entry into the Inner Space, and the history of the goblin-market lineage of anomalies at its root, and Lostco's weight class was, at minimum, on par with a high-rank devil like Seire—quite possibly higher.
And its true worth would probably reveal itself sometime after 11:30 p.m., I'd wager.
Ideally, I'd like to dig out the Bureau's real objective before then….
Someone came to mind right away. Yoon Soo-ah. I'd have to meet her anyway to find Eun-ha, so I could pump her for information while I was at it. The problem was how to make contact—and as it happened, an obvious method was sitting right in front of me.
I had Yoon Soo-ah's phone number, so if I wanted, I could send her a Coil Channel link that very moment.
The only reason I hadn't used the Coil Channel until now was that Yoon Soo-ah belonged to the Paranormal Administration Bureau. As Bureau personnel, she would know exactly how extraordinary—and how far outside every regulation—a channel that connected communications inside the Inner Space really was.
Would Yoon Soo-ah truly keep something like that secret from the Bureau?
"Hmm…."
After agonizing over it, I decided in the end to send a Temporary Coil Channel link.
I couldn't leave Lostco without finding Choi Eun-ha anyway. And Yoon Soo-ah had a track record—she'd kept her mouth shut about Min-seo. For now, I chose to trust that.
Worst case, I'll just lie and say Cosmos gave it to me.
Beep.
The brief flicker of regret after sending the link lasted only a moment.
As I turned my head, something caught my eye.
"Huh?"
The Commencement of the Narrative. The store's usage rules were posted there on the wall.
It had refused me entry time and again, and now that I'd finally gotten in, was this its way of saying: fine, read up?
What a whim….
But then—
"Why is the content different?"
Vrrrm!
"…!"
The sudden buzz of her smartphone nearly made Yoon Soo-ah release the breath she'd been holding.
Tap, tap.
Choi Eun-ha, terror written across her face, patted her shoulder.
Yoon Soo-ah nodded to her—it's okay—at the girl drenched in tears.
Then she looked at the Manager standing at the display shelf right beside them.
The Manager took human shape—but a shape so massive its head brushed the ceiling. Its face, however, was warped out of all proportion, inspiring a revulsion that made it impossible to think of it as human at all.
Of course, it wasn't merely this that had reduced even the iron-willed Eun-ha to a tear-streaked mess.
What was truly horrific were the countless people embedded in the Manager's body. They bore none of the stylized exaggeration that anomalies and their objets d'horror so often wore.
"Aaah… aah…."
"It hurts… it hurts…."
"I'm melting! I'm melting! I'm melting!"
"Mom, mommommommommommommomma…."
Every one of them was a poor civilian dragged into Lostco's Inner Space. And now, condemned for the sin of failing to kill themselves the moment they met the Manager, they were living through the hell of being digested by it alive.
10. The Manager occasionally comes out to make inspection rounds of the store. Should you come face to face with the Manager, we recommend a prompt suicide.
That rule had not been written to mock its customers or toy with them.
It was heartfelt advice—genuine, sincere concern for the customer's well-being.
Fortunately, though the posted rules never mentioned it, the Administration Bureau had learned—at the cost of many sacrifices—a secret rule for evading the Manager's sight.
Hold your breath.
The Manager could not perceive a being that did not breathe, even one standing right under its nose. And so the two women held their breath and waited for the Manager to move on.
But no matter how much time passed, the Manager showed no sign of leaving. More than a minute had already gone by since they'd stopped breathing.
Professionally trained as she was, Yoon Soo-ah might have endured—but Eun-ha was already at her limit.
Having resolved to act as bait if it came to that and send Eun-ha out alive, Yoon Soo-ah belatedly noticed something strange.
How did a text message reach me inside the Inner Space?
She hastily checked her phone. And there—
With this, you can reach me even inside the Inner Space.
The instant she confirmed it, before the question of how could even take shape, Yoon Soo-ah's hands were already moving. Connecting through the link into the Temporary Coil Channel, she sent a message at once.
The messages that had been arriving within a second suddenly lagged by two. And the reply that came after that two-second deliberation left Yoon Soo-ah stunned.
Yoon Soo-ah deliberated—because the method Kim Dosa proposed was, frankly, an absurd one.
But…
Trust Kim Dosa!
She steeled her resolve and showed Eun-ha the conversation. The moment Eun-ha's eyes went wide at the screen, but she nodded quickly all the same. That was the speed of someone who trusted Kim Dosa without reservation.
She trusts him far more than I do….
The bitter feeling lasted only a moment.
"Pwooh!"
"Haah! Haah!"
The two of them breathed.
At that instant, the eyes of the Manager—and of the people buried in its body, mid-digestion—all turned to the two of them at once.
"Eat! Eat! Eat! Eat! Eat!"
"Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Digest me! Digest me!"
"Hehehehehehehe! Comrade! Comrade!"
Amid the mad ravings of a dozen-odd people driven insane as they were digested alive, the Manager fixed them with an uncanny smile and stepped toward the two of them.
And then—
"I want to die!"
"Me too!"
At their words, the Manager's footsteps froze. Then the smile at the corner of its mouth twisted into something pitiful.
KIIIIIIIK!
The Manager let out a grotesque sound and clenched its fist.
And—
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
It bludgeoned the heads of the chattering people mid-digestion, crushing them flat.
Crunch! Splat! Squelch!
After venting its fury like that for a good long while, the Manager looked at the two of them and spoke in a grotesque voice that mixed man, woman, young, and old:
"Follow me. We go to the food court."
Kim Dosa was right!
"Tell the Manager you want to die. It'll most likely take you to one of two places—the butcher shop or the food court. Find out which one it leads you to and tell me."
When she'd first read the message, she'd been half in doubt—but it had truly played out just as he'd said.
"Trust Yi-yeon oppa, and even if the sky caves in, a way out will open up," Choi Eun-ha said, wiping her tear-soaked face with her sleeve and smiling.
And so the two of them followed the Manager in silence. They did think about bolting somewhere along the way—but—
"No—follow it. The moment you run, you're dead."
At Kim Yi-yeon's words, they resigned themselves to walking on.
After trudging for some time, the food court at last revealed itself in the distance, radiating an ominous aura.
"Ugh!"
"What is that?"
The food court's black floor was slick with fresh scarlet blood. No—not a black floor. Even that blackness was blood, caked and congealed until it had turned dark.
But more ominous still were the black shadows that filled the food court to bursting.
Those shadows were no ordinary existences. Even the Manager stopped a full step away from the food court and looked back at the two of them.
"Now, off you—"
FWOOOOOSH!
Before the Manager could finish, transparent flame engulfed it.