The Hospital Where People Vanish [5]
Cosmos was manufacturing anomalies artificially.
When I learned that fact... honestly? I wasn't all that surprised.
If anything, my first thought was something like, Wow, lol. Guess that's the bare minimum for the planet's number one corporation~
Technology to mass-produce mysteries and anomalies, equipment designed to fight them — considering everything Cosmos had shown us so far, it would have been stranger if they didn't have tech like this.
Still, there's a difference between thinking someone could do a thing and thinking they were allowed to do it.
Yoon Soo-ah and I had very nearly died in that alley of the Corner Man, an anomaly Cosmos made.
"...The Corner Man was created by Cosmos?"
Yoon Soo-ah seemed to have recalled that moment too, murmuring with a blank expression.
"But why...?"
She had no idea why Cosmos would do such a thing, but I had a decent guess.
Narrative Coercion. Cosmos is artificially manufacturing Narrative Coercion through urban legends.
Yoon Chang-sik had said that after the end times, in the new age, Cosmos would establish a new law. I'd found that statement puzzling from the moment I heard it.
How, exactly, had Cosmos intended to establish a new law?
Writing a new law is the privilege of a Seeker. Yoon Chang-sik had said that himself, with his own mouth.
And it was true. I can write Narrative Coercion through the Yeokcheonje.
But what about Cosmos? If I had never appeared, how would they have gone about creating their new law?
The answer was right here.
Cosmos had been conducting research into fabricating whatever Narrative Coercion they desired by means of urban legends.
"...Insane bastards."
The real problem was that the anomalies they were stamping out were still, right now, actively costing people their lives.
Yoon Soo-ah and I were among the victims.
Every fiber of me wanted to tear Cosmos down, root and branch, but that was easier said than done. They were hardly a pushover that would crumble just because I decided to topple them — and right now, I was in a loose cooperative arrangement with them besides.
I'd already made an enemy of Jeong-myung-gyo. Declaring war on Cosmos on top of that would be suicide.
I've said it plenty of times, but the thing I value most in this life is myself. If it's necessary for my survival, I'm perfectly willing to turn a blind eye to this or that injustice.
The problem was that Cosmos churning out anomalies like this posed a serious threat to me, too.
This was me we were talking about — the guy who got dragged into some anomaly the moment he stepped one foot out of his house.
An anomaly encounter rate rivaling a classic JRPG!
Under those circumstances, the urban legends Cosmos manufactured coming looking for me wasn't some groundless worry. It was an inevitability just waiting to happen.
Granted, I could have framed it as, Free homework footage, plus awareness, plus recognition — three birds with one stone? Not a bad deal, right?
But even good things have their limits.
"Master Kim, we must inform the Paranormal Administration Bureau of this as soon as possible — even an hour sooner matters."
She'd said she couldn't care less about the Bureau anymore, but faced with a scene like this, it seemed her sense of duty as a Bureau employee had come roaring back.
Well, to be fair, stopping corporations from pulling this kind of crap is exactly what a government agency is for.
"...Let's find Baek Gong-ju first and worry about the rest after."
I shoved the problem into a corner of my mind and stepped into the Corner Man's hospital room. The Corner Man had been exorcised ages ago, so I doubted Baek Gong-ju was in there — but I was curious what state a ward holding an already-exorcised anomaly would be in.
Despite the word CLOSED scrawled on it, inside, people lay in beds just like in every other room, droning the Corner Man's legend.
But none of them had heard the news that the Corner Man they were so diligently reciting had already reappeared.
"So an anomaly that's been exorcised once never comes back, huh."
Even when all the conditions for creating an urban legend were met, an anomaly that had been exorcised once would never manifest again.
And yet they kept the Corner Man's ward running. Which meant...
"Once a person's been used to generate a legend, they can't be recycled."
I muttered the situation's cold analysis while surveying the faces of the patients. Like the patients in the other rooms, they all stared blankly at the ceiling, and aside from their ceaseless murmuring of the legend, nothing seemed physically wrong with them.
"No, wait. That is the biggest problem."
Every person here was probably swapped, just like the team leader in the report and Baek Gong-ju.
The swapping itself had most likely been to secure the workforce needed to keep this anomaly factory running.
Wanting to check the patients' condition more precisely, I took hold of the wrist of a boy among them who looked to be in middle school.
In that instant —
"M-Master Kim!?"
Shreeeee—
The boy's mouth gaped open, impossibly wide, and smoke began to pour out of it.
The smoke slowly took on human form. It resembled the patient, and yet was eerily, subtly different — almost certainly the something that had been swapped with him.
The thing materialized, and with a face twisted into something out of a demon nightmare, it glared at me and lunged.
Just as I moved to counter —
— Halt.
Fey, who had appeared from who knew where, spoke coldly.
The swapped thing froze mid-motion. That wasn't all — its face went bone-pale, and it pressed its own head to the floor of its own accord.
The display stunned Yoon Soo-ah — and me as well, truthfully.
I asked Fey, feeling dazed.
"What did you just do?"
— Fairy society is a rigidly vertical hierarchy of station. We could hardly permit a base creature to lay hands on the contracted one of Ourself, could We not?
"...The swapped ones are fairies?"
— Aye. Such it appears to Our eyes.
"Then... oh!"
The moment I heard that, I understood what the swapped beings actually were.
"The Changeling. Why didn't I think of this?"
The changeling is a being from Western European legend — a child the fairies leave behind after abducting a human infant. Along with the doppelgänger, it's a bona fide classic of the swapped-person urban legend genre.
"So that's why the entry condition for the Inner Space was a mirror, and why the passphrase was Tír na nÓg?"
In folklore and myth, the mirror is the archetypal door to another world — and in many tellings, it is depicted as a door leading especially to the land of the fairies.
— That said, this child is no longer a pure fairy. It was likely altered, corrupted by its fusion with the anomaly.
"You mean they took a fairy that already existed and layered an urban legend over it?"
— Perchance.
From generating original urban legends to draping them over preexisting supernatural beings — Cosmos's mastery of anomaly engineering was apparently leagues beyond my estimates.
Regardless — if the essence beneath the layered legend was a changeling, then the solutions were limitless.
— So you've come all the way here, have you, dog of the Paranormal Administration Bureau.
"Professor Baek Dong-sik?"
The voice belonged to Professor Baek Dong-sik, whom we'd met just a short while ago.
— Heh heh. My thanks for remembering me.
Somehow he had a means of hearing our voices — Baek Dong-sik answered from beyond the speaker.
— You should have turned back while you could. In the end, you've crossed a line that was never meant to be crossed.
As I listened to Baek Dong-sik's voice, I racked my brain over where exactly our infiltration had been exposed.
I rotated my appearance at regular intervals with the Cheongangsu Transformation Art while moving through the hospital, and when I entered the Inner Space through the mirror, I cleverly avoided every CCTV angle. It couldn't have been that...
Was there some method for monitoring those who came and went from the Inner Space?
It didn't look that way — the reaction had come far too late.
Which left exactly one possibility.
I looked at the changeling, still cowering and quivering in fear before Fey.
He tracked us through the changeling.
Which meant the one who'd summoned the changeling was Baek Dong-sik himself?
While I was reasoning through how Baek Dong-sik had discovered us, Yoon Soo-ah shouted.
"That's nonsense! You think we'll just let this slide after what you've done!? Is the Paranormal Administration Bureau — is the Masquerade League a joke to you!?"
— HAHAHAHAHA! Why, of course you're a joke, young lady. What use is someone who can't read the winds of the times better than I can?
Rather than cowering, Baek Dong-sik laughed Yoon Soo-ah right in the face.
I cut off Yoon Soo-ah before she could shout anything further and stepped in.
"So you crossed the line. What are you going to do about it?"
I was still wearing a shifted face thanks to the Cheongangsu Transformation Art anyway, so I figured I'd come out boldly.
— Shut your mouth, of course.
"How?"
— Like this.
GRREEEE—!
GRREEEE—!
GRREEEE—!
The sound of doors opening echoed down the corridor all at once.
And the patients lying in the CORNER MAN ward — every last one of them — opened their mouths in unison.
No doubt the patients in the other rooms were in exactly the same state.
Sssssss...
Changelings came spilling out of the patients' mouths — the very beings who'd been swapped with them.
— You might have managed to subdue one or two changelings without much trouble, but at this quantity? A different story entirely. Why do you suppose zombie films are frightening, hm?
— For the record, your escape routes have already been sealed. I canceled several dozen reservations specifically so I could watch you two become minced meat. Do put on an entertaining show. Ta-ta.
— click.
The broadcast cut off.
And at Baek Dong-sik's grandiose declaration, the only thing I could manage was a laugh of pure disbelief.
"...This bastard didn't hear any of the conversation from before I started streaming, did he? Fey."
At my call, Fey swept her hair back with regal indifference.
— Thou art rather impertinent, for one who comes begging a favor.
Then as now, Fey's nose shot skyward the instant there was a mount to be taken.
But this once, I decided to play along with her rhythm.
"O beautiful, graceful, and noble Lady, would you not, for my sake, teach a lesson to those ugly, vulgar little fairies? As your reward, I promise you a magnificent festival, premium cookies and pastries, and a bouquet of flowers~"
— Ahem! Since thou dost plead so earnestly, how could Ourself turn a blind eye?
Fey threw her chest out and beamed a smile of supreme magnificence.
Tsk. She gets this delighted over such a pittance. I'll have to keep sweet-talking her regularly from now on — no more of her sulking.
Then Fey wiped the smile from her face, and with an expression of glacial cold, she addressed the changelings.
— Thou liftest thy heads before a queen?
At that single utterance, the changelings — just now crawling from the patients' mouths — slammed their heads against the floor.
Swooooosh
Then Fey waved her hand, and water burst from the bathroom at the end of the corridor, flooding the hallway.
Sssssuuuuuu—
And through the water spreading across the corridor, Fey's voice carried.
— All of thee — kneel.
THUD!
Every changeling in the inpatient wing that Baek Dong-sik had summoned bowed to the floor at once before Fey's command — that was the sound they made doing it.
"...Fey, have you always been this strong?"
— Thou askest such a thing only now? Did We not tell thee? Ourself is a queen.
Fey swept her hair back with a pleased smile.
— And that We may wield power on this scale is partly thy doing as well.
"My doing?"
— Aye. Hast thou forgotten? The power Ourself can exercise in reality is proportional to the ability of thee, Our contracted one. Thou mayst not feel it keenly thyself, but the thee who first summoned Ourself and the thee of this moment might as well be two different people. Truly dazzling growth. As ever, Our eyes do not err.
Fey gazed at me with a gentle smile.
Between the dignified bearing so unlike her usual self and the outright praise, I found myself getting a little embarrassed.
"Flattery gets you nothing, you know."
— Fufufu. And yet it is the truth. Now then — what wilt thou do, my summoner?
"Huh?"
— Thou art Our summoner. Which is to say — the changelings who bowed their heads in submission to Our authority have, by that very act, bowed in submission to thee as well.
The instant I understood her meaning, a fishy smile spread across my lips on its own.
"I see. So that's how it is."
I smirked and stepped out into the corridor.
The changelings who had submitted to Fey's authority were waiting there, awaiting my orders.
I looked at them and spoke.
"Bring me Baek Dong-sik. That bastard."
Baek Dong-sik had said we crossed a line.
But he was the one who'd crossed it first.
And from this moment on, Baek Dong-sik was going to pay for it.
Yep. Our Fey outranks your little summoned fairy by a country mile~
Time to teach a professor marinated in democracy just how terrifying a class-stratified society can be.