Abandoned House Experience Broadcast [3]
The mansion standing before us—submitted by a viewer—radiated a menace on a whole different level from Taeyang Village.
A murky something, unlike any human soul, drifted through every corner of the estate. And above all...
Scritch-scritch-scritch-scritch-scritch.
From all over the mansion came the sound of countless insects crawling.
'Screw this up and walk in there, and I'm dead.'
I shot a glance at ApplaudClap, wordlessly inviting him to go ahead and say something.
"Hm, seems Kim Do-sa isn't feeling confident?"
Yeah, right. Figured as much.
I'd pegged him the moment he pulled out that pathetic scrap of paper and called it a talisman.
ApplaudClap was a hundred percent a con artist.
"Dangerous? I've toured creepy abandoned houses and haunted buildings like this until I was sick of them."
And with that, Chaser—the self-proclaimed ghost hunter—threw his weight behind ApplaudClap's little jab.
'Aargh, these idiots...'
If you don't know, the least you could do is keep your mouth shut.
In the middle of all this, Tsukumo Momo seemed eager to step into that unsettling haunted house.
"In your view, Kim Do-sa, is that mansion really that dangerous?"
"Yes. Unless I've been paid in advance, I'd want to turn around and go home right now."
"Could you tell us specifically what makes you feel that way?"
Momo asked, eyes brimming with anticipation. Fishing for a broadcast moment, presumably.
"Bad energy, spirits—something like that has gathered there in swarms. But above all, it's the sound."
"The sound?"
"Yes. The mansion gives off this deeply unsettling 'scritch-scritch-scritch' noise, as if an enormous number of insects were crawling around all at once."
At Kim Yi-yeon's words, ApplaudClap raised a dismissive eyebrow as if to ask what that was supposed to mean, while Chaser pushed up his glasses, intrigued.
And Tsukumo Momo...
'Insect sounds? How did Kim Do-sa know about that?'
She thought back to the story the viewer had sent in.
— I came across this building by chance, but ever since I went inside and came back out, strange things started happening to me. And a while ago, the friend who went there with me took their own life.
These are the last messages my friend sent me before they died.
I can hear insects, scritch scritch scritch scritch scritch scritch scrigagagagagagag... it's coming to devour me.
'Is there really something in that mansion?'
The place gave her an uneasy feeling, but Momo couldn't back down now.
"Mm, I understand what you're saying, Kim Do-sa. That house is genuinely dangerous—is that it?"
"Yes."
"But we can't turn back anyway. You know how this is, Kim Do-sa."
She glanced at the staff she'd hired, the filming equipment, and Kim Yi-yeon himself—whom she'd brought in for a full million won. The money was already spent; dangerous or not, they couldn't walk away with nothing to show for it.
"...You're saying that no matter how dangerous it is, we have to go in?"
A single look was all it took for Kim Yi-yeon to read her meaning.
"That's why we gathered three experts in the first place, isn't it?"
Kim Yi-yeon considered for a moment, then pulled the usual Post-it talismans out of his pocket.
"Everyone, take one—no, take three each."
The participants of this collab were the three streamers—Tsukumo Momo, ApplaudClap, and Chaser—plus Momo's manager and the two hired camera staff, and finally Choi Eun-ha and Kim Yi-yeon himself. Eight people in all.
Three apiece would burn through every talisman he'd brought.
'Damn it, I should've made more...'
Kim Yi-yeon deeply regretted not packing more talismans, having used so many of them crafting the Domok Sword.
Confronted with a Kim Yi-yeon who was a complete one-eighty from the flimsy, clownish act he'd put on until now, everyone accepted the talismans in silence.
Even ApplaudClap, who'd claimed he didn't need them since he'd brought his own, caved under the sheer intensity and took his.
The viewers watching the broadcast were equally stunned by Kim Yi-yeon's transformation.
But whether the people around him were shocked or not, Kim Yi-yeon paid it no mind and continued.
"Do not, under any circumstances, let those talismans leave your pockets. And once we're inside, never stray more than a certain distance from me."
"Hah, well, I—"
"If something happens later because you ignored what I just said, I will not be taking responsibility. I won't look for you, and I won't help you."
Even ApplaudClap, who'd been about to raise another objection, shut his mouth at Kim Yi-yeon's words—so resolute they carried a chill.
"And if it gets genuinely dangerous inside, we leave immediately. Do you all agree to this?"
Momo wanted to protest—the client paid, so why are you the one deciding?—but...
"...Fine. So we're agreed on going in, then?"
Kim Yi-yeon's attitude was simply too unshakable for her to answer any other way.
"Yes. Let's head in—and let's grab our footage fast and get out."
And so the eight of them finally entered the haunted house.
"Wow, the atmosphere here is on point..."
Tsukumo Momo shivered delicately as she thrust her camera into every corner.
The mansion was a two-story Western-style estate, a rare sight in Korea. Sitting in a corner of Gangwon Province as if it had mistaken itself for some foreign country, the house had clearly stood abandoned for a long time, exuding an eerie, desolate air.
"Kim Do-sa, how does it feel to finally be inside the haunted house you called so dangerous?"
"I want to go home right now."
"Ahahahaha, you don't look that scared for someone who said that?"
"That's because nothing's happened yet."
So saying, Kim Yi-yeon glanced around.
"Oh, by any chance, are you seeing any ghosts attached to the mansion?"
Kim Yi-yeon had already commandeered the spotlight of this collab with his trademark presence. Add in the unexpected charm he'd shown in front of the haunted house, and the broadcast had effectively become Kim Yi-yeon and Tsukumo Momo—plus assorted background extras.
Needless to say, ApplaudClap and Chaser were not amused.
"You really are a coward, Kim Do-sa. Well, no matter. Momo, if anything happens, you're welcome to lean on me."
While ApplaudClap desperately wedged himself into their conversation, clawing for screen time, Chaser took a different tack.
'That idiot ApplaudClap—the "trustworthy psychic expert" spot is already taken by Kim Do-sa. If I want screen time, I need to go a different route.'
Chaser pulled his pet project—his homemade ghost sensor—out of his bag.
He'd concede the mystical expert position to Kim Do-sa. In exchange, Chaser would claim the role of the scientific expert.
That angle wouldn't overlap with Kim Do-sa, so it was more than enough to grab his share of attention.
'Let's see... the more Kim Do-sa freaks out, the higher I'll pre-inflate the gauge readings, and then...'
But as he fiddled with the sensor, Chaser caught sight of a black silhouette at the end of the corridor.
"Huh? A per...son?"
A person—or more precisely, the silhouette of a child who looked about ten years old.
The corridor was dark, so the figure was hazy and he couldn't be certain, but it was unmistakably a young girl of ten or so.
And the girl smiled sweetly at him.
"What's a kid doing somewhere dangerous like this?"
Chaser walked down the dark corridor after the child.
Giggle-giggle-giggle.
Scritch-scritch-scritch-scritch-scritch.
But the child, as if teasing him, flitted lightly into the darkness at the corridor's end.
"Y-yeah, this place is dangerous..."
After following the child down the corridor for some time, Chaser realized something was wrong.
'No matter how young a kid is, how can they run like that without making a single footstep?'
Instead, what he heard was that strange, unnerving 'scritch-scritch-scritch-scritch-scritch.'
'What is that sound? It's like an absolutely massive number of insects crawling all at once...'
The moment that thought clicked, he realized that the girl's silhouette—which he'd assumed merely wavered because of the darkness—was actually, genuinely, rippling.
"Ah."
And then, far too late, another thought surfaced: he had somehow drifted completely away from the rest of the group.
Why am I here?
He didn't know. He'd simply followed the child's silhouette without thinking.
A child?
Was that really a child?
No—now that he looked again, it didn't even resemble a human silhouette.
Then why did I think that thing was a child?
In that instant, a single word surfaced in Chaser's mind.
Bewitched.
And the moment Chaser thought that word—
The rippling silhouette froze dead, like a paused video frame. Then, like a melting scoop of ice cream, it sloughed apart.
The collapsed mass of small black shapes stained the corridor black and came crawling toward Chaser.
"AAAAAAAHHH!"
Up close, Chaser realized too late that they were insects—grotesque insects of a shape he had never once seen in his life.
The swarm flooding the corridor engulfed Chaser in an instant.
FWOOSH!
But at that very moment, the black insects that had swarmed him burst into flame in midair, as if striking an invisible wall of fire.
"The t-talisman!"
Belatedly remembering the talisman, Chaser pulled it from his pocket.
The problem was that in driving back the black insects just now, nearly half of one talisman had burned away.
And the corridor was still crawling with black insects.
"I-I have to run, now... huh...?"
When he whirled around, Chaser's face went deathly pale.
Scritch-scritch-scritch-scritch-scritch-scritch.
The corridor behind him was already sealed off by the black insects as well.
Trapped between the swarms, despair flickered across Chaser's face. He didn't know what those black insects were, but instinct told him that without the talismans, touching them was something he would not walk away from.
"S-stay back...! Stay back!"
Chaser held his two remaining talismans out before and behind him like shields.
The black insects, too, apparently knew the talismans were dangerous, and a standoff held for a moment.
But the standoff didn't last.
The insects had figured it out: two and a half remaining talismans weren't enough to hold them back.
Scritch-scritch-scritch-scritch-scritch-scritch.
A wave of insects surged at Chaser from both ends of the corridor.
"AAAAAAAHHHH!"
Like a terrified child, Chaser buried his head in the floor, clutching the talismans.
As the talismans' power burned the black insects away, the talismans in Chaser's hands were burning away with them.
"No, no...!"
It was a countdown to the end of Chaser's remaining life.
And that counter drained fast, until barely a sliver was left.
"M-Mom...! AAAAHHHH!"
When the last Post-it talisman was down to a tenth of its paper—
"Om Amoka Vairocana Mahamudra..."
A voice cut through his screams—unusually clear, clear to the point of being strange.
And the instant the voice rang out—
FWOOSH!
A flame on an entirely different level from what the talismans had produced swept through the corridor, incinerating the black insects that filled it.
The fire streaming in from the rear corridor soon swallowed Chaser whole as well.
"Uwaaaaaagh! F-fire... huh?"
Chaser had shrieked the moment the flames took him—only to realize, too late, that the fire wasn't hot.
The blaze that burned the black insects so ferociously did Chaser's body no harm whatsoever. Instead, it brought peace to his heart, which had been smeared with terror and despair.
Only after the sinister energy gnawing at his inner being was purified could Chaser finally see the owner of the voice and the flames.
Kim Do-sa.
He was walking toward them, one hand with its index finger raised, the other curled around that finger in a strange, deliberate gesture.
As the incantation ended, an even fiercer flame than before bloomed up from beneath Kim Do-sa's feet, burning the black insects away.
Soon the insects staining the corridor black were gone. Most had melted into nothing, and the few survivors fled into the darkness beyond the corridor.
Chaser stared at the scene, hollow-eyed with awe.
Chaser—his real name Lee Ha-ram—had believed himself special since he was very young.
It was the sort of bloated ego every child that age carried. What set Lee Ha-ram apart from ordinary people was the sheer force of his drive.
He'd been fascinated by the occult—ghost stories, yokai, tales of the supernatural. His channel, built through years of exploring abandoned houses and haunted buildings since his school days, had grown steadily larger.
But as those days piled one atop another, Lee Ha-ram's feelings toward the paranormal had twisted from longing into hatred.
'Every ghost story on the internet is a lie. Because if it isn't—then it makes no sense that I'm the only one who's never experienced a single one!'
At some point, Lee Ha-ram had adopted a if-I-can't-have-it-nobody-can attitude and begun denying the existence of paranormal phenomena outright.
To grow the channel—the byproduct of the dream he'd once chased—he thought nothing of faking footage.
And today. The paranormal he'd so loved and hated had appeared before him—along with a genuine exorcist who could drive it out.
It was no wonder tears of emotion were streaming down his face.
"K-Kim Do-sa, don't tell me... you're the real thing...!"
"The real thing..."
"I knew it! The real thing!"
"The 'real thing' never listens to a damn word I say!"
"Eh!?"
WHAM!
Kim Yi-yeon's fist smashed square into Lee Ha-ram's face.