Chapter 51
Chapter 51
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Ebonarch
Chapter: 51
Chapter Title: Even If I Fall into a Ghost Story, I Still Have to Go to Work
-----------------------------------------------------------------
'What an incredibly fulfilling day.'
Forty million won in unlogged, tax-free extra income. It had been the absolute best tactical choice.
'It seems like I've successfully established a secure pipeline for steady, discreet side cash without drawing corporate attention.'
For now, several strategic options for liquidating today's forty million won actively floated through my mind.
Especially considering the newly unlocked, high-clearance company zones I now had access to following my recent promotion.
And, naturally, the shadowy plush doll who had sharply noticed my financial gains was now subtly pushing its own parasitic agenda.
Hold it in. It's not like I can casually break into a hospital and steal medical-grade blood packs for you...
Hm. A full-body submersion in a tub of fresh blood might be impossible to source right now, but maybe I can at least negotiate letting it hand-wash itself in a basin.
That was the mundane plan for spending the evening—some idle, borderline-insane chit-chat with Brown.
Until someone violently flung my dorm room door open.
"You!!"
"...!"
Baek Saheon.
Wait, why the hell was this guy—who barely ever left the confines of his own room—barging into mine without so much as a knock?
But before I could even open my mouth to call out his blatant rudeness, I clocked his physical state.
He was practically hyperventilating in a state of absolute panic.
"What the hell does this mean...! What kind of nightmare have you dragged me into?!"
Clutched in his trembling hand was his smartphone, the screen brightly displaying...
The cryptic warning message I had sent him when I got back to the dorms earlier.
But here's the thing.
"I didn't drag you into anything."
"......"
"You clearly made the wrong choice on your own."
Baek Saheon's face drained of all color, turning a sickly, translucent pale.
'Looks like something just triggered in the physical world, perfectly aligning with my warning message.'
He wasn't dead yet, so he could theoretically contact the company's crisis management team himself and handle it.
Anyway, there was absolutely no way I was getting tangled up in his lethal mess and suffering pointlessly. The moment I grabbed my coat to head out and put distance between us...
"......"
What?
Hm, hmm, hmmm, hmm hmm.
A soft, melodic humming began to bleed into the air.
The acoustic source: definitely the hyperventilating Baek Saheon standing right in front of me.
But Baek Saheon hadn't so much as twitched his lips.
...Then that means.
"You seem to have picked up something you shouldn't have, didn't you?"
"......"
Baek Saheon, his face ashen with terror, slowly reached into his coat pocket and pulled something out.
A portable cassette tape.
On its worn, grimy ivory body, the original title—stuck on with a cheap paper sticker—had been crudely and violently scribbled out with a black pen.
Hm, hmm, hmmm, hmm hmm.
The eerie humming emanating from the physical tape grew steadily louder, vibrating in the air.
A very... intuitive, ominous signal.
Bolt.
I jumped up and bolted out of the dorm room without a second thought.
The massive problem was, Baek Saheon came desperately scrambling down the hallway right after me!
"Ditch the damn tape first!"
"I did! I threw it out the window!"
Then stop following me!
Ha.
'Why the fuck can't Baek Saheon handle his own shit without dragging everyone else into his lethal messes?!'
I even explicitly warned him—he should have taken the hint! Are you really a named, elite employee at a ghost story company?!
A stream of vicious profanities rose to my throat, threatening to spill over. But there was no time to curse—I just ran faster.
'Put physical distance between us first.'
If we weren't fully submerged into the ghost story's localized reality yet, securing geographical distance would probably sever the connection!
I raced away from the company dorms, sprinting all the way to a main street bus stop in one breathless go.
And hopped right onto the very next city bus that pulled up.
Beep.
I tapped my transit card to board, and right behind me—Baek Saheon tapped his too.
'Why are you following me, you absolute lunatic?!'
Doesn't he possess even a basic shred of human conscience? Shouldn't he avoid dragging the one person who tried to warn him into a death trap?
Thinking about it... no, he doesn't. That bastard is a straight-up, unrepentant sociopath!
Anyway, the hydraulic bus doors hissed closed, and the vehicle departed the curb without issue.
"Ha."
"Ha......"
There was no more humming.
I headed to the very back of the bus, deliberately sitting right beside the red emergency hammer mounted for breaking windows. Just in case.
Baek Saheon hesitated for a second, then slumped into a seat right near me.
"......"
"......"
It was a weekend transit route, off-peak hours, cleanly avoiding the lunch rush—so there were only a few passengers on board. Just two or three civilians sitting near the front.
Baek Saheon glanced around nervously, then asked in a low, incredibly anxious voice.
"Hey, you... how the hell did you know to send those warning messages?"
"You?"
"...We agreed to drop the formali— no, I mean... yeah. How did you know, Supervisor?"
"How I knew isn't the point."
I barely held back the urge to yell at the wary, sweating Baek Saheon.
"The point is how you ended up with that thing in your possession."
"......"
If this guy just shut up and stayed put, I planned to get off at the next stop, grab a taxi, and physically toss him out onto the pavement if he tried to follow me.
But as if he had read my hostile intentions, Baek Saheon finally spoke up.
"...It was just something lying around at home."
Home?
"I inherited it from a relative. They told me to keep it on me, that it could be used for a reversal in a dire crisis, so I've been carrying it around..."
Tell me about it.
I wasn't trying to pick a fight—I was just genuinely, morbidly curious.
"You work at a mega-corporation that literally grades and contains ghost stories for a living, and you never once thought to get it professionally checked?"
"...If the company analytics determine it's a useful asset, they might confiscate it and not give it back! I did think it through, sir."
"No, it really doesn't seem like you did."
"......"
"Think a few steps ahead next time, why don't you."
"...A-Ah, yes, sir."
Baek Saheon's face flushed a deep, humiliated red and purple, his lips twitching into a violently forced smile to suppress his frustration.
This guy acts all sociopathic and snippy when he thinks he has the upper hand, but he cowers and suddenly turns desperately polite the second he's scared. He's an open book.
Anyway, I swallowed a heavy sigh and ruthlessly assessed the tactical situation.
This was a classic ghost story entanglement opener.
"For now, we ride this route to the end of the line, get off, and immediately contact company security..."
"......"
"......"
"......W-what is it, Supervisor?"
Something felt horribly off.
City bus stops in Seoul are usually spaced no more than 3 minutes apart.
But this bus...
Why was it still driving nonstop?
I looked out the window.
...A thick, unnatural fog was rolling in.
The scenery outside—the pleasant, four-lane paved roads of Seoul—was physically twisting and devolving into a winding, unpaved dirt path.
"...!"
I stood up from my seat.
The civilian passengers in the front rows were gone.
...Only the driver remained.
"......"
The driver was now wearing a battered, old-fashioned uniform cap.
The kind from decades ago, back when transit operators still wore highly formal uniforms.
And with heavily gloved hands, humming softly, the driver reached out to turn the dashboard dial on the radio.
Click.
And what poured out of the speakers...
Hm, hmm, hmmm, hmm hmm.
The exact humming from the cassette tape.
"......!"
Hm, hmm, hmmm, hmm hmm.
The eerie humming completely filled the interior of the bus.
The modern, low-floor Seoul bus had seamlessly transformed into a rickety, vintage model with single-file vinyl seats.
Hm, hmm, hmmm, hmm hmm.
"Don't look back."
It was already too late.
Baek Saheon gripped the metal handrail, his face bone-white, staring straight ahead in paralyzed terror. I fixed my gaze forward, actively avoiding staring too hard at the dense fog clearing outside the windows.
The dirt path slowly transitioned from a trail back into cracked, aged pavement.
The old bus rattled down the rough country road, then began to slow its pace...
"......"
The final destination came into view.
Hm, hmm, hmmm, hmm hmm.
The humming now flowed continuously from the radio as a clear, distinct melody.
It was a cheerful, minor-key pop tune from the 80s or 90s.
I gazed at the scene revealed as the hydraulic doors hissed open...
A luxury chalet-style mountain mansion stood secluded in the woods, an elegant wooden sign carved with antique script marking the entrance.
"......"
Ha.
"...You're getting off?"
Yeah.
I hate to say it, but fuck this.
I stood up and stepped toward the open door. Behind me, Baek Saheon muttered something that sounded suspiciously like a frantic curse and hurried after me.
The bus doors closed, and the vehicle departed into the fog.
Taking the humming melody with it.
"......"
"......"
Baek Saheon mumbled, sounding somewhat relieved by the sudden silence.
"At least the song's gone, and the tape isn't here, so the situation is better than before..."
"Check your pocket."
"What?"
"Your coat pocket. Stick your hand in and check it."
"......"
Baek Saheon stared at me blankly, then thrust his hand deep into his coat pocket.
And out came...
The worn ivory cassette tape he had supposedly tossed out the window back at the dorms.
"...!!"
I grabbed his arm with a vice grip as he frantically tried to throw it again.
"It's way too late for that. Get ready to go in."
"Go in where...?"
"There."
I pointed squarely at the Horizon Lodge.
There was absolutely no point in running now.
We'd just waste our stamina fighting the localized reality and inevitably end up crawling back here after suffering needless exhaustion...
'It's better to head in early and scope out the tactical situation.'
Brown piped up, having long since noticed that I possessed a bizarrely broad range of classified supernatural intelligence.
And... he was correct.
'...Yeah.'
The narrative keywords all clicked into place flawlessly.
A serial killer.
Fishing for victims via a hijacked mode of transportation.
A cursed artifact that physically returns to the owner's pocket no matter what.
And...
I looked up at the destination's wooden sign.
'...Horizon Lodge.'
The true identity of the ghost story. I had deduced it through the exact same analytical process I'd used during my months of on-the-job experience.
But there was one massive, critical difference from the usual scenarios.
'The affiliation...!'
This wasn't one of Daydream Corporation's contained Darknesses.
It was a ghost story isolated by the government—or rather, one slated to be isolated.
In other words, a 'disaster'!
What's the difference?
Their operational principles differ entirely from a megacorp actively extracting raw materials from a Darkness for profit.
The government created the Disaster Management Bureau solely to prevent massive loss of civilian life or catastrophic property damage.
At least, that was the justification on paper.
So the Bureau prioritizes isolating and neutralizing anomalies that the civilian populace must never have contact with.
In other words...
Someone always has to die.
Whether you clear it, get trapped in it, fail the objective, or succeed.
In every single simulated scenario.
'Getting caught in this specific narrative guarantees a kill.'
Cold sweat violently trickled down my spine.
The government had deemed this an anomaly that explicitly requires human deaths to clear...
And I was about to walk right into the dead center of it.
I wouldn't even get any corporate Wish points for surviving this!!
'Damn you, Baek Saheon, you hopeless little shit!'
I desperately wanted to curse him out and blacken his remaining eye...
'But that just wastes time.'
"Supervisor!"
I completely ignored Baek Saheon, exhaled a heavy sigh, and headed straight for the lodge's front gate.
Taking a deep breath, I raised my fist, about to knock on the heavy wood...
Ding-a-ling.
The sharp sound of a bicycle bell rang out from the road behind me.
I turned around to see a bicycle pulling up to a stop in front of this secluded forest house, and its rider.
Indeed. No kidding.
One more poor, doomed soul tangled in this damn ghost story.
I swallowed a groan of frustration and turned to look, then completely froze.
"...!"
A highly familiar figure dismounted the bike.
Well, not the face—but the specific getup was unmistakable.
Dark tactical clothes, a heavy mask, and a hat pulled low.
'...Salmon Market!'
The guy from this morning at Gwanghwamun Station who had traded me 40 million won for the ghost story food—he was standing right there!