The Day of the Decisive Battle
The day of the decisive battle had finally arrived.
Today was the day we went to Neverland.
I looked down at Nabi, absolutely buzzing with excitement. To be precise, at a puppy plush doll swaying wildly from side to side.
"……."
You don't go ruining the mood with a sigh at a moment like this.
If you promised, you follow through properly. That's the only way to think about what comes after.
And hey, who knows? Maybe if he thinks I've really been trying, he'll go a little easier on me.
-I will play with you. Even after we leave this place. From time to time. After death, too, of course.
I was fairly certain that was the promise I'd made.
But no matter how generously you looked at it, this was not "from time to time." It felt like being glued together all day long, sleep being the only exception.
If I could satisfy him properly this time around, maybe I could finally get a word in edgewise.
"……Ahem."
Steeling my resolve, I began pressing everything we needed, piece by piece, into the little yellow kindergarten backpack.
The bag was adorably tiny — just a handful of items and it was already stuffed to bursting.
Anyone familiar with my morning commute routine might raise an eyebrow here.
Where had the work bag gone, and why was I suddenly carrying a kindergarten backpack?
I don't know. It's just….
……Nabi wanted to copy everything the other kids did.
He spotted the backpacks on our class as they headed home from kindergarten, pointed, and declared as much.
And just like that, I became the madman who said, "My usual bag's way too big. The kids' bags are just the right size — I think it'll work great for commuting," and walked off with a leftover kindergarten backpack from the storage room.
……And yet, my fellow teachers just nodded along as though this all made perfect sense.
Truly curious creatures.
Anyway, thanks to that, this was the bag coming with us to the amusement park.
He was absolutely unyielding about it.
[ Do you really have to bring this one? ]
[ Yep. ]
I gave up on persuading him entirely. Given the venue, people would probably just assume I was another uncle hauling his nephew's bag around.
Worst case, people will peg me as some kid's dad. That's the ceiling.
Finishing my rationalizations, I changed clothes — a clean hoodie and jeans, chosen with mobility in mind.
There was plenty more to prepare, so I bustled about busily. Confirmed the pre-booked park tickets, the bus reservation, then went over the itinerary I'd written up last night, checking off every item one by one to make sure nothing was missing.
Which meant that for that brief window, I couldn't spare Nabi a thought.
And this one used that window to the absolute fullest.
I had no idea, you see. No idea what Nabi had packed into that bag.
✦ The Dreamland of Neverland! ✦
Scattering stardust as we go,
Upon the clock hands as they strike midnight,
We're going to dance the night away~
The dreamy Neverland logo song drifted from speakers scattered all over the park.
I looked out at the teeming crowds that packed the place to capacity.
A weekend morning.
I'd expected it to be crowded, sure. But I was already tired. Without hesitation, I fished the energy drink I'd stashed in the front pocket of the bag and jammed the spout into my mouth.
This is the only thing getting me through today.
[ What's that? ]
Oh, look at that. Already so worked up he's about to burst out on his own.
Slinging the bag around to my front, I started walking toward wherever Nabi wanted to go.
In a place this size, what are the odds of actually running into Noah?
The day before at the kindergarten, we'd thrown together a hastily arranged birthday party for Noah. Rushed as it was, there had been a few rough edges….
But thankfully, he'd loved it.
With nothing but a cake and presents from his friends, the child had looked absolutely overjoyed.
Of course, I knew that beneath all that excitement and joy lay a thick layer of anticipation for the upcoming amusement park outing with his mom.
It might be a little awkward, but if you're going to celebrate, doing it on the actual birthday is even better.
Just in case we did run into Noah, I'd even added a stop at the gift shop into the middle of the itinerary.
There ought to be something Noah likes there.
Lost in that thought and walking hard, I found we'd arrived at the first ride before I knew it.
I stared up at the contraption before me with a helpless expression.
"Yep, just as I thought…."
A grown man riding this alone… doesn't exactly make for a pretty picture, does it?
[ The horses! Horses! ]
Of all the rides in this park, he picks the carousel.
A quick sweep of my surroundings confirmed it — I was the only solo adult man in sight.
……But there's no backing out now. It's not like I didn't see this coming.
Dignity? Not on today's menu, I'm afraid.
With that thought, I joined the line for the carousel.
Though there is one good thing about coming to an amusement park.
This one's too busy gawking to bother me.
Dazzled by Neverland's eye-catching scenery, Nabi was as thoroughly absorbed as any child on their first park visit.
Which meant I got to spend the whole wait blissfully zoning out, enjoying a moment to myself. Whenever he piped up, all I had to do was answer with a decent show of effort.
[ What's that one? The orange one! The big one! ]
"Ah… that's a Gyro Drop. It lifts you way up high and then whoosh — you drop. It's for enjoying the thrill."
For the record, I was wearing wireless earbuds so as not to look like a lunatic talking to a backpack.
[ Why? Is it fun? ]
The enormous contraption looked like a giant donut skewered on a long steel rod. Now picture that colossal donut creeping up the rod toward the very top, then — with absolutely no warning — free-falling some hundred meters at a hundred kilometers an hour.
Where exactly is the fun in that?
"Lots of people seem to enjoy it. I'm not one of them."
[ You? Why? Don't you like it? ]
"It's not that…. I just like this kind of thing better."
I gave the carousel a sidelong glance. Honestly, it wasn't much to look at, but for my money nothing here suited me better.
Maybe in my early twenties it'd be a different story, but riding a Gyro Drop today would be a guaranteed one-way ticket to motion sickness.
"Let me check your ticket, please~"
After our wait, a staff member waved us through. I picked a suitable mount and climbed on.
The white-and-blue-striped horse began to turn, accompanied by a cutesy little melody.
-The princess and the prince, hand in hand~
-Off to the beautiful palace we go~
……Wow. Unbelievable.
Everyone is staring…?
Like spectators at some rare exotic animal, every single passerby shot me a look — a rare and thoroughly miserable experience that simply refused to end.
please, let Noah never witness this particular sight.
I had zero intention of inflicting psychological damage on a kid who'd come here to have fun….
[ Run! Run! ]
Aside from the occasional overwhelming urge to simply leave my body behind, the carousel's ride quality wasn't half bad.
After the carousel, I humored him on a few more rides, alternating between the boring ones and the nerve-wracking ones.
[ This is fun! ]
When I checked my watch, about an hour and a half had passed since we'd entered Neverland.
Let's see. Next on the agenda….
Neverland wasn't just about the rides — it also boasted themed pavilions built in collaboration with famous cartoons and movies, so there was plenty to see beyond the coasters.
With that in mind, I'd penciled a pavilion tour into the schedule too.
"Time to go check out the theme pavilions."
We'd had our fill of the rides, so there'd be no problem moving on. Conveniently, Nabi gave his stamp of approval.
[ Okay! ]
The first pavilion on our list was an indoor theme park sitting right against Neverland's western lake.
It had been freshly renovated recently, and the reason was probably….
A promotional tie-in for an upcoming movie release, right?
Apparently, it was a remake of a film that had already come out once, ages ago.
They'd rebuilt the whole park around that movie's setting and plot, opening its doors with the bold ambition of hooking future moviegoers before the premiere.
Going by the reviews from past visitors, the production quality alone was absolutely top-notch, so it was probably worth a look.
Great. Everything's great — except for exactly one thing.
[ Blood? Blood! It's blood! ]
…Yes. The exact problem being that the movie this pavilion was themed after was a horror film drenched in blood and screaming.
I swept a less-than-enthusiastic eye over the entrance. Between the staging of red blood dripping down the doors and the ominous background music, people were already letting out little shrieks.
From what I could tell, the concept was that visitors would step into the shoes of characters from the movie and experience the story firsthand.
Here's hoping that character isn't the dangerous one.
What's more, since the original film had failed at the box office so spectacularly that plenty of reviews admitted they hadn't even known it existed….
Not knowing anything does seem to crank up the psychological horror, though.
The one silver lining here was… wait, hold on. How had I even seen this movie before?
Come to think of it, I basically lived in the library's video room back then.
For fun, I used to binge four horror films a day, and the horror immunity I built up in that era still shined through from time to time.
So the experience itself, I could probably handle without incident….
[ Blood, dripping everywhere! ]
[ I like the music. ]
[ They're all screaming! What's there to be scared of? Should I send those guys to eternal rest too? ]
I couldn't help wondering if this was doing further damage to the kid's emotional development.
He was already saddled with that unsettling alias — 'aka. Eternal Rest Is Death and Nothing Else!'
[ It's wailing inside me. ]
[ It says to give those people eternal rest. ]
That was what Nabi had blurted out at the entrance, watching a cluster of teenagers too scared to go in.
……His mental age was that of a child, but could he be developing a case of eighth-grader syndrome on top of it?
Swoosh. I blocked the doll's field of vision with my palm, like a hand draped over a kid's eyes.
[ ? ]
Yeah. No eternal rest for anyone.
Come to think of it, the chipmunks who helped out when the kindergarten caught fire went by the alias 'Dongaksan Brawlers' too.
Maybe my speculation wasn't entirely baseless after all.
[ Let's go! Hurry, let's go! ]
Anyway, with enthusiasm like that, there was no way we weren't going in.
I drifted gracefully past the crowd hesitating at the entrance and stepped into the pavilion.
Huh. The inside was quieter than I'd expected?
"Now that I think about it, what was that movie about again?"
Taking in the interior layout, I rummaged through my memory.
The vast dome of a ceiling displayed a murky, cloud-heavy sky in hologram form.
Drop your gaze just a little lower, and a brick road spread out along the entrance, following the floor. Gloomy alleys branched off the central path, orange streetlamps glowing between them.
……There were weathered, old-fashioned shops, and staff members playing NPC roles wandered sparsely to and fro.
Wow. They were really committed to the concept.
Just as I was marveling at the quality — better than expected — a moment later, familiar things began catching my eye, and recognition stirred.
"Ah."
Brick buildings. Costumes evoking a specific era. A dark backdrop. A bleak, dreary street. And….
-KYAAAAAAAH!!!
-He's here! He's appeared!
Screaming.
"That fog. That man."
Along with the movie's title, the once-hazy plot came flooding back, piece by piece.
……This was not a ghost movie, was it.
Not ghosts — a deranged, psychopathic serial killer.
And it wasn't even purely fiction — it was loosely adapted from real events that took place in a certain part of late-nineteenth-century London!
This isn't going to turn into me playing cat-and-mouse with a serial killer like some Lo*don Man, is it.
[ Let's find him! The killer! ]
At the entrance, I accepted a whistle from one of the staff members.
Grave in delivery, but laced with Neverland's signature chipper tone, the employee locked eyes with me and declared with gusto:
"If you spot the culprit, just blow this whistle nice and loud!"
"Ah, got it."
"And if you arrest the culprit, you win this prize! Fun fact — so far, only one person has ever claimed it~"
"…Oh."
So that's how it is.
The prize the employee held up was a plush shaped like an absolutely enormous scallion.
"It's from the series that's all the rage with kids these days! 'Goodnight, Big Leek'! Ah — oh dear, you might not know it…?"
No, I know it.
In fact, I know it very well.
Conversation geared toward children's tastes requires doing your homework in advance.
Goodnight, Big Leek is Taejae's absolute favorite.
Once the employee's quick briefing wrapped up, I collected the indoor map they handed out and set off on the tour proper.
[ How do we find the killer? ]
Hmm, well — as long as pretending to search keeps you happy, there's no real need to find him at all, is there.
……I probably shouldn't say that part out loud.
"Apparently you can find clues by visiting the shops marked on this map they gave us. Or — see those people in the funny costumes over there? You can ask them too."
[ Ooh. ]
"Then you use your clues to deduce who the killer is and catch him yourself, or you blow the whistle to call the patrolling police for backup. That's how it works, supposedly."
[ This is gonna be fun! ]
"Hope we catch him. Right?"
Well, since we were doing this anyway, why not give it an honest shot?
I smiled, easy and carefree, and ambled along at a leisurely pace.
What could possibly go wrong?
The whole place was built for lighthearted fun.
Exactly thirty minutes later.
I was running for my life, eyebrows flying in the wind — with the theme park's resident murderer hot on my heels!