Monster's Nest (2)
"Kyaaaaaaah!"
"Oh? Giving up already?"
"Yes, yes! I can't do it! Why is it so scary in here? It wasn't like this during the daaaaay—hk!"
One of the women let out something closer to a shriek than a scream and bolted.
"Excuse me! You're supposed to take your participation merch!"
She didn't even take the goods they handed out to challengers. I shook my head at the sight and called in the next one.
This challenger was a man, and in his hand he gripped a long selfie stick, with a phone and a power bank fixed to the end of it. From the look of the setup, he was the sort who streamed on a platform like Mutube.
"Hello there! Mr. Shinsoo! I'm Hakko — I film mystery content and horror experiences over on Mutube!"
So the challenger was a Mutuber who specialized in horror experiences. I found myself curious just how he would appraise our zoo, now that it had become Monster's Nest.
But before I could do anything, he got a question in first.
"Um, Mr. Shinsoo. Would it be all right if I filmed inside? Places like haunted houses usually ban interior filming, since knowing what's coming ruins the fun."
"Ah, that's fine. The layout just uses the zoo as it is. Well... you'll see what I mean once you're in there."
"Ooh...!"
I huffed a quiet laugh at the way he marveled and held out a sheet of paper.
"Sign here, first... And this is merch we give everyone who takes the challenge. Normally we hand it over on the way out, but some people end up unable to take theirs with them, so we've started giving it at the door."
There had been guests who never collected it — because they fainted, or because they ran — so there was nothing else for it.
"It's a Yubu figure. Huh? This one's a little different, though..."
"You could call it the Monster's Nest edition."
The figure I'd handed him was a slight departure from the ones sold in the zoo's gift shop. Where the ordinary merch showed him standing there like himself, the Monster's Nest version had his head cranked sideways at about ninety degrees.
"For the record, if you clear the whole thing there's finisher merch too, so give it your best."
Monster's Nest charged admission like anything else, and I'd prepared the gifts so no one would walk away feeling the money had gone to waste.
"What counts as clearing it?"
"You'll find that out inside as well."
He cocked his head at that, said he understood anyway, and set off with a confident stride. I watched him go for a moment, then left my post to the other staff and decided to see for myself how a Mutuber named Hakko would fight his way through Monster's Nest.
Between the CCTV covering the zoo and the broadcast Hakko was running himself, I could watch every one of his reactions in vivid detail.
"Fellas. Yeah, with this many lights out, it really is creepy in here."
You could fairly call the place a zoo tucked into the mountains, and turning the lights down a little had made it thoroughly eerie. He looked badly rattled because of it. Then again, with the lighting that low, even I would have been a little spooked.
At any rate, once he was past the entrance, Hakko set off along the viewing path with a brave stride.
"He said I'd know once I went in... but how am I supposed to know?"
And the very moment he voiced that doubt, something happened.
"Sshaa!"
"Aaaagh!"
A snake that looked as if it were made of nothing but bone had appeared out of nowhere. In truth, it was only ordinary Nureongi, dressed in a black costume painted with a white skeleton pattern.
"Wow. I seriously thought I was gonna die of a heart attack."
Nureongi had popped up and given his shoulder a light tap, and Hakko — startled half out of his skin — dropped onto the ground and wiped away a bead of cold sweat. Sitting there, he noticed the snake wasn't leaving his side, and then he spotted whatever it was Nureongi held in his mouth.
"You want me to take it?"
When Nureongi nodded, Hakko carefully accepted the thing the snake was carrying.
It was a board for collecting stamps. Bring back five of them and it counted as a clear. Some the animals would carry around with them, and some had been set down in particular spots.
"Oh, so I've gotta wander all over the place. With a setup like this, sprinting around without looking back wouldn't do me any good."
"Hey now, boss. Who's scared? This is Hakko. Today I'll conquer Monster's Nest, just you watch!"
Hakko, bristling as if the donation had lit a fire under him, strode on like a man who wasn't afraid of anything. That show of guts lasted about a moment.
"Bwooo—!"
"Caw—! Caaaw—!"
"Ghk!"
The instant Yubu and the crows cried out, he whipped his head this way and that, scanning the dark for whatever else might be lining up to startle him. But dark feathers make for poor targets, and picking the ones out of the night sky was no easy thing.
"...I'll get moving, then."
Hakko, who had frozen in place, started forward again. And that was the moment.
Fwr-r-r-rsh!
"Wh-what the—!"
Something had lunged in at his back out of nowhere. No — more precisely, it had lunged in and vanished. By the time he spun around, there was already nothing there.
"Didn't something just come at me?"
"Maru... yeah, that could be it. At her speed, not even seeing her wouldn't be a stretch—aaaaaagh!"
The instant he grew certain that what had blown past him was Maru, the Maru who had vanished came back. Dressed in a costume that sprouted what looked like spider legs, an LED headband on her head made to blaze like a pair of red eyes, she closed in beside Hakko at a tremendous speed.
"SPIIIIIDER!"
Whether it was the spider costume on her or not, Hakko stamped his feet like he was tap-dancing and screamed his head off. Even so, the moment he confirmed it really was Maru, he let out a sigh of relief.
"I did NOT piss myself! And I wasn't scared either!"
He had very obviously been terrified, but Hakko bristled, denied the whole thing, and strode off again. This time there wasn't much to get in his way, and he found the first stamp in short order. It was the one at the visitor information center, stamped with the icon from my channel.
"First stamp, finally. Four more and I clear it!"
Hakko stamped the board and moved on, declaring the other four would turn up in no time. But this was only the very start of the course.
From there, he was in for a rough time. Because it wasn't run one group at a time, running into other challengers and startling one another came standard, and there was even an incident in which the raccoons made off with the lantern he'd been carrying.
"Damn it... I have to get through all this dark without a lantern?"
Lantern gone, reduced to the light of his phone, Hakko crept along looking thoroughly diminished. Moving like that, he had somehow reached about the middle of the course. Dodging animals that seemed to have made up their minds to mess with him, he tucked himself behind the outdoor unit of an air conditioner and let out a ragged breath.
"Fellas. Would it be all right if I quit?"
"Goddammit."
Hakko was heaving sigh after sigh, trying to get his breath back, when a few drops of water fell onto the top of his head. Wondering if it had started to rain, he looked up — and promptly locked stiff.
"An el-el-el-el-elephant — why is there an elephant on the roooooof!"
On the roof of the building right beside the condenser he was hiding behind, Bbwoobbwoo had climbed up and was letting the drops fall one by one. He hadn't bothered with a costume, but the pressure rolling off that enormous bulk was impossible to ignore. The moment Hakko saw Bbwoobbwoo looking down at him, he screamed and took off at a dead run.
Thud. Thud. Thud-thud-thud—!
"Aaaagh! What! What is it nowww! What's coming after me! The elephant?!"
"Goddaaaamn it! Not an elephant — a rhino?!"
He didn't have the courage to look back, so he had turned his phone around behind him instead, and the moment he heard the viewer's donation he ran for the front even harder. That choice, too, could only be called a very wrong one.
"Grrrrn."
"Noooooo! Why did you let the tigers loose toooooo!"
The tigers had come out of their enclosure and gathered in a cozy little cluster, and he had gone plowing straight through the middle of them. They gave the Hakko who had come to them a gentle taste.
"K-k-kuh..."
The moment a tiger's rough tongue touched his face, Hakko made a strange noise and collapsed where he stood. The tigers poked him with their front paws, as if checking whether he had really fainted, and got no response at all.
"Boss. This guy's smiling."
"Leave him. He's probably dreaming about going home. Come on."
The tigers seemed to lose interest at that, and one by one they drifted away from the spot.
"Pwah! Did you see that, fellas? This is what they mean when they say even if a tiger's got you in its jaws, keep your head and you'll live. I deployed the play-dead technique in that tiny window of time."
"Huh...? Uh, uwaaaaaaaagh!"
Hakko took one look at the donation and started running like a madman all over again. Stamps were the last thing on his mind. He ran a full lap of the zoo and came stumbling back to the entrance.
"Hah — haaah...! Hah, hah...!"
"Did you enjoy your visit?"
"En... joy... haah..."
Faced with a staff member greeting him with a bright, beaming smile, Hakko sat down on the ground as if the last of the air had gone out of him. The staff member picked up the stamp board he had dropped along the way, confirmed that a single stamp had been marked on it, and nodded.
"You've only got one stamp. Would you like to go back and find the rest? Or would you rather take the prize for one stamp and head out?"
"EXIIIIT!"
Hakko shouted for the exit as if going back were the last thing he would ever do. Viewers filled the chat with disappointing— and go back—, but he didn't seem to see any of it.
"Here's your prize. The shop on the right also sells underwear and pants, so feel free to stop by if you need any."
Hakko collected a figure a little larger than the one he'd been given on the way in and started walking. He went straight for a few steps, then turned to the right. I let out a snort of laughter at the sight and headed into the zoo.
"Appa!"
"Wah — you scared me!"
On the way in, I found So-eun riding Bboni. Bboni wore a costume strung with lights glowing a very pale green, and up on her back So-eun had a pure white cloth draped over her head. So-eun had been wandering all over the place, which was why Hakko had never quite managed to cross paths with her.
"Hehe."
"Soeun, play a little longer and then it's time for bed, all right?"
"Yeah!"
I passed So-eun, who nodded with a bright, sunny smile, and found the rhino making her slow way back to her own spot.
"Good work. But is it all right for you to run around like that?"
She was carrying a calf, so I worried in my own way, but they insisted they were fine and there was nothing to fuss over. What actually bothered them was something else entirely.
"The humans said it was something they needed, so I was going to bring it to him. He just ran away..."
She was disappointed she hadn't been able to give Hakko the stamp fixed to the tip of her horn. I stroked her, and caught the scream of yet another victim — no, challenger.