Mysterious Bunny Girl! (2)
The long and agonizing ordeal finally came to an end.
“I’m sorry the examination process had so many items and took up your whole day. Thank you for your hard work.”
“It’s fine. I just did what needed to be done. Well… you know.”
“We’ll send you the detailed results sometime tomorrow morning.”
The Awakened registration process wrapped up without any major issues. The results came back faster than I expected, and the feedback I overheard wasn’t bad either. Once I officially became a Hunter, the country would pay me compensation based on my activity performance.
But in South Korea, whenever the words “country” and “compensation” appeared together, you had to be careful. It was the kind of combination that would make any military veteran snort in disbelief.
If I wanted to actually make money as a Hunter, joining a guild would be the smarter move. Since I’d gained power anyway, there was no reason to suffer through another miserable government salary.
I planned to look for a decent guild once I built up some achievements.
As I was about to head home, a staff member from the Hunter Management Department cautiously approached me with an offer.
“Um, Hunter Lee Hasol? If you’re not too busy, would you like to take on a simple job?”
“Tell me what it is first. What kind of job?”
“You know about the Anomaly Management Bureau under the Hunter Management Department, right? There’s a video tape currently in isolation there, and one of your skills appeared to be video-related, so…”
I had a video-related skill? I thought my main category was physical enhancement. The paperwork I’d filled out earlier had listed quite a few high-rank reinforcement skills. The receptionist had even double-checked it twice.
“The, um, one that applies cognitive distortion while in bunny girl state…”
“Ah, aaaaah! I got it! You can stop talking now!”
I barely managed to clamp my hand over the staff member’s mouth. As I clutched my chest trying to calm down, the familiar military smell hit my nose.
So the cognitive distortion applied to video as well, which meant they wanted me to handle a video-based urban legend.
It was exactly the kind of military-style job assignment I remembered. They’d once sent a cosmetology major to be a grass cutter because “cutting is cutting.”
Looked like South Korean public organizations were the same no matter where you went. The same scent I used to smell at the fire department was here too.
“So what kind of video is it?”
“A video that kills you seven days after you watch it.”
Of course it had nothing to do with my actual skills.
Haunted Video
📍 Threat Level: B
📍 ID Number: BPA-OBJ-III-041
A video tape that plays a short clip roughly five minutes long. Hardware analysis reveals a 95-minute horror movie instead of the actual footage. Once acquired, viewing cannot be avoided by any means. The video will play within 12 hours of acquisition.
Viewers report significant ■■■. Death occurs 168 hours after viewing. If there is no owner, the first person to observe the video is recognized as the owner. If no new owner appears within 95 minutes of the previous owner’s death, the video relocates to a random location.
It has been confirmed that the more deaths occur, the more violent they become. Transferring ownership to another person allows escape from the curse. The anomaly is therefore permanently neutralized by continuously changing owners.
The world I used to live in had turned into a horror story. Urban legends—goedam. Because some of them contained stories that couldn’t be understood, the official term was anomaly.
They were phenomena that forced bizarre rules on humans. Sometimes they mimicked human culture or facilities in strange ways. Occasionally, long-standing folktales or concepts would undergo anomaly transformation as well.
Dealing with these anomalies was a Hunter’s main job. Strictly speaking, terms like “exorcist” or “exorcist” fit better than “Hunter.”
But when the world first changed, it had been far too similar to the beginning of a modern fantasy story. There hadn’t even been time to properly distinguish between monsters and anomalies.
By the time we realized what genre our world actually belonged to, the word “Hunter” had already become widely known. It felt too late to change it, so the term stuck.
Anyway, the first job I’d been given was the Haunted Video, which seemed to be on the easier side.
“So I just keep passing it to someone else before I die? Sounds simple enough.”
Well, they probably wouldn’t give a newbie something that had no solution but death. My Awakened rank still hadn’t been finalized. The Hunter Management Department had made a big fuss about me being a promising prospect, but I was still just a rookie.
They wouldn’t throw a difficult job at a greenhorn right away. It was probably against regulations. Too many people had died after they recklessly assigned high-rank anomalies. I remembered that new recruits were only given relatively safe tasks.
The Praising Goddess says there are more pages after this.
“I glanced at it earlier and it looked like investigation records. They always attach them to anomalies taken out of the Anomaly Management Bureau. There was one at the fire station where I used to work too.”
The existence of investigation records made sense. How else would they have known that death occurred 168 hours after watching it? How would they have known that ownership transferred just by looking at it? All safety protocols were written in blood.
The video didn’t have a mouth to tell them itself, so it meant some unlucky person had suffered the consequences. The records of those victims had piled up until the isolation method on the first page was created.
“I’ll read it after I get some sleep. I’m pretty tired today.”
From the description, it didn’t seem like an immediately dangerous type of anomaly. The Anomaly Management Bureau staff had said there was no need to be scared of it.
My body had accumulated a lot of fatigue. It seemed I’d pushed myself more than I realized while undergoing all those tests at the Hunter Management Department. Unless it was truly urgent, I wanted to sleep first.
The Praising Goddess nods. Rest is important for a bunny girl too.
Most of my exhaustion is because of you… No. Let’s not waste energy on pointless things.
And the next morning, I came to bitterly regret that decision.
9 hours and 32 minutes after acquiring the Haunted Video.
■■■ stated that the monitor in the isolation room was acting strange. The supervisor immediately checked the monitor but found no abnormalities.
■■■ repeatedly testified that they were being stared at by a ghost inside the monitor. They showed considerable anxiety and fear. A detailed examination found no signs of spiritual contamination.
168 hours and 7 minutes after the paranormal phenomenon began, ■■■ died with their neck bent at an unnatural angle. They exhibited screams and convulsions immediately before death.
Conclusion: The curse of this video is difficult to interfere with from the outside.
Ownership was forcibly transferred to the ■■■ supervisor in charge of Investigation Record 002. It is presumed that observing the video after the owner’s death acted as the trigger.
All attempts to destroy the video with physical force failed. All attempts to isolate the video and ■■■ supervisor failed.
Conclusion: This video cannot be destroyed or isolated through conventional means.
168 hours and 11 minutes after viewing the video, ■■■ supervisor died with their waist bent at an unnatural angle.
Death row inmates were deployed in an attempt to isolate it in a location beyond human gaze.
The randomly relocated Haunted Video was recovered. Temporary isolation measures were implemented using death row inmates.
Death row inmate ■■■ passed the video to another death row inmate. They stated that they had a usual grudge and wanted the other to die in their place.
192 hours after viewing the video, death row inmate ■■■ did not die.
Confirmed that transferring ownership of the video allows escape from the curse. An additional death row inmate was deployed to test the neutralization procedure.
It has been confirmed that this anomaly can be neutralized through repeated ownership transfers. The threat level of the Haunted Video has been downgraded to E-rank.
An anomaly occurred during the 95th neutralization. After watching the video, E-rank Hunter ■■■ complained of extreme fear. They repeatedly mentioned that something felt wrong, but it was dismissed as a natural aversion to paranormal phenomena.
186 hours and 47 minutes after viewing the video, E-rank Hunter ■■■ was found dead in their home. The body had been dismembered into 95 pieces. The message “Did you have fun so far?” was found on the wall of the residence. It is presumed that the anomaly controlled ■■■’s body to write it.
■■■ administrator received a six-month pay cut. Disciplinary investigation procedures for two additional anomalies are scheduled.
The threat level of the Haunted Video has been restored to D-rank.
It has been confirmed that exorcism rituals can delay the video’s curse.
All personnel involved in the exorcism ritual—one B-rank Hunter and four C-rank Hunters—died. Given the severe damage to the corpses, it is presumed that the exorcism ritual provoked the anomaly.
Judged that existing isolation methods can no longer be maintained. The threat level of the Haunted Video has been raised to B-rank.
Decision made to perform a ritual through ■■■ and seal it at Chiaksan Seonghwang-ri Seonangdang. Under no circumstances is the removal of this anomaly permitted in the future.