Chapter 30
Chapter 30
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 30
Chapter Title: Happiness General Hospital - Horror Tale (1)
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I passed through the hospital's main gate and turned my steps to the right.
A hollow rumble echoed from my stomach.
I quickly scanned the surroundings.
After a moment's hesitation on where to go, my eyes caught a sign, and I stopped.
[Boram Restaurant]
Was it named that way because it's next to Boram Hospital?
These kinds of places often hide real gems.
The name itself oddly drew me in.
The exterior backed up my intuition.
It had a shabby look that didn't resemble a modern shop.
The glass door hadn't been cleaned in ages, making it impossible to see inside properly.
A faint fluorescent light leaking from within barely indicated that the place was open.
It was just past lunchtime, so the inside was quieter than expected.
This is it for today.
"Excuse me."
I pushed open the stiff door and stepped inside.
Clunk.
"Welcome…"
The air felt chillingly cold, like the AC was cranked to max.
The woman who emerged from the back at the sound of the door wore an apron.
She had a face you could see anywhere.
But her voice was strangely dry, monotone like a machine.
I looked around.
Four tables. Eight chairs.
An old calendar hung on the wall.
And my eyes stopped on the calendar.
The date was stuck at… September 2012.
My heart sank with a thud.
'No way…?'
That's when a menu was placed in front of me.
"By any chance, the current year is…"
The lady responded to my question with a puzzled expression.
"2025, right?"
"Then, that calendar…?"
"Oh… that. I was too lazy to take it down."
Hm.
My face flushed a bit.
I need to ease up on the paranoia.
[Today's Boram Menu – Soybean Paste Stew / Kimchi Fried Rice / Pork Stir-Fry Set]
The lady's gaze fixed on my lips.
These three must be the entire menu.
"…I'll have the pork stir-fry set, please."
"Yes. One set."
Her voice echoed.
Soon, the rhythmic sound of a knife chopping on a cutting board came from the kitchen.
A shadow flitted past the frosted glass.
'…Isn't this a one-person shop?'
A chill crept up my spine.
"–Of course, they probably have a separate chef."
I muttered under my breath, but my hand had already honestly turned on my phone.
Logging into the gallery, I confirmed the live stream wasn't on.
'As expected.'
I'd have to wait a bit for the food anyway.
Since it was already on, I decided to kill time.
As I absentmindedly scrolled, one post caught my eye.
It was about that other-gallery user who'd been mentioned a few times.
[Title: Safeng Gal lol, just came back from shitting there]
–Poster: Hopeless Life
Another big catch today lolololol
[Parcheonhwang]: Still got newbies hanging around?
ㄴ[Hopeless Life]: Not big fish, just fresh newbs lol
Hmm.
I didn't know what they did, but they went to another gallery and stirred shit—that much was clear.
But…
'How do you even get in there?'
I'd seen mentions of other galleries a few times, but I'd been too busy lately to properly look into it.
[Title: Other galleries get mentioned a lot]
–Poster: Newb120053
How do you get in?
I posted and waited a moment.
Soon, one of the time billionaires replied in under five seconds.
[Not Human]: ..? Just hit the leave button on Horror Gallery. All the other gals pop up.
'..That easy?'
If it were any other ghost, I'd do it right away.
But coming from 'Not Human', I couldn't trust it.
That guy seems like…
The type where actually hitting the leave button could lead to a life-ruining catastrophe.
[Parcheonhwang]: Not many actually hit the leave button for real.
[Cream Bun]: For real lol, who in a harsh reincarnated world would actually leave when they're surviving?
[Kyarru is Truth]: Lol for real, we were probably the first to discover it.
ㄴ[Cucumber Candy]: Apogal claimed they found it first a lot.
[Dark Merchant]: Lolololol… hold up. Suddenly sweating from my eyes.
[Organism]: Me too.
[Hell Hurts]: Ah, so this world has people too!
No one in the comments outright denied Not Human's words.
[Grad Student No.12]: Yeah, just hit leave. But stop hanging here and go troll elsewhere! Hurry!
After waiting a bit more, I saw a mod's comment and felt convinced.
It's not a lie.
Even the gallery's own mod was egging on the trolling.
I wondered if this was right for a second.
But anyway, I looked at the top of my phone screen.
[Leave] button.
I hesitated for a moment before tapping it.
No warning popped up.
The Horror Gallery closed immediately, and a new selection screen appeared before my eyes.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Current Galleries: 412]
[Magical Girl Gal] [Magical Girl NGal] [Academy Gal]
[Fantasy Gal] [Romance Fantasy Gal] [Cyberpunk Gal]...
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
More gallery types than I thought.
I pondered which to enter first, then Cyberpunk Gal came to mind.
The one mentioned multiple times even in the mod notice.
'They said Cyberpunk Gal and our gal don't get along…?'
I clicked Cyberpunk Gang and went in.
The first thing to greet me was…
A massive notice on the Cyberpunk Gal homepage about our gallery.
[Notice][Horror Gal Users ㅗ]
[Notice][We haven't forgotten what you did that day.]
[Notice][Even if the guy who sent us the summoning circle pretends he didn't know what he posted and died naturally from clicking it, it won't save you.]
I let out a hollow laugh.
'What the hell did they do…?'
I tapped the notice to find out the reason.
[Notice][Horror Gal Users ㅗ]
–Poster: Gonna Make Gunpura
Fuck!!!!!! You bastards!
It was my peaceful cyberpunk world.
Then you flipped it into urban fantasy?
Turned it into deep dark fantasy cyberpunk?
Lololololol thaaaaaaaanks a lot. Fuck, no more infighting between humans here.
How about it? Should I give you the Nobel Peace Prize while we're at it?
Thanks to whatever freaky monsters you sent, humans are building walls and fighting monsters now.
I thought I was born in cyberpunk.
Turns out it was urban + cyberpunk + fantasy?
Did you loosen up and get complacent?
[Coder Developer]: I was clearly trying to develop games in another world. No one to help. Peak concurrent: 1.
[I'm a Baby]: …Fuck. The one always babbling cutely got their head cracked open and snapped out of it. Dropped that speech pattern. Life's a bitch.
[Board Game]: ...Where's the time for games. Repair walls when they break, fight monsters, stand watch all night guarding the four directions, purge internal heretics, track the source whenever there's a spare moment.
Oof, fuck.
[Title: Finally Figured It Out]
–Poster: Future is Mine SF
Watching that crazy Cthulhu bitch. Finally—
[Not Human]: …Pretty?
ㄴ[Future is Mine SF]: …What the fuck kinda bullshit is that!
ㄴ[Not Human]: Sorry, I'll fix my words.
ㄴ[Not Human]: Hot?
ㄴ[Future is Mine SF]: …
This was being written in real-time.
The ghost 'Not Human' commented on my post in Horror Gal just a bit ago.
And now hopped over here to troll.
Ghosts must be insanely diligent to pull this off.
I shook my head at the post exploding with incoming Cyberpunk Gal users in real-time.
Now that I knew the inside story.
I quietly left Cyberpunk Gal.
I couldn't troll here.
If they changed a peaceful neighborhood's genre on purpose.
I'd feel too bad to do it.
"That wasn't even a drift."
My eyes caught Magical Girl Gal.
Romance Fantasy Gal too. Fantasy Gal.
The ones with the biggest populations.
For reference, our Horror Dark Fantasy Gal ranks around 401st.
1st: Magical Girl Gallery (1.014 million)
2nd: Romance Fantasy Gallery (918k)
3rd: Fantasy Gallery (595k)
'Why does the population drop off so sharply from 3rd?'
If our gal pulled that shit on 5th-place Cyberpunk Gal.
What the hell did they do to 1st, 2nd, and 3rd?
Given our gal's personalities, it being weird that they didn't do anything at all.
Watching the happily laughing posts from those blissfully living gals.
I wondered if they just said, "Be happy! Looks great!"
I'm so curious.
Just as my finger hovered to click a gal—
"Your set is ready."
The food was placed in front of me.
Pork sizzling on a hot stone plate.
Soybean paste stew enhancing the flavors, just like a proper set.
Fresh lettuce on the side.
A perfect, no-frills meal fitting the name.
Well.
Nothing urgent anyway.
I'll check later.
I set the phone down for now and fixed my gaze on the meal before me.
***
The moment I finished eating and pushed open the hospital door to go back in.
A chill swept over my body.
They must have the AC blasting here too.
But the hospital before my eyes was completely different from the one I knew.
No way they suddenly remodeled with an abandoned ruin theme.
"...Maybe I should find a real shaman and do an exorcism."
Fight superstition with superstition.