The Blueprint of Disaster
"...This can't be happening."
A hollow laugh escaped my lips.
My jaw trembled with sheer tension.
My hands and feet were turning ice-cold.
Yet my head burned with a frantic heat.
This was a project I had planned to shoot on a shoestring budget of twenty million won—cobbled together from a ten-million-won school grant, three million of my own savings, and, if possible, another five million by pulling my housing deposit, all topped off with whatever help my friends could offer.
If even that fell through, I was prepared to slash the budget to ten million won. If that failed, eight million. That was my screenplay.
And if all else failed, it was going to be a dirt-cheap cult film that Kang Deokhu, Yoo Minhae, and I would somehow shoot ourselves, armed with nothing but a single, battered handheld camera.
But what was unfolding before my eyes right now...
...isn't some crude indie film.
It was the opening sequence of a multi-million-dollar Hollywood disaster blockbuster.
A hellscape of overwhelming scale, one that could only be realized by smashing dozens of cars and dropping hundreds of extras from stunt wires.
The imagination inside my head was manifesting in reality in the most thrilling, yet utterly horrific way possible.
"This! This is my screenplay! It's exactly like my screenplay!"
I screamed like a madman.
But my voice was swallowed by the chaotic din of pandemonium, reaching no one.
"Hurry, call 119! Call the police!"
"Aaaah! Don't look! Kids, don't look over there!"
"Mom... Mom, I'm scared... What do we do..."
People wailed as they rushed out of the cafe, or collapsed to the floor, clutching their heads.
Then again, to people gripped by panic, someone shouting "This is my screenplay" would have sounded like nothing more than the ravings of a lunatic.
Weee-wooo, weee-wooo!
Beeeeeeeep!
The shrill wails of sirens rapidly approached from the distance.
Get a grip, Kim Minjun...
With trembling hands, I grabbed the laptop on the table.
Calm down... Just stay calm.
My fingers slipped repeatedly as I tried to type in my password.
The situation was so urgent that my password, which I must have entered hundreds of thousands of times, felt completely foreign.
I finally managed to unlock the desktop and opened the folder labeled 'GraduationProject_Final'.
[Screenplay] Haunted Bridge_Kim Minjun.hwp
As the file opened, the familiar project proposal page appeared.
I scrolled down frantically, re-reading the words I had written. This was no longer just a screenplay for a graduation project; it was a manual for this disaster—perhaps even a book of prophecy.
Title: Haunted Bridge (Working Title)
Logline: A disaster begins as the whispers of those who died unjust deaths swallow an entire city. This is the story of those who fight to stop the catastrophe.
Synopsis:
[Urban Legend: The Whispering Bridge]
There is an urban legend surrounding Pungwol Bridge, located on the outskirts of the metropolitan area. It is said to be haunted by the vengeful spirits of construction workers who died during a rushed, forced construction project in the 1970s. The local legend states that the whisper, 'Come here, it's peaceful,' is heard only by lonely souls crossing the bridge, luring them to jump to their deaths. The curse is strictly confined to the physical space of Pungwol Bridge.
[Adaptation: Modern Transmission of the Curse]
I found the 'confined space' setting too boring. It was too small in scale to develop into a feature film. Therefore, I established new rules for the curse.
1. Transmission of Sound: The curse is not a simple sound wave, but a semantic voice virus.
2. Primary Infection: The first infected victim emerges at Pungwol Bridge.
3. Secondary Infection: The sighs, mutterings, and even phone conversations unconsciously uttered by the infected become 'vectors' for the curse. Anyone who hears these sounds becomes infected with the virus.
4. Manifestation of Disaster: The virus slowly eats away at the host's will to live. When the infected, having reached their breaking point, gather in one place, they experience collective auditory hallucinations and commit mass suicide. The city becomes a massive graveyard.
Reading the proposal again, a cold sweat trickled down my spine.
There was no mistake. I had created this.
I was the one who designed the transmission method of this horrific disaster.
All because I found the original legend boring. Out of the sheer arrogance of wanting to make it more cinematic.
It was then.
"Mmm... Mmm-hmm..."
At the table right next to mine.
The female student who had been sobbing on the floor—the very one who had screamed first. She had stopped crying and was now muttering something under her breath, like a chant.
"What... what are you doing...?"
With hollow, vacant eyes fixed on the corpses outside the window, she began to hum a strange tune.
"Mmm... hmmm... mmm."
It was a bizarre, disjointed humming that barely qualified as a melody.
The moment I heard it, the hairs on my arms stood on end.
"Could this be...?"
The secondary infection.
It had begun. Through the chaos outside the window, the voice of the curse had already penetrated the cafe.
That humming was the definitive proof of transmission.
Anyone else who hears that sound will be infected.
Before the thought could even finish, the girl slowly rose to her feet.
Like a marionette with its strings cut, she began to stagger toward the glass window.
"No!"
I rushed toward her.
But what was I supposed to do? Cover her mouth? She was already infected.
Even if I stopped her, what about the next victims?
Just then, my eyes darted to the cafe counter.
There hung a headset around the barista's neck—one he always wore to block out the loud grinding of the coffee beans.
Transmission of sound.
If so, there was only one answer.
Block the sound!
I lunged toward the counter. Shoving the startled barista aside, I ripped the headset from his neck. It was a heavy-duty pair with active noise-canceling.
I bolted behind the girl, who had stopped right in front of the window. Her forehead was pressed against the glass, and she was still emitting that eerie humming. She looked ready to shatter the glass and throw herself out at any second.
Without a moment's hesitation, I slammed the headset over her ears and pressed down hard with both hands.
"Mmph! Mmmph!"
Instantly, her body began to shudder violently. She thrashed and struggled like someone having a seizure. But I didn't let go. I had no intention of letting go. If my screenplay was correct, this was the only way. Please!
Ten seconds, twenty seconds.
Time stretched out like an eternity.
Slowly, her struggles began to subside.
And finally, she went limp, leaning against me.
"...Huh?"
Focus returned to her eyes. She looked completely bewildered, utterly unaware of why she was standing in front of the window or why I was holding onto her.
"Um... why am I standing here...?"
It worked. A short-term solution. By completely blocking out the external noise, the 'whisper' controlling her had been severed.
Panting heavily, I looked down at the girl who had collapsed to the floor.
Then I looked out the cafe window, at the hellscape where sirens still wailed.
I had saved exactly one person.
This entire city was about to become the stage for the screenplay I wrote.
And the only person who knows how to stop this disaster is me.
The moment the realization hit that I had to resolve this, my terror-numbed brain began to flash like an emergency light.
There was no time.
I lunged back toward my laptop.
The 'Haunted Bridge' screenplay on my desktop was the blueprint of this disaster.
Which meant...
I swiped my fingers frantically across the trackpad.
D-drive, 'Research', and then 'Screenplay_Sources'.
Inside was my urban legends folder, the culmination of all my hobbies and delusions.
Hundreds of files flashed before my eyes.
'Jangsan_Tiger_Notes.txt', 'Hong_Kong_Grandma_Ghost_Evolution.docx', 'Jayuro_Ghost_Sightings.zip'...
My hard drive was practically a graveyard of modern folklore.
I desperately racked my brain for the file name. I had called it 'Haunted Bridge' in the screenplay, but I hadn't saved the raw research file under that name.
It would have been a much rawer, more literal name...
I typed 'Bridge' into the search bar.
[Urban Legend] Whispering Bridge_Gyeonggi Outskirts.txt
Found it!
I hit Enter, and the text file containing all the research I had gathered and organized filled the screen.
The origins of the legend, eyewitness accounts, and most importantly...
The weaknesses and solutions I had formulated as hypotheses.
Yes!
With my heart practically in my throat, I scrolled down.
1. Analysis of Curse Characteristics:
• The resentment of the vengeful spirits manifests in the form of 'sound'.
• Targets: The curse synchronizes with the frequencies of those who are weary of life, lonely, or depressed.
• Core Emotion: Driven by the sorrow and rage of having 'died an unjust death,' they drag the living down with them.
2. Weaknesses & Short-Term Solutions (Transmission Interception Hypothesis):
• Physical Interception: Since the curse is 'sound,' completely blocking out external noise with high-performance noise-canceling headphones or industrial earplugs can temporarily prevent infection.
• Acoustic Countermeasures: According to folklore, the power of the whispers weakens in the presence of 'the purest sound of life (a baby's first cry)' or 'the sound of light banishing the darkness (a rooster's first crow at dawn).' This is historically why spirits lose their strength. Therefore, amplifying and broadcasting a pure sound of a specific frequency might neutralize the contaminated sound of the curse spreading across the city.
3. Ultimate Solution (Curse Dispel Hypothesis):
• Intercepting the transmission is only a temporary fix. If the source of the curse, Pungwol Bridge, is not purified, the disaster will repeat indefinitely.
• The resentment of the spirits stems from the fact that they 'died unjust, forgotten deaths.'
• Therefore, the key to the solution lies in honoring their souls.
• One must trace back the 1970s construction records of Pungwol Bridge and contemporary newspaper articles to uncover the names of all the workers who perished in the rapid-current accident but went unrecorded.
• By calling out their names one by one on Pungwol Bridge, comforting their spirits, and bringing their unjust deaths to light, their resentment will be appeased. Only when the existence of the forgotten is finally acknowledged will the spirits find peace, and the curse will be destroyed at its root.
I tore my eyes away from the laptop screen.
A short-term solution and an ultimate solution.
These settings, which I had written down just for fun to make the story plausible, had now become humanity's survival strategy.
Looking out the window, I saw police officers setting up police tape.
Soon, an officer holding a megaphone began trying to control the crowd.
No!
That megaphone! The curse could spread through that sound...
I wanted to run out and stop them immediately, but I didn't have the luxury of time.
I need to focus on what I can do first.
A plan began to form in my mind, projecting itself like a film reel.
First, I had to make the pure sound of life echo across the campus. I needed to protect the people here and prevent further casualties before the curse spread any further.
Second, I had to head to Pungwol Bridge. But before I did, I needed to find the names of those tragic workers so I could end this curse once and for all on that hellish bridge.
I slammed my laptop shut, shoved it into my bag, and bolted toward the cafe exit.