The Perfect Way In
After resolving the scenario like that, I sent all my team members home.
They had insisted on preparing for the next one right away, but I had to practically push them out the door. None of them had been able to get a single moment of proper rest. Seeing the hollow, dark circles under their eyes after being on edge for twenty-four hours straight, I ordered them to stand down and rest first.
At my words, they reluctantly nodded and headed to their respective homes.
This brief peace, which couldn't even truly be called peace.
Knowing all too well that this was merely the calm before the storm, I couldn't afford to let my guard down.
Today, the afternoon sunlight streaming through my bedroom window felt strangely foreign.
Beneath this ordinary, lazy scenery—so vastly different from the days spent fighting back and forth between terrible nightmares and reality—I sank deep into the sofa and pulled my smartphone from my pocket.
Right in the center of the screen, without fail, a black system notification window was floating.
Show Window.
On the star-rating list I had compiled, this was another one-star—no, one-and-a-half-star—scenario, scraping the absolute bottom alongside the previous one.
I let out a bitter chuckle and put my phone down.
The reason I had given this scenario such a low score was clear.
It was because of the scoffing remarks of my close college classmate, Choi Woojin, who was otherwise a good friend but utterly merciless when it came to evaluating my writing.
"Minjun, this isn't Hollywood. A movie about mannequins coming to life in Korea? Who's going to fund that? You'd be better off writing a realist drama for an indie film festival."
His words stung, but I knew all too well that he wasn't wrong.
Creature features and survival horror were genres utterly ignored in the domestic market, save for a tiny niche of hardcore enthusiasts.
Faced with that wall of reality, I had branded one of the stories I wanted to write most as worthless.
So in the end, this too is a record of failure that I have to prove wrong.
It felt as though The Judge was deliberately poking at my sorest spots. The stories I had turned away from, ignored, and abandoned. A cruel yet bizarre opportunity to finish them with my own hands.
"Phew..."
I stood up with a deep sigh. I couldn't stay lost in sentimentality forever. Rest was important, but knowing the enemy came first.
I walked over to the desk where my laptop sat.
Click.
With a single click of the mouse, the screen lit up.
I opened the scenario folder, found the file, and double-clicked it.
Inside the file was a record of an old urban legend I had written years ago, along with the horrific imagination I had spun from it.
1. Overview
There is an urban legend that after closing hours at the historic Daehan Department Store in downtown Seoul, the mannequins in the show windows and on each floor move on their own. Rumors quietly circulate among the employees that anyone trapped inside after closing will be found the next morning as an eerily realistic mannequin.
2. Origin
The origin of the legend dates back to the 1970s, starting with the bizarre aesthetic obsession of Chairman Han, the department store's founder. A psychopath, he wanted the mannequins displayed in his store to be more realistic than anything else in the world. Under the pretext of hiring runaway teenage girls or vagrants who had no connections, he lured them in, murdered them, fixed their corpses in the most beautiful poses, and cast plaster molds over them. The mannequins made from those plaster molds boasted an incomparable, lifelike beauty, and the department store became a massive success. Although the founder took his secret to the grave, the resentment of the unjustly sacrificed souls came to dwell within the mannequins cast in their likeness.
3. Phenomena
The mannequins begin to move once the department store closes and all the lights are turned off. They swap clothes with each other inside the show windows or walk around the empty sales floors, mimicking their lives when they were still alive. If they spot a living person during this time, they freeze and return to their original positions, but they recognize that person as their 'colleague.' As the night deepens, they drag the person down to a secret workshop hidden deep in the basement of the department store and turn them into a new mannequin in the exact same manner.
I chuckled.
Looking at it now, it was a bizarre and somewhat nonsensical urban legend.
To give this legend as much plausibility and realism as possible, I had adapted it as follows.
Title: Show Window
Logline: A part-time worker trapped in a closing department store fights for survival through the night against the horrific 'fitting' of living mannequins.
Synopsis:
[Quoting Urban Legend: The Living Mannequins of Daehan Department Store]
The legend of the Daehan Department Store mannequins made from corpses. I wanted to turn this passive urban legend into an active survival horror set in a confined space. Not a simple ghost story, but a desperate struggle against creatures with clear rules and weaknesses.
[Adaptation Details: Establishing Survival Rules and Weaknesses]
1. Manifestation of the Curse: The Act of 'Fitting'
Goal of the Curse: The mannequins' objective is not simple murder, but acquiring a new 'body' to replace their own. They capture living humans and drag them to their secret workshop. The reason? It could be described as a yearning and desire for humanity.
The Process of 'Fitting': Once they drag a human there, the mannequins pour cold plaster over the victim's body and let it harden. Unable to move, the victim slowly suffocates to death, becoming a new mannequin added to the collection in that exact pose. This is their horrific 'fitting' ritual.
2. Setting Abilities and Weaknesses: The Duality of Plaster
Abilities: Made of plaster, the mannequins' bodies are hard and highly resistant to ordinary physical impacts. Furthermore, multiple entities move as a collective, sharing a single consciousness.
Weaknesses: Though hard, plaster is extremely vulnerable to specific frequencies of ultrasound or high-frequency sound waves. Prolonged exposure to high-frequency sound causes microscopic cracks to form in their plaster bodies. Once these cracks pass a critical threshold, the entire body crumbles to dust, halting all activity.
3. Final Stage: The Existence of the 'Queen'
Among the mannequins, there exists the 'Queen' mannequin, the very first one ever created. She acts as the command center, controlling the other mannequins. Everything else moves under her direction.
The protagonist must utilize objects inside the department store (speakers, microphones, glassware, etc.) to generate high-frequency sounds that neutralize the mannequins. Ultimately, they must destroy the 'Queen' mannequin to end this horrific night of fitting.
"Hmm..."
A low groan escaped my lips without me realizing.
Staring at the synopsis of Show Window filling the laptop screen, I fell into deep thought.
Setting aside the childish B-movie vibes, there was a very clear, practical problem.
Daehan Department Store after closing, huh...
First of all, how was I supposed to sneak in?
If it were an abandoned building like Namyeong Psychiatric Hospital, I could scale a wall or break a window to get inside.
But a department store is a completely different story.
A massive commercial facility located right in the heart of Seoul, still bustling with countless people. After closing, dozens of CCTVs and state-of-the-art security systems would wrap around the building like a spiderweb. If I tried to sneak in half-cocked, I'd be caught by the security team and sent straight to the police station before the curse even began.
Ah, how do I get in?
I opened a search engine and typed in "Daehan Department Store."
Only flashy homepages, ongoing sale information, and lists of tenant brands popped up.
This isn't it.
I tried keywords like "Daehan Department Store security" and "Daehan Department Store CCTV," but all that came up were security team job postings or related news articles.
This is driving me crazy...
I clutched my hair and scrolled down. Was there really no way? I couldn't exactly crawl through the ceiling vents like in the movies, and contacting an internal employee was out of the question. We had neither money nor connections—only the sheer desperation to stop this absurd disaster.
As I sighed in frustration and spun the mouse wheel aimlessly, something caught my eye.
At the very bottom of the search results page, mixed in with the ads, a small link caught my attention.
[★Same-Day Pay / Beginners Welcome★ Urgent Hire: Night Shift Laborers at Daehan Department Store]
Laborer... recruitment?
I clicked the link without thinking. It redirected me to a familiar job search portal. The posting was in a format similar to the ones I had looked at when I was planning to take a leave of absence from college and search for manual labor gigs at countryside factories.
Location: Daehan Department Store Main Branch, Jung-gu, Seoul
Job Description: Assisting with interior renovation, transporting and organizing materials, site cleanup, etc. (Simple tasks, beginners welcome)
Working Hours: 22:00 ~ 06:00 the following day (Overnight shift)
Pay: 250,000 KRW per day (Paid immediately on-site upon shift completion)
Requirements: Physically healthy adult males, diligent and responsible.
How to Apply: Contact the number below and visit.
As I read down the dry text of the posting, the fog in my mind instantly cleared.
This is it!!!!!
Overnight shift. Interior construction. Immediate on-site payment.
Every single condition was so perfect it felt as if it had been tailored just for us. The only way to legally stay inside the department store overnight without raising anyone's suspicion. And we'd even get paid for it.
"Yes!"
I clapped my hands without realizing. It felt like finding a ray of light in the pitch black. Right, just because we were fixers preventing a worldly disaster didn't mean we always had to rely on grim, shadowy methods.
Sometimes, a highly realistic and ordinary path like this could be the best solution.
Without hesitation, I picked up my smartphone and dialed the number on the posting. After only a few rings, a middle-aged man with a raspy, gravelly voice answered.
"Hello?"
"Ah, yes. Hello. I'm calling about the job posting I just saw online. Are you still looking for night shift workers at Daehan Department Store?"