Basement Level 1

"Kyaaaaaaah."

With a scream, I snapped back to the starting point.

I must have looked completely unhinged, but there were no actual humans around, so it was fine.

"Fuuuuuck, why can't I just be happy for onceeeee!"

"Is something the matter?"

The front desk lady approached with a gentle smile. Even my deranged outburst didn't make her so much as frown.

Back when I still knew nothing, her kindness had brought me to tears. Not anymore.

Scary. Scary. It's fucking scary.

I had seen her true form. An appearance that triggered pure revulsion, like the uncanny valley cranked to eleven. The way she moved as she came closer had been pure nightmare fuel.

But looking at her now… damn, she's hot as hell?

I studied the front desk lady's face carefully. Right now, she was more beautiful than anyone.

Sex? Sex… sex!

Decision made. This loop, I was throwing everything else out the window and going all-in on fucking the front desk lady.

"Everyone, go home. This company is not normal. You all saw how those real dolls get made, right?"

I cleared out every last potential obstacle. Faces gone pale, they piled into the elevators and vanished.

They'll figure it out on their own, right?

A flicker of worry crossed my mind. If they died and the anomaly got resolved afterward, the dead wouldn't come back.

"No. I need to worry about myself first."

My life came first. The Management Bureau had already fallen to the anomaly. If this situation kept going, the entire country was in danger.

I've got experiments to run anyway. Might as well treat this loop as a throwaway.

I fiddled with the name tag in my pocket. It still had the original name written on it: Seol In-pyo.

To go down to the basement, I needed a new recruit's name tag.

"You go first. I'll take the elevator down."

"Okay."

"Ah, and you absolutely cannot act like a new hire. In this place, you're Seo In-seo. A Management Bureau agent."

"Huh? Ah—yes, understood."

She had probably died for the same reason I had. Right before her death, the name tag I'd seen on her hadn't said Seo In-seo—it had said Seong Eun-hwa.

Hypothesis one: you have to behave the way the person whose name is on the tag would behave.

I worked the logic through on my own. The original owner of the name tag, a man named Lee Hong-cheol, had probably tried to escape via the emergency stairs when the Management Bureau got overrun. But a long-haired woman—already claimed by the anomaly—had appeared and blocked his path.

What happened after that, I have no idea. Can't even guess.

Whether the route to the basement had always been sealed off or something else had blocked it, I didn't know. I'd dug up a secret post and asked PaidMemberUncle about it, and he'd said you could reach the basement via the emergency stairs too. Claimed he'd never even heard that the emergency stairs only opened during emergencies.

What the hell does this guy even know, then?

One moment he seemed rock-solid reliable, the next he was weirdly untrustworthy in the strangest places.

Ding.

"I'll head up first."

Seong Eun-hwa took the elevator upstairs. The floor she stopped at was the twenty-ninth—right below the top floor, the thirtieth. She seemed to plan on taking the stairs the rest of the way.

Ding.

"Hoo… alright, let's go."

Please let my guess be right. Please let this go the way I planned. I prayed to whatever god was listening and stepped into the elevator.

I hit the button for the first floor, then the close button.

Ding.

The elevator arrived at the first floor and the doors opened. I swallowed hard and scanned the surroundings.

Time passed, and still nobody paid the elevator any attention.

It's fine. It's fine. I can do this.

Still okay. Carefully, I stepped out of the elevator.

In the distance, the front desk came into view. The light of my life, the reason I kept going, the pussy—it was all right there.

I'm gonna fuck the front desk ladyyy!

My cock was rock-hard from pure excitement. Sensing a threat to my life, the instinct to propagate the species was thrashing around inside me.

Just as expected, the fake humans in the first-floor lobby didn't spare me a second glance.

The "fake humans" had a lot of behavioral restrictions. Cover their faces with a coat and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠they'd panic so hard they couldn't even get up—dumbass anomalies. Get caught being human and you were dead, but until then, they just repeated the same actions over and over.

Basically human fleshlights.

And I've got countermeasures locked down.

When an anomaly came up behind me, I used a mirror to watch my back. I pulled out the mirror and alternated between checking front and rear. Even looking ridiculous like that, nobody around said a word.

Wait for me, front desk lady.

Huff. Huff. Huff. Huff.

I turned into a dog in heat and sprinted for the front desk. In this insane building full of nothing but anomalies, the light and salt of my existence ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was right there.

"Who are you?"

A man blocked my path. His massive frame completely hid the front desk lady from view.

"Huff?"

The gazes of every human around me locked on. The dolls were suspicious of me.

"Hello. I'm Seol In-yul. Just started today."

I straightened my tie and spoke politely. I'd known ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠something like this might happen, so I hadn't taken my pants off.

"A new hire?"

"Ah, I'm a part-timer. Looking forward to working with you."

"A part-timer, huh. Nice to meet you."

The stares melted away. Calling myself a part-timer had been the right answer.

Is Eun-hwa pulling off her act okay?

I worried about Eun-hwa, who'd gone up to the rooftop. Could she convincingly play a Management Bureau employee named Seo In-seo—someone whose face she didn't even know?

"Huff. Huff. Huuff."

Ah, whatever. She'd figure it out. Focusing on my own job came first.

"Um, excuse me?"

"I'm sorry. Since I'm just a part-timer, I don't know the way down to the basement."

"You've lost your escort, I see. Follow me. I'll take you down."

The front desk lady gestured for me to come along.

It works.

I'd just followed the manual, and it worked. Asking her for help had been the correct move.

We stepped into the elevator.

"Getting to the basement is simple. Press this button and you'll go down to Basement Level 1."

She hit the emergency button and the elevator started moving. Slowly descending.

"Please work. Please."

I pulled off my coat and draped it over her face.

"Ah…?"

Like a character hit with lag, every trace of movement vanished from the front desk lady's body. The strength drained from her arms.

No idea why this works?

Same as the woman I'd met on the stairs—the anomalies that had taken over the Management Bureau seemed to lose intelligence the moment their vision was blocked.

I took the front desk lady's limp hand. Her skin was incredibly soft. Just holding it was enough to get me hard.

"Pussy, pussy, pussy. Let me see that pussy."

I shoved my face up under her miniskirt. The reason I was still alive was right here.

I breathed in the scent of the front desk lady's pussy and lifted my head.

Diiing.

We'd already arrived at Basement Level 1. Nowhere near enough time to fuck her.

"We've… arri… arri… arrived… Follow… follow… follow beside me."

She was broken. Without vision, her speech had stretched out and dragged.

The elevator doors opened onto a long, endless corridor.

Wait a second… the basement is supposed to be packed with contained anomalies. I have to go in there?

Terrifying. I swallowed hard, staring back at the elevator, and opened the gallery.

Every time I wrote a post, it hit the front page. Might as well have been handed a free ticket to recommended status.

I groped the front desk lady's ass while browsing the gallery.

"The easiest jobs? Not the kind where you get your guts ripped out if you mess up, right?"

I was terrified. The fear that some unknown something could snatch my life away squeezed my heart like a vise.

I pulled the coat off the front desk lady's head.

"Follow me. I'll introduce you to the staff in charge of Basement Level 1. Watch carefully and learn, and you won't have any problems."

The moment the coat came off, her speech snapped back to normal speed. The front desk lady had also switched from formal speech to casual.

I followed behind her.

We arrived at a space that looked like a waiting room. Beyond a bench and a drink vending machine sat a desk.

Crunch.

"What the hell."

"Careful. We haven't finished cleaning up all the remains yet."

I'd stepped on something. I reflexively stumbled backward. The severed arms and legs of real dolls were scattered across the floor.

"These people…?"

These were people. At least, inside this building, they were.

"New recruits. They couldn't hold out and died almost immediately."

The man said it with complete indifference.

It's because he's an anomaly that he's warped like this, right?

He treated people like numbers. I decided to believe that was an anomaly trait, not a Management Bureau one.

"Don't worry. As long as you follow the manual, you won't die."

"Where is the manual?"

"We'll teach you!"

The front desk lady and the first-floor management employee beamed at me with wide smiles.

Yeah. I'm fucked.

Most of the manual was of unknown authenticity—real or fake, no way to tell. But one thing I knew for certain: doing exactly what these things told me was a one-way ticket to the afterlife.

"I'll be heading back now."

The front desk lady waved and disappeared.

"Hmm… what should I assign you to…"

He was looking elsewhere. This was my chance.

Name tag acquired.

I scooped up Lee Hong-cheol's name tag from the floor. Just in case, I grabbed Seong Eun-hwa's name tag too.

What's this? A death report?

Death reports for Lee Hong-cheol and Seong Eun-hwa. I pocketed those as well. I'd deal with them before heading to the upper floors. If I played it right, I might even be able to reuse Lee Hong-cheol's name tag.

"Alright. Follow me. Let's go meet the safest friend on Basement Level 1."

I followed behind him.

"It's called the Smiling Flower. Looks grotesque, but it's actually a very safe flower. You can relax."

It was a bizarre flower with eyeballs growing from its buds and a mouth attached to the stem.

"What do I need to do?"

"Nothing much. Just poke the eyeballs on the buds. Then the flowers will close their eyes and turn their heads away."

I pulled out my phone and played a saved ringtone. The flowers that had been staring wide-eyed squeezed their eyes shut and drifted off to sleep.

"Impressive. The other guys were too scared to poke the eyeballs. You went and poked them all in one go—amazing. If you don't poke the eyes in time, the flowers get angry and start biting people."

So he perceives the situation completely backward.

I hadn't poked a single eyeball, and he was marveling at me. I'd heard ghosts reverse every action—this seemed like that kind of case.

"Next up is the Dancing Piano."

I cleared five anomalies back to back. No need to hunt down any manual. I had PaidMemberUncle—who was more reliable than any human had a right to be.

"You're something else. Clearing the first floor already? You could head down to the second floor tomorrow."

Apparently he'd decided the first floor wasn't enough. He'd already made the call to send me to the second.

"Could I go down to the second floor today?"

"…Why?"

"All the new recruits died, right? Even if I have to pull an all-nighter, I want to cover the remaining share."

"That's impressive. Thank you. I'll add extra pay for the additional work. It's about time to eat, isn't it? Head into the cafeteria and they'll give you a meal. Eat there and come back. See you on the night shift."

"Yes."

I ran for the elevator without looking back.

Scary. Scary. Scary. Scary.

I chewed my nails, body trembling with fear. Flowers with teeth had been watching me, waiting for an opening. Strange pictures had locked eyes with me and rolled their pupils around. Eight hours of staring contests with things whose very existence was horror.

I couldn't even reach Basement Level 5, let alone Level 10.

But I have to do it, don't I.

I had to resolve the anomaly that had invaded the Management Bureau if I ever wanted to go back to normal life. I steeled my will and opened the gallery.

"Ooooh…"

The solution PaidMemberUncle offered was exactly what I needed to hear.

Going down to the basement wasn't the only answer after all.

PaidMemberUncle had mentioned Basement Level 10, so I'd gotten completely tunnel-visioned on reaching Level 10. I didn't necessarily have to go down there myself. Other countries' branches were still intact. I could head there and put in a support request.

The cafeteria doesn't have some whole set of rules too, right?

Fortunately, it didn't.

"Mister…?"

Instead, Seong Eun-hwa was curled up in a ball near the hallway.