Chapter 44
Chapter 44
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 44
Chapter Title: The Day Before the Festival
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The entity took the bait.
One of the dolls encircling the small bonfire was dragged underground by the entity's hand.
"I-I'm just gonna watch from way over here!"
The moment Se-hwa heard that the entity had been spotted, she quickly backed away.
She was standing at least ten meters away, watching from a safe distance.
"Whack-a-mole time."
"Four dolls left with bait. It doesn't matter if you fail a few times—just make sure you catch the entity!"
Se-hwa shouted from afar, cupping her hands around her mouth.
I always thought she worried too much about unnecessary things.
"Se-hwa, you're such a worrywart. There's no way I'd fail, right?"
I muttered lightly to myself and stared intently at the doll.
Then, the ground began to tremble faintly.
I focused my mind, waiting for the entity to pop up.
Snap.
The mole-like entity grabbed the doll.
Before it could vanish underground, I snatched it right up.
I yanked it out of the ground like harvesting a ripe potato.
"A real whopper."
The entity thrashed desperately in my grip, trying to escape.
I turned to Se-hwa and raised my hand high, showing off the captured entity.
"You did it! As expected of Seo-hwa. I knew you could!"
I held the pose for a moment, basking in her praise.
The moment I decided to savor the satisfying accomplishment and store the entity away...
The ground trembled faintly again.
Snap.
Another hand shot out from the earth and grabbed my ankle.
It happened in the blink of an eye.
The second entity that burst from the ground started pulling me underground.
"How rude."
Daring to grab my ankle without permission.
I reached out with my free hand and seized the impudent creature in one swift motion.
I reversed its pull, yanking it out of the ground instead.
Now I held two mole-like entities, one in each hand.
Se-hwa had been walking slowly toward me but froze the instant she saw me pull out the second one.
She stayed safely far away.
"It's fine now. The main body seems to have fled."
I squeezed the wriggling entities in my hands until they went limp and still.
I'd successfully finished entity fishing and was in a great mood, but things had gotten a bit annoying.
"Th-the main body got away?"
Se-hwa cautiously approached while scanning the surroundings and asked.
The small bonfire we'd lit had burned down to faint embers.
"Yeah. These seem to be lesser entities created by some other entity. Once they got caught, the main one bolted."
"Ugh, what a headache. Still, you caught some lesser ones, so that's something. Now we can start a proper investigation."
The entities in my hands hung limp, no longer moving.
They looked just like ordinary moles in appearance.
Maybe because they mimicked moles, they actually seemed kinda cute.
"Are those... dead?"
Se-hwa pointed at the entities in my hand and asked.
"Just knocked out for a bit. They were thrashing around, so I made them stay still."
"Hmm, I see."
Se-hwa peered at the entity in my hand with eyes full of curiosity.
By the time we'd finished entity fishing, the sun had set, and dusk was falling.
"Can you catch the main body?"
"It probably got scared and ran off. I can't think of a way to catch it right now."
"Then we should head back to the lodging."
"Yeah. Too bad, but we can't wrap this up today."
Unable to finish today, we'd have to try again later.
I stored away the entities in my hands.
Even though the fishing had gone successfully, I returned to the lodging with a nagging sense of unease.
I planned to rest at the lodging with Se-hwa and discuss our next steps.
"Can you lure out the main body?"
"If it's a smart entity, it won't fall for the same trick again."
"Hmm. Guess we'll just have to wait until festival day then."
"All we can do is hope it shows up on festival day."
As we talked and hashed out plans...
Knock knock.
Suddenly, someone knocked on the door.
"Yes? Who's there?"
Se-hwa cautiously got up and approached the entrance.
"It's the lodging owner. May I come in for a moment?"
An elderly woman's voice came from beyond the door.
Se-hwa looked at me with a puzzled expression.
"Yes, that's fine."
"Excuse me then."
Se-hwa gave permission and opened the door, letting the lodging owner into the room.
"Is something wrong?"
"No, nothing like that. I just have a question for you tourists."
The elderly woman had a kind expression, but there was a strong resolve hidden beneath it.
Se-hwa and I stared at her, wondering what she wanted to say.
"Are you from the research lab?"
"Pardon?"
"I asked if you're from the research lab."
"Why do you ask that all of a sudden?"
Se-hwa seemed momentarily flustered by the abrupt question.
The lodging owner continued calmly, her expression unchanging.
"People from the research lab aren't allowed to stay in this village. Please leave immediately. The other villagers agree."
She finished as if stating an obvious fact, her tone serene.
Se-hwa took a deep breath to calm herself before speaking evenly.
"We're not from the research lab. We're just ordinary tourists. Think about it—if we were, would we be dragging a kid around?"
Se-hwa pointed at me.
The lodging owner looked at me and nodded.
"I see... My apologies. But if you're not from the research lab, why have you been investigating the entity incidents around the village?"
"I've always been curious about that stuff. Guess it rubbed the villagers the wrong way. Sorry about that."
Entity-related disappearances were tragic events.
It seemed we'd drawn suspicion for poking into such matters unnecessarily.
"No, I'm the one who should apologize. You guests did nothing wrong. Truly, I'm sorry."
The elderly woman met our eyes and apologized sincerely.
Her attitude conveyed genuine remorse.
"Glad we cleared up the misunderstanding. Looks like the villagers really hate the research lab, huh?"
"Yes. At least in this village, no one likes them."
"Do you mind telling us why?"
Se-hwa's tone was extremely polite, as if trying her best to be courteous.
The lodging owner hesitated for a moment before speaking haltingly.
"It's not really a story fit for tourists' ears, but..."
"It's okay. We like stories like that."
"Very well. It was my mistake to suspect you first. I'll tell you about the incident from the festival five years ago."
The lodging owner sat down at a small table and chair in one corner of the room.
Her voice, small but clear, began recounting the events of five years prior.
"The incident happened on the final night of the Kuisukaus Festival. As we enjoyed the closing around the bonfire, an entity appeared out of nowhere. A family of three tourists vanished, dragged away by the entity in less than a minute, right before everyone's eyes."
Outside the window, night had fully fallen, pitch black.
Se-hwa and I listened intently to the lodging owner's tale.
"The villagers contacted the research lab and fought to drive off the entity. In the end, six people sacrificed themselves to stop it."
A total of nine victims.
Six brave villagers had given their lives to hold it back.
"The research lab arrived long after the entity had fled. They tracked it but never found it."
Being a remote rural village, it took time for the lab personnel to arrive.
Unlike in the city, rural areas couldn't respond swiftly to entity threats.
"It was clear this would damage the research lab's image badly. They were already embroiled in scandals from other incidents, so they decided to cover it up. A small rural village like ours had no way to fight back."
The lab in the story wasn't Se-hwa's Ansong Research Lab.
It was one of the labs in Finland.
"That's how people met pointless deaths. Even the village youths who sacrificed themselves to stop the entity were ignored. And so... the villagers came to hate the research lab."
The story ended.
After a brief silence, Se-hwa spoke first.
"That's regrettable. I had no idea something like that happened."
"It's fine. Not something tourists need to worry about. The villagers are all moving forward, overcoming the past. This year, we're holding the festival again to regain some of our old vitality."
The reason the villagers had eyed Se-hwa and me warily was because they'd mistaken us for personnel from the Finnish lab.
With the story told, the lodging owner returned to her place.
Once again, only Se-hwa and I remained in the room.
"Won't the entity show up again if they restart the festival?"
Se-hwa asked me cautiously.
"Probably. The villagers don't know what triggers it. They stopped the festival for a while after it appeared last time."
"Then..."
"I'll handle the entity. It'll make for a perfect grand finale to the festival."
I'm looking forward to the fun festival.