Chapter 136
Chapter 136
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Translator: crow
Chapter Title: Board Game
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What happens when a person is truly gripped by fear?
Their legs go weak, cold sweat trickles down their back, and their brain freezes in an instant.
It was mostly something that happened back when I was a kid and got caught slacking off instead of studying, or in the army when I accidentally woke the wrong senior during night watch, or in college when I accidentally sent a grade correction email to the wrong professor.
"Jaeheon?"
That sensation was returning after a long time.
Yoo Daon looked at me with a puzzled expression.
"Daon."
"Yes?"
"How did I end up here?"
At my question, Yoo Daon went "Ah" and smiled as she answered.
"You fell asleep so soundly leaning on my shoulder, so I quietly carried you over!"
How?
She didn't answer my exact question.
"...Um, by any chance."
"Yes?"
"I didn't... do anything while I was asleep, right?"
"Yes?"
Yoo Daon widened her eyes at my words, then shook her head.
"No? You didn't do anything."
"Oh, really?"
What a relief.
I had been so worried that something might have happened while I slept and woke up to disaster.
If only I had some memory of it, but with none at all, I nearly felt wronged.
It was unlikely, but how reassuring that I hadn't done anything weird in my sleep.
"Still, you slept really well. Like I slept deeply for a long time."
"Ah, me too!"
Yoo Daon nodded with a smile at my words.
"I don't even know the last time I slept without dreaming!"
-Shwaa!
Right on cue with her words, the manual unfolded.
[Employee Manual]
[NB - When Vocabulary Comprehension is Lacking]
1. Sometimes, a single different character in what you hear can lead you to interpret the same sound with a completely different meaning.
2. In such cases, you must always-
-Thud!
I closed the manual.
I always felt this way, but the manual had so many useless clauses mixed in with the useful ones.
"Why?"
"The manual spouts nonsense sometimes."
"You often talk like the manual is alive, Jaeheon."
"..."
Now even I couldn't tell if this thing was alive or just a high-performance asset of the Management Bureau.
"Still, since you stayed here, it's fate."
Yoo Daon tied her hair up and looked at me.
"I'll make breakfast!"
Her smile shone in the sunlight.
"Is there a kitchen?"
"Jaeheon!"
At my words, Yoo Daon pouted and yelled, then trotted off somewhere and started pulling cooking ingredients from a corner.
"...When did you buy that?"
"Oh, I snuck out last night while you were sleeping and bought it!"
"..."
She planned to feed me breakfast from the start?
Then she must have anticipated calling me here too.
I wanted to say the plan was brilliant, but I understood her feelings.
Yoo Daon was an incredibly unstable person.
Her past was pitch black, and her very sense of normalcy differed from ordinary people.
To her, our HR Team might be her first real friends. Or colleagues she met in a place where she felt at ease.
In that case, it was natural for her to cling to me—someone she met first—with a certain level of friendship.
She hadn't properly experienced human relationships.
Sure, that makes sense.
"I'll help."
"Oh, you don't have to..."
"I'm too scared to leave cooking to the person who went shopping for the first time."
"..."
Yoo Daon pouted again at my words.
"You know that?"
"Yes?"
"You're mean sometimes, Jaeheon."
"Am I?"
"Yes."
Yoo Daon smiled as she took eggs from the fridge.
"But I think even that's just like you."
"That's a compliment, right?"
"It's a compliment! I think you're the smartest and bravest person in the world."
"That's going a bit too far now."
And as someone who had lived a bit longer in life and was her senior in this regard, I just needed to guide her properly.
"Daon, a shell just went into the fry-up."
"Oh, really?"
"Yes. Fish it out with chopsticks."
The first breakfast I ate with Yoo Daon wasn't something I could call delicious even as an empty compliment,
"Wow, this is my first time making and eating breakfast with someone!"
"Let's do it together from next time."
"Really?"
But just seeing her reaction made it taste good.
"Yes. Next time, bring Chaeyeon and Arin too."
"...Ah... Okay..."
How fun would it be to eat with everyone? Warm and lively.
With the big incident over, moods would be good too. Just thinking about it was exciting.
"Daon, why are you suddenly picking at your food? Doesn't it taste good?"
"Ah, no. It's just...?"
*
The branch chief's summons came sooner than expected.
"You look tired, Branch Chief."
"I am a bit tired."
The branch chief nodded wearily.
"Was the interrogation tough?"
"Interrogation? No, not that."
The branch chief slowly shook her head.
"For starters, I wrote a letter of apology for not preparing properly for this situation..."
"Oh dear."
It didn't seem like her fault at all.
"And the office... blood splattered everywhere..."
"Ah..."
Yoo Daon's face flashed through my mind for a moment, but I said nothing.
"It took the whole day just to clean that up."
"...Isn't there a cleaning team?"
"There is an internal cleaning team, but... they usually just empty trash bins in the branch chief's office, not wipe up bloodstains."
The branch chief sighed as she rubbed her arm.
Honestly, with that strength and power, her arm shouldn't hurt.
"Anyway. The resignation process is still underway."
"Ah, yes."
The branch chief continued while rubbing her arm.
"From the info we've extracted so far... as you said, he has regression abilities."
"Extracted?"
"Oh, don't worry about it. Anyway, he had regression powers... and according to what we got, Kim Jaeheon stripped him of his abilities?"
"..."
Her red eyes turned to me.
"Is that true?"
"Uh, well..."
If I said yes here, wouldn't my life get way too harsh?
I'd get dragged to some weird team right away...
"We more or less knew that already..."
"..."
"Shall we call it even?"
"Yes?"
"Anyway, it doesn't seem like something he can use on just anyone."
"That's..."
I recalled the hourglass I saw back then.
That was probably a special case.
I don't know how hostile we were, but all those choices must have built up his understanding of me.
Conversely, if asked how much I knew of the branch chief's weaknesses, excluding age, nothing much.
"So yeah."
The branch chief shrugged.
"Let's keep this our little secret."
"Ah, th-thank you."
"No big deal. Thanks to you, we've avoided one major headache on our side."
The branch chief smiled and continued.
"And during extraction, one person was deeply imprinted on him."
"One person?"
Who? Me? Or someone else?
"Eirin."
"..."
"That man had quite a strong inner affinity for someone named Eirin."
Inner affinity.
Did he have some relationship with Eirin in the past too?
"I see."
"So, for now, we're putting her under focused observation."
"Understood."
Fair enough. She did have something peculiar about her.
Not that Eirin was strange. It's just that her actions showed an eerily consistent ability to slip out of incidents unscathed.
Not that she had any special powers either.
"Honestly, we couldn't extract everything."
The branch chief sighed.
"Whenever we tried something, there was this bizarre wall."
"A wall?"
"Yes. We thought it was psychological, so we even called Song Arin, but it wasn't that either."
"Any other words...?"
"...We did."
The branch chief nodded.
"He said he heard everything."
"..."
I knew that too.
Because he said he heard.
"It seems there's another tough opponent this time too."
The branch chief sighed.
"So I asked them to gather as much info as possible... but as I said."
There must be some kind of wall in his mind.
"We didn't get much out of it."
We'll figure it out gradually.
"...In that case, Branch Chief."
"Yes?"
The branch chief blinked and looked at me.
"Have you ever heard of the Observer or the Troupe Leader?"
"Observer and Troupe Leader...?"
The branch chief muttered as if recalling my words, then shook her head.
"No, never heard of them."
"Nothing extracted about them either?"
"No."
"..."
As I closed my mouth, the branch chief looked at me curiously.
"Some future I don't know about?"
"Yes, that's right."
"And it involves our staff?"
"...Yes."
"Ah, then that's fine. Don't tell me."
"Yes?"
"Knowing half-baked info about a future that hasn't happened is worse than ignorance."
"..."
"For example, say a future comes where I... um, face ruin."
The branch chief continued, hand on her chin.
"Then my struggling to avoid that future might be what leads to the ruin."
It aligned somewhat with what Song Arin had said.
"So let's just leave it as something only Kim Jaeheon knows?"
"...Understood."
"Good!"
The branch chief smiled and looked at me.
"Keep an eye on Eirin. She might not show it, but she's had a hard life."
The branch chief muttered sympathetically and looked at me.
"That's it for now. Once the resignation process is fully done, you can check him out yourself."
"Myself?"
Isn't that dangerous?
As if reading my thoughts, the branch chief smiled softly.
"Don't worry. He's completely safe. He won't be able to lift a finger."
That made me even more anxious.
"See you later?"
She waved again, and I bowed and left the branch chief's office.
"...Hmm."
"Your face looks bad."
"Whoa!"
A sullen voice came from beside me. Song Arin was leaning against the wall with her arms crossed.
"Arin, did you rest properly?"
"No. Got dragged into the resignation process suddenly and saw all sorts of ugly stuff."
Song Arin muttered as if it disgusted her just thinking about it.
"You must have had it rough."
"What can you do? If the higher-ups say jump, you jump."
Song Arin sighed in response, then looked at me and opened her mouth.
"You had it rough."
"It wasn't just me. You had it rough too."
"Not as much as you."
Song Arin muttered and took the lead.
"Let's go."
"Where to?"
"The office. Work's done, right?"
"Ah."
"You seem to forget sometimes, but we're the HR Team."
"I haven't forgotten. Gotta hurry back and sort performance reviews."
Song Arin smirked at my words.
With the big case over, a somewhat relaxed life lay ahead—
"Love Board Game?"
"Whoa, this is a loaner containment object, and it's still around?"
"Looks intriguing."
As soon as I entered the office, I heard the hauler, Team Leader, and Yoo Daon muttering.
"Team Leader, what's that?"
"Oh, you're back. Chaeyeon borrowed it."
"..."
Far off, Jang Chaeyeon nodded expressionlessly.
"What's it for?"
"The Management Bureau sometimes lends harmless containment objects to staff."
"Yes."
What he showed me was a board game.
"While playing this board game, everything written here comes true."
"It's a horror thriller."
A board game where the text becomes reality?
In my memory, at least, only horror thriller and a gruesome ending came to mind.
"But this one's romance."
Team Leader nodded.
"Six people fighting over love lines. Three guys, three girls, getting all romantic..."
"Let's do it."
Song Arin, next to me, stepped forward toward the board game.
Her eyes looked a bit off.
"I want in too!"
"...I brought it to play."
Yoo Daon and Jang Chaeyeon chimed in.
Their eyes looked strange too.
"Uh. Then the guys are..."
"You."
"Jaeheon."
"..."
Three gazes turned to me.
"Then... the other two..."
Where do I find two more guys?
At my question, Song Arin answered.
"The intern."
"I'm a girl, though?"
"You do what your senior says."
"No, I... Huh? My body's moving on its own..."
Suddenly, one more male role appeared.
Now one left.
"No, but where do we get one more guy..."
"..."
Three gazes turned to a man sweating coldly.
"Kids. I'm married."
"Perfect chance to reaffirm your love for your wife!"
"Kids?"
And so, male roles: three. Me, Park Yeeun (girl), Team Leader (married).
Female roles: three. Yoo Daon, Jang Chaeyeon, Song Arin.
The board game began.
"I'll roll the dice!"
Is this really happening?