Chapter 2
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 0
Chapter Title: City in the Fog
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Once I decided to accept the request, the Manager warned me, "Be careful before you look at it," then pulled something out from the file.
What she took out was a survey form.
"...? What's this? A questionnaire?"
"It's a survey that started circulating around the same time the [Mysterious Fog] appeared. Want to take a closer look?"
I did as she said and checked it out.
The content of the survey and the wording of each item seemed fine at first glance.
But strangely enough, I could sense an odd flow of spiritual power permeating the entire page.
It was probably a hypnotic spell designed to manipulate people's perceptions.
By reading each question one by one and answering them, you'd gradually sink deeper into the hypnosis.
It started with light, common-sense questions about personal details, hobbies, and preferences, but by the end of the long survey, it devolved into utterly absurd prompts like "Will you bear a child for us? Please give birth and offer the child."
Was the paper itself enchanted with a hypnotic spell? It definitely gave off a faint trace of yokai power.
But if every sheet was like this, it would require tremendous spiritual power and skill—not to mention the inefficiency, since the success rate would probably be one in a few hundred at best.
According to the Manager, though, new disappearances linked to this questionnaire were still happening.
"They use luxury bags, brand perfumes, and other goodies targeted at young women to lure them into filling out the surveys. Then they hypnotize them through the questionnaire and guide them into the [Mysterious Fog]. We caught one of the latest missing persons on CCTV near the fog—she got off a bus and walked straight into it like she was entranced."
'A yokai that wields hypnotic spells...'
Typically, mental-type yokai like that have low combat ability.
Exorcists have natural resistance anyway, and we maintain protective barriers around our minds at all times, so most yokai's mental attacks don't work on us.
I'd need to stay cautious, but I wasn't worried.
With that, I finished up my business at the Association and headed out.
........................
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.....
"This is..."
Narak-dong, Hunryeong-gu, Seoul.
This was the area where the [Mysterious Fog] had appeared, and now the entire village—from Narak-dong all the way to the distant ridgeline—was shrouded in fog.
I was standing near the boundary line where the fog enveloping Narak-dong became visible.
Having accepted the commission from the Association, I'd prepared immediately and come straight here.
For starters, I surveyed the area from outside the fog.
The fog was unusual for sure, refusing to dissipate even under the daylight, but the people passing through it didn't seem inconvenienced at all.
Now that I saw it up close, it was clear: not just the people who'd vanished inside, but even those coming and going through the fog had their perceptions twisted to some degree.
The fact that no major uproar had broken out despite this blatant anomaly wasn't because people had grown accustomed to the sight—it was because external forces were forcibly distorting their awareness.
Forcing them not to find the fog suspicious. To see it as just another part of everyday life.
A hypnotic spell compelling exactly that perception was infused into the fog.
But if this was the full extent of that yokai's power, honestly, it didn't seem like much.
As I mentioned earlier, mental-type yokai generally have weak combat prowess. And mental interference techniques don't work well on exorcists to begin with.
Even an A+-grade yokai in yokai power couldn't control a low B-grade exorcist who'd prepared defenses in advance.
That's why most mental-type yokai are rated lower risk than their yokai power suggests.
In my assessment, the yokai behind this fog could easily be exorcised by a B-grade team from the Association.
'Still, I can't let my guard down. There's no way Association exorcists would fail against something like that.'
Looking at the list of missing Association personnel, most were B to D-grade, but there was one A-grade exorcist too.
And none of them had returned. It was too early to draw light conclusions.
"...Guess this is enough preliminary scouting."
There was a limit to what I could learn without going inside.
I couldn't afford to waste time sitting around. The Succubus Curse on me was growing stronger by the day.
With that, I boldly stepped into the fog I'd been keeping my distance from.
—At that moment, I had no idea. How could I?
I couldn't possibly know that this choice—this instant of stepping into the fog—would irrevocably drag my life into ruin.
Or perhaps... ever since I'd fallen under that Succubus Curse a year ago, my fate had already been sealed...
Parting the fog, pressing inward.
As I advanced, the surroundings instantly turned a milky white haze, visibility dropping to zero.
To test it, I backtracked, but no matter how far I went, I couldn't emerge from the fog.
Probably couldn't just stroll out. Maybe it was a barrier, or perhaps I'd crossed into another space entirely.
I could still turn back if I wanted. But that would tip off the yokai to an exorcist's intrusion.
They might block re-entry, or in the worst case, the entire [Mysterious Fog]—vanished people and all—could slip away from this spot.
'Might as well push forward... but which way?'
With no visibility in any direction and no destination, wandering aimlessly wasn't an option.
As I pondered, a faint presence stirred in my pocket.
I pulled out what was inside.
It was the twice-folded note—the questionnaire from the Manager.
Unfolding it, the original text and ink writhed like worms across the page.
Then, a new image formed on the paper.
It was an arrow.
[Forward 20 steps, proceed]
Oh ho. A guide, huh?
No reason to doubt or hesitate. I followed the paper's directions.
After exactly 20 steps forward, the content on the paper changed again.
[Right 15 steps, left 7 steps, proceed]
I followed that too, and the next instruction came right after.
The monotonous, tedious commands kept coming.
It had me retrace my steps, stand still and march in place, drop to the ground and crawl forward on all fours...
Just as I was tempted to rip up this annoying guide, the fog finally cleared, revealing a new scene.
"......Oh...?"
Before I knew it, the fog had receded into the distance.
And I was standing in the middle of what looked like a perfectly normal residential neighborhood.
Breaking through the fog led to an ordinary residential area where normal people lived.
At first, I thought I'd ended up in Narak-dong, but checking the address plates on nearby houses proved otherwise.
According to the plates, this was Myeonggu-dong—not Narak-dong. And I'd never heard of a place like that in Seoul.
'Signal... no bars.'
My smartphone was dead. The communication talisman linked to the Association's Manager was useless too.
Giving up on contacting the outside, I decided to move and scout the area first.
I needed to grasp the situation.
This was your standard residential neighborhood, the kind found anywhere.
It felt a bit quiet and serene, but there were still signs of life—no total silence.
I ran into an old man walking his dog in an alley. He glanced at me in my tracksuit but passed by slowly without a fuss.
In about two hours of wandering, I encountered plenty of people besides the old man. Nothing suspicious. They all looked unmistakably human, no matter how I scrutinized them.
Another thing I learned: this space inside the fog was huge.
At least several times larger than the original Narak-dong area.
Beyond the houses, I saw bustling downtown streets, schools, even large buildings.
Not just one district—more like a whole... maybe even a small city. From here, I couldn't spot the fog's boundary enclosing the space.
No clue how vast it really was, but it was clearly walled off by fog walls on all sides.
'Where the hell did all these people come from...?'
The confirmed missing persons were only a few dozen young women.
Yet here were far more people—definitely more than Narak-dong's original population.
I even struck up conversations just in case, and they seemed like real people, not dolls.
Plus, I spotted one of the women from the missing persons list. I didn't approach her, but tailed her briefly—she went about her daily life without any apparent issues.
What was going on here?
That was puzzling enough, but the biggest thing was the yokai power saturating this entire space.
Yokai power is like an exorcist's spiritual power—essentially, the energy of yokai.
All yokai have it to some degree, and exorcists track its presence to hunt them down.
Normally, I'd follow the yokai power trail to the source, but in this fog-shrouded space, the presence was scattered everywhere, diffused broadly.
Like it'd been sprayed from a mist sprayer. Unless there was an exceptionally strong concentration, pinpointing it was impossible.
With the area this vast and my yokai power "antenna" jammed...
Blundering around on foot to find the fog's origin would be a stretch.
'In that case...'
No helping it. I pulled out the paper from my pocket again.
The one that had guided me from the fog to here.
Its content was pointing to somewhere in this city.