AB or Cis-AB
Yes, I am, uh... a man!
Ting—
A brass shell casing popped free of Shiho's double barrel, ringing out clean as it ejected from the chamber.
Shiho caught the flying casing midair with practiced ease.
I'm no military buff or firearms expert, but even I knew that ordinary shotgun shells didn't eject like that—which was enough for me to guess her ammunition was anything but standard.
Then again, once a woman has torn a solid steel laboratory door apart like a sheet of paper and reduced whatever was on the other side to a honeycomb, speculation starts to feel a little absurd anyway.
"Mmmph... ahh~"
Shiho waved the brass casing under her nose, gave the lingering whiff of gunpowder a satisfying sniff, then pocketed the shell.
She peered through the pocked holes of the honeycombed steel door at the hallway beyond.
"Tch. It got away."
Clicking her tongue, she pulled the door open. A smear of red had seeped in beneath it and trailed off down the corridor.
But the owner of that blood was nowhere to be seen. A pool congealed in front of the doorway, and from there a scatter of red droplets led toward the emergency stairwell—all it told us was that the thing had indeed been standing at my door.
Shiho followed the trail with her eyes and clicked her tongue again.
"Sorry about that. I assumed it was humanoid—apparently not."
So she'd gauged the height of the voice, estimated where the head would be, and pulled the trigger. Unfortunately, the head either hadn't been the vital spot, or the thing's voice hadn't come from its head at all.
"In Korea, an entity that impersonates someone from behind a door is usually a Jangsanbeom—but I suppose not this time."
She said it while looking down at the blood pooled on the floor. And she was right: as a rule, Echoes operate within the culture that spawned them. Just as diseases prevalent in Korea follow certain patterns, Echoes have their tendencies too.
Granted, there are exceptions—Echoes like The Most Romantic Choice or Digital Portrait that build empathy too universal to care about cultural boundaries—but a biological-type entity like the one that had just come calling at my lab tends to stay within its native folklore.
So the fact that she'd guessed Jangsanbeom and been wrong said nothing about her competence.
"Heheh. Sorry for talking a big game and then letting it slip away. Back when I was stationed at checkpoints, I never used to make mistakes like this."
She scratched her head sheepishly and slid the shotgun back into the crevice of her cleavage.
Watching her stow and draw a weapon that way still hadn't gotten any less jarring—but there was something I needed to point out first.
"By the way, Shiho."
"Yes? Go ahead, Jeong-uk."
"How exactly are we repairing this?"
I gestured at the splintered scrap of metal that had, until moments ago, been a functional door.
"Shiho?"
"..."
She quietly averted her eyes.
"Um... didn't the professor's lab, you know, resonate?"
"Cardiology is a safe zone, remember?"
We had none of that automatic self-repair nonsense the other departments' buildings enjoyed.
A tiny bead of cold sweat formed on Shiho's forehead.
"Then... couldn't you call the facilities department and have them fix it?"
"And where exactly would they source the materials from? The outside?"
"Ah."
She mouthed the word for a moment, then dropped flat onto the floor.
"I'm sorry. I'll skip dinner tonight, so please don't throw me out."
Thankfully, she didn't end up starving.
"Believe me, I know you're not supposed to open the door for them."
That's the rule with Jangsanbeom-type entities: never open the door. The moment you crack it open even a sliver, the 'narrative' is satisfied, and the thing becomes impossible to contain.
The standard countermeasure for that breed is to point out the contradiction in their story and drive them into retreat.
...Shooting them through the door, door and all, was a method I was witnessing for the first time in my life.
"Is that standard Management Bureau procedure, by any chance?"
"Huh? No, I figured that one out myself."
Her logic went like this: until the door opens, entities of that type are weakened to roughly the level of an ordinary person. Which means even a slightly special slug can deal them plenty of damage.
"If it had been a Jangsanbeom, anyway."
As it happened, the thing across the door was no such entity.
I mulled over what it might have been as I opened the game app on my phone. With Shiho already in the know, there was no reason to hide it anymore.
While the in-game encyclopedia loaded, I considered which keywords to search and posed the question to her.
"So what do you think it was, Shiho?"
"I couldn't even begin to guess. There are far too many Echoes of that type."
She folded down her fingers one by one, listing off related Echoes from memory.
The banshee of Ireland, the wendigo and skinwalker of America, the aswang of the Philippines...
"Honestly, Echoes that lure you in by imitating a voice are a dime a dozen."
"Then we've got ourselves one task, at least."
Identifying that entity.
"Even if we can't catch it, we can't prepare a defense until we know what it is."
"You don't think it'll come looking for you again after failing, do you?"
"Very likely, yes."
Out of all the people in this hospital, it had come specifically for me. That alone made it fairly certain.
"I'd guess I'm simply the most suitable victim for whatever narrative it's running."
I had no way of knowing its narrative. Was I merely a threat—someone capable of unmasking it? Or did it bear some personal grudge against me, Lee Jeong-uk? Either way, one thing was undeniable: as long as that entity remained in this hospital, I was not safe.
"Come to think of it, my roommate in here..."
"He's probably dead by now."
I looked over at the desk across from mine, buried under a chaotic sprawl of papers. As the junior-most professor, I hadn't been assigned a private lab. So I'd ended up sharing with this particular professor—except he rarely bothered showing up, which made the room a private one in all but name.
We did trade stories now and then, though...
A bitter taste lingered on my tongue. Once the Echoes broke loose, I'd braced myself for the world to become exactly this. And yet, watching people vanish so emptily, so meaninglessly—I still hadn't gotten used to it.
"He'll have changed his face by now, I suppose?"
"Almost certainly."
If the thing had any intelligence at all, it wouldn't be wandering the halls wearing my dead roommate's face.
I stared at the red blood soaking thickly into the corridor floor.
I didn't know what narrative drove that entity. But my duty was clear.
"Looks like you've got your first assignment, Shiho."
So that I could survive.
"It seems there's someone in this hospital who isn't a patient—so I'd like you to screen everyone. And—"
So that I could avenge the professor who was gone.
I had to find it.
Early morning.
Professor Han Cheolhyun shuffled down the corridor, scrolling lazily through his phone. In the upper corner of the screen, the time read 6:34.
"Haaam."
A yawn escaped him, bringing a trickle of tears to the corners of his eyes.
"Exhausted... what on earth possessed Jeong-uk to organize all this..."
He trudged off toward the blood draw room. It was well ahead of the scheduled 7:00 AM start, but a crowd had already gathered, rolling up their sleeves in preparation.
Professor Han edged past the waiting staff straight to the front of the line.
"Hello—Han Cheolhyun from cardiology. I have rounds at seven, so would it be all right if I went first?"
The phlebotomist nodded readily. "Of course, Professor. Give me your arm, please."
Yawning in quick succession, Professor Han extended his left arm. With practiced efficiency, the phlebotomist swabbed the inside of his elbow with an alcohol pad and searched for a vein.
"Professor, your veins aren't in great shape today."
"That's what happens when you don't sleep."
The phlebotomist gave a wry smile and began drawing blood. The sharp sting didn't do much for his drowsiness, but it granted him a small flicker of alertness.
"All done. Don't rub it—just press down firmly."
"Do you have a bandage?"
"Right here, Professor."
Professor Han folded his arm back and was about to rise from the chair when a chill crept up from behind him.
Clack.
At the sound of something being racked and loaded, his head went rigid as it turned.
There stood Seo Shiho, shotgun in hand, methodically gnawing away at a strip of jerky.
Sensing that something was very wrong, the crowd began filtering out of the blood draw room. Professor Han wiped his cold sweat and ventured a question.
"Y-you don't actually suspect me, do you?"
Instead of Shiho, it was Jeong-uk—seated behind her—who answered.
"What exactly would you have to fear, Professor Han? The results aren't even back yet. We have no reason whatsoever to suspect you."
"Th-then..."
"You're free to go, Professor. We have business with the phlebotomist who just drew your blood."
He was sprawled in his chair with a slouch, and he leveled a pen straight at the phlebotomist.
Professor Han slid quietly out of the pen's line of fire.
Jeong-uk's voice took on the tone of an interrogation.
"Phlebotomist. Your results came back type AB."
The phlebotomist nodded. "Yes. That's correct."
"What is correct, exactly?"
"I'm sorry?"
Jeong-uk's smile deepened.
"However desperate you were for fake blood, you really should have checked whether it was plain AB—or Cis-AB—before you stole it."