Who Is Entity (7)

An Entity. By now I'd more or less gotten used to the word itself — but at the sound of it, Jihun's chair creaked.

"Hyung-nim, you're joking, right?"

"If you don't delete them, that Entity is going to kill you."

"…"

At my flat, matter-of-fact answer, Jihun couldn't find a single word to follow up with. He just fiddled with the screen in silence. His fingertips were trembling ever so slightly. Then, apparently finishing his deliberation, his fingers began moving busily across the keyboard. Needlessly to say, he also purged every last tactical weapon stockpiled in his fortress along the way. He emptied the recycle bin completely, then turned the monitor toward me as if awaiting confirmation.

"All deleted."

"Good work."

"But it's really an Entity? Don't tell me it's the kind that socially erases a person from existence?"

"Did you already forget what I just told you?"

"No, I remember. I die. But an Entity that turns your photos into a grandma? Honestly, it doesn't feel all that scary. Kind of funny, if anything."

I pressed a hand to my forehead. Was this why they said ignorance and courage meant the same thing?

"I literally showed you the encyclopedia entry. You read all that and you're still cracking jokes?"

Unlike me, I was dead ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠serious. A trace of irritation crept into my voice — but Jihun's attitude didn't waver an inch.

"I did read it. All that 'temptation' stuff made it sound like some horrifying Entity that forces you to fall in love with a grandmother. If that's really what happens, honestly, suicide would be the better option."

"???"

Something wasn't adding up. "That's just the default introduction blurb. I showed you the detailed entries underneath it too."

"What are you talking about? It was all locked."

"?"

"?"

Our gazes crossed in midair. Bewilderment was plain in both pairs of eyes. Without a word, I pulled the screen back toward me and showed him the Entity's introduction section again. Unprompted, Jihun began reading the words on the display aloud.

"What's the Entity's name?"

"It says… 'Not yet sufficiently observed.'"

"The Entity number?"

"Same thing. 'Not yet sufficiently observed.'"

I scrolled down, showing him the observation logs, the description, even the resolution method, one after another. But the answer out of Jihun's mouth never changed. The administrator in charge hadn't observed it sufficiently yet. His admin rank was too low for the file to be opened. His game version was too outdated for the entry to unlock.

I even wondered whether I'd logged in on a different account and checked — but everything displayed perfectly fine for me. As I was racking my brain over what on earth was going on, one possibility flashed through my mind.

"Wait. Can you actually see this Entity?"

I pulled up Haetae, the mascot of Paranoid.

Haetae was an Entity serving as the game's mascot, with an adorable appearance, and one we actively recommended to rookie administrators. The creature its Echo resonated with looked, to anyone's eyes, exactly like an Entity, so there was no way it could slip past a checkpoint unnoticed. Of course, that wasn't the only reason it was recommended for beginners. Even if it escaped after a failed containment attempt, it dealt no direct harm — and best of all, even administrators with low levels could read every containment protocol and isolation procedure it had, from start to finish. In the late game this thing synergizes with other Entities to trigger an apocalypse parade, but that's not a story for right now.

"Read this one."

"PM007.3… ChonkyCat?"

"Can you see the containment protocol and isolation procedure below it?"

"Yeah. It just says… squeak-squeak, meow-meow? That you just have to love and pet it, and if it escapes you give its butt a few pats?"

"So this one shows up for you."

I kept showing him other Entities after that. But aside from the beginner-tier ones like Haetae, Jihun couldn't read a shred of information about any of them. Not the names, not the identification numbers, not the containment protocols, not the countermeasures — nothing. After repeating the process again and again, I could only arrive at one conclusion.

"Looks like you can only see content you've personally unlocked by playing the game yourself."

Screenshots were no exception either. Unless you'd cleared it with your own hands, workarounds like screenshots or streaming didn't fly. For people who hadn't played the game, there was exactly one way to learn about an Entity: asking the grizzled veterans who had played it themselves.

Whether he'd finally grasped that fact or not, Jihun's face went pale.

"Wait, then what do I do? I installed it on my computer the moment I watched your interview!"

"You still haven't played it, have you?"

"No. Things have been crazy lately, so I just installed it and left it there."

"Oh, for God's sake."

This was an ambush I hadn't seen coming. In that interview, I'd mostly released worldbuilding lore and steered clear of the fine details about the Entities themselves. There were hundreds of them — there was no way I could have explained each and every one on that stage. Besides, a quick internet search would flood anyone with Entity information anyway, so instead of introducing specific Entities, I'd focused on how to search for them in an emergency.

Of course the whole system turned out to be unlock-gated…

Disaster. And that wasn't even the end of the problems.

"Now that I think about it, how come only you have a mobile version, Hyung-nim? Did it come out on mobile too?"

Jihun's eyes were brimming with suspicion.

"…"

"And your version says 1.0… the internet only ever had 0.9 up."

Ordinary people had no way to access it on mobile. Only the PC version had ever been released to the public, and even that release was one version behind mine. I'd tried scanning a QR code to pull up the download link, only to be told the code didn't exist. To summarize: the only person in the world in possession of the official 1.0 release — mobile, no less — was me.

Forever and always.

The moment that fact sank in, cold sweat began trickling down my spine.

"Hyung-nim. I feel like you're the only one running on cheat mode here. Oh, you do know what cheats are, right?"

"I know what cheats are. Who do you take for a Galápagos islander?"

"Hyung-nim."

"What."

"I'll stick by your side for the rest of my life, so please, save me."

"Get off me. You're disgusting."

I shoved away the clingy, repulsive male nurse and sank into thought for a moment.

"Hey. Jihun."

"Yes. What is it, Hyung-nim?"

"Then how do people dig up information when they actually run into an Entity?"

"Oh, that?"

Jihun pulled out his phone and swiped down the screen, and then—

"Hyung-nim, for someone in our line of work you are so out of touch with the world."

"I pulled four night shifts this week. Keeping up with the news is about all I can manage."

"Sure, sure. Anyway, when people our age run into an Entity these days, they post here."

He turned the screen toward my eyes. It was a gallery. The Paranoid Institute Gallery.

"Most people ask in here… Hyung-nim, why is your face doing that?"

I have no idea what my expression looked like when I heard that, but one thing was certain.

"That sounds supremely untrustworthy."

"Do you trust people, then?"

No matter how I turned it over in my head, asking a web forum did not seem like the answer. How exactly was a person supposed to trust humanity?

Hrrk— blegh—

In front of a mold-stained bathroom mirror, the streamer Guji vomited into the sink.

"Blegh—! Hrk—!"

What came pouring out was a dark crimson liquid. Once she'd emptied everything out of her mouth, Guji rinsed her lips with water and slowly lifted her head to look at the mirror. Despite having just spewed up all that blood, the woman in the reflection had a healthy, rosy complexion. If anything, her beauty was positively glowing. The woman in the mirror's shoulders rose and fell.

"Why…"

Guji stroked her own cheek. Springy, flawless skin. Features more delicately sculpted than the most famous idol from the days before the Echoes broke loose. These days, a single wink on stream was enough to send donations flooding in like a downpour. Her chat was spammed wall-to-wall with drooling, heart-eyed emotes, and even her female fans sent nothing but praise — calling her unnie instead of feeling a shred of jealousy. When she opened her inbox, there were casting offers from actual talent agencies stacked up waiting for her. And this appearance held even without a scrap of makeup. From the moment she woke up each morning, she was always perfect.

"Hoo… hoo…"

Every circumstance seemed to conspire toward her happiness. Waking up in the morning, she would thrill at the thought of what joy might be waiting for her that day. That was why, until just yesterday, she had believed without a shadow of doubt that her era had finally arrived.

Right up until last night, when an impulse swept her away and she beat a man half to death.

I've lost it! I've completely lost it!

She had never gone around introducing herself as some paragon of morality. But that didn't mean she was fond of barbaric violence, either. Guji was the sort of person who preferred snickering behind someone's back to swinging a fist at their face. And yet yesterday, everything was different.

Why did I do that?

Last night at a bar, a male streamer had subjected her to brazen, vulgar harassment. In response, she had exploded, smashing a liquor bottle over his head. Her viewers cheered, finding it hilarious entertainment, while the streamer who collapsed bleeding from the skull got roasted instead. Even the news coverage went so far as to defend her, dubbing it a 'girl-crush moment.' She had surrendered herself, body and soul, to the base, filthy pleasure that situation offered.

But excessive coddling has a way of snapping a person back to reality. Fear swallowed her soon enough. Only then did the sensation strike her — as though she were not herself. As though some alien emotion were gnawing away at her from the inside. Something was changing her.

Wh-what do I do…?

It wasn't simply the fear of her personality shifting. This fear was closer to the terror of being bitten by a zombie and turning into something else. The horror of me ceasing to be me.

"It's… it's all because of this…"

She logged into her social media. Every photo she'd ever taken had been doctored, without exception, into images of a withered crone. A wrinkled, hideous, malicious-looking old woman. An appearance that deserved, quite literally, the word hag. She had known about it for six days now. But at the time, she hadn't paid it any mind. She'd assumed some anti-fan had hacked her account as a prank. There was a publicity-noise benefit anyway, and fixing every altered photo one by one was a hassle, so she'd simply left it alone. It didn't affect her live streams, and she'd been too busy basking in the endless compliments on her looks to spare it a second thought.

But now, coming to her senses, something was wrong. For a hacker's prank, even photos taken less than a second ago were turning into grandmas. She was normal only in mirrors and on live video. Only then did she grasp how dire her situation truly was.

"Why did it have to be me…"

And then, this morning, she'd had no choice but to admit it. She had been infected by the thing Professor Lee Jeong-uk had called an Echo.

She hit play on the interview compilation once again — she'd lost count of how many times she'd rewatched it since the small hours of the previous night. A hundred million views. By now, the video had become something like a survival manual for the entire Republic of Korea. It was galling to have to lean on the knowledge of someone she despised so bitterly, but desperate times didn't care about pride.

Only after watching the footage dozens of times over could she claw her way out of the swamp of denial. She had finally accepted it: she was turning into an Entity. Her breathing grew ragged. Her heart wasn't pounding all that hard, but she couldn't seem to draw a full breath.

"Mo… Mom…"

Her finger drifted toward speed dial number one. She wanted to hear her mother's voice. But she knew almost nothing about Echoes. She didn't even know what this thing was — reaching out recklessly felt too dangerous.

"Da… Dad…"

She wanted to call her dependable father. She wanted to see his face on a video call. But remembering that 'novel Entity' that had devastated the entire world, even picking up the phone could be a risk. One wrong move, and the family she loved would be dragged into this catastrophe too.

"Hhhk…"

She huddled on the bathroom floor and sobbed. The tears came in a flood she couldn't contain. And then, abruptly, a single line of chat from a livestream surfaced in her memory.

The Entity Gallery. The only place left where anyone could learn the counter-strategies for the Entities invading South Korea. The game had to be played through, content by content, to unlock anything, so the vast majority of people preferred simply using the gallery. She typed 'Entity Gallery' into the search bar. The exact name was different, but the related searches got her there in no time.

"F-found it."

Crouched on the damp bathroom floor, she kept searching. And straight away, she made a post about her own condition.

The… 97 Squad?

Why was her own fandom's name showing up here? With trembling hands, she opened the link. And what she found there was, to put it mildly, a shock.

"Ah…"

Hot tears welled up in the corners of her eyes.

"It didn't show up, you little bastard…"

Over the past week, not one chat message of that kind had appeared in her stream. She scrolled back through her recent comments — not a single post identifying her as an Entity. She checked again, right now. Still nothing.

"Why… why…"

Urgency began to creep into her fingers. Frantically, she hunted down the countermeasure for her own Entity. The information was easy to find in the gallery.

"F-found it."

She hurried to commit the contents to memory.

"Delete the photos. Right. The photos…"

She went straight into her album and dragged her thumb across the photos, selecting them all. At last, her finger pressed the delete button.

Hrk—!

And a dizzying agony crashed through her chest. She collapsed face-down onto the damp bathroom floor.

Huh…?

No matter how she tried to rise, her body wouldn't obey. Trying to dial emergency services, she groped along the floor and barely managed to hoist her phone up. But the moment she spotted a certain comment on the screen she'd raised, she froze solid.

"Ah…"

A single tear slid down her cheek. Each time she blinked, fresh wrinkles spread across the skin of her hands. Just like the grandmother in the photographs. Her consciousness was drifting away.

If only… if only I had one more chance…

But she gave up resisting and let her body sink into the drowsiness. Just then, a voice rang out from beyond her front door. A woman's voice — low and commanding.

"Ms. Gu Ji-hye! Are you in there!"

"…"

"Answer me! This is the Entity Management Bureau!"

"…"

"If you don't answer, we're coming in!"

Thud—

Thud—

CRASH!

Then, amid the thunderous splintering of the door being torn off its hinges, a woman stormed into the apartment.

"Ms. Gu Ji-hye, are you still breath— ah, damn it. One step too late."

Step. Step.

The unidentified woman approached. Through Guji's blurring vision, she could make out leather boots and a jacket — the kind of attire you'd expect from a biker gang. The woman pressed two fingers to Guji's wrist.

"She's breathing. Hold on just a little longer."

Heave—

With that, she hoisted Guji up onto her back without effort. The woman's fragrant black hair tickled Guji's nose.

"Just hold on five minutes. I'm taking you to a hospital."

"Who… are… you…"

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

"Me?"

The woman answered with a soft laugh.

"The last survivor of the dead Entity Management Bureau."