Chapter 50
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 50
Chapter Title: Monster Tale Specialist Office: The Cursed Video (12)
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“What are all these mirrors?”
Suhyeon, looking as if she’d never shed a tear, had tidied herself up and was now wandering around the space with Seonwoo.
The atmosphere was definitely different from before. It had looked like a normal café earlier, but now it was arranged in a way that screamed occult ritual to anyone who saw it.
The tables and chairs had all been cleared away, and in the area near the emergency stairs, a single television stood alone, dominating the wide-open space. Four mirrors surrounded it at generous intervals of a few meters.
“Those mirrors mark the boundary. I’m telling you ahead of time: whatever you do, don’t think about stepping inside. You can see in from outside, but once you’re in, you can’t see out—and you can’t get out.”
The two of them reacted with skeptical half-belief. It was only natural; from the outside, they just looked like mirrors in a weird arrangement.
Taeju chuckled and said,
“Obviously, you won’t believe me just from words, so let me show you what’s inside for a second. It’s dangerous, so I’ll grab your necks from behind—don’t shake me off.”
After getting their consent, Taeju gripped their napes and briefly thrust just their heads inside the boundary.
“Eek.”
“Eek!”
The two gasped in shock at the sight inside. It was wider than it looked from outside. Not only that, but from inside, the outside wasn’t visible at all—it just looked like a wall.
A circular wall like the inside of a tall well. Their heads were sticking out from within it. Taeju had warned them not to shake him off, but they couldn’t have even if they’d wanted to.
Everything below their necks was embedded in the wall; moving was impossible.
“How did you do that?”
Only after Taeju pulled them back did they see the original view again. They touched their necks, but felt no pain.
“Trade secret. Anyway, you get it now—no going inside, no matter what happens in there?”
At Taeju’s words, the two could only nod blankly.
Suhyeon, her face slightly flushed, asked,
“Why make a space like that?”
“Hmm, it’s to keep the curse from coming out. Seonwoo, you’ve seen the curse yourself already, right?”
At Taeju’s question, Seonwoo nodded.
“This curse takes the form of a ghost. It looks like the one from the Ring series. But up until now, it hasn’t been able to come out fully. The pad’s screen is too small for a person to fit through.”
Taeju pointed at the pad connected to the television. The two naturally followed his gaze.
“So it stayed a relatively low-risk item.”
The two nodded at Taeju’s words. No way a person could come out of something that small.
“But there’s a problem. The ghost not being able to come out means it’s hard for us to get rid of it, too.”
“Then that television...?”
The two immediately understood what Taeju meant. Seonwoo’s face went pale, and Suhyeon looked flustered.
He checked the time and turned on the TV with the remote. Inside, as if it had been waiting, the ghost appeared. It was the most intact form they’d seen so far.
The moment the screen turned on, the ghost shoved its face toward the outside. It seemed like it had been waiting for someone to turn it on.
“Eep...!”
Seonwoo was so terrified he couldn’t even scream, just swallowed hard.
“It’s fine. It can’t see out here.”
Seonwoo trembled but nodded quietly. Even as the two talked, the ghost kept staring out from the screen.
Maybe because it was its first time seeing such a large screen, the ghost looked disoriented.
Slowly, the ghost extended an arm outward.
The arm came out naturally. First the left, then the right. Confirming it could get both arms out, the ghost grinned widely.
But it was no pleasant smile. On the big screen, it looked even more grotesque.
Blue skin, black-red blood oozing from its eyes, and a pitch-black void inside its mouth.
“...Hic...”
Watching the ghost make bizarre noises, Seonwoo clamped her own mouth shut with her hand.
Taeju smirked inwardly, thinking it really was scary at night. Keeping his amusement hidden, he said in a gentle tone,
“Don’t make too much noise. It can’t see us or come out, but it can hear sounds.”
Suhyeon clamped her mouth shut with determined eyes, as if steeling herself, but Seonwoo barely seemed to register Taeju’s words.
But really, there was no big cause for worry. Even if sounds carried, as long as Sia kept replenishing the smoke, they wouldn’t be visible.
- Finally
The ghost, now fully out, said in delight. When it opened its mouth, black blood poured out, making the rest of its words unintelligible.
Its long black hair dragged across the floor.
“Oh, just like in the movies.”
Taeju muttered without thinking. Sia sighed deeply. She’d taken a long drag on her e-cigarette, so white smoke mixed with her exhale.
“You can’t hold back with those two scared over there?”
The white smoke was already filling the room thickly.
“Haha, sorry.”
The ghost, now fully out of the TV, looked around but couldn’t pinpoint their location.
It just flailed about.
A weird voice seemed to say “where?” or call them over, but it was hard to make out exactly.
“Even while doing that, look at how unnaturally it moves its joints. Pretty eerie.”
“Agreed, but can you keep it down?”
As Taeju and Sia traded quips, a creak came from inside the boundary—the sound of the stairwell door opening. Footsteps followed. The ghost looked that way.
It wasn’t piercing through the boundary from beyond. Of course not. The door had opened from inside.
“A bit late?”
At Woli’s entrance, the ghost screeched and lunged, then hesitated and backed away slowly.
“Oh—you remember me?”
“Kraaaah!”
At Woli’s playful words, the ghost roared in rage, spewing black-red blood from its mouth.
Taeju glanced at the ghost’s arms. They still weren’t fully out. The ghost kept its distance, facing off. For every step Woli took forward, it took one back.
“Isn’t she in danger all alone like that?”
“So defenseless...”
Seonwoo and Suhyeon blurted in alarm. To an outsider, it’d look like an accidental mishap.
“She’s fine.”
Taeju brushed off their worry and shock casually.
“She’s the strongest out of all of us. Her brains are... well, whatever.”
Woli wore matching top-and-bottom tracksuit, baseball cap, sunglasses, and a mask.
She’d probably been late rounding up that getup. She even carried an aluminum baseball bat from who-knows-where.
“She’s not seriously trying to hide her face with that, is she?”
Taeju whispered to Sia without the other two hearing.
“She thinks she is. Isn’t that dumb charm of hers part of the appeal? Our Woli?”
Sia shook her head. Woli probably thought that outfit might actually hide her, but no chance.
The ghost recognizing her already proved it wouldn’t work. Sia took another long drag on her e-cig and exhaled white vapor again.
No, Taeju didn’t get why she’d bothered hiding her face when she was the one who brought Suhyeon here.
“Isn’t she in danger alone?”
While Taeju pondered, Seonwoo anxiously asked him to do something.
But to Taeju, who knew what Woli was capable of, it was just amusing.
“Haha, if she’s in real danger, we’d all need to evacuate. This boundary is up because of the clients, not any real threat. If it was just us, we wouldn’t have bothered.”
Right then, the ghost suddenly charged at Woli.
“Kyaaak!”
The ghost let out a tearing shriek. Seonwoo screamed loudly too at the sound.
The stereo screams made Taeju grimace.
A yellowish but sturdy-looking beast claw swiped at Woli.
Seonwoo screamed again, imagining what came next.
But her feared scenario didn’t happen. A clear *clang* rang out. Before the claw could touch, Woli swung her bat into the ghost.
Her precise strike to its jaw sent the ghost’s head flying upward, launching its body high into the air. It crashed into the secondhand TV, smashing it in half.
“Ah, it wasn’t expensive, but still a waste. Only used it once.”
“At least it was a cheap secondhand one.”
As the two chatted idly, a bloody melee unfolded inside. One-sided, with blood only from one combatant, but a literal bloodbath of flesh and gore.
Woli methodically bashed the ghost: ‘Bite at me, I smash your head. Claw at me, I hit your arm first. Leap at me, I slam you into the floor.’
Luckily or unluckily, the ghost was tough; even with joints twisted and covered in blood, it kept moving.
But despite its durability, it hadn’t so much as torn Woli’s clothes. She stood pristine before it, naturally brimming with leisure.
Eventually, deeming a head-on fight hopeless, the ghost gave up charging and tried to flee—right toward the direction where people watched from outside.
Thanks to the boundary, it couldn’t escape, but Seonwoo and Suhyeon, seeing its battered face up close, almost pitied it now.
“See? Nothing to worry about, right?”
The two watched Woli’s bat show with dazed expressions.
“That thing... it’s not a big deal, is it?”
Suhyeon’s question. A high schooler gleefully beating a ghost with a bat would prompt that. Taeju chuckled.
“For her?”
At Taeju’s words, Suhyeon nodded.
Suhyeon’s heart pounded. Partly from surprise, but not only that. She knew this feeling.
When she first signed up and posted, when she learned the Ring series was horror, when she first saw a ghost emerge on TV. She’d felt this thrill then.
“Fun, right? That?”
Taeju whispered just loud enough for Suhyeon alone. Hearing it, she realized she found it fun.
She shouldn’t enjoy scenes like that. Shouldn’t find them entertaining. That’s what she thought.
“It’s okay. You’re allowed to find it fun.”
The words echoed. She rejected it so hard because she liked it.
Just like Taeju said. She still loved horror movies. Despite vowing never again, she couldn’t resist scenes like this.
“Your parents would prefer you admit you like what you like, rather than shambling around like a zombie, barely alive.”
Suddenly, tears welled up—not from raw emotion like before.
Suhyeon wiped them secretly. Not overwhelmed this time, they stopped easily.
“Even a brute-force method like that works, huh.”
Seonwoo asked Taeju. His worried eyes had shifted to those watching raw gore without filter.
Not exactly Seonwoo’s taste, but he seemed somewhat desensitized; the fear had faded.
“Sometimes simple and brutal works. You know the saying? ‘Smart head, easy body.’ Opposite too: ‘Strong body, easy head.’ No need to overcomplicate what a bat can handle.”
As Taeju joked, Woli swung tirelessly, no sign of fatigue. Maybe bored of the pummeling, her grip tightened, swings grew fiercer.
The escalating bat blows eventually sent the curse bouncing around until it couldn’t rise again.
“See? That’s the curse’s true form. No big deal.”
Seonwoo glanced sidelong, reluctant to look fully, but Suhyeon watched intently.
This was what she loved. What she’d thought she shouldn’t.
When she first heard about the curse with the ghost bursting from the screen, she’d wondered if it was punishment for loving such things—after her parents’ death, still not reformed.
Heaven’s judgment for her unchanging tastes. That’s what she’d thought.
That as punishment? Suhyeon smirked. It was nothing. No punishment. The moment she thought that, the curse dissolved into smoke.
It vanished as if never there. No blood, no flesh. Just lingering mist-like smoke and Woli standing amid the mirrors.
“Is it over?”
Suhyeon asked. Seonwoo turned, wanting to ask the same.
“Yeah, for now.”
“‘For now’...?”
Seonwoo asked uneasily. Before Taeju could answer, Suhyeon did.
“The rest is up to me, right?”
Taeju was a bit surprised. She’d said what he’d planned to.
“Right. And maybe Seonwoo too. Nothing major—just live normally.”
He skipped the lecture: stop blaming yourself, and the curse won’t return. She seemed to get it; repeating would just be preachy adult nagging.
“Thank you.”
Suhyeon bowed sincerely. Taeju smiled back.
“Now go on out. We need to clean up.”
“Huh?”