Chapter 12
Chapter 12
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 12
Chapter Title: Lee Seo-ah
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“Fuck, damn. They killed them so cleanly.”
A man in suit pants with just a shirt thrown on dipped his finger into the thick blood smeared on the window and spat out the words.
The interior of the subway where the Monkey Dream had appeared. Specifically, the first car directly connected to the driver's compartment.
Unlike the other cars where at least one survivor had emerged, there wasn't a single survivor here. All that was left was blood and more blood, even more blood, along with chunks of flesh and scattered organs. At a glance, it looked like an elementary school kid had dumped red paint everywhere.
Which meant it lacked any sense of reality.
Park Hee-min, chief of the Response Division at the Management Bureau's Busan Branch, shook his head and squatted down in front of the corpses, prodding at a piece of red flesh.
It went without saying, but these were real bodies. The cause of death was exsanguination, unlike typical Monkey Dream victims. Or shock. There were no traces of cardiac arrest.
The victims had probably died while their skin was sliced and carved away, enduring the pain. Slowly, without any resistance.
It wasn't unusual. The Monkey Dream was infamous among urban legends for inflicting excruciating agony on its victims.
The problem was that it had happened exactly the same way in reality.
These things never crawled out from the dream world into the real one. They were eternally confined to the back side of the world, slowly growing by devouring humans one by one. For them to manifest in reality and cause mass casualties like this was a first, even if you scoured the entire globe.
And for that first incident to happen in Korea, of all places.
Park Hee-min let out a deep sigh and stepped out of the subway car.
“All right, everyone, you didn't see anything here. What was that?”
“Nothing...”
“Good job! Such good kids. Now head on home!”
“Yes...”
“Next?”
The blonde woman sitting on the station bench spoke to the line of witnesses standing in a row. Instead of walking toward her when called, the witness shouted at the Management Bureau agent standing right beside him.
“Wh-what the hell is this? Who the fuck are you people? I'm a department head at a major corporation—a department head! You can't treat me like—”
Bang!
Before the man could finish, the agent pulled the trigger. The bullet that grazed past him embedded itself in the wall.
“...”
The agent said nothing and lowered the gun. The man who'd been yelling rolled his eyes back on the spot and pissed himself.
“Eww! Gross!”
The woman waved her hand dismissively as she looked down at him. The agent bowed apologetically, then dragged the fainted man by the collar and dumped him at the very end of the line.
After that, things proceeded smoothly. No one else dared complain about the bizarre procedure.
Park Hee-min, who had been smoking a bit further away, walked over to her.
“Hari.”
“Oh, Chief Park Hee-min.”
The woman called Hari turned her head toward Hee-min. He erased the memory of the old man in front of him, then patted the empty seat beside him.
“Have a seat. Your legs must be killing you from standing so long.”
“Should I?”
Hee-min grinned and plopped down onto the empty bench. Sitting next to the petite Hari, his massive frame made their size difference even more stark. Even the Management Bureau agents handling the scene couldn't help glancing over.
But Hee-min didn't reprimand them and instead asked Hari,
“Learn anything?”
“Hmm... not really. These people here weren't even on the subway to begin with! No useful info.”
“Where are the survivors?”
“At the very end of the line. They still need stabilizing, so I pushed them back, but should I start with them first?”
“That'd be great.”
“Got it!”
Hari flashed a bright smile and signaled to an agent with her eyes. The agent brought forward a man from the back of the line who looked relatively unharmed and placed him in front of her.
“Uh, ugh...”
The man's pupils were dilated. His whole body trembled, and cold sweat drenched his face. Whether from anxiety or nail-biting, blood dripped from his index and middle fingers.
It was understandable. The Monkey Dream made victims appear unconscious on the outside, but in reality, it was different. Everyone caught in it remained fully conscious. Which meant they'd been forced to watch people being disassembled in real time right in front of them.
It was only natural for their minds to shatter.
Even seasoned Management Bureau agents often couldn't eat meat for days after dealing with anomalies, so what about civilians?
Honestly, the fact that the man was standing at all was a miracle. With some sedatives and time, he might even give a proper testimony.
But Hari didn't do that. She glanced at Hee-min, then stared straight into the man's eyes and clapped her hands.
Clap.
With the sharp sound, the man's tense, anxious face went slack.
He was under hypnosis.
It was her ability, gained from exposure to anomalies. The power that had elevated her to a high position and made her an indispensable human resource for the Bureau.
Not as potent as magic, but undeniably powerful. Ordinary people couldn't resist it even once; their minds were completely dominated.
That was the case now. The man stared at Hari blankly, fully entranced.
Hari forcibly manipulated his body this way and that, giggling, before finally asking the real questions.
“Tell me everything you saw and felt! No lies!”
“It was the weekend, so I was sleeping in. Then around lunchtime, I suddenly get a call from my section chief. Says there's urgent work in the afternoon and to come in. I kept saying no, but he starts yelling—”
“Bzzzt! Just the subway incident! Only the stuff involving the anomaly!”
With the proper command inputted, the man stopped and switched to a different story.
“The subway ran for ten minutes but didn't arrive at any station. The moment I started wondering about it, some unknown force forced me into my seat. I tried to get up amid the sudden chaos, but my mind was awake while my body wouldn't move.”
“Mhm.”
“All sorts of thoughts started flooding my head. Was I kidnapped? Did something go wrong with the subway? Is someone trying to set a fire—”
“Skip!”
“A little later, small monkeys wielding blades started entering my car. They chatted among themselves, then suddenly butchered some woman. After killing her alive like that, they did the same to the guy sitting right next to me.”
“Monkey Dream for sure, Chief Park Hee-min.”
“Then they reached for the man next to me. But right before the blade touched him, he pulled a knife and a book from the bag he was holding and slaughtered the monkeys in reverse.”
“What?”
Hari's eyes went wide at the completely unexpected story. Chief Park Hee-min shot up from his seat and said to the man,
“Keep going.”
“The man killed the monkeys, drew something somewhere, cried out God's name, and moved to another car. A few minutes later, he came back, and when the subway stopped, he left. That's when I snapped out of it too.”
The man stopped there and said no more.
Hee-min muttered the word “God,” then asked again.
“Describe what he drew.”
“I'm not sure. Couldn't turn my head to see.”
“Fuck.”
Hee-min cursed and turned to Hari.
“It's a mage. The book he had has to be a grimoire.”
“Really...?”
“Definitely. Crying out God's name means he probably picked up an old Christian grimoire and became a mage. He's not the culprit behind this incident, but the emergence of a new mage in Korea is a problem in itself. Anomalies will start popping up around him in droves.”
Mages had the power to attract anomalies. This incident might even have happened because the mage boarded the subway.
Hee-min spotted the CCTV dangling plainly from the station ceiling and turned away.
“Hari, has the video forensics team arrived?”
“Yup! They went in just a bit ago, so they're probably checking the footage now.”
“Alright, I'll head there. Wrap up appropriately and administer the memory suppressants.”
“Roger.”
Hari replied, and Hee-min set off. He burst into the security room managing the subway's CCTV and scanned the forensics team already there.
“...Ha, fuck.”
The forensics team members were all collapsed on the floor, blood streaming from their ears, noses, and eyes. Hee-min grimaced and shifted his gaze to the monitor.
[...Young man, why do you wander so? Come, let us wash away our grudges.]
What appeared on the monitor wasn't CCTV footage but a blood-soaked woman in pure white mourning clothes. Hee-min sighed deeply, lined up the widespread monitors, and slipped on his golden knuckles.
And then.
Crunch!!
He smashed them all with his fist.
Knuckles that destroyed both ethereal and physical forms without distinction. The evil spirit was pulverized face-first before it could do anything. A pathetic end, but she had faithfully fulfilled her role.
“...”
Videos or footage possessed by evil spirits didn't get purified by killing the entity. Instead, the data depleted entirely, leaving nothing.
The CCTV footage was the same. Hee-min checked just in case, but nothing remained in storage. Only the cursed video that could revive the evil spirit.
“...Not a coincidence, huh.”
An evil spirit popping up out of nowhere at a site the Management Bureau arrived at? In the security room of a subway station with footage of a mage?
No way it was random. Someone was definitely covering for his identity.
Hee-min sighed deeply and slapped the cheeks of the forensics team on the floor. But they wouldn't wake. They only twitched intermittently, muttering incomprehensible words.
Fully cursed. Proof of a high-level evil spirit handler. Impressively controlled so they wouldn't die outright.
“Gonna need to purify these guys...”
Hee-min cursed inwardly, sat in the security room chair, and pulled out his phone. Then he made a call.
After a short ring, the other side picked up. Hee-min cut straight to the chase without preamble.
“Branch Director, new mage in Busan. Can you check if any Christian-related grimoires have gone missing recently from Israel or nearby?”
*
“Huh, the ghost died.”
“What?”
“Nah, it's nothing. Keep going.”