Chapter 033
Let’s sort this out.
While chasing the missing person, I ran into a bizarre and horrifying phenomenon and got sucked somewhere.
The conclusion was simple.
I, too, had gone missing, just like the missing person.
Swallowed by a Ghost Story.
“M-Mister Policeman…?”
And probably these kids too.
The five or six kids in middle school uniforms were looking at me with faces full of hope and sorrow.
Seeing those faces, the sense of being overwhelmed receded instead, and my mind came back into focus.
First things first.
I had to figure out the situation…!
“I’m not a police officer.”
I showed them the <Baekilmong Co., Ltd.> logo attached to the front of the guard uniform I was wearing.
“I work for a private security company.”
“Ahhh…….”
It seemed they had mistaken the guard uniform for a police uniform.
Resignation and fear began filling the children’s faces. I quickly added,
“But I can still report this and take security measures. So calm down and tell me what kind of situation this is, okay?”
“U-uh, yes…!”
The short-haired student who had spoken first swallowed hard, then began speaking in a trembling voice.
“So, um. We, we… came on a school trip.”
First-year students from a middle school in Seoul had come to Gyeongju on a school trip.
The teachers had split the kids into groups to make them easier to manage, and these kids, who had ended up as Group 3, seemed to have been especially lively and curious.
“B-behind our lodgings, there was a mountain. And when we looked, there was something like a pavilion there… so we said we should go do a courage test.”
In the middle of the night, they had secretly decided among themselves to go check out that “pavilion.”
Whew….
Under normal circumstances, they would have gotten caught by the teachers and scolded, or they would have gone to look, laughed among themselves, and come back.
But….
“There was a painting in that pavilion.”
This was a Ghost Story world.
“It, it was a weird-looking painting, of something like a house…….”
The student swallowed.
“Someone was looking at us from inside that house.”
“……”
“So then, like, we were telling each other to go closer and look….”
“You touched it.”
“……”
The student who had been speaking nodded, then started crying with choking sobs.
“Su-suddenly, from inside the painting, there was this voice saying stuff like, ‘Good, very good,’ and laughing and laughing, and then… something weird came out,”
And when they came to their senses, they were in this eerie abandoned house.
“There are weird sounds outside the windows, and even when the sun comes up we can’t see because of the fog… w-we can’t get out…….”
Behind them, a boy with a slightly mischievous face was sniffling too. They all looked like they were on the verge of panicking.
Hah….
I asked in a deliberately calm voice.
“Did that painting happen to look like a hanging scroll?”
“Hhk, a hanging scroll?”
“Something rolled up like this.”
“Ah… uh, no, not that… it was, like, a traditional painting? A traditional painting… you know, um, painted with a brush….”
“…An ink-wash painting?”
“Yes!!”
The middle schooler nodded fiercely.
If that was the case… then maybe that was the common point that pulled people into this Ghost Story.
A scroll rod was usually an old-fashioned sort of object.
Then there’s a high chance that what was inside the scroll the officer had was also a traditional ink-wash painting.
Considering that grotesque dark red-black liquid rampaging in the restroom had looked like ink too.
To sum it up….
A Ghost Story in which a bizarre ink-wash painting swallowed any human who touched it and sent them to a terrifying place.
…I can think of maybe five or six.
That narrowed the category down quite a bit. The problem was that not a single Darkness among them was easy to deal with.
This really is a classic Ghost Story type….
The superstitious kind of fear that slowly tightened around your throat.
The kind of scary story that carried a whiff of shamanic dread.
“……”
I was seriously in trouble. I was already bad with ghosts as it was….
This looks a lot more serious than the convenience store ghost did….
In the spirit of grasping at straws, I wanted to count the number of people. Things were usually less scary if there were more people around!
Was there anyone else here?
Come to think of it, where had that guard captain gone? He should have gotten caught up in this with me too, but there wasn’t even a trace of him.
Even having that guard around would’ve been reassuring, but this… I couldn’t exactly lean on the kids.
This is driving me crazy.
Even so, without letting it show, I asked,
“You must’ve been really scared. How long have you been here?”
“O-one day…? I don’t know…….”
“Aren’t you hungry?”
“We had, like, snacks… so we ate those.”
“I see.”
I think these kids are near their limit too.
Kids who had only just graduated elementary school being trapped in a place like this by themselves?
It was only because fear had put them into a hyper-alert state that they didn’t feel the drain on their stamina, but if this kept up, they could collapse from exhaustion in an instant.
“It’s s-so scary, and our phones don’t work, so….”
“Right. For now, mister will try to find a way out, so don’t touch anything else in the meantime….”
Wait.
“Then is it just you kids here? No other adults?”
“An adult! There is one, but…!”
Just then.
…From far away, I heard the sound of someone screaming.
Aaaagh!
“……”
“He’s over there just shouting by himself… that mister is scary.”
“……Yeah.”
I’m scared too….
But it’s not like I can take you with me….
At times like this, maybe it really was an advantage to have a warm comforting plush doll (alive).
Brown.
I called to my Good Friend in my pocket.
Come to think of it, this guy had been awfully quiet.
“Mr. Roe Deer.”
A somewhat dispirited voice came out.
“I’m sorry. You went into such an unsanitary and filthy place just to give me a gift….”
It seemed he had been feeling quite guilty. I laughed awkwardly.
It’s fine. We just have to get out.
Actually, it was not fine.
But it wasn’t as if getting angry here would let me quit midway…. It would only leave resentment in a walking murderous plush doll.
“You truly are bold! That is an excellent talent even for an entertainer!”
No, I’m a coward.
So I’m going to need your cooperation, seriously.
Will you help me get out?
“What do you need? Just say the word! This Brown shall prepare it….”
Hmm, at this rate, even if I didn’t pull in the fifty million, it felt like my favorability with him would still be fine.
I gave the pocket holding Brown a couple of taps, after he had promised full cooperation, then started walking deeper into the abandoned house.
…Toward where the screams were coming from.
“I’m going to check and come back, so could you wait here for a bit?”
“Y-yes…!”
Of course, I had already loaded a 500-won coin so I could use my remote hand at any time.
And my flashlight too.
Good thing it’s attached to the uniform.
Relying on the thin beam of light, I moved farther in.
Aagh…! No, don’t…!
…Save me, save meeeeaaagh!
The closer I got, the clearer the voice became, until I could make out words and sentences.
The screaming from beyond the walls of the dark abandoned house sounded horribly vivid. Ha….
H-hang in there.
A chill ran down my spine because I wanted to run away.
The moment I forced myself onward and turned the corner—
“This fucking world! This fucking company…!!”
I saw a familiar face.
“…Manager in charge of the manual review?”
The office worker in his forties who had been struggling in front of a wooden board plastered with talismans stared at me with wide eyes.
It was the missing Manager Lee Byeongjin.
“Gu-Guard Team…??”
Ah, right.
I was wearing a Guard Team uniform.
“G-good heavens! You’re from the Guard Team?!”
The other man brightened at once and came scrambling toward me, trembling.
“You came to find me!!”
No, I got dragged in here too.
But why is he acting so submissive?
Ah, was it because he thought I was Guard Team?
After ending up here, this was almost the first time I’d seen one of this company’s employees act this flatly deferential.
I glanced down slightly at the borrowed guard uniform I was wearing.
…Office staff do tend to look down on the Field Operations Teams….
More precisely, on lower-ranking ordinary employees in the Field Operations Teams. Since no one knew when or where they might die, people treated them carelessly and didn’t try very hard to get along with them.
I remembered the administrative employee whose attitude had subtly changed once they found out I had almost ended up on an elite team.
And then there was Manager Lee Byeongjin in front of me too, sweating coldly, darting his eyes around, and smiling as hard as he could.
Hmm.
Let’s make a little use of this.
I clasped my hands behind my back and, like a proper Guard Team member, said,
“A missing-person report was filed within the company, so I was in the middle of searching.”
“I-I see. Haha! H-hahaha…! As expected!! The company didn’t abandon me…!!”
No, it did abandon you.
“Th-then, um, you’re going to smash this Darkness, right? Yes?? Since you’re Guard Team….”
I deliberately spoke in an indifferent tone.
“The Guard Team is not a unit that smashes Darknesses.”
“……!”
“We are the team that suppresses disturbances.”
“Th-that… that’s right. Yes, haha… I, uh, don’t have much experience with this kind of field exploration, you see.”
Okay. I’d set the mood well enough.
“Explain the situation.”
“Pardon??”
“I would like you to describe what you experienced after going missing, in chronological order.”
Because I needed to compare it to what the kids had told me and figure out what exactly this Ghost Story was!
“Ah, y-yes, yes!”
The man hurriedly got up, then began babbling at top speed.
“Th-that is, I, I found a very valuable-looking scroll rod over there near Jirisan, at a souvenir shop….”
It was almost exactly the same as what I’d heard in the office.
After being tipped off by the shop owner that it “granted wishes,” he had purchased the suspicious scroll rod, and afterward his financial luck had visibly improved.
“They said to keep it near water and not touch the scroll rod, and I really did hit the lottery!! Second prize!!”
But….
“I started hearing strange whispers….”
Manager Lee Byeongjin’s eyes shook, and he began clawing at his hands and spitting as he spoke.
“I-I… they said since my wish had been granted, it was only proper, by a scholar’s duty, to repay it, th-that sort of whispering, every night, every night the sound of water, and crying, and the sound of a beast crying coming closer and closerrrr!!”
Eek.
“I-I simply, simply couldn’t bear it any longerrrr! So….”
“…So,”
I remembered the scroll rod I had seen in that blood-soaked-looking restroom, ripped to shreds down the middle.
“You tried to tear it apart?”
“……Yes.”
So he had chosen a place that wasn’t his home, somewhere in broad daylight, somewhere with no witnesses but where he could immediately flee back into a crowd after ripping it apart. For example….
An unused restroom at the company.
He had gone there and torn the scroll rod apart.
“I-I tried, I tried to do that, but….”
“You got dragged here.”
“……Hrk! Yes….”
Manager Lee Byeongjin breathed harshly.
I rubbed the back of my neck.
…What do I even say to this.
He really had done everything a person in a Ghost Story does right before dying….
And in the middle of all that, the fact that he had gone all the way to a basement restroom in Baekilmong Co., Ltd. because he wanted a place with no witnesses was almost worthy of applause.
Honestly, at this point it feels like he’d have no room to complain even if he died.
Holding back a sigh, I raised my head.
In front of the spot where Manager Lee Byeongjin had been rolling around, I saw a wall covered with talismans.
There were especially many torn talismans here compared to the other places.
Why had he been making such a fuss in front of this spot?
I shone my flashlight on the wall.
And I realized why.
“…Is this a door?”
Through the gaps where the talismans had been torn away, I could see a handle.
And judging by the lock attached to the handle….
A door leading outside?
“It-it comes here!”
“Pardon?”
“The ghost! It comes here every day!”
Manager Lee Byeongjin crawled toward me with bloodshot eyes, grabbed at my pant leg, and began muttering.
“It c-comes to eat me. It comes to eat me…. Th-the talismans! They keep falling off every day!”
“That’s….”
“It’ll come a-again today….”
Knock knock.
“……”
“……”
Knock knock knock.
From the door,
came a sound.
Knock knock knock knock.
“It came ag—”
I clamped a hand over Manager Lee Byeongjin’s mouth.
Excuse me.
“……”
It’s too cold outside, so could you please open the door?
“……”
Mister, don’t you remember me? I’m seven-year-old Jeong Naeun, the girl who lived next door to you at Somang Apartments…
From beyond the door came the sound of a small child sniffing and sobbing.
Please help me. I’m so cold and tired… I don’t know where I am, please, just open the door…….
There was a strange sorrow in it, the kind that made pity well up in you before fear even could….
As if entranced, the trembling voice beside me said,
“N-Naeun.”
Mister.
The talismans on the door began to burn away.
A smile mixed into the sobbing voice.
You answered again?
“…!”
“N-no!! Agh!! No! I didn’t answer! Go away! Go away!!”
The manager came back to his senses and shrieked.
But.
I don’t want to.
I don’t want toI don’t want toI don’t want toI don’t want toI don’t want toI don’t want toI don’t want toI don’t want toI don’t want toI don’t want toI don’t want toI don’t want toI don’t want toI don’t want toI don’t want toI don’t want to
“Hiiiiik!”
Bang.
Bang bang bang bang bang bang
The door began shaking as if it would break.
The burned talismans fell away.
Bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang
Talismans came raining down.
Bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang
I barely managed to move my arm.
Bang.
I threw a coin into the air and summoned the hand.
Bang.
And among the countless talismans that had fallen to the floor, I somehow grabbed the ones that still had an intact shape….
Bang.
And pasted those talismans over the doorknob.
Bang.
The talismans fell away again in a rush.
“Hff.”
But….
.
The sound at the door stopped.
Of the talismans I had layered over the doorknob, only one remained.
“……”
“……”
That was too close.
A shiver rose up the back of my neck.
Sobbing, hic, hic….
The sound of footsteps walking away slowly faded from beyond the door……
“Hrk, hufffff….”
Manager Lee Byeongjin collapsed onto the floor.
I opened and closed my hand, slick with sweat.
This is insane.
I almost fainted when it started pounding on the door.
I hid my trembling hand behind my back.
A Ghost Story that trapped prey.
A shamanic atmosphere, talismans, being eaten, temptation, a calling voice, fear….
“…….”
I knew it.
———————=
Darkness Exploration Record / Ghost Story
[Sangun-nim]
: A Ghost Story that appears in Darkness Exploration Record. Baekilmong Co., Ltd.’s identification code for it is Qterw-C-51.
A grim Darkness in the form of an eerie ink-wash painting based on a changgwi.
A total of 17 explorations were recorded.
———————=
This was a Jangsanbeom-type Ghost Story.
